The Horrors of an Ayn Rand World

[Klukie]

The Horrors of an Ayn Rand World
By Gary Weiss, Alternet/St. Martin's Press
27 March 12


An Objectivist America would be a dark age of unhindered free enterprise, far more primitive and Darwinian than anything seen before.

here is no real doubt what an Objectivist America would mean. We may not be around to see it, but it's likely we'll be here for its earliest manifestations. They may have already arrived.

The shape of a future Objectivist world has been a matter of public record for the past half century, since Ayn Rand, the Brandens, Alan Greenspan, and other Objectivist theoreticians began to set down their views in Objectivist newsletters. When he casually defended repeal of child labor laws in the debate with Miles Rapoport, Yaron Brook [President of the Ayn Rand Institute] was merely repeating long- established Objectivist doctrine, summarized by Leonard Peikoff as “Government is inherently negative.” It is a worldview that has been static through the decades, its tenets reiterated endlessly by Rand and her apostles:

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/10656-focus-the-horrors-of-an-ayn-rand-world

[KT2000]

1. having been recruited

unsuccessfully, to become an Objectivist while in high school, I agree. The family who made me their project had nothing to offer anyone except their own personal darkness. The father was a dentist, the mother stay at home and they had three children. They also had a grandfather who lived in the home. I only saw him sitting quietly at the dining room table with his nightly beer. For that and his need for assistance, they ridiculed him. He was a loser in their house. Everyone was informed of that fact.

Mealtimes were for discussion. It was the first time I had seen someone so close to my age so twisted with anger - the son. He found everything wanting, and much beneath him and his intellect, or at least that is what he spoke about.

I listened to tapes of Nathaniel Branden in a dark living room that had not one lick of comfort, artistic influence or personal identification. The tapes were all about the superiority of those who embraced selfishness and the idiocy of altruism.

My takeaway was that these were people who had one goal and that was to make themselves superior to all others by virtue of their intellect.
But I did not see any real intellect. I saw lots of anger and people with missing parts - humor, art, love, kindness, graciousness, empathy, sympathy and other good human qualities.

These are people hellbent on remaking the world in their own incomplete image.

[provis99]

2. in brief, you met a family of evil people.

Evil isn't always the scary Nazi or serial killer; it can be as ordinary and banal as the family down the street.

[KT2000]

3. yes - that sounds right n/t

[yurbud]

4. if people really believed this, they would ridicule trust fund babies

for being parasites living off of the work of their ancestors, and the trust fund babies themselves who are Randy should renounce their family fortunes and make their own way in the world to prove their independence.

[Kennah]

5. Stephanie Miller called the GOP primary "Lord of the Flies" ...

... and said if Chris Christie were in the primary they'd drop a boulder on his head and kill him.

[wpelb]

6. Darwinian?

An Objectivist America would be a dark age of unhindered free enterprise, far more primitive and Darwinian than anything seen before.

I assume Darwinian means "exhibiting characteristics of social Darwinism" here. Let's be careful with that term, as I believe Darwin himself found social Darwinism repulsive. Darwin didn't believe in survival of the fittest or strongest so much as in survival of the best able to adapt to change, a rather liberal concept, IMHO.