Stupid greedy voters – Brash

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1. mickysavage 1

   1 March 2010 at 8:18 am

   I thought that the capitalist system relied on everyone being venal?
2. PeteG 2

   1 March 2010 at 8:27 am

   And the socialist system relied on no one being lazy or greedy.

   Are blogs capitalist? Or just a different type of venal?

   (I don’t support Brash or his flavour of policies).
3. Pascal's bookie 3

   1 March 2010 at 8:34 am

   My question is for the Prime Minister and reads,

   What sort of idiot would say that NZers are ignorant and venal if they don’t give full support to ACT policy, and should NZers trust a party that would elect such an idiot as leader?
4. Sam 4

   1 March 2010 at 8:46 am

   zombiebrash needs brains

   braaaaaainssss
5. vto 5

   1 March 2010 at 9:02 am

   Brash always was too open and honest to make a successful politician.

   He should be far more guarded and closed and significantly less than completely honest. He should have followed Helen Clark’s example.
   • Marty G 5.1

     1 March 2010 at 9:07 am

     Or he could just not be a fuckwit,

     See, vto, the reason that Clark didn’t call voters idiots isn’t because she’s more tricksie than Brash, it’s because she doesn’t believe it.

     To think that this guy was the Nats’ choice for PM.

     And remember that Key said he differs from Brash in style, not substance.
     • Pascal's bookie 5.1.1

       1 March 2010 at 9:15 am

       “Or he could just not be a fuckwit,”

       Might be difficult, all things considered.
6. tc 6

   1 March 2010 at 9:10 am

   Brash addressing ACT is not unlike Jack Nicolson’s character in One Flew over the Cockoos nest getting all the other mental patients onside….mmmm Jucy Fruit.

   It’s a free country, well till they pass some more laws under urgency that bypasses select comittees/questions as they love to do.
7. RedLogix 7

   1 March 2010 at 10:15 am

   The link to the Martin Ames article is well worth the read. He re-works some little known information about the ugly Ms Rand,and clearly makes a case for liberatarianism as a bastard political outgrowth of sociopathy. It’s disturbing stuff.

   Given that psychopaths/sociopaths form about 2% of the population… how much of a coincidence is it that ACT’s core support is a number not too dissimilar?

   Ames concludes:

   Too many critics of Ayn Rand would rather dismiss her books and ideas as laughable, childish, hackneyed, lame, embarrassing’Nietzsche for sorority girls’ was how I used to dismiss her. I did that with the Christian Right, like a lot of people who didn’t want to take on something as big, bland and impervious as them. Too many of us focused elsewhereuntil it was too late and the Christian fundamentalist crazies took over America

   Hide/Brash/Douglas are evil clowns all-right, but have mitts wrapped around levers of power, and get air-time in our media. They’re dangerous.
   • Lew 7.1

     1 March 2010 at 10:50 am

     Spot on, RL. They shouldn’t be misunderestimated, and not enough people are saying so.

     L
   • PeteG 7.2

     1 March 2010 at 11:20 am

     “Given that psychopaths/sociopaths form about 2% of the population how much of a coincidence is it that ACT’s core support is a number not too dissimilar?”

     …or not logixal.

     2% of the population in NZ are Hindu, that number isn’t dissimilar either.
     Bugger, 2% are also Buddhist, Act supporters can’t be both.
     • RedLogix 7.2.1

       1 March 2010 at 11:27 am

       There is no identifiable reason why all Hindu’s would be ACT supporters (and evidentially they are not)… but the nature of the arguments put forward by ACT supporters reveals an underlying anti-social psychopathy that logically justifies an inferential connection.
     • Draco T Bastard 7.2.2

       1 March 2010 at 11:49 am

       What’s their religion got to do with it? And yes, they can be both.
   • Quoth the Raven 7.3

     1 March 2010 at 5:34 pm

     RedLogix – On occasion it would be nice to have a little bit of intellectual honesty from you. Do I have to remind you that libertarian is simply a word that basically means anti-authoritarian, but originally was just a synonym for anarchism. There are libertarian-marxists, libertarian-socialists, left-libertarians, right-libertarians, geo-libertarians, and much much more. And do I have to remind you of Ayn Rand’s own opinion of libertarians – Ayn Rand’s Q & A on Libertarianism or maybe the thoughts of prominent libertarians on Rand The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult or what some Objectivists think of libertarianism: Libertarianism the perversion of liberty. Yes, many libertarians have drawn on Rand’s work many are Randian, yes some Objectivists call themsevles libertarian, but you’re just intentionally conflating concepts and not engaging libertarianism honestly. And if you want a more generous interpretation of Rand’s work maybe you should read some of Roderick Long’s articles like Ayn Rand’s Left-Libertarian Legacy
     Ayn Rand and the Capitalist Class
     And I like this quote to show that Rand’s thoughts changed as she aged:

     That idea of hardships being good for character and of talent always being able to break through is an old fallacy. Talent alone is helpless today. Any success requires both talent and luck. And the “luck’ has to be helped along and provided by someone. Talent does not survive all obstacles. In fact, in the face of hardships, talent is the first one to perish; the rarest plants are usually the most fragile. Our present-day struggle for existence is the coarsest and ugliest phenomenon that has ever appeared on earth. It takes a tough skin to face it, a very tough one. Are talented people born with tough skins? Hardly. In fact, the more talent one possesses the more sensitive one is, as a rule. And if there is a more tragic figure than a sensitive, worthwhile person facing life without money I don’t know where it can be found.
8. Bill 8

   1 March 2010 at 10:27 am

   How heartbreaking it must be for Brash that the public fails to understand that unemployment rises when equality measures are brought to bear on the labour market. How terrible for him that we (the public) are being wilfully misinformed by (his words) ‘ the so-called news on state television.’ I’m guessing he’s just fine with TV3? This guy is fucking insane.

   The moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the man….hmm, he became so well rewarded under capitalism, why?…does lead one to suspect that he should be subjected to the last suggestion in Ames piece….

   “The only way to protect ourselves from this thinking is the way you protect yourself from serial killers: smoke the Rand followers out, make them answer for following the crazed ideology of a serial-killer-groupie, and run them the hell out of town and out of our hemisphere”

   Oh, and in the comments below the Ames piece is a link to a ‘well worth the read’ article titled ‘The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult.’
   http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard23.html
9. The Chairman 9

   1 March 2010 at 11:05 am

   A Brief History of Neoliberalism by David Harvey 5/5

   http://tinyurl.com/yjadz2e

   (Note: parts 1 to 4 can be found in the sidebar)
10. pollywog 10

    1 March 2010 at 11:32 am

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSY_KbtNSv4

    Them crazy, them crazy –
    We gonna chase those crazy
    Baldheads out of town;
    Chase those crazy baldheads
    Out of our town.

    I’n’I build a cabin;
    I’n’I plant the corn;
    Didn’t my people before me
    Slave for this country?
    Now you look me with that scorn,
    Then you eat up all my corn.

    We gonna chase those crazy –
    Chase them crazy –
    Chase those crazy baldheads out of town!

    Build your penitentiary, we build your schools,
    Brainwash education to make us the fools.
    Hate is your reward for our love,
    Telling us of your God above.

    We gonna chase those crazy –
    Chase those crazy bunkheads –
    Chase those crazy baldheads out of the yown!

    We gonna chase those crazy –
    Chase those crazy bunkheads –
    Chase those crazy baldheads out of the yown!

    Here comes the conman
    Coming with his con plan.
    We won’t take no bribe;
    We’ve got [to] stay alive.

    We gonna chase those crazy –
    Chase those crazy baldheads –
    Chase those crazy baldheads out of the yown.

    …uncle bob FTW !!!
    • felix 10.1

      1 March 2010 at 2:01 pm

      I appreciate the sentiment but I like my reggae with a bit more of an edge:
11. reddy 11

    1 March 2010 at 11:56 am

    Please note this is the man that National had chosen to lead them into government.
12. James 12

    1 March 2010 at 1:23 pm

    Brash was bang on….Kiwis are,by and large,ignorant of politics and easy to dupe with tax and spend nonsense.See you lot here.

    They can’t work out that getting their own stolen money back via the welfare state after the Government has clipped the ticket doesn’t make them better off….quite the reverse.
    • Captain Rehab 12.1

      1 March 2010 at 1:39 pm

      Haha you’re a neo-liberal retard. How’s that economic crisis working out for you super-man?
      • Pascal's bookie 12.1.1

        1 March 2010 at 1:44 pm

        I think James is assuming that everyone is venal and ignorant,
        in which case Brash would be correct,
        but ‘twould beg the question.
13. Peter Cresswell 13

    1 March 2010 at 1:50 pm

    Well, Irish Bill, perhaps you should reconsider your condemnation of Rand.

    No, it was not her finest hour. But she was “not an admirer of sociopaths” as you say, and Hickman was not in any way “her first love and mentor” as that article you link to says so disgracefully.

    Why do you need to make things up to discredit those you oppose? Is it that you can’t do it by telling the truth?

    For the record, Rand’s comments on Hickman appear in her published journals. They’re not hidden. What she was fascinated by was not Hickman’s disgusting crime, but society’s reaction to Hickman, and she thought (as any writer might) that she could make a story out of it.

    Bad as Hickman’s crime was (which at the time of course was only an alleged crime, since Hickman had yet to be found guilty), there had been worse crimes committed with less public outrage. That was what fascinated Rand, and what she tried to answer in her notes.

    She concluded that the intensity of the public’s hatred of Hickman was primarily “because of the man who committed the crime and not because of the crime he committed.” The mob hated Hickman for his independence, she surmised in her notes; she chose him as a model for the same reason — in the same way the likes of Hubert Selby or Truman Capote or Bret Easton Ellis or sundry others made stories out of similar characters.

    Journal editor David Harriman says, “Hickman served as a model for Danny only in strictly limited respects, which AR names in her notes. Danny does commit a crime in the story [she planned], but it is nothing like Hickman’s. To guard against any misinterpretation [which Irish Bill and your linked website ignore], I quote her own statement regarding the relationship between her hero [in the planned story] and Hickman”:

    “[My hero is] very far from him, of course. The outside of Hickman, but not the inside. Much deeper and much more. A Hickman with a purpose. And without the degeneracy. It is more exact to say that the model is not Hickman, but what Hickman suggested to me.”

    So much for worshipping a psychopath.

    Interestingly, the young Rand was inclined to excuse Hickman as “a product of society” — something opponents of the likes of the Sensible Sentencing Trust are inclined to do these days. In her notes, for example, she says of Hickman,

    “He was given [nothing with which] to fill his life. What was he offered to fill his soul? The petty, narrow, inconsistent, hypocritical ideology of present-day humanity. All the criminal, ludicrous, tragic nonsense of Christianity and its morals, virtues, and consequences. Is it any wonder that he didn’t accept it? That it left his soul emptier than it had been before? That boy does not believe in anything. But, oh! men, have you anything to believe in? Can you offer anything to be believed? He is a monster in his cruelty and disrespect of all things. But is there anything to be respected? He does not know what love means. But what is it that is worthy of being loved?
    “Yes, he is a monster—now. But the worse he is, the worst must be the cause that drove him to this. Isn’t it significant that society was not able to fill the life of an exceptional, intelligent boy, to give him anything to outbalance crime in his eyes? If society is horrified at his crime, it should be horrified at the crime’s ultimate cause: itself. The worse the crime—the greater its guilt. What could society answer, if that boy were to say: ‘Yes, I’m a monstrous criminal, but what are you?’”

    And, by the way, she never completed the story.
    • IrishBill 13.1

      1 March 2010 at 2:05 pm

      I’ve spent too long arguing with Randian loons to bother much more. But if I must then I’d point out that Rand’s celebration of the sociopath was obvious in Atlas Shrugged including the way Eddie Willers was left to die because he was weak, the celebration of Rearden abandoning his family because they were parasites and that sick passage glorying in the deaths of railway passengers who had supported government intervention.

      As far as I’m concerned Objectivists are like the worst kinds of fascists but without any money or power.
    • Lew 13.2

      1 March 2010 at 2:20 pm

      Faint praise, Peter. Your argument appears to be that Rand didn’t lionise sociopathic criminals, so much as those who were sociopathic but who stopped short of actually enacting their sociopathology in criminal ways. That is; people with their independence of thought and action, absence of empathy, single-minded determination and utter self-obsession. This is borne out in pretty explicit terms plenty of places in Rand’s writing and in that of many of her objectivist followers.

      The point is that she/they don’t disapprove of sociopathology per se — so much as they disapprove of some of its cruder manifestations. Some, but not all — Roark’s blowing up the housing project — not owned or paid for by him, nor requiring anything further from him for its existence — is an example of “acceptable” manifestation of sociopathology in the Randian canon.

      L
      • Peter Cresswell 13.2.1

        1 March 2010 at 3:10 pm

        My \’argument,\’ Lew, is simply to post what the young Rand actually said about Hickman, and to point out that she was hardly the only novelist to contemplate basing a story on a disgusting character — or, in this case, on the public reaction to a disgusting character.

        In other words, that IB and his linked author are making too much stew from one very small onion
        • Lew 13.2.1.1

          1 March 2010 at 3:23 pm

          Peter, I accept that would be true if the comments had been made at the time of the young Rand’s apparent interest in Hickman — but there’s plenty more onion provided by her later writing, and a few carrots, a bit of celery, some garlic and some juicy red meat as well. You could say that the extras — things like wine and turnips and tomatoes — are provided by her followers.

          This context of her later work is all relevant in the here and now, since it’s in the here and now that we’re making the stew. Or at least talking about it.

          L
          • Peter Cresswell 13.2.1.1.1

            1 March 2010 at 4:02 pm

            No, I don’t agree. Sure, every student of Rand knows that she went through a ‘Neitzschean’ phase in her youth, one that she thoroughly rejected once she understood (to use your word) his sociopathy.

            Her 1968 introduction to her novel ‘The Fountainhead’ make this plain enough, and also the reasons for her initial admiration.

            “Perhaps the best way to communicate The Fountainhead’s sense of life is by means of the quotation which had stood at the head of my manuscript, but which I removed from the final, published book. With this opportunity to explain it, I am glad to bring it back.
            “I removed it, because of my profound disagreement with the philosophy of its author, Friedrich Nietzsche. Philosophically, Nietzsche is a mystic and an irrationalist. His metaphysics consists of a somewhat ‘Byronic’ and mystically ‘malevolent’ universe; his epistemology subordinates reason to ‘will,’ or feeling or instinct or blood or innate virtues of character. But, as a poet, he projects at times (not consistently) a magnificent feeling for man’s greatness, expressed in emotional, not intellectual terms.
            “This is especially true of the quotation I had chosen. I could not endorse its literal meaning: it proclaims an indefensible tenet—psychological determinism. But if one takes it as a poetic projection of an emotional experience …, then that quotation communicates the inner state of an exalted self-esteem—and sums up the emotional consequences for which ‘The Fountainhead’ provides the rational, philosophical base:
            “‘It is not the works, but the belief which is here decisive and determines the order of rank—to employ once more an old religious formula with a new and deeper meaning,—it is some fundamental certainty which a noble soul has about itself, something which is not to be sought, is not to be found, and perhaps, also, is not to be lost.—The noble soul has reverence for itself.—‘ (Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.)
            “This view of man has rarely been expressed in human history. Today, it is virtually non-existent. Yet this is the view with which—in various degrees of longing, wistfulness, passion and agonized confusion—the best of mankind’s youth start out in life…”

            I submit that it was this, however imperfectly expressed, she was responding to in her interest with the criminal, and in the public reaction to him.
            • IrishBill 13.2.1.1.1.1

              1 March 2010 at 4:09 pm

              All that shows is her (and your) fundamental misunderstanding of Nietzsche. He didn’t endorse sociopaths. She clearly did.
              • Peter Cresswell …

                1 March 2010 at 4:49 pm

                “Nietzsche . . . didn’t endorse sociopaths”

                Well that really does take the biscuit. While not endorsing the use of the term (which you chose initially), one could select any number of readings from Nietzsche to make the point that Nietzsche’s uberman is precisely what you’re arguing against, and in which box you’re trying to force Rand. This odious sentiment for example:

                “Mankind in the mass sacrificed to the prosperity of a single stronger species of man—that would be an advance.‘
                – Nietzsche, ‘On the Genealogy of Morals’

                What is that if not what you’re objecting to in those made-up stories about Rand?
                
                IrishBill: Beyond good and evil is a treatise on the nature of meaning that takes as its main example one of the fundamental notions of truth at the time in order to gain maximum effect. It’s no more a call to arms for nihilists than On the Origin of the Species is (although Nietzsche had a better sense of humour than Darwin did). Your problem is you have this rather earnest inability to see the nuance in anything. That’s probably why you’re an Objectivist.
            • Lew 13.2.1.1.1.2

              1 March 2010 at 4:11 pm

              Peter, a characteristically sympathetic reading which does nothing to account for her later idolisation of heroes with sociopathic qualities, and her modelling of (certain of) those traits as ideal and perfect. Not to mention those of her followers and ideological allies, which was the initial topic of the discussion.

              L
              • Peter Cresswell …

                1 March 2010 at 4:52 pm

                “…her later idolisation of heroes with sociopathic qualities…Not to mention those of her followers and ideological allies ”

                Well now you’ve lost me totally. What on earth are you talking about? Which “heroes with sociopathic qualities” are you talking about? What “followers and ideological allies” share these same “sociopathic qualities”?

                Or is this just a further smear?
              • Lew …

                1 March 2010 at 5:10 pm

                Peter, qualities she claims to have admired in Hickman, which I referred to above (though I almost didn’t, since the suite is so well-known). The “outside” of him, without the degeneracy. The idea that the degeneracy was somehow separable from his actions and outlook.

                As to the heroes: these qualities are shared to a large extent by the protagonists in her fiction, and her judgements of people and actions in non-fiction are frequently against this benchmark.

                As to the followers: I don’t claim they necessarily share these traits I claim they idolise them. That’s an important distinction.

                L
    • Bright Red 13.3

      1 March 2010 at 3:31 pm

      “The mob hated Hickman for his independence, she surmised in her notes; she chose him as a model for the same reason”

      well that just marks her out as a sociopath.

      The ‘mob’ as you call them hated a man who had brutally murdered a young girl for no reason and abused her remains while horrifically tormenting her father.

      Fact is there were plenty of criminals in the era who were actually widely admired who you would characterise as ‘independent’ but the difference was they didn’t go around torturing little girls.

      The fact that Rand admired Hickman and blamed the world for his actions, not his sociopathic nature, says all we need to know about her.

      The fact you are making excuses fro both Rand and Hickman says a lot about you.
      • Peter Cresswell 13.3.1

        1 March 2010 at 4:07 pm

        @Bright Red: “…well that just marks her out as a sociopath.”

        Well, no it doesn’t. It marks her down as someone struck by the fact that even more barbaric crimes attracted so little public opprobrium. I’m not at all downplaying the barbarity of Hickman, and neither was Rand. What interested her primarily however (to say it again) was that even more barbaric crimes attracted far less opprobrium than this one.

        That’s what she wanted to answer and portray, through a more sympathetic character than this animal.

        “The fact you are making excuses for both Rand and Hickman says a lot about you.”

        Oh, grow up and learn to read.
    • Daveo 13.4

      1 March 2010 at 4:47 pm

      Bad as Hickman’s crime was (which at the time of course was only an alleged crime, since Hickman had yet to be found guilty), there had been worse crimes committed with less public outrage. That was what fascinated Rand, and what she tried to answer in her notes.

      She concluded that the intensity of the public’s hatred of Hickman was primarily “because of the man who committed the crime and not because of the crime he committed.’

      What Rand admired about Hickman was that he “had no regard whatsoever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own… he can never realize and feel other people'” – ie, the fact he was a sociopath.

      Considering that what Rand brushes aside as “whatsoever society holds sacred” was in this case the murder and dismembership of a small girl and then the psychological torture of her father, it kind of makes sense that the public were horrified and this case gained particular notoriety.

      People don’t like sociopaths. We are social animals, we hold things sacred, and sociopaths like Hickman do us and our society harm. That this element of the crime – the fact Hickman acted like a sociopath – was precisely what Rand admired about him says a lot about her and about the values underlying her philosophy.
      • Peter Cresswell 13.4.1

        1 March 2010 at 5:09 pm

        @Daveo: She did not “brush aside” the sacred, nor was she “a huge admirer of sociopaths.” Your and IB’s rewriting of the truth is almost Stalinist.

        Novelists write stories about despicable characters. I’m sure you’ve read some; I’m sure you’ve enjoyed them. That doesn’t make you a “sociopath” any more than it makes Rand one for planning a story as a twenty-three year old that she never completed, about the public reaction to (at the time) an alleged murderer whose barbaric crimes received more condemnation than much greater barbarities — and whose crimes (in her planned story) she intended to change for something far less savage.

        Which is to say that the story is far less than it’s painted — although, as I say above, it’s hardly Rand’s finest hour– but the truth is far more interesting than the juvenile finger-pointing.

        For example, writing years later about another criminal whom she actually did include in a completed work, she talked about the use of a “heroic criminal” as the protagonist: “I do not think, nor did I think when I wrote this play, that a swindler is a heroic character or that a respectable banker is a villain. But for the purpose of dramatizing the conflict of independence versus conformity, a criminal—a social outcast—can be an eloquent symbol. This, incidentally, is the reason of the profound appeal of the ‘noble crook in fiction. He is the symbol of the rebel as such, regardless of the kind of society he rebels against, the symbol—for most people—of their vague, undefined, unrealized groping toward a concept, or a shadowy image, of man’s self-esteem.”

        Discussing that and related pointd would be far more interesting than this finger-pointing.
14. Peter Cresswell 14

    1 March 2010 at 2:08 pm

    Well, IB, I didn’t expect you to agree with me about AR–and I’ve spent far too long arguing with people whe don’t. Merely that you would tell the truth about her.
    • IrishBill 14.1

      1 March 2010 at 2:10 pm

      I have.
15. Peter Cresswell 15

    1 March 2010 at 2:19 pm

    Yeah right.
    • Bright Red 15.1

      1 March 2010 at 3:44 pm

      Ah, strong argumentation Peter.

      Quick, dig out your copies of the Objectivist Newsletter and find out what Ayn says you have to say in this situation.
16. Peter Cresswell 16

    1 March 2010 at 3:07 pm

    My “argument,” Lew, is simply to post what the young Rand actually said about Hickman, and to point out that she was hardly the only novelist to contemplate basing a story on a disgusting character — or, in this case, on the public reaction to a disgusting character.

    In other words, that IB and his linked author are making too much stew from one very small onion.
17. Hilary 17

    1 March 2010 at 3:55 pm

    Apparently millions of copies of Ayn Rand books are given free to US schools.

    There is a good critique of AR (and also a not so damning one of Adam Smith) by economist and social justice advocate Raj Patel in his recent book ‘The value of nothing’.
    • Bright Red 17.1

      1 March 2010 at 5:05 pm

      Isn’t that ironic. If they were true to their creed the Objectivists would never give away their books in a desperate attempt to win over mallable minds.

      The more I learn the more it sounds like a quasi-religious cult dressed as something else.
      • Quoth the Raven 17.1.1

        1 March 2010 at 5:55 pm

        One of the co-founders of wikipedia is an Objectivist – Jimmy Wales– so much for not giving stuff away.
18. prism 18

    1 March 2010 at 4:05 pm

    Ayn Rand was a name that I heard from time to time, from the past. But well-known powerful people were said to be interested in her ideas and I began to search for more information. I read through the Virtue of Selfishness and Her Objectivist Ethics and noted that she seemed very unobjective about altruism – she called it evil. She seemed to dislike even hate kindness, she was married but didn’t have any children I understand. Thank goodness.

    IB supplied an interesting link on her. The detail it gives and the fears it expresses are not exaggerated I think. Rand came from Russia and was filled with excitement at the opportunities that the USA offered and seems to have struck a rich vein of self-interest that hankers after the absolute powers and riches of crazy emperors. Her ideas would match with Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus an awful story about Romans and Goths, killing, torturing, mutilating and savage revenge. What a world we would have if her ideas were followed and when you see some of her devotees in power it explains a lot about how society diminishes in standards despite our advances in prosperity and knowledge.

    From Tzvee’s Talmudic Blog –
    According to Wikipedia, “Rand was born Alisa Zinov’yevna Rosenbaum (Russian: Алиса Зиновьевна Розенбаум) in 1905, into a middle-class family living in Saint Petersburg, Russia, the eldest of three daughters (Alisa, Natasha, and Nora).”
    Her parents were, “Zinovy Zacharovich Rosenbaum and Anna Borisovna Rosenbaum, agnostic and largely non-observant Jews. Her father was a chemist and a successful pharmaceutical entrepreneur who earned the privilege of living outside the Jewish Pale of Settlement.”
    And why do I bring up this question now?

    Because the Wall Street Journal published a strange essay yesterday by Stephen Moore, “‘Atlas Shrugged’: From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years.”
    In the essay Moore argues inexplicably that recent economic upheavals prove the underlying theories of Rand’s objectivism are correct, starting off by saying,
    Some years ago when I worked at the libertarian Cato Institute, we used to label any new hire who had not yet read “Atlas Shrugged” a “virgin.” Being conversant in Ayn Rand’s classic novel about the economic carnage caused by big government run amok was practically a job requirement. If only “Atlas” were required reading for every member of Congress and political appointee in the Obama administration. I’m confident that we’d get out of the current financial mess a lot faster.

    From The eXileD thru IB’s link
    That’s what makes it so creepy how Rand and her followers clearly get off on hating and bashing those they perceived as weakRand and her followers have a kind of fetish for classifying weaker, poorer people as “parasites’ and “lice’ who need to swept away.
    Interesting that that is just the type of approach that the Nazis portrayed about the Jews in their infamous propaganda.
19. SPC 19

    1 March 2010 at 11:45 pm

    Brash has a problem with democracy. So does Ayn Rand. They each want society organised around their ideology, something that democracy might not allow in the first place or would reject once it was tried.
20. Thomas 20

    2 March 2010 at 1:19 pm

    Unfortunately a problem with democracy is shared by extremist idealogs of any stripe. Sue Bradford in her blogs after the S59 referendum was just as contemptuous of the intelligence of the masses as Brash. In other words if the public does not agree with extremist nutters such as Brash, Hide or Bradford it must be “because they are thick or do not understand what they are voting for”. I put it to you that the public understands exactly what their votes meant.
    Opposition to binding referendums is always couched in the terms that idealog politicians have special insight, information or knowledge denied to the “stupid” masses.
    Much of the public disappointment with politics is that those in power (Whatever party) continually take us in directions we do not want according to some dogma. Helen Clarks pragmatism was a welcome bit of fresh air for a while.
    • Pat 20.1

      2 March 2010 at 1:35 pm

      “I put it to you that the public understands exactly what their votes meant.”

      This comment puts you in a tie with Berend on Dimpost for The Most Sensible Comment Of The Day Award.
21. James 21

    2 March 2010 at 11:09 pm

    “Isn’t that ironic. If they were true to their creed the Objectivists would never give away their books in a desperate attempt to win over mallable minds.”

    Why? Objectivists expouse benevolance towards their fellow men….as opposed to the slavery of altruism.Holding seminars,running essay contests and donating books is vintage Objectivist outreach to spread the word to those who are interested…..indeed it was intrested people approaching Rand about her work that evolved into the various objectivist outlets we have today…ARI,The Objectivist Centre etc.They came to Rand….she didn’t go out looking for them aside from selling her writing.

    “The more I learn the more it sounds like a quasi-religious cult dressed as something else.”

    There was nothing cultic about Objectivism.Indeed its central tenents make it morphing into a cult impossible.The so called “cult” was just a small circle of friends who Rand enjoyed talking and socialising with.They even jokingly called themselves the Collective….hardly cultic behaviour.

    “Brash has a problem with democracy. So does Ayn Rand. They each want society organised around their ideology, something that democracy might not allow in the first place or would reject once it was tried.

    Rand…and Brash to a lesser consistent degree, are belivers in a free society…which Democracy is not.Democracy is mob rule…force denys rights.Rand supported the individual rights of EVERYONE….and new that a Democray desn’t deliver on that…only a free society can.

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