Well! So this is the "morality" that the Republican Party embraces. This is the writer whose books Paul Ryan insists that his staff read when they come to work for him. The video is a 7-minute excerpt from an interview of Rand by Mike Wallace in 1957 which runs to nearly 30 minutes. I watched it all and found Rand's words and manner to be chilling. First of all, Rand's darting eyes and body language are strange, indeed. She is unable to look at Wallace for any length of time, and she seems to be shrinking back from him during the interview.
Rand's "morality" favors the rational self-interest of the thinkers who never allow emotion to influence their conclusions. Selfishness rules, and altruism has no place in Rand's "morality". If the policies of laissez-faire are in force, then the common good will result. Greed, which is as evident today as ever it was throughout history, the desire to accumulate more and more money and goods at the expense of those less fortunate, seems not to be noted at all. By simply leaving rational achievers to their own devices, without constraints, Rand and her disciples believe that all deserving people will benefit...somehow. By magic? As for the undeserving, who knows what becomes of them in Rand's morality?
This one interview sheds much light on where the far right, who have now become middle-of-the roaders in the Republican Party, get their ideas. What I don't understand is how a person who subscribes to Rand's "morality" can claim, at the same time, to be an observant Christian, Jew, or Mormon. Objectivism is in direct opposition to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to the teachings in the Hebrew Testament on mercy and justice.
Paul Ryan is Roman Catholic, and I have to wonder if he reads the church's teachings on social justice as assiduously as he reads Ayn Rand.
In an unusually pointed correspondence, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops urged lawmakers to consider the moral implications of their actions as they prepared to vote on the Ryan budget.There you have it from Ryan, the Pericles of Janesville. (H/T to Charles Pierce.)
"We join with other Christian leaders in calling for a 'circle of protection' around our brothers and sisters at home and abroad who are poor and vulnerable," the bishops wrote in the spring. They said the "moral measure" of the debate "is not which party wins or which powerful interests prevail, but rather how those who are jobless, hungry, homeless or poor are treated."
....
And he [Ryan] pushed back at those who criticized him for abandoning the Catholic principle of "preferential option for the poor and vulnerable."
"Simply put, I do not believe that the preferential option for the poor means a preferential option for big government," he said.
The entire 30 minute interview is here at YouTube.
Thanks for finding this abbreviated version. Bearing in mind that Rand was a middle-class Russian Jew who had survived Tsarism and the Bolshevik Revolution, her strange darting eyes and body language are perhaps understandable. Nice to hear the Messiah of the American Radical Right speaking for herself. Chilling, less for itself - her being so patently odd - as for the faith that those who would rule this country place in her "philosophy".
ReplyDeleteLapin, considering her history, I understand how Rand arrived at her philosophical conclusions, but I'm no less appalled.
DeleteMakes the Social Darwinism of the Gilded Age look genteel, doesn't it? Doubt there's a Carnegie among this bunch.
DeleteCertain prominent people in the heartland seem to have no hearts. I think also of the governor of Wisconsin.
DeleteOff topic, did you catch this?
ReplyDeleteLeonardo did a nice post on the general.
DeleteI suspect Rand may have been autistic herself....which would explain her shifty eyes (since we auties have trouble with eye contact)
ReplyDeleteRand would say that greed is good, and that we're not obliged to care what happens to the less fortunate, and if they're less deserving, then we should not care about them, simply because they were less deserving. And to her mind, the less fortunate were always somehow less deserving, apparently because they weren't greedy enough or something. To her the word "duty" was an obscenity. One should only take on obligations that are voluntarily undertaken. I guess she felt it was okay to throw Grandma in the ditch, as long as you had not previously promised to throw Grandma in the ditch.
kishnevi, if Rand was autistic, that would explain the odd movements. If that is the case, then I owe her a posthumous apology.
DeleteI did not know you were autistic. One of my English Facebook friends is autistic, and she's taught me quite a lot about autism. Navigating the everyday world can be quite challenging.
At least Rand had the courage of convictions to say that the God of the Bible was nonsense (to her).
ReplyDeleteAll the "Christian" Randians? Not so much.
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"Simply put, I do not believe that the preferential option for the poor means a preferential option for big government," he said.
Ah yes, and Christendom will care for all the least of these. After all, everybody gives The Church all that money for indulgences, right? To pay to get out of purgatory?
SRSLY, this *fantasy* that there is any other institution other than government that can (even if imperfectly) GUARANTEE social services, is the intersection of disingenuous & delusion. GET REAL.
"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."
ReplyDeleteh/t Kung Fu Monkey blog.
This one can't be repeated enough!
DeleteI hope the interview circulates widely.
DeleteGood post, Bex. And Grandmere Mimi, your hope reminds me of a song from the movie "Hindenberg", performed on the airship as it was headed for America. The song contained a cryptic message and was titled "There's a Lot to be Said for the Fuhrer" , and the song's last line was "And I hope it's said in time." I played the interview for a lady who is a home health aid for my disabled wife. She's been a life long republican, and I happen to be watching MSNBC when she was here and she asked me what I thought about President Obama, and of course I heard, "Why he's a Muslim, and he was born in Kenya" and the rest of the Fox Parrot act. I played a couple of excerpts of Paul Ryan worhiping Ayn Rand, and the lady had never heard of Ayn Rand, so I played the Mike Wallace interview and within the first 3 minutes, she said "You mean Romney and Ryan believe in what this GREEDY BITCH teaches? I'd NEVER VOTE FOR ANYBODY who thinks like she does." AND THAT IS WHY, AS YOU SAID, this interview NEEDS to circulate widely. I'm convinced that deep down, most REPUBLICANS DO NOT THINK LIKE AYN RAND, and would NOT VOTE for anyone who does.
DeleteWhat crap. What an utterly loveless, soulless person she is. She's coming from a dark, stagnant corner somewhere, far out of the light of day.
ReplyDeleteI had all I could take from this one clip, thank you very much. The few passages of hers I've seen over the years were always totally off-putting and now I have seen the source. The wonder is that thinking people, to say nothing of nominal Christians, can fall for this arrogant, hard-hearted putridity.
But they they have fallen for Nazism, Stalinism, Scientology, prosperity Gospel, junk bonds, and the trickle-down theory too. It just never ends, this search for a magic formula of success and domination: I'm-great-because-I'm-better-than-you. An old, old story.
If there is a single accomplishment out of my delirious youth in NYC, having run out of the bible belt @ 20--it was never having falling for such a menacing, destructive female human being.
DeleteAnonymous, please if you comment again, sign a name. Make up a name if you like.
DeleteI have to tread lightly here because I know little about Rand's philosophy or "morality" or whatever she wants to call it. I read The Fountainhead when I was in college and found it weird and boring. I think I did not "get" it. I was not moved to follow up with Atlas Shrugged, which seems to have captivated a good many movers and shakers, who, for the most part, seem rather soulless types to me, if you judge them by their fruits.
ReplyDeleteTo follow through and run a country putting Rand's philosophy into practice would result in life in a dystopia, the likes of which it would be difficult to imagine. Some brave soul should write an imagined fictional account.
Hmm, that would be right up Margaret Atwood's alley, why don't you drop her a note? Grin.
ReplyDeleteOh get a grip and become responsible for your own lives. I was just a working man and did the best I could. I had and expected no help. If you can't or won't make it, depending on Government is laziness personified. As far as Catholicism, take out that log you pedophiles. Yeah, talk about doing to the "least". Perverted money grubbing bastards. How many innocent lives have the Catholics decimated? God my ass!
ReplyDeleteAnonymous, if you leave another comment, sign a name, or I will hit the delete button. You say you were a working man. Are you retired? Are you covered by Medicare? Do you collect Social Security? Those are government programs.
DeleteI am not Roman Catholic. I was, but I left a number of years ago. Paul Ryan is Roman Catholic, so perhaps you should send your message to him.
Don Hawthorne wrote:
ReplyDeleteWow. It's depressing how many people on this list (alone) have drawn from this brief clip of an interview such completely erroneous conclusions about Rand, her work, her emotions, her passions, her beliefs... but then a 7-minute excerpt of one interview is as poor a way to understand Rand's philosphy as would reading one page of the Bible at random be for understanding Judeo-Christian faith. This really has been a case of people seeing only what they look for.Wow. It's depressing how many people on this list (alone) have drawn from this brief clip of an interview such completely erroneous conclusions about Rand, her work, her emotions, her passions, her beliefs... but then a 7-minute excerpt of one interview is as poor a way to understand Rand's philosphy as would reading one page of the Bible at random be for understanding Judeo-Christian faith. This really has been a case of people seeing only what they look for.