Thursday, November 19, 2009

From GoogleDocs: "The Cult of Randianism?"


11-19-09
(early morning)

Randpant holes... Time to see how well her theory 
and life hold together.
"Grant Ayn Rand a premise and you’d leave with a lifestyle."
Depends... I see the hold of her use of the word morality. 

"(Glenn Beck and Ron Paul are Rand fans; Alan Greenspan, once a member of her inner circle, had his faith in the market’s rationality shaken by the crash.)"
Alan, the market is mixed. That's why it doesn't hold to your... "faith".

"It’s easy to chuckle at Rand"
Why? Why would you chuckle at Rand?

"Rand insisted, over and over, that the details of her life had nothing to do with the tenets of her philosophy. She would cite, on this subject, the fictional architect Howard Roark, hero of her novel The Fountainhead:“Don’t ask me about my family, my childhood, my friends or my feelings. Ask me about the things I think.” But the things she thought, it turns out, were very much dependent on her family, her childhood, her friends, and her feelings—or at least on her relative lack of all that."
That is not a good sign. Ah, but contradictions don't exist - 
check your premises. But what of the area of quantum 
physics and that of consciousness (they are related; as 
to how, I forget the connection, but it had to do with 
some article I read online, and a Derren Brown series)?
Suppose the area of consciousness is Indeed the spot 
where some sort of God or something that is not 
connected to the observable world, resides? I highly 
doubt this to be the case, but this would be the spot 
to look and explore -- the edges of understanding 
are historically automatically attached upon to by 
mystics.

"Anne Heller’s new biography, Ayn Rand and the World She Made, allows us to poke our heads, for the first time, into the Russian-American’s overheated philosophical subbasement. After reading the details of Rand’s early life, I find it hard to think of Objectivism as very objective at all—it looks more like a rational program retrofitted to a lifelong temperament, a fantasy world created to cancel the nightmare of a terrifying childhood."

"No one, according to Heller’s portrait, struggled with the unreality of Objectivism more than Rand herself. She wept, throughout her life, at the world’s refusal to conform to her ideal vision of it."
To show! To show! What of John Galt's "to show" principle? "Does not consist of demands, but of granting wishes."

"Although she claimed that “one must never attempt to fake reality in any manner,” she repeatedly withheld or distorted facts to feed her own mythology. (When she died, in 1982, none of her followers even knew her real name.) She carried on an increasingly toxic sexual affair with a married disciple 25 years her junior; when he had his own affair with a younger woman, Rand slapped him, excommunicated him, and falsely accused him of embezzlement. Her special brand of reasoning led her to some unreasonably ugly positions—e.g., that homosexuality is “disgusting” (which caused gay Objectivists to pretend to be straight)"

"that Native Americans, having failed for millennia to create a heroically productive capitalist society, deserved to be stripped of their land; that women are ideally “hero worshippers” who should submit themselves, body and soul, to great men. “I think I represent the proper integration of a complete human being,” Rand wrote while composing her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged. After the book’s publication, however, she fell into a deep depression and chided herself for not being more like her ideal man. “John Galt wouldn’t feel this,” she wrote. “He would know how to handle this. I don’t know.” All of which makes her—if not an ideal person, or even really anything close—at least an ideal subject for a biography."

"Ayn Rand was born Alissa Rosenbaum, in St. Petersburg in 1905. Her father, a pharmacist, was successful enough to buy both the pharmacy he worked in and the building that housed it. Her mother, foreshadowing her daughter’s future, named the family cats after American place-names. The family employed a cook, a nurse, a maid, and a governess. It was a bad time, of course, to be Russian Jews, and also a bad time to be a prosperous business owner—to be both basically guaranteed disaster. The Rosenbaums were subject to strict anti-Semitic laws, the constant threat of pogroms, and—just as Alissa was hitting adolescence—the Russian Revolution. At 12, Rand watched Bolshevik soldiers march in and take her father’s pharmacy. He would never really work again, and she would spend her adulthood railing, from across the world, against anyone who used force to “loot and mooch” from productive businessmen."

"Alissa showed strong Objectivist traits from the start: As a child, she was solitary, opinionated, possessive, and intense—a willful and brilliant loner with literally zero friends."

"At 9, she decided to become a writer; by 11 she’d written four novels, each of which revolved around a heroine exactly her age but blonde, blue-eyed, tall, and leggy. (Rand was—by her own standards—unheroically dark, short, and square.) At 13, she declared herself an atheist. It’s hard not to suspect, based on many of these childhood anecdotes, that Rand suffered from some kind of undiagnosed personality disorder. Once, when a teacher asked her to write an essay about the joys of childhood, she wrote a diatribe condemning childhood as a cognitive wasteland—a joyless limbo in which adult rationality had yet to fully develop. (It was possibly a good thing that she never had children.) In middle school she found herself uncharacteristically intrigued by another student, a seemingly intelligent girl who was also popular—a contradiction in the Rand cosmology. Hoping to solve the mystery, and possibly even make a friend, Rand approached her. “Would you tell me what is the most important thing in life to you?” she asked, showing once again her flair for smooth opening lines. “My mother,” the girl answered. Rand turned away, disgusted. As an adult, she called this exchange “the first most important event in my life socially” and analyzed it as follows: “I had thought she was a serious girl and that she was after serious things, but she was just conventional and ordinary, a mediocrity, and she didn’t mean anything as a person.”"

Strange to think of those other principles that I once 
heard only in relevance to school distinguishers... 
Often, a gifted individual has asynchronous development.

"“No one helped me,” Rand would later write, “nor did I think it was anyone’s duty to help me.” In fact, her family and American friends helped her quite a lot. She moved in with, and borrowed money from, relatives in Chicago, one of whom owned a theater where she watched hundreds of movies for free. Eventually she moved to Hollywood, ran into Cecil B. DeMille in a parking lot, and somehow, despite her broken English, got a job reading scripts. "

"Toward the end of her life, Rand listened as a prominent psychologist stood onstage and dismissed her fictional heroes—those idealized steel barons and physicists and composers—as implausible. Soon she’d had enough and stood up in the crowd, outraged.


“Am I unreal?” she shouted. “Am I a character who can’t possibly exist?”


She intended this, one suspects, as a refutation. It strikes me as maybe the most profound question she ever raised."

"Objectivists long unfulfilled wish: "Why can't everybody see the benefit of this philosophy and embrace it!"

Objectivists wish fulfilled: "Why is everybody f***ing me over???"

By Ricochet252 on 11/02/2009 at 2:29 pm"
Selfishness inside a system of selflessness is not what 
Rand was talking about, Ricochet. An example of this 
would be a Christian trying to get his or her loved 
ones into heaven. Selfishness in the context of selflessness. 
A Muslim bombing a place for 72 virgins. Selfishness 
in the context of selflessness.


"Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life."
I suppose the main problem that I actually have with the 
use of the word "moral" is that I instantly think of the 
Christian use of the word "moral", being that of a judgmental 
God that I've never understood, and that says things 
that feel good are immoral, like masturbation, sex, 
woman, men, and profit. It could very well be that I 
have no conception of how she's using the word "moral". 
In that case, it's an entirely new concept for me.


"Because then it gives man permission to function irrationally"
Permission? What about John Galt and only you yourself being able 
to give permission?

"Success arrived slowly but steadily after that: her first play, her first novel, her philosophy, her cult."
Cult... Is it a cult? If it indeed is it cult, it's a rather ironic one.



(reaching the end of the video from that one site)
    Evolutionarily, following the leader has had the benefit of 
survival. The change from animal to human has made for 
a change. This extra limb, this chunk of matter that used 
to serve no purpose except as an extra boost for a lift 
a bit above the rest of the crowd, finds itself in a reversal. 
Consciousness, which before was this thing of mystery, 
and for that the chunky nature of extra limbs with 
no apparent purpose was semi-beneficial, like an 
prepubescent eye that could detect light - 
consciousness might evolve toward this Rand rationality. 
It might also go the opposite direction, with a balance 
between emotions and reason. It might go the direction 
of a reasonable faith. Whatever is most beneficial to 
survival, shall survive. This isn't a intent-driven 
process, but a passive-change result. 
    However, the poison from faith and force-based 
money system is starting to show its cracks, and 
it's only so long before we either swim, or sink. 
I think it is calculable what will happen. Such things - 
thoughts about the thoughts - also enter the calculations.
    It's also interesting that I make the assumption
of "evolutionarily". I haven't studies the subject at all. 
I've just watched videos about it.

Watching 
into 5 minutes in, I'm shocked. It looks like 
pre-YouTubian atheist/theist debates. My philosophy 
fits perfectly with hers. That is - atheism, self-interest/ 
selfishness. I think the main difference is that lately 
I've been applying these principles as something 
that others could follow, not just something that 
I'm doing on my own. I've always had nervousness 
attached with this - Christianity, FHTM, PTCs... 
in that I felt like I had to somehow impose the 
ideology on the other person.
       6:41 into that video, I'm seeing what I consider 
to have been an unnecessary integration of 
morality into Objectivism. It could be that 
I'm simply, as with jobs, rejecting pearls for 
the slime - but damn, what a slime!
Why, Rand, use words like "evil", when such 
a word relies so heavily on emotion? 
    That is, ... and now I'm wondering if it's 
not just because I've always had the word 
evil attached to faith-based systems. 
But still... why "evil"?
Well, as she put, that that which is 
detrimental to life, that is evil. It makes 
"evil" sound more like "that hurts!" in response 
to a stove. But again, I hear John Galt's
words (in my mind) of it not being referential to
instinctual or automatic responses.
    Is this not, then, a blind spot in the philosophy?
Or in my own?

Her darting eyes are interesting. Calculating. 
And then I think of that one thing I read about 
Benjamin Franklin and how his one picture shows 
his "cold and calculating eyes". It also reminds 
me of what people call "reptilian". Shifty eyes. 
They also jut out, and are quite dark.
No, I think it might be more to do with her 
facial structure.

up to 2:27
She appears to be using her visual field as a 
means of visualizing the discussion. The shifting 
seems connected to either models that she 
is looking at, references, or ways of thought. 
3:07
She sits awkwardly; stiffly.
9:04
YES!

The same could be said of anyone's philosophy - 
look at their life, it was chaotic, they display 
neurotic tendencies - therefore their philosophy 
is invalid. I was a Christian for a good few years 
of my life. Is that not a contradiction to my 
espousement of reason and selfishness? 
Perhaps, instead, the philosophy was the Mean 
out of the trap. And a lot of the reason 
that I'm now saying this is that I'm seeing 
Ayn Rand talking in that video, and I cannot 
distinguish how she is talking from how 
an atheist or statheist (rejection of 
theism but reliance of the state), 
except that it is a more consistent 
and more thorough approach.

2:21
I don't consider it a strength, but a self-defense, 
since I am easily manipulated emotionally. 
That is why I have refudged in books. I can control 
the interaction. The same with YouTube videos. 
With face-to-face, I have to spend some time 
learning about the person, so I know what their 
tendencies are, and what to be aware of.

1:34
I'm starting to see why the use of "evil".
2:52
That sounds psychotic.

In regard to the woman who was talking 
about "having grown up" and "being able 
to differentiate".
Could you not see her face? Could you not 
see the obvious lines of knowing it would 
not be wanted? The intention WAS exactly 
as what Rand put it is - to create chaos, 
to destroy.

1:05
Exactly one of the thoughts that came to 
my mind - her similarity to a dictator.
1:33
This seems a bit side-tracked...
2:12
The thought of the Christian complex comes 
to mind -- if the Christian is not allowed to 
insert Christian ideology wherever the Christian 
wants - that is censorship. To have the anyone 
else do the same, is militantness on that part of 
the group.










starting 5:32 PM
Apparently, Ayn Rand was anti-anarchy.
"Anarchy, as a political concept, is a naive floating abstraction: . . . a society without an organized government would be at the mercy of the first criminal who came along and who would precipitate it into the chaos of gang warfare."
But isn't this antithetical to individualism? 
That is, what about having no rulers - no 
authorities that are not, as per Ayn Rand's 
own Atlas Shrugged -- EARNED?

"But the possibility of human immorality is not the only objection to anarchy: even a society whose every member were fully rational and faultlessly moral, could not function in a state of anarchy; it is the need of objective laws and of an arbiter for honest disagreements among men that necessitates the establishment of a government."
Why couldn't "human immorality" be put under 
a magnifying glass in the same way that 
objects in the world are - the table, 
wood, molecules, atoms, all with the 
question of What? -- what about applying 
this to psychology?? Rand, did you not 
notice this gaping hole? 
Additionally, you define "human immorality" 
as things like "self-sacrifice" and "selflessness". 
Those are explainable by evolution! 
In the same way that Dawkins said to a woman 
who was complaining that evolution was 
cold and unforgiving, couldn't we adjust 
ourselves to reality, rather than escaping 
to that hole of government? Your Galt 
said that this hazy/foggy thinking came 
from having not thought about the issue 
enough -- BUT WHY. Galt took the road 
of showing. You did not have such an easy 
James Bond road to be able to take. 
What you "wish" then encompassed in 
the abdication of your mind to the 
gap of statism - more specifically, 
minarchism?
Or am I mixing categories (and no, I 
don't mean that sarcastically).

"it is the need of objective laws and of an arbiter for honest disagreements among men"
And why could that not emerge

... a thought occurred to me again 
about anarchy.
"But we have anarchy. Is not what is 
now what has emerged?"
By taking anarchy in the context of letting 
things emerge as they will, multiplied* by 
evolution, indeed, it is. I think that more 
thought into the subject would make for 
more enjoyable anarchy.
*Put into. Example: 3 people want pie, 
and all three worked on making it; 
how can all three have a slice?... 
that doesn't quite work. If they were 
already doing that, they either already 
had an agreement about how the pie 
would be shared. Damn equations that 
I got when I was younger... 
Let's suppose that they didn't.
Bleh. Nevermind. It explodes into 
conflict - authority issues. 
Put it this way: 
By multiplies, in this sense, I mean 
"put into". One or the other is the 
container "leader" and the other 
the follower. It could also be 
put as the difference between 
a line and a square: 
a square is a line put into a line - 
multiplied.

"If a society provided no organized protection against force, it would compel every citizen to go about armed, to turn his home into a fortress, to shoot any strangers approaching his door—or to join a protective gang of citizens who would fight other gangs, formed for the same purpose, and thus bring about the degeneration of that society into the chaos of gang-rule, i.e., rule by brute force, into perpetual tribal warfare of prehistorical savages."
Society doesn't exist, but society must provide protection? 
"The use of physical force—even its retaliatory use—cannot be left at the discretion of individual citizens."
THE FUCK. WHAT THE FUCK. AYN RAND! WHAT THE FUCK.
God damn it. She is not consistent. That or anarchy isn't. 
Or something...

"Peaceful coexistence is impossible if a man has to live under the constant threat of force to be unleashed against him by any of his neighbors at any moment."
WHICH IS FROM GOVERNMENT and the use of force...
which is enabled, and proceeds from... gover - well, 
not exactly. It has evolutionary roots, kinda. 

"Whether his neighbors’ intentions are good or bad, whether their judgment is rational or irrational, whether they are motivated by a sense of justice or by ignorance or by prejudice or by malice—the use of force against one man cannot be left to the arbitrary decision of another."
Man is a heroic creature... but not to be trusted.
I guess this rings to the same tune of that new 
video game:
"No hero is without his blemish."
Rand, you are both exemplary in psychological 
matters... and lacking. There are better 
answers than "let government do it."
What are they? Learning about people... 
Hm. That looks like a gap/elitism thing. 


Hm. Government is like money. It is easier 
to have this medium of "exchange" than 
to have to have to resolve them all with 
more specific means. When there is no 
anchor for money or government, 
chaos ensues.

"A recent variant of anarchistic theory, which is befuddling some of the younger advocates of freedom, is a weird absurdity called “competing governments.”"
lulz. Mixing the free market with extortion. 
Who can best extort you? :P


Roads! How do the Americanos stay on 
dem roads? I heard of some person once 
talking about driving in some other place. 
Possibly Honduras? I don't recall. 
The person was asking how and why the 
Americans weren't crashing left and right. 
If they were where HE came from, people 
would be vying for space and to get 
in front of each other.
That then reminds me of a TV show that 
I was recently half-watching - 
Wives Swap, I think it was called. 
The two households were basically 
opposite, with one having strict 
rules, and the other having barely 
any. After the swap, the predictable 
"middle ground" of improvements 
from both cultures was made.

I suspect that our reliance on road 
lights and stop signs are a sort of 
abdication of thought. What would 
happen if they were just taken away? 
Chaos?

"Accepting the basic premise of the modern statists—who see no difference between the functions of government and the functions of industry, between force and production"
Exactomundo.

"Remember that forcible restraint of men is the only service a government has to offer. Ask yourself what a competition in forcible restraint would have to mean."
"forcible restraint of men"
And your only reason for government 
is for the men that the conservatives 
(Christian, religion, selflessness) 
have created? Rand - government 
comes from and is consistent with 
that ideology. Am I wrong? How is 
government NOT that?

"One cannot call this theory a contradiction in terms, since it is obviously devoid of any understanding of the terms “competition” and “government.” Nor can one call it a floating abstraction, since it is devoid of any contact with or reference to reality and cannot be concretized at all, not even roughly or approximately. One illustration will be sufficient: suppose Mr. Smith, a customer of Government A, suspects that his next-door neighbor, Mr. Jones, a customer of Government B, has robbed him; a squad of Police A proceeds to Mr. Jones’ house and is met at the door by a squad of Police B, who declare that they do not accept the validity of Mr. Smith’s complaint and do not recognize the authority of Government A. What happens then? You take it from there."
War. Another 1776, but really small-scale.
I agree with you, Rand, about this point. 
What I don't agree with you about is 
of the validity of ANY government -- 
namely, that of sanction by law. 
Objectivism, taking to this extreme, 
becomes totalitarianism, does it not? 
...hm. And then I think of how it 
would weed out religion, as per 
Objectivism.

"The common denominator of such [advocates of “competing governments”] is the desire to escape from objectivity (objectivity requires a very long conceptual chain and very abstract principles), to act on whim, and to deal with men rather than with ideas—i.e., with the men of their own gang bound by the same concretes."
So, the use of force applied to the 
current evils of the world (however 
that might be defined) is the reason 
that the free market applied to 
government won't work? 
.... good point. 
But isn't evil - as per how you use it - 
the result of the ideology of Statism? 
And thus, aren't you falling into the 
very gap you accuse the religious of 
falling into?

Then comes to my mind the recall 
of that girl and her statement, along 
with the article, about Rand's Objectivism 
being a cult. Religions are infamously 
intolerant of such accusations.

"Picture a band of strangers marching down Main Street, submachine guns at the ready. When confronted by the police, the leader of the band announces: “Me and the boys are only here to see that justice is done, so you have no right to interfere with us.” According to the “libertarian” anarchists, in such a confrontation the police are morally bound to withdraw, on pain of betraying the rights of self-defense and free trade."
I guess I'm not a libertarian anachist, then.
I think that, at that point, each of them 
might as well just start shooting at each 
other. The leaders, at least, in these 
two groups believe that violence as a means 
to an end is a pretty good idea. Why not 
let 'er rip?

"Private force is force not authorized by the government, not validated by its procedural safeguards, and not subject to its supervision. The government has to regard such private force as a threat—i.e., as a potential violation of individual rights. In barring such private force, the government is retaliating against that threat."
So... what do you mean by "the government"?

""Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men." (from The Fountainhead)"
Previous evolutions - that which we are currently 
behind, are evil? Do you not realize that 
humanity is, itself, a technology?

"Atlas Shrugged, an enormous work, 1 168 pages long, portrayed what Rand considered to be the inevitable result of the unselfish concern for the welfare of others – socialism or anarchy."
Socialism or anarchy??
I'm starting to think she means the 
violent anarchists.

"Galt claims, that it is irrational to sacrifice the self for the good of society."
Whilst reason was not being passively selected 
because of its start, it was, in my guess, 
evolutionarily successful to be selfless. 
Now that the evolution has changed the 
game a bit, there is a slight impasse.

"Galt's Gulch, a capitalist utopia, is born to promote free enterprise without government controls."
... which is completely consistent with your 
advocation of the roles of government.

""Rand was passionately patriotic about her adopted country. There are many things about America, though, that she never understood, and the pervasiveness of religion in this country was certainly one of them. "
It was protected by the founders. 
They were running from tyranny 
and wanted free exchange, so they 
included cults and religion in free 
speech. ... well, that doesn't exactly 
account for the pervasiveness, does it? 
Although, memes spread like hell 
in that sort of environment.

"She imagined America as she imagined capitalism, and her success is evidence of the fact that her own fantasies coincided with those of others – and probably that her own simplicities met the need of others for one simple, all-embracing explanation of everything. This makes for a movement, but it doesn't make for good philosophy or viable politics."
"simple, all-embacing explanation of everything."
That's what I want, too.... kind of.

"Ayn Rand called her philosophy "Objectivism" because it is based on the premise that reality is an objective absolute. One must perceive and understand reality to survive. One's highest value should be one's ability to reason. This also manifested in the way Rand viewed her own life, not through feelings but through her interest in ideas and her thinking: "I do not regard any particular day of my childhood as especially memorable. What I regard as significant are certain trends and intellectual developments in my childhood, but not single days or events""
I'm kind of the same way. I have events mostly
categorized by the intellectual journey that I've 
been on.

"If students are taught that mindless conformity to the group is a virtue, is it any surprise that they gravitate toward gangs? If they are rendered intellectually incompetent to deal with reality, is it any surprise that they will seek to rule, or to be ruled, by others?"
Nice one.

"None of this matters, right? We're talking about a phase, no different from purple hair and lip rings, right? Well, yes, it's true that in most cases, the fever breaks. That kid stands up, walks outside, and reflects on the 727 pages of Fountainhead and 1,168 of Atlas he's just wolfed down. And realizes: That was nearly 2,000 pages (more, really, given that Rand's loathing of collectivist parasites is matched only by her loathing of paragraph indents) without a single instance of irony or humor. Or subtlety. Or grace. Nearly 2,000 hectoring, brook-no-ambiguity, you're-either-a-lion-or-a-leech pages of breathtaking psychological obtuseness."
Psychological obtuseness is a rather apt way of 
putting it.

"The days during which that 19-year-old has Rand's worldview vectored into his cerebral cortex are feverish and sleepless. Days of beautiful affliction during which the intransigence of others—roommates, a coed the patient has been hitting on, professors, parents, everyone—are shown to be the product of their shortcomings, their idiocy and sublimated envy of the patient's intelligence and talent. Days during which the infected comes to see himself and Roark/Galt as avatars of one another: superheroically mirthless protagonists in a drama of historical import. It's the damnedest thing. One day you've got a bright young kid dutifully connecting the dots of his liberal-arts education; the next, he's got Roark and Galt in the marrow and has become…an insufferable asshole."
Hm...

"In time, he begins to understand that his ordeal consists of two phases. There is the reading itself, which is one thing. And then there is the digesting, which is quite another. Overall, the experience eerily replicates that of devouring a family-size bag of Cheetos in a single sitting.1 During: irresistible, bracing, the thing at hand imparting vitality, fertility, potency. After: bleccchh."
?

"Make it go away, he thinks. The metallurgist protagonists. The operatic rapes heralded by whips and rock drills. The pirates with cat-coughing-up-hairball names like Ragnar Danneskjöld. Please, God."
??

"He may even feel his "recovery" marks him as a savvy and well-adjusted individual, yes?"
Ew. Reminds me of Christian indoctrination.

"No. He is a stupid and insolent boy. No one gets done with Ayn (rhymes with "mine") Rand. It is not in one's power to do so. That boy (or you, or I) can dismiss the books as a "phase" and attempt to busy ourselves with the kind of degenerate "stylists" Rand scorned (Faulkner, Nabokov). But none of us can escape the shadow of the lone straight shaft of the Taggart Building tumescing in the distance."
Why are you trying to escape it? Why are you 
busying yourself in attempt to forget?

"This is because there are boys and girls among us who have never overcome the Randian infection. "
This reminds me of a Christian speaker who once 
talked about how porn stars never got over 
sharing their porn.

"The Galt speech continues to ring in their ears for years like a maddening tinnitus, turning each of them into what next year's Physicians' Desk Reference will (undoubtedly) term an Ayn Rand Asshole(ARA)."
Why is it bad? Why do you not like it?

"They constitute a relatively small percentage of Rand readers, these ARAs. But they make their reading count. Thanks to them, the Rand Experience is no longer limited to those who have read the books. It's metastasized."
?

"You, me, all of us, we're living it. Because it's the ARA Army of antigovernment-antiregulation puritans who have spent the past three decades gleefully pulling the cooling rods out of the American economy. For a while, it got very big and very hot. Then it popped. And now the rest of us have to spend the next decade scaling the slippery slopes of the huge suppurative crater that was left behind."
The hell? What are you talking about?

"Feeling fisted by the Invisible Hand of the Market lo these past fifteen months? Lost a job lately? Or half the value of your 401(k)? Or a home? All three? Been wondering whence the too-long-ascendant political and economic ideas and forces behind Greenspanism, John Thainism, blind Wall Street plunder, bankruptcy, credit-default swaps, Bernie Madoff, and the ensuing Cannibalism in the Streets? Then you, sir, need to give thanks to Ayn Rand Assholes everywhere—as well as the steely loins from which they sprang."
I recognize the name Greenspan in that. Greenspan was 
the Stadler of Atlas Shrugged, as has been put by 
a YouTube comment I found somewhere. 
What are ARAs?

"DOES THAT MONIKER "Ayn Rand Asshole" strike you as a contrivance? Do you disbelieve the proposition that a person could read Atlas Shrugged almost purely at the level of injunction—taking the things John Galt says and does as straight as a biblical literalist takes the eye of the needle?"
No. YouTube anti-theists, as I once was and 
kind of still am, are the same way. It's just 
switching from once cult to another, based 
on how one is thinking -- authority-based. 
And yes, I do think that I have this insecurity.

"Then meet Michael Malice. No, really. That's his name. He's a New York City author and blogger who calls himself both a genius and an "elitist anarchist." What's that mean? It means that if a panhandler asks him for a little money or food, Malice says, "I could, but then you might live longer, so you see my dilemma.""
Ah, so this is what this person means by ARA. 
I suppose Malice skips over the question to 
the panhandler of, "What would I get in return?" 
It's understandable and compatible with 
Objectivism that Andrew Corsello, in the mindset 
of selflessness, condemn this action and 
remark. However, this is also remnant of 
a cult. But then, the question is: 
which side is the cult? :P
And if both are, then aren't we just living 
in one whole big shebang of a world 
of competing cults?

"Does Michael Malice admit to being an unreconstructed 33-year-old Ayn Rand Asshole?"
Loaded question.
"He does not—he proclaims it. "
:P As per the guys asking Dagne if she 
would consider public relations and she 
just tells the press that she's selfish.

And, again, here we (I and my imaginary 
audience which I project onto and will 
possibly later include Diane, Crystal, 
and Jeff) see my tendency to accept 
others' viewpoints -- 
"Loaded question".
And then I think of that one book I once 
read about the kid president. A kid book, 
cartoon cover, written probably for the 
ages of 13-15.

""I own Ayn Rand's personal first-edition, first-print copy of The Fountainhead," Malice continues. "I got it for my twenty-first birthday. It came from her estate. Whenever I'm with other Randians, I sohave the biggest dick in the room. 'Oh yeah? You've read all her books? Well, check this out, bitch!' ""
Um... that's an interesting combination. 
It mirrors those who, in the book, take 
others down as a means of destruction... 
anti-life. Those above are envied and hated, 
and those below, mocked. And, again, 
according to her philosophy, any amount 
of poison results in death. Sir, you have 
been touched. To be consistent with her 
philosophy, think - think of everything, 
and especially yourself. And if you think (lulz) 
that I'm wrong, explain to me why you think 
that. ... if you should ever come to read this.

"Malice also possesses an arguably rarer relic: a copy of Atlas Shrugged signed by William F. Buckley Jr. Only another Ayn Rand Asshole can properly appreciate such a curio."
I do agree with the thought that diluting 
Ayn Rand with other tendencies does 
make for a Mixed Philosophy. If this is 
what ARA springs from, then I quite 
agree with the assessment.

"Rand, who died in 1982 at the age of 77, was prone to barking, "What are your premises?" when shaking strangers' hands"
Which, when starting from a standpoint of 
not checking one's premises, does make 
for a cult-like atmosphere, given that 
premises are at the basis of cults, along 
with how the insistence on returning to 
premises (based on the circular logic of 
cults) sounds cultish. Hence, it is much 
like "going from one cult to another". 
It's what's behind violent (non-NAP) anarchists 
and the dilution of the word anarchy 
to the use that is more in line 
with minarchy.
This type of attention-focusing, 
authority-based side-switching, 
violence... fascinates me.

"upon meeting the devoutly Catholic Buckley, she demanded to know how a man so evidently brilliant could truck in such piffle."
There is a concrete answer to that. 
However, the assumption is that 
Catholicism is a piffle. And that is 
the starting point of getting Rand's 
view, yes; however, the point was 
to find out that about Buckley -- 
but ah, see how the circles does that?

"Buckley later returned the compliment by assigning Whittaker Chambers to review Atlas Shrugged for the National Review. Money quote: "From almost any page…a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: 'To a gas chamber—go!' ""
Nah. All you have to do is make the choice 
and accept thinking (Jesus) into your heart :P 
I'm starting to see this perspective. 
But - see here - there is a converse. 
In the Objectivist perspective, 
YOU are the gas chamber, since 
YOU have been neglecting the basic 
survival task of thinking, so the 
rejection of your projection of your 
responsibility to think for yourself... 
is what Ayn Rand was talking about.
The assholes are merely not letting 
themselves get gassed along with you.

"MM: It's funny you should call me an Ayn Rand Asshole, because I happen to own the domain name assholism.com. 
GQ: Ah, now you're fucking with me.
MM: Really. I own it.2 
GQ: Really?
MM: I really do.
GQ: If that's true, you are not a Randian Asshole. You are the Ayn Rand Asshole.
MM: Well, an asshole is just an assertive person you don't approve of, right?"
If that's the definition of asshole, 
than I don't see what's wrong 
with being one. ... "wrong". Curious. 
What I've usually thought of as 
an asshole is someone who lies 
a lot, who is deceitful, and who 
engages in violence, along with 
putting laws into effect.

"During my own college days, I did observe that a number of the fresh-minted Randroids in my midst became intellectually disciplined to a degree I wouldn't previously have thought possible. I also admit that a few of them became better questioners of ideas and of themselves—which in turn made them more honest people. But most fell into that hapless group of Rand readers—the ones whose postadolescent insecurity was alchemized upon contact with The Fountainhead and Atlas Shruggedinto a bizarre unlaughing superiority."
Ahhhhhh. Ok. That's a lot clearer.

"whose postadolescent insecurity was alchemized"
THAT's what I was thinking you were conflating 
with the philosophy of Objectivism.

"Some snapped out of it after a semester or two, becoming people who later in life—like Hillary Clinton—could refer with a shake of the head to their "Ayn Rand phase." Some didn't, and I lost them as friends. And for years I've wondered whether they:
(a) bolted upright in bed at three in the morning a year or two after we'd graduated and exclaimed, "Mon Dieu! I have been an Ayn Rand Asshole! I must immediately cease and desist!"
(b) took it all the way, and now spend their days in the bowels of the Cato Institute, stroking hairless lap cats and smirking sourly as they develop strategies for deregulating the law of gravity."
O...k....

"deregulating the law of gravity"
So, you mean, being against everything 
that is "law"?

"Some snapped out of it after a semester or two, becoming people who later in life—like Hillary Clinton—could refer with a shake of the head to their "Ayn Rand phase." Some didn't, and I lost them as friends."
Do you mean "postadolescent insecurity was alchemized" or "a few of them became better questioners of ideas and of themselves—which in turn made them more honest people"? 
Your article, I think, is based on the assumption, so it looks 
to me, that ALL Objectivists are, as you put, and in that 
specific way, ARAs, being:
"the ones whose postadolescent insecurity was alchemized upon contact with The Fountainhead and Atlas Shruggedinto a bizarre unlaughing superiority"
which means, namely, that their death
(as per how Atlas Shrugged describes 
it) was multiplied exponentially, and 
essentially that death, yet again, 
leeched off life.

Since, again, as you put on the second 
page:
"They constitute a relatively small percentage of Rand readers, these ARAs."
Hm...
"But they make their reading count. Thanks to them, the Rand Experience is no longer limited to those who have read the books. It's metastasized. You, me, all of us, we're living it. Because it's the ARA Army of antigovernment-antiregulation puritans who have spent the past three decades gleefully pulling the cooling rods out of the American economy. For a while, it got very big and very hot. Then it popped. And now the rest of us have to spend the next decade scaling the slippery slopes of the huge suppurative crater that was left behind."
Ohhhhhhhhhh. Now I'm starting to get 
some more of the picture. Those who 
read the book and took it seriously 
(the ARAs) are doing what the book 
said and have destroyed the economy. 
Hence the first part:
"2009's most influential author is a mirthless Russian-American who loves money, hates God, and swings a gigantic dick. She died in 1982, but her spawn soldier on. And the Great Recession is all their fault"

So... it looks like, in quite a real way, 
the story of Atlas Shrugged is being 
lived out. Hm... is Michael Malice 
a playboy? :P
And who is right will, probably literally, 
be a matter of life or death.

""AS A FICTION WRITER, she's absurd," says author and Vanity Fair columnist Christopher Hitchens, who is arguably the most opinionated Homo sapiens since Rand herself."
LOL. Now this touches on a spot where 
I have a lot more familiarity: 
the atheist/theist debates.

""But if you're young and not particularly wanted and not particularly brilliant, reading Atlas Shrugged provides all the feelings of compensation one might need for any period of terrifying inadequacy.""
Huh. I'm inclined to say that that's not 
me, and then to consider that that 
describes me pretty well.

""Atlas Shrugged was a life-changing event for me," says John Allison, who recently retired as the CEO of the BB&T Corporation and remains the chairman of the huge North Carolina-based bank."
Is that not a reason to read books?

""I was a 19-year-old at the University of North Carolina the first time I read it," Allison recalls. "I was already struggling with my religious beliefs and with what my parents had taught me."
Yep. Nearly inevitable. Same here. 
Except that I'm a year older than the 
apparently-traditional age. Though, 
the main reason I hadn't read it 
sooner was that it looked really 
long and I was watching YouTube 
videos. Yeah, I'd say they were 
a good investment.

"Then, on top of that, I had to contend with my professors—this was the 1960s, so even at UNC the intellectual environment was socialist. It was tough for me, because as Ayn Rand herself says, we think alone. "
Yes and no. A little less than a week 
ago Reachel and I had a conversation, 
and I think that it replicated those 
effects quite well. Although, it was 
in an assumed environment of 
strict honesty and a want to understand, 
so it's probably not representative 
of the "intellectual environment" that 
was "socialist". Although, Reachel was 
advocating communism; but then, 
I tended to overpower her intellectually. 
I really didn't intend to, though...
A lot of it was a sort of "training" 
from Stefan Molyneux (podcasts) and some 
adaption and learning curve 
from YouTube videos.

"And then to find this book, to have somebody defend ideas I agreed with, ideas that were inconsistent with what I was hearing at the university—it just gave me great comfort and strength.""
Yeah.

"It speaks to Rand's mojo that when an ARA as off the grid as Michael Malice speaks of the hour he first believed, his thoughts and words all but duplicate those of an establishment Randian like John Allison."
It is kind of like that, I guess. But, given 
that my first "conversion experience" was 
due to Andrew Pudewa, and since I've come 
to disagree with some of his points 
(Christianity in specific), I've come to a 
conclusion of taking the points that I 
like, and dismissing those that I don't, 
with the additional factor of trying to 
figure out why the factors were in the 
person who was espousing them. 
It's not an either-or, but adaption. 
Perhaps this is part of the encouragement 
about the "cult of Rand", that it's 
too rigid and won't take into 
account "social pressures". 
Since "social pressures" are becoming my line 
of study, perhaps I can be of assistance... :P

""There is a reason she appeals to the young," says Malice. "Because when you're young, you hunger for moralism. You know there are things that are right and things that are wrong. But the two choices traditionally put forward by mass culture are Jesus or 'helping everybody,' which are both fraudulent and ridiculous. And dull. And then you read those books and it's like a punch in the gut, especially if you're a gifted kid like me. To have her saying that you are right and that everyone against you iswrong… Well, it's just something that people who are gifted need to hear.""
I have, as shown in previous entries, 
questions regarding the connection 
between logic and morals. I see it, 
so far, as being an unnecessary 
add-on. But, again, it could be a 
dismissal of a pearl for having 
seen slime on it.

"To have her saying that you are right and that everyone against you iswrong… "
And, again, paraphrasing part of 
Galt's speech: 
This is an internalization of the 
Society part of the morality, 
which puts you against the 
world.
So, basically, include, 
"you are right and that everyone against you is ...."
Oh. "against". ... Misread that. I read it 
as "around". I's doin' Freudian reading.

""In terms of literary influence, only Kerouac compares," says Nick Gillespie, editor-in-chief of Reason.com and Reason.tv (offshoots of Reason, the libertarian magazine founded in 1968 by a Randian). Pointing out that Atlas Shrugged and On the Road were both published in 1957, he adds, "Kerouac has had a more diffuse influence on American culture. He created a broad-based conception of what was cool and hip. Rand hasn't brushed the culture as widely. She touchesindividuals—immensely and deeply. It's useful to think about her impact in terms of Catcher in the Rye, another novel of individuation. Everyone agrees it's beautifully written, but it's losing its grasp on the public imagination. Same with Catch-22. Yossarian was a perfect antihero for the '60s generation, but does anybody give a shit about him now? Or about Portnoy? A few days ago, I was watching an old clip of Andrew Dice Clay's stand-up act from 1987. He made a joke about jerking off into a liver, and no one in the audience knew what he was talking about. Think about that. You can still make Howard Roark jokes that play, but it's been at least twenty years since you could do that with Portnoy. Portnoy's dead. Philip Roth is a great writer, but his signature character has had far less purchase on the collective imagination than Galt or Roark. No matter what you think of Rand, there's no denying that the woman just swings a really big dick.""
"Really big dick" = Literary/psychological grippingness? 
I have yet more understanding of what is meant now.
Well, I guess that makes sense, especially given 
my own proclivity towards the same type of literary 
style. Essentially, her writing is the epitome (in terms 
of Objectivism) of her value: it is her sexiness; the 
characters in her books were sexually attracted 
to those that were/they saw as valuable.
As per her own words, she wanted to be a 
writer. That being her trade, she, like Dagne, 
"swings a really big dick".

"It's curious, that dick of Rand's. In fact, one cannot understand what an Ayn Rand Asshole is without considering that dick. ARAs acclaim it with great frequency and passion. Its size. Its swing. The countless "nonentities" and "looters" who've been slapped upside the head with it."
The countless who has been slapped with it? 
...Objectivism misfire?

"ARAs extoll the Dick for the same reason they embrace their own "asshole" moniker: to celebrate Ayn Rand's essential Us-vs.-the-Losers combativeness. For ARAs, being dickish is the point."
Ahh. Retaliation in self-defense, then? 
But, I'd say that that's not the point - 
that thinking is the point. ... unless, 
I'm missing the point?

"THE SPEECH. To understand what an Ayn Rand Asshole is, you have to study that sixty-page Speech Rand stuffed in John Galt's mouth at the end of Atlas."
Yep.

"She spent two years writing it."
Wow.

"Her publisher asked for cuts. "Would you cut the Bible?" she snapped."
:P

"Thing is, Rand was right. (And not just because a Library of Congress/Book-of-the-Month Club survey conducted thirty-four years after its publication ranked Atlas Shrugged the second most influential book ever written after, you guessed it, the Bible.) She viewed the Speech as the keystone to…everything."
It is. It's the Rosetta Stone of the entire book and philosophy.

"And to a degree that still confounds mainstream academic philosophers (most of whom find Rand's work laughable), that is how it has been taken. Which means there are three things that all Americans must know about it."
Huh?

"The first is that the Speech serves as both the foundation and finished edifice of Objectivism, Rand's utopian vision of an entrepreneurial elite freed at last from any obligation, financial or moral, to the hangers-on of the world; free from religious hokum and from having to feign concern for the wee; free to exercise the "virtue of selfishness" in pursuit of money and glory. (The novel ends with Galt atop a mountain, raising a hand to trace the sacred sign of the dollar over the desolate earth that he and his A-Team are at last ready to return to and revive.) Is greed good, you ask? My friend, in the Objectivist world of Ayn Rand, whose funeral featured a six-foot dollar sign made out of flowers next to the open casket, greed is God."
I remember on one of Renetto's videos where 
he was discussing whether greed was good, 
and him saying that it was in the video... 
in the comments' section, one viewer complained 
about an annoying ad (probably intermission 
type?). Renetto responded to the comment 
by asking if it was wrong for YouTube to be 
greedy and have that ad there.

I think the entire premise of that was false. 
It wasn't greed that screwed up that shit 
and was annoying - it was YouTube being 
battered to shit by things like Viacom and 
WMV. And I could be mixing up the ideas. 
I think it's that the economy of it was Mixed 
that made for that annoyance. It also 
leads for the question of why there aren't 
more YouTubes around. 
Basically... that the "virtue" of things like 
"greed" are hyjacked by the "death" of 
the reverse system. I used quotes 
because I'm referring to Objectivism, 
the philosophy I am, at the moment, 
trying to see the faults of and destroy. 
(faults of according to what? Consistency 
and reality)

"The second thing is that it is helpful to conjure Keanu Reeves in his What would you DO?proclamatory mode when reading it (silently or aloud):
Morality, to you, is a phantom scarecrow made of duty, of boredom, of punishment, of pain…and pleasure, to you, is a liquor-soggy brain, a mindless slut, the stupor of a moron who stakes his cash on some animal's race, since pleasure cannot be moral.
"
....ok...

"The third thing you must understand about the Speech is that it's extreme stuff—but it's not fringe. Not anymore. Randroids abound."
Well, this is consistent with you "infection" 
statement, but why is it so bad? ... 
Oh. That the economy is tanking and 
it's Randroidians faults and their cult 
of Objectivism.
This is starting to look like a real-life 
K-PAX... and it's not just either-or, 
it's which-one-of-all-those (Christianity, Buddhism, 
Statism, Anarchism, Islam, etc.) -fucking-things? 
and what-the-hell-even-exists? type of thing.

"They run influential libertarian think tanks like the Cato Institute in D.C., and that's one thing. But they also tend to be people who—unlike all those semiotics majors who'd written off Rand as Nietzsche in a bra even before they'd graduated—impact our lives in direct ways. Randians run some of America's biggest companies (Ralph Lauren, John Mackey of Whole Foods), hedge funds (Victor Niederhoffer, Peter Thiel), and banks."
And they're going to bring those 
companies down, too, you mean? 
Well, if things become intolerable 
to Objectivism thinking, why wouldn't 
they?

"Clarence Thomas makes his clerks watch the 1949 Gary Cooper film version of The Fountainhead. Mark Cuban requires no explanation."
If the people want to be employed by 
Clarence Thomas, then they're being 
paid to watch it. They can refuse, 
and that just means that the person 
will have to look for employment elsewhere. 
And yes, that does sound cultish.

"And as if the publication of a major new biography, Ayn Rand and the World She Made, by Anne Heller, weren't enough, there's this: In the first quarter of this year, as rightists shrilled about the president's "socialism," Atlas Shrugged (re)cracked Amazon's top fifty; early estimates place its 2009 sales at 400,000 copies—about double its 2008 total.
Ayn Rand Assholes, they're not just teeming—they're breeding.3"
Sounds like an orgy.

"3. There's even an Ayn Rand dating Web site, for Christ's sake: the Atlasphere. Which presents two related questions: Do Objectivists look to the novels for amorous, as well as economic, instruction? "
YES. Are you not aware that her philosophy 
all but explicitly says that emotions and 
sexuality are the result of philosophy and 
reason?
However, the implied of what your statement 
is: are these guys and girls faggot sluts 
and perverts? And the answer - not sure. 
Maybe. But it's put in a positive light - 
sexuality is enjoyment. lol That sounds 
like someone talking about theft by 
calling it "prolonged borrowing".

"If so, is a given Objectivist coupling what it was in The Fountainhead—"an act of scorn. Not as love, but as defilement…[by] a master taking shameful, contemptuous possession"?"
I haven't read The Fountainhead, so I'm not sure 
what the reference is.

"For which I have answers: Yes, and yes."
Shrug. I'll figure out what you mean.

"I cite my junior year of college, during which I frequently experienced precipitations of plaster dust onto my face while lying in bed, thanks to the ARA who lived above me, and his girlfriend. I could never determine whether it was their Richter-scale copulations that shook the dust loose or the 120-decibel stereo blastings of the Ayn Rand-inspired band Rush that they used to soundtrack and enhance them."
I see...

"(No, his mind is not for rent / To any god or government!)"
?... From Fountainhead?

"I only know that whenever I trudged upstairs to ask him to dial down the fucking and the Rush (lest the lone straight shaft of the Taggart Building crash through the ceiling and impale me where I lay), the answer was always, merely, unsmilingly: "No.""
So, because he didn't sacrifice his pleasure 
for your inability to avoid the annoyances 
that - in my opinion currently since I am 
slightly Objectivistic - were and are caused 
by such an approach to life, it's his fault? 
Not yours for moving somewhere else? 
Not yours for ... well. I'll not pontificate 
further. 
And it reminds me of one instance where 
Reachel wanted me to get something 
from a box, and I didn't hear what she 
wanted, and eventually she got it herself, 
saying that all she had wanted was... 
some item... from the box, and was that 
so much to ask?

"Right: Greenspan. Man was there at the creation. A member of the so-called Collective that in the early 1950s gathered on Saturday nights in the sanctum sanctorum—Rand's New York apartment—as the master held forth on the evils of taxes and altruism and read from her Manuscript. According toMy Years with Ayn Rand by the woman's acolyte/lover, Nathaniel Branden, Greenspan was prone to such utterances as, "Upon reading this one tends to feel exhilarated." After the Times panned Atlasupon its publication, Greenspan sent an oddly strenuous letter that the paper published: 
To the editor:
"Atlas Shrugged" is a celebration of life and happiness. Justice is unrelenting. Creative individuals and undeviating purpose and rationality achieve joy and fulfillment. Parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should.
Alan Greenspan


It's a remarkable letter for two reasons. The first, of course, is that Greenspan wrote it; a line can be drawn from that letter to the wholesale deregulation of the American economy, to the invention of hydra-headed derivatives and credit-default swaps, and finally to the collapse of the financial and housing markets. He may not be the Ultimate Ayn Rand Asshole,4, but no ARA has ever tucked the Objectivist football and taken it to the hole like Alan Greenspan."
Huh.

"The letter's second remarkable quality is its quintessentially Randian temper: absolute, proclamatory, severe. Rand writes at great length about the "joy" that results when "men of talent" are left to their own devices—but invariably in the most sneering tone imaginable. A reader wonders: Is it joy for which she and her followers salivate? Or is it the perishing of those parasites?"
Hm. Which would basically be the 
same thing that Objectivism says 
the parasites do of the productive 
people. Though, this comment could 
be said to be projection on the side 
of the parasite. But, likewise, it 
could be projection on the side 
of the "productive" person. 
Maybe even dual projection, 
from both sides.

""Yes, Rand's writing is strident, but she's not concerned with aesthetics, and it's a mistake to judgeAtlas by 'normal novel' standards," says Todd Seavey"
I quite agree. It's a proof-oriented novel.

"a 40-year-old libertarian blogger whose politics were "substantially" altered after he read Rand as a college sophomore. "It should be read as if it's an extended philosophy word problem. You may want characters who are full-fledged psychological portraits unto themselves, but one of her arguments is that there are no moral grays, and that 'aesthetics' should be about romanticism rather than neuroses and flawed characters. She knows what she's doing. I mean, would you have gone to Nietzsche and said, 'You're not writing calm, balanced essays. You're writing like a crazed man'?""
Hm. Good point. And it's kind of a sort of 
mirror designed to have you look at your 
own psychological problems - how 
we're psychological portraits unto ourselves. 
And, possibly, that we like looking at such 
novels that do that because it reinforces 
our view of ourselves (the authority issue).

"I like to think I would have, yes. Because when it comes to ARAs, that dictatorial tone isn't just thehow but the what."
Hm?

"You can't spend more than five minutes on a Rand-related chat room without seeing a teacher (or social worker, or environmentalist) declaimed as a "risk avoider/merit denouncer.""
?

"This affect, it should be added, is the trademark symptom of a collegiate Randian infection."
Ok...

"Where, say, undergraduate Marxists share a certain narcoleptic insouciance, freshly afflicted Randians evince a showier disregard for those who can't or won't see the light."
....so? It's in accordance with the philosophy. 
So, because these Randians are infected with 
the Objectivism virus, they won't help their 
common man, and are thereby destroying 
the economy?

"Showy—but serene, in a way that's cultish and weird."
Ok, I kind of see the gist of what you mean.

"And unintentionally funny, since the only other young people possessed of such grim serenity are those homeschooled Christian fundamentalists who have the ability to transmit—with nothing more than a silent, pitying look—that they know (1) the Rapture is imminent, (2) they'll be taken up, and (3) you'll be spending eternity steeping in a liquid-shit Jacuzzi."
Nods. I see that. I was once one of those 
fundy Christians. I take that it's your argument 
that I have been, in turn, infected with 
Objectivism.

"Not surprisingly, Christopher Hitchens isn't the only cultural critic who links the Rand and Rapture fascinations. GQ's own Critic columnist, Tom Carson, puts it best: "Her books are capitalism's version of middlebrow religious novels like Ben-Hur and the Left Behind series." Even Todd Seavey sees a parallel: "Hard-core Randians tend to regurgitate Randian observations in a way that's not mindless but very redundant. Unless you're fully signed on, they assume you're not getting it. Which is exactly the way some Christians are when they can't get somebody to accept Jesus Christ as their savior.""
Nods.

"In the end, it's not the books but the smug, evangelical certainty of Ayn Rand Assholes that causes me to loathe Ayn Rand in a personal way. The thing I liked most about college was being around so many young people who were as earnest as they were dauntingly smart. People who didn't (yet) feel the need to own every room they walked into. People who knew how to ask questions. That was it. All that elevated question-asking, and the pliancy of temperament it entailed."
You enjoyed the openness of college.

"We were children. Then came Rand, "the Rosa Klebb of letters," as entertainment journalist Gary Susman calls her, to body-snatch some of the best of them. Rhetorical question: Is there anything more irritating than a 20-year-old incapable of uttering the words "I don't know"?"
An alarm clock. But to answer the question, 
What do you mean?

"Actually, there is: an 82-year-old Alan Greenspan admitting in October 2008—at least ten years too late—that he'd found "a flaw in the model that I perceived as the critical functioning structure that defines how the world works.""
What's the flaw?

"No, wait, forget Greenspan, who avoided both purpose and reason when he declined to comment for this story.5 "
"5. He will perish as he should."
Okey dokey then.

"When it comes to irritation, the capo di tutti capi is an Ayn Rand Asshole who responds to the headlines of the past fifteen months by…doubling down. Who claims that there should have been less regulation of the markets. Who admits that, yeah, Alan Greenspan was the one who put this country in an economic hole—but only because he wasn't nearly Randian enough."
lulz.

""There is no question in my mind that it's government policy that created [the financial meltdown]," says BB&T's John Allison. "It began with Alan Greenspan's mismanagement of the Federal Reserve, which controls monetary policy. Look at his early writings! He strongly recommended getting rid of the Federal Reserve and going to the gold standard. Once he got in power, he never moved at all in that direction.""
Well, isn't it the case that he 
wasn't Randian enough, then?



...it's tomorrow. I'll continue this in the 
next one.

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