On Ayn Rand, Limbaugh's rant, and the metastasizing sociopathy of the right

[villager]

<snip>

The anti-social nature of (Limbaugh's) diatribe was stunning. Service, according to the gospel of Limbaugh, is for suckers, for society's "losers," for people who have committed crimes. In other words, it should be viewed as punishment rather than as something to be applauded and encouraged. To do for community is a fool's errand.

Yet as bizarre as his words may seem at first blush, they actually illustrate with bold clarity the fundamental (and increasingly common) core of the conservative belief system. They speak to the sociopathy that is at the heart of the far-right worldview. It is a worldview that holds, quite simply, that doing for others is contemptible; that doing for self is the purpose of human life; that altruism and service are somehow pathologies pushed by collectivists and should be subordinated to selfishness and greed.

Sound too extreme? Well if so, consider this. Among the most interesting phenomena of the past year--and especially since the inauguration of Barack Obama--has been the explosion of interest in (and sales of) books by the late author, Ayn Rand: most prominently her classic novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Indeed, the latter had an all-time record year in 2008, and 2009 sales are on a pace to shatter even last year's numbers.

Far from a simple believer in limited government and a free market economy, Rand's philosophy--now being endorsed by tea party protesters and anti-Obama minions across the nation (indeed the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights was among the sponsors of the 9/12 march on Washington)--was predicated on one overarching notion: that a commitment to selfishness and a rejection of altruistic behavior were the height of morality. That's not to say that she merely rejected compulsory altruism via taxation, but altruism even privately chosen. To do for others, out of a charitable impulse or out of some faith-based commitment, for example, is morally and ethically suspect, for neither feelings nor faith are rational bases for human actions, according to her philosophy known as Objectivism. Unless one's assistance to another were rooted in some self-interested motivation, it was to be condemned.

It is especially fascinating to see the so-called "average, everyday folks" at the tea party rallies embracing Rand's thinking and literature. After all, Rand's view of the common man and woman--presumably the very Joe Six Packs and Hockey Moms recently enthralled by her--was decidedly grotesque. So, for instance, in her original version of her work,We the Living, Rand had her chief protagonist proclaim: "What are your masses...but mud to be ground underfoot, fuel to be burned for those who deserve it?"

Rand's disdain for the bulk of humanity was, indeed, so extreme that in the aforemetioned Atlas Shrugged--whose main character and "hero" John Galt has been referenced on numerous tea party signs--she indulges a pseudo-genocidal fantasy, in which virtually everyone except Galt and his few "perfect" producers is vanquished. This happy occurrence results from a "strike of the mind," in which Galt and his superior colleagues of industry withdraw their talents from the nation and hole up in a mountain retreat, rather than submit to things like government regulations. Those whom Galt condemns in the book, and thus, whom Rand is herself condemning, are referred to as "parasites" who are unworthy of life. Indeed, Galt's contempt for the weak of the world prompts he and his colleagues to banish the word "give" from their small utopian "gulch." Giving, after all, much like calls for community service, is for suckers.

<snip>

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/9/15/782252/-Sociopathy-on-the-Right:-Ayn-Rand-and-the-Triumph-of-Conservative-Cultism

[monmouth]

1. You know what strikes me odd about this? Rush lives a great deal

of the time in Palm Beach. PB is almost entirely Republican. However, the charity work and I do mean the nitty gritty, not the type where you show up to get your pic taken, is plentiful. Many of these very wealthy people are of the belief, like the Kennedy's are, you must give back, anyway you can. PBers could write checks and that would be the end of it but many of them don't. Many work trying to get living arrangements for the homeless, run shelters, run second-hand stores with proceeds going to the less fortunate. I know many who take turns running soup kitchens "over the bridge" as they say and much of their charity is anonymous.

Rush has a hell of a nerve and I hope his neighbors take note. PB is loaded with community organizers and very charity-oriented people. I like giving credit where it's due whether I agree with their politics or not.

[Tsar_Bomba]

8. Rush doesn't care about his audience as long as

he cashing in. His listeners are dumb enough to take his word as truth, he's laughing all the way to the bank.

[quiet.american]

13. Yep. nt

[quiet.american]

14. That's interesting to know. Hadn't thought of that. nt

[yurbud]

23. noblesse oblige only hangs on with the lefter wealthy

[phantom power]

2. In Ayn Rand's ideology, the ideal role of the mediocre masses was...

to mostly Get Out Of The Way And Let The Talented Lead Them.

Ayn Rand never really grappled with the problem of how these "Talented" were to be identified. She seemed to assume that they would just naturally rise to the top, like cream. In that sense, she was actually a closet Royalist.

Here in the real world, sociopaths and con artists seem to have risen to the top, and simply declared themselves The Talented, and humbly requested that the rest of us get down to the important business of being their wage slaves. You can see why Conservatives gravitate to this view. It is authoritarian.

[theblasmo]

3. No Children

Notice how almost none of Rand's protagonists have families? They would just get in the way.

Hell of a philosophy: selfishness disguised as self-fulfillment; altruism described as inhuman. Way to justify your own personal limitations, Ayn.

[nxylas]

9. Wasn't there some quote from Rand about babies being leeches?

Because they're entirely dependent on others. Rand was presumably too insane to realise that if her own mother had agreed with her, she probably would have been left to die on a hillside somewhere.

Speaking of Rand-related quotes, this one never fails to make me laugh, however many times I see it: "There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."

(Edit:typo)

[zazen]

11. do you have the source of the second quote? that's going up on my Facebook page

mostly because I'm on Facebook to keep tabs on my 15-year-old daughter. Even _she_ scoffs at Ayn Rand's books as some childish work she had to read in middle school.

[theblasmo]

16. Yeesh...

The moment I asked a college freshman class I was teaching if they'd read 1984, and they all replied no, but they'd read Anthem, was when I knew we were in trouble.

[nxylas]

20. Not sure of the origin of it

I've seen it quoted extensively in the blogosphere, but nobody seems 100% sure who came up with it first, due to the perpetual problem of bloggers quoting from each other's blogs without attribution.

[theblasmo]

25. The Simpsons

If it's not an actual quote, they may be quoting from an episode of The Simpsons named "A Streetcar Named Marge", where Maggie is forced to stay at the Ayn Rand School for Tots. I believe the quote is something about babies as leeches. In full screw-you-Ayn-Rand mode, the episode manages to skewer Objectivism by having the babies all WORK TOGETHER to escape.

[nxylas]

27. You're right

I thought the quote about babies was from Rand herself, but it appears to be from that Simpsons episode.

[applegrove]

29. That's hillarious. I started to read one of her books but put it down halfway

through because I was so disgusted witht he selfishness.

[demigoddess]

4. what is that line from Dickens, something like, "if the poor are going to die

best they do it quickly and get out of everybody's way"

That is what Rand seems to recommend. It does not take into consideration that some of those people you are losing could be doctors, scientists and other people we need in this world to progress. Kind of like shooting your self in the chest for no good reason.

[murray hill farm]

5. Metastasizing Sociopathy!!!!!

I have been struggling to come up with some description of what I have been seeing..for myself, some clarity of what is occurring. Now I have it. "metastasizing sociapathy". That describes it perfectly.

[Martin Eden]

6. Dittoheads are too dimwitted to actually understand Ayn Rand

They merely like to think they have a viable intellectuial underpinning for the RW propaganda they so eagerly gobble up and regurgitate at their protests.

To be sure, the implications of Rand's actual philosophy is abhorrent. I'm just saying the vast majority of the teabaggers are too clueless to fully understand the intellectual foundation of ANY philosophy, good or bad. Their purchases of Rand's books merely make them think they are smart when in fact they are about as batshit crazy stupid as it gets for people of "normal" intelligence.

If they had a clue, their anger would be directed at the corporate masters of Limbaugh and Beck who are inciting them to protest against their own best interests.

[Enthusiast]

7. But they are devoted.

Funny they are willing to claim Christianity as their religion yet abandon Christ's core principles for Rand's. It would actually be funny if it wasn't so damn sad.

[Martin Eden]

10. What you said ...

... also expresses my feeling about that irony: funny if it weren't so sad and potentially dangerous.

[unpossibles]

12. exactly. These are the embodiment of the idea where incompetent people

are generally the worst at being able to successfully estimate their own intelligence and abilities, and almost always rate themselves as higher than they are.

There are studies which show that a surprisingly large number of people erroneously include themselves into the upper 1% of society somehow. I'm guessing this population overlaps considerably with the people who think Glenn Beck is smart, FOX is unbiased, Iraq was behind 9/11, Stephen Colbert is a conservative, Bush is competent, Obama is a Muslim/Socialist, etc.

I think you begin to see the pattern, and this perhaps is why the right is so against the inheritance tax and other things which only affect a few people.

[Lucy Goosey]

15. Rand would not have been impressed with an average Joe Teabagger.

That's what I always think is so funny - people like Rush's fans and teabaggers and the like all think they can be Galt. They really really can't all be Galt.

[burning rain]

21. Too true.

Rand would spit in the faces of most of her latter-day fans.

[quiet.american]

17. Very insightful read. nt

[tinrobot]

18. Ayn Rand would have hated most of today's conservatives.

She railed against people who use government favors as a way to enrich themselves (such as Halliburton, insurance companies, etc.) She also hated militarism and war for profit. Don't forget she was an atheist and saw no role for religion, let alone religion in government.

The Bush administration would have been very comfortable hanging with the likes of James Taggart and her other villains.

As much as Ayn Rand is derided here, she did have a few viewpoints that liberals could agree with, but her views have been so co opted and distorted by the right that it's hard to see her real philosophy through their crap.

[JohnWxy]

19. Excellent. Should be read by all the M$M enablers who stand by while America slides into fascist

escapist insanity.

recommended.

[burning rain]

22. It's ironic how Rand's philosophy was based on uncompromising self-interest...

and yet so many of her acolytes today pursue a libertarian economy for altruistic reasons--because they're humble people who certainly aren't going to benefit themselves, who will if anything be harmed. They want to be part of the cause of freedom (they'd put it that way), and serve something larger than themselves. So do most of us--but hopefully a cause that benefits society on the whole. Rand's humbler acolytes of the What's the Matter with Kansas? backlash voter type uphold her beloved unfettered capitalism, alright, but in doing so they (unlike her and the John Galts) are sacrificing themselves in return for nothing, something that she condemned.

[Number_Six]

24. When you're a selfish PIG..

..you tend to say things like El Oxycondo does. He's a selfish pig, all of them are. What else did you expect?

[soupkitchen]

26. Bill Buckley, Whittaker Chambers and Ayn Rand

Atlas Shrugged is a dreadful novel; anyone who thinks it is literature simply has no sense of literature.

There's a great clip of Bill Buckley being interviewed, maybe by Charlie Rose, where he talks about having to literally whip himself in order to continue reading what is truly a dreadful book (which was pretty much my experience.)

During the interview Buckley told of a personal falling out with Rand over a rather dismissive review by Whittaker Chambers (yes that Whittaker Chamber) which appeared in National Review.

http://www.nationalreview.com/flashback/flashback200501050715.asp

Anyway, the point is even Conservatives with brains know that Rand is essentially an evolutionary dead end.

[MinM]

34. Chambers >> Pumpkin Papers << Hiss

Very interesting. Thanks for the link, soupkitchen. :dem:

More on Chambers:

http://realhistoryarchives.blogspot.com/2007/04/alger-hiss-in-news-again.html

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAchambersW.htm

[YoungAndOutraged]

28. I don't know what disgusts me more

Ayn Rand's dangerous, inhuman "philosophy," or the people who support her even though they're the same people she would've called worthless leeches and parasites.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

30. Alan Greenspan is one of her disciples.

[lumberjack_jeff]

31. Modern conservatives have taken objectivism a step further.

The only kind of acceptable collective action is that which cannot be defended on humanitarian grounds.

Feed the poor to reduce crime? Reducing crime might be an acceptably self-interested goal, but it helps too many.
Health coverage for everyone to reduce costs? I like saving money as much as anyone, but I'm holding out for a cost-saving plan which hurts everyone else, like medicare privatization.
Misguided wars in foreign lands? I don't really see how it helps me, but it hurts others worse, so I guess it's okay.

K&R

[MattSh]

32. Ayn Rand and William Hickman, thief, kidnapper, murderer.

.....

A wonderful, free, light consciousness" born of the utter absence of any understanding of "the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people." Obviously, Ayn Rand was most favorably impressed with Mr. Hickman. He was, at least at that stage of Rand's life, her kind of man.

So the question is, who exactly was he?

William Edward Hickman was one of the most famous men in America in 1928. But he came by his fame in a way that perhaps should have given pause to Ayn Rand before she decided that he was a "real man" worthy of enshrinement in her pantheon of fictional heroes.

You see, Hickman was a forger, an armed robber, a child kidnapper, and a multiple murderer.

Other than that, he was probably a swell guy.

In December of 1927, Hickman, nineteen years old, showed up at a Los Angeles public school and managed to get custody of a twelve-year-old girl, Marian (sometimes Marion) Parker. He was able to convince Marian's teacher that the girl's father, a well-known banker, had been seriously injured in a car accident and that the girl had to go to the hospital immediately. The story was a lie. Hickman disappeared with Marian, and over the next few days Mr. and Mrs. Parker received a series of ransom notes. The notes were cruel and taunting and were sometimes signed "Death" or "Fate." The sum of $1,500 was demanded for the child's safe release. (Hickman needed this sum, he later claimed, because he wanted to go to Bible college!)

.....

http://michaelprescott.net/hickman.htm

[Sentath]

33. An essay that cannot be spread too widely

http://michaelprescott.net/hickman.htm