Thursday, February 04, 2010

Ayn Rand: Prophetess of Evil

As I continue my reconsideration of Capitalism, I came across a link to this article that discusses the character, Ayn Rand:
...she set out to write stories that expressed her philosophy—a body of thought she said was the polar opposite of communism. She announced that the world was divided between a small minority of Supermen who are productive and "the naked, twisted, mindless figure of the human Incompetent" who, like the Leninists, try to feed off them. He is "mud to be ground underfoot, fuel to be burned." It is evil to show kindness to these "lice": The "only virtue" is "selfishness."

She meant it. Her diaries from that time, while she worked as a receptionist and an extra, lay out the Nietzschean mentality that underpins all her later writings. The newspapers were filled for months with stories about serial killer called William Hickman, who kidnapped a 12-year-old girl called Marion Parker from her junior high school, raped her, and dismembered her body, which he sent mockingly to the police in pieces. Rand wrote great stretches of praise for him, saying he represented "the amazing picture of a man with no regard whatsoever for all that a society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. A man who really stands alone, in action and in soul. … Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should." She called him "a brilliant, unusual, exceptional boy," shimmering with "immense, explicit egotism." Rand had only one regret: "A strong man can eventually trample society under its feet. That boy [Hickman] was not strong enough."

Is this the brand of Capitalism conservatives want to foster?

5 comments:

Outlaw said...

You have not read Rand and you certainly do not understand her philosophy.

Craig French said...

You have no idea what I've read or haven't read.

I've even refuted Objectivism via youtube.

Rand's atheism informed her economics...as it does with the Austrian school and as atheism informs Communism.

Rob R said...

Wow. now there's a spokesperson for the moral vision of atheism.

Rob R said...

At least outlaw isn't your in-law.

The NeoCon Brownshirt said...

Intersting post. I have read a little Rand myself, and feel that what she wrote should be taken with a grain of salt, although she does make some interesting points.

I believe collectivism is parasitic, and people's inventions shouldn't be just taken away just "for the good of the masses". For example, Big Government increases the cost of pharmaceuticals by created a long and expensive process to develop them, and then seizing the patents. Now the Government wants to limit those patents to 5 years. The patients, one way or another, get shafted.

Rand's opinions of the killer Hickman are tantamount to endorsing a personal extreme form of anarchy, where one makes oneself a god. That to me is going off the deep end.

Interestingly enough, it appears that both extreme Leftism and extreme conservatism have been defined by atheistic influences.