Ayn Rand "Youthfully Yours" |
This is a coming war. It is a war against dogma and all things Un-American. An old friend in Berlin, Axel Melzener said a German phrase for the current plight of the USA is "Geistige Umnachtung," meaning mental nightfall.
It is not democratic or federal or benign what the republican tea party libertarians like Rand Paul and Scott Walker and Ted Cruz and Mike Pence rigidly accept as their calling. These men are disrupting our America.
Libertarian dogma has been infused in every decision made by the scant male majority of the Supreme Court of the United States in the last ten years. Both Scalia and Thomas tout Ayn Rand's influence on their paper-thin contortions of the United States Constitution. Using Ayn Rand to interpret the Constitution is destructive to our America.
Just like the Scientologist L. Ron Hubbard, all of Ayn Rand's novellas are Science Fiction salve for teen age angst. Atlas Shrugged is the republican Mein Kampf. And the Krupps... well, now we have the Kochs. This has become another savage tea party republican joke on America.
The libertarians are the intellectual fountainheads for the tea party. Young Rand Paul was even named after Ayn Rand by millionaire Poppa Ron Paul. The libertarian creed demands social and economic Darwinism that could only be described as sociopathic. Government controlled by business destroys free society. In America we have seen the effects of giant inhumane companies that make profit the only goal. Historically, look up the Ludlow Colorado massacre in tents in the night of women and children protesting for better wages and working conditions. For modern times look up the actions by overzealous cops against rioting black people or drugstore cowboy vigilantes who murder without regret or consequence like George Zimmerman. Some of the poseur politicians like Scott Walker and Ted Cruz and Rand Paul and Mike Pence and and Paul Ryan plus captains of industry like David and Charles Koch read Rand's work as the torah for their thousand year republic.
Thomas Jefferson warned the American people, "... the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered...I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies... "
Academics back in the cold war days of the 1950's declared that the USSR communism of Stalin and Krushchev was a radical religion with all of the formal dogma and doctrine of any faith. It's pretty much true that dogma and doctrine of any kind can be seen as a religion. With the exception of communism, Americans have always been very tolerant of religion. Over our entire history as a nation, dogma and doctrine flourished in various cults that rose up and found a zealous following. In the 1800's Joseph Smith founded the Church of the Latter Day Saints based on the Book of Mormon. An angel gave Elder Smith the entire Book of Mormon in a revelation in the woods near Harmony, Pennsylvania. Elder Smith discovered that Jesus came over to the Mexicans and taught them the way to salvation and the afterlife after his time in Jerusalem. A bit later, Mary Baker Glover Eddy discovered in her revelation that one's own mind can cure all ailments that come along. Mrs. Eddy founded the Church of Christ Scientist. By this cult's dogma and doctrine there's no need to get vaccinations for disease because no disease can be more powerful than the human mind helped along by Jesus or some other god. The Krishnas. Aimee Semple McPherson. L. Ron Hubbard.
Yogananda. The Klu Klux Klan. There are dozens more.
In our times the media hype attending the tea party republican cult is a never-ending stream of disinformation that aids and abets murder and mayhem all over our America. It is not benign what the Scott Walker and Rick Scott et al stand for. Their tea party creed demands social and economic Darwinism that could only be described as sociopathic. The doyenne and reputed founder of the tea party, Ayn Rand concealed the code of objectivism under the veil of "libertarianism."
In her book Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand saw herself as a savior for Americans who wanted no interference by the rule of law or government: "My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute." This is a pristine version of the republican's "American Exceptionalism" accenting the hubris of the all-important agendas of god and business and profit destined to prevail and to rule over all our local and state and national governments.
Sadly the United States of America has made a giant exceptional cult out of our Thirty Years War against "terrorism" all over the planet since 1991 when we invaded Iraq. The cult of our Thirty Years War is good for some businesses and parts of our economy. Thomas Jefferson warned us that government controlled by business is "more dangerous than standing armies." To date our Thirty Years War has cost us trillions of dollars in debt and thousands of lives of our children.
About the money debts of our Thirty Years War, let's remember that libertarian, Grover Norquist? Grover Norquist is the single-minded lobbyist for curtailing the federal government by eliminating all taxation. Grover knows well the end effect of his obsession is private everything in America. Here's Grover's solemn prayer, "The free market will solve all our problems, and for everything else, god will quickly cover!"
Grover's paychecks come from branches of the House of Koch in Wichita like the Heritage Foundation and Americans for Prosperity plus a national board member status from the NRA lobby in Washington. If Ayn Rand is a make-believe Catherine the Great of the tea party then Grover Norquist is an American Grigory Rasputin who whispers into the ears and thickens the wallets of all the Pay-Per-Vote™ powerful in the Capitol Dome.
An international example of such a libertarian cult gives us the Russian icon, Vadimir Putin. Putin's recent moves in the Ukraine are very much libertarian and anything-goes tea party. It's almost like Putin had read about John Galt and then took on the personality. Maybe that's why some tea party candidates for President rail on and on about the Putin invasions and how we need to stop them with all our armies. The American libertarian tea party is simply jealous of the power that their Russian doppelganger Putin has achieved.
We Americans can be thankful for the short memories of our voters, and thereby our cults may have short timelines.
If we are lucky, all the rubes and the media will soon catch on to the tea party cult of our Thirty Years War and turn away! But for now this is war! We'll keep fighting the war against our Thirty Years War and all of these cruel cults, America! Thomas Jefferson is our heroic warrior!
6 comments:
We have seen the tyranny of the ideal where people are held guilty for the failure of ideologies... We are seeing it again... The Muslims have their religious zealot counterparts in America; but anyone who accepts uncritically the principals that out of capitalist greed grows social good against all evidence are as bad as any communist, fascist, religious fruitcake, or zionist...
As Roberto says in the movie Down By Law: It's a sad and a beautiful life.
I found Mein Kampf more readable than Atlas Shrugged, and it is pretty bad.
Ayn Rand was an author of fiction. Atlas Shrugged is a work of fiction. Read it as a cautionary tale against a society or culture as described in the book. The same as the much more effective 1084. Or Lord of the Flies. Or Animal Farm.
None of those describe a desirable culture. Anarchy is the worst form of government.
The purpose of government is to govern.
Thanks Marty! I never met my (paternal) grandfather but read a memorial written for him in which the Jefferson quote was said to be his favorite. He was a union leader, murdered while "..leading a strike against a great corporation, swollen with power, rioting in riches and obstinately opposed to paying those employees enough to live upon...". That was 1925... and the wheel keeps turning.
The objective of government is not to maximize profit. Take it from there.
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