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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsI do not believe a dang thing that Rand Paul is saying. His moderate persona is as
phony as a three dollar bill. He is playing to our base and I hope that no one falls for the okey doke. Vote for him and he will change back to the extreme conservative that he has always been.
blm
(113,083 posts)Ayn Rand: the mother of American Satanism
When I say that Ayn Rand was a wanna be Antichrist who inspired The Satanist Bible, I am not suggesting that Paul Ryan, a huge Ayn Rand fan, shares that distinction. Ryan is struggling to be a good Catholic Christian and a devotee of a woman who turned the teaching of Jesus on its head.
Fortunately, a long list of conservative politicians and Christians has no illusions about Ayn Rand. The late Charles Colson, shortly before his death, made a last ditch attempt to warn fellow conservatives that Ayn Rand and Jesus are antithetical. Atlas shrugged, Colson said, and so should you.
Colson wasnt alone.
In a biting article in First Things, a conservative Christian journal founded by Richard John Neuhaus, Joe Carter addressed the link between the Satanism of Anton LeVey (the author of The Satanic Bible) and Ayn Rands Objectivist philosophy.
" . . . to be a follower of both Rand and Christ is not possible. The original Objectivist was a type of self-professed anti-Christ who hated Christianity and the self-sacrificial love of its founder. She recognized that those Christians who claimed to share her views didnt seem to understand what she was saying.
Many conservatives admire Rand because she was anti-collectivist. But that is like admiring Stalin because he opposed Nazism. Stalin was against the Nazis because he wanted to make the world safe for Communism. Likewise, Rand stands against collectivism because she wants the freedom to abolish Judeo-Christian morality. Conservative Christians who embrace her as the enemy-of-my-enemy seem to forget that she considered us the enemy.
Even if this were not the case, though, what would warrant the current influence of her thought within the conservative movement? Rand was a third-rate writer who was too arrogant to recognize her own ignorance (she believed she was the third greatest philosopher in history, behind only Aristotle and Aquinas). She misunderstood almost every concept she engaged withfrom capitalism to freedomand wrote nothing that had not been treated before by better thinkers. We dont need her any more than we need LeVay."
Few conservatives will fall completely under Rands diabolic sway. But we are sustaining a climate in which not a few gullible souls believe she is worth taking seriously. Are we willing to be held responsible for pushing them to adopt an anti-Christian worldview? If so, perhaps instead of recommending Atlas Shrugged, we should simply hand out copies of The Satanic Bible. If theyre going to align with a satanic cult, they might as well join the one that has the better holidays.
Faux historian David Barton wasnt publicly unmasked until conservative Christian scholars, embarrassed by being associated with blatant lies and distortions, went into full revolt. I am hoping the same dynamic plays out in connection with Paul Ryans boyish infatuation with a woman who hated his Jesus with the darkest passion.
This debate transcends partisanship. The big problem is that Ayn Rands Antichrist philosophy drives a business culture where, by design, only the strong survive. Unless you argue that Christian ethics have nothing to do with the teaching of Jesus, or that the teaching of Jesus should be dissociated from business ethics, this is a problem. Paul Ryan like Ayn Rand because, like most American politicians, red and blue, he shares her take-no-prisoners, profit-driven outlook. The only people exempted from this survival of the fittest social Darwinism are your family of origin, your spouse and your children. Everyone else is on their own.
That is the philosophy of Antichrist.
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nilesobek
(1,423 posts)but found it unreadable and put it down for good about 30 pages in. I hated the way she capitalized everything to add some pseudo importance to an idea or concept. I didn't care for the characters in the story either, it really didn't begin to touch on basic human themes. Forgettable, I have even lost memory of the plot.
kemah
(276 posts)Politicians would say one thing to an audience and another thing to a different audience. Or would vote against the proposal but would go back home and take credit for it. But now, everyone having cell phones with cameras and recording it is hard to pull this off.
Rand is trying to be all things to all people, but in his real convictions he is a right winger.
Archae
(46,343 posts)A guy who cut up his victim's body (a little girl,) and Rand threw a royal fit when he was hanged for the crime.
calimary
(81,440 posts)Blue Owl
(50,488 posts)Don't be fooled!
malaise
(269,157 posts)Rec
MH1
(17,600 posts)A good resource for that is Project Vote Smart: http://votesmart.org/ .
http://votesmart.org/candidate/117285/rand-paul
But, people need to be careful of the names of organizations. I was surprised to learn that "Campaign for Working Families" is actually an anti-abortion group; not what it sounds like at all.
Jamaal510
(10,893 posts)to do GOP "outreach" in the Black community, but I'm not too concerned about that. Most of us aren't stupid and we are hip to the race-baiting politics they've been playing since the Civil Rights era. Even someone at Howard University last year had pressed him about his support for voter ID laws. It looks like more of a matter of him trying to prove to White swing voters that the GOP isn't bigoted.
What I'm concerned about are voters around my age who like him. Some young people fancy his rhetoric concerning drugs and isolationism, while seemingly disregarding his plans for things such as the safety net and the minimum wage:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5155332
I had said in that same thread that what many people don't mention about Rand's stances on drugs and on his isolationism are that with drugs, neither he (nor his pops) have advocated anything that would legalize marijuana nationally; he only wants the federal government to stop enforcing the drug laws and leave it to the states, while with isolationism, that is out of the question for a big superpower like the U.S. We can throw less money into the military and more towards domestic programs, but it would be foolish to completely block ourselves off from the rest of the world.
AverageJoe90
(10,745 posts)It's older than Atari, and even older than Dubya Bush. In fact, this been a tactic of right-wing populists for about a hundred years now, at least. Ted Bilbo from Mississippi was a particularly slick operator, masquerading as a progressive as all things. Of course, he was actually the exact opposite, but boy, if he didn't know how to play the part.....even FDR was fooled by him at one time!
He was basically one of the World War I era equivalents of Ron Paul, but far nastier in his outlook and even better at fooling people.