It's 2012, And People Are Still Being Killed Over Make Believe (Religion) Being Treated As Fact

[SarahM32]

86. The Fountainhead? Ayn Rand? Let's think about that.

"History has shown time after time that the Republican claim is deceptive and their logic is flawed. After all, our current economic crisis was caused by three decades of Reaganite policies, legislation and deregulation, because they didn’t learn the lessons of history.

That’s why the rich have gotten so much richer, the middle class has shrunk, the working poor population has grown, and poverty, hunger and homelessness increased. It is similar to the historical consequences of Republican dominance in the 1920s, when the rich got richer and corrupt and caused the financial crisis and stock market crash of 1929, followed by the Great Depression.

Unfortunately, Right-wing Republicans, Libertarians and the “Tea Party” love laissez-faire government. That’s why Ayn Rand has become a cult hero to them (almost as much a hero as Ronald Reagan). They even consider Rand a prophet. But Americans should understand that while Ayn Rand was surely well-meaning and said some good things, she was sadly mistaken about some very crucial issues.

Rand was born in Russia in 1905, and her family was financially ruined after the Russian Revolution of 1917. She grew up hating Russian Communism, and she moved to America. Then, when Capitalism became so corrupt in America that it caused an economic collapse in 1929 followed by the Great Depression, she simply misunderstood, and therefore feared, the New Deal of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. She did not recognize how necessary his reforms were, and she thought his regulations would be like those of the Soviet Communists. And, since she hated government control, she supporting laissez-faire capitalism. She believed it was the only social system that protected individual rights (even though it is what had almost ruined America before Roosevelt saved it).

That is why real Democrats and real Christians believe in Jeffersonian Democracy, and in Roosevelt's New Deal. They believe that government must promote the general welfare and properly and sufficiently regulate and oversee big businesses, corporations and banks; that we must provide an adequate safety net to provide for those who need financial assistance and other care; and that we must legislate to make the vast majority prosperous, because widespread prosperity will benefit the whole country in many ways."

Excerpted and quoted from Partisan Politics: A Corrupt, Failed System.
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