Personally Ayn Rand offers a view of existence so bleak and heartless one has to wonder at her popularity among many on the right. Whittaker Chambers sums her up in the link in the first URL below.
But the individual as the locus and lord of reality and modern life is a powerful meme in American thought. Only in America could a silly kind of Marxism Libertarianism exist. Americans exist in a sort of fantasy that says all this came about from me, Robinson Crusoe without Friday - without history. So yes, the nonsense Rand wrote serves to continue a myth of magic divorced from responsibility for each other. Odd in a nation that calls itself Christian. 'I got mine, tough for you.'
http://www.usmessageboard.com/clean...on-could-be-a-game-changer-2.html#post5810441
http://www.usmessageboard.com/politics/164072-ayn-rand-conservatives-tea-party-republicans.html
http://www.usmessageboard.com/gener...ult-of-selfishness-on-the-american-right.html
"I was raised to be ashamed of my ignorance, and to try to do something about it if at all possible. I carry that burden to this day, and have successfully passed it on to my children. I don’t believe I have the right to an opinion about something I know nothing about—constitutional law, for example, or sailing—a notion that puts me sadly out of step with a growing majority of my countrymen, many of whom may be unable to tell you anything at all about Islam, say, or socialism, or climate change, except that they hate it, are against it, don’t believe in it. Worse still (or more amusing, depending on the day) are those who can tell you, and then offer up a stew of New Age blather, right-wing rant, and bloggers’ speculation that’s so divorced from actual, demonstrable fact, that’s so not true, as the kids would say, that the mind goes numb with wonder. “Way I see it is,” a man in the Tulsa Motel 6 swimming pool told me last summer, “if English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it’s good enough for us.” Mark Slouka 'Harper's'
Rands popularity is really quite simple. Her entire philosphy is that of an adolesent. Selfish greed wedded to an overblown sense of worth. When I was a teen, I found Rands philosphy enthralling. I found it to be correct and exactly what this country needed.
And then I grew up and I put away childish things.
Paul Ryan on the other hand lives on the street he grew up on, his brother only a block away. After his father died, Ryan drew on his fathers social security to help put himself through college, where he double majored in Economics and Political Science. From college, he went straight to work in Washington.
Ryan went straight from his sheltered life in Janesville to work in government. He has never had a private sector job as his primary and only source of income ( he worked as a waiter and a fitness trainer to suppliment his income he recieved from the government. ) . In fact, as his double major indicates, his goal has always been government.
When the 2008 meltdown occured, Paul Ryan voted AGAINST the GM loan. That had consequences. GM closed the plant in his hometown of Janesville, WI. 3800 middle class jobs lost and Ryan did nothing. Though to his credit, Ryan did vote against the extention of unemployemnt benefits for those same 3800 workers.
In his 13 years in the House, Ryan has passed just two pieces of legislation. The first, in 2000, changed the name of a post office, the second, in 2008 while the country was in full on economic meltdown, changed the way an excise tax was levied on arrows.
At a salary of $174,000 a year, the American taxpayer has paid Paul Ryan 2.26 million dollars, or 1.13 million dollars per piece of legislation. At his current rate of production, if Paul Ryan stays in the House, we should expect to see his next great piece of legislation sometime in 2016.
Ryan, as a foloower of Rands philosophy, believes that a man should only be entitled to that which is produced by his own hand. What has Paul Ryans hand produced? Ryan has said that he believes that welfare, unemployment, social security, medicare are all things the governemnt should not be doing. All things that he wishes to privatize, because government is the problem, NOT the solution.
Yet, the government gave him his fathers social security money so Ryan could got to school. Ryan chose majors which would lead him directly into government. He has never had to rely on a private sector paycheck as his main source of income. And the sweat from Paul Ryans brow produced only 2 pieces of legistlation in 13 years.
