…this time from Tim Wise. Below is an excerpt; I’d recommend reading the entire article here. I find it fascinating that so many continue to believe that a true pro-life worldview is compatible with this contemptible intellectual and moral slop.
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?”
And:
This is what the right is coming to. This is what they really mean when they call themselves “values voters.” The values of which they speak, far from being “Christian,” and far from being rooted in concern for the country, are–at least for many–firmly grounded in selfishness, applied narcissism and operationalized, organizational sociopathy. That they would seek to make a hero of Rand, and forge a movement based even in part on her thinking is all the evidence one should need that the patients are running the asylum known as the American right.
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