Ayn Rand Checklist

Nothing really prepares you for seeing Rush’s 2112 associated with that list. Unfortunately the greatness of that album simply doesn’t counteract the crappiness of everything else in that list. Hardly balanced.

Yeah, but BIOSHOCK fucking kicked ass. One of the greatest video games ever.

2112 is a direct ripoff of Anthem and is ‘dedicated to the genius of Ayn Rand’

Yeah, but can the aweseomeness of Bioshock and Rush 2112 overcome the douchebaggery that is Malkin & Limbaugh? (please make sure not to confuse the two tons of fun that is Limbaugh with the trio from Canada).

I prefer Noam Chomsky. His writing is more relevant. I tried to read “Atlas Shrugged” once. About a third of the way through I calmly closed the book, set it down, and then picked up “The Mote in God’s Eye” and read it for the fourth time.Life it too short to drink cheap beer and to waste it reading garbage.

Bioshock! W00T!/geek

SillyGit, The Mote in God’s Eye, awesome book! I just got done reading Footfall for the 4th time.

I spend 2-3 hours a day in my car getting to and from work (it’s only 35 miles one-way). I use that time to listen to audiobooks – it really makes the time in traffic tolerable.It just so happens that I recently downloaded and listened to Atlas Shrugged. It’s one of those books I had tried to read many years ago, had read about, and pretty much knew the story and philosophy, but had never really read all the way through.The audiobook is 63 hours (yikes!) so it lasted me over a month of commutes. What a value! Fortunately, it was read by one of my favorites, Scott Brick.Anyway, it seems my timing was interesting given the wingnuts new found fasination with Ayn Rand.Ummm, I thought I had a point when I started writing this. I seem to have forgoten what it was…

Also responsible for the leigon of awkward, semi-smart-but-not-as-smart-as-they-THINK-they-are dudes who sublimate their anger at their high-school and all the girls who ever weren’t into them into a feeling of totally misplaced superiority.I have yet to meet a self-styled Randian Ubermensch who had 3 ounces of personal charisma.

Libertarianism may have been a White Guy’s Idea of a Good Time back in Ye Goode Olden Days when “Colored Folk” picked up society’s slack and did all the heavy lifting for Whitey, but these days it’s just a thinly disguised excuse for racism and disdain for Poor People. I loathe Libertarians.

Lee,If you’ve never done so I highly recommend reading all three parts of “Outing the L-Word”:http://www.bestcyrano.org/TaylorAndrew.htmAbsolutely the best written criticism of so-called libertarianism I’ve ever read!

Yeah, some of these assholes sound stressed out, so they could use a good sit-down with a copy of Bioshock.They might learn something vitally important from that game.HUGE fan of it, BTW.The Big Sisters are coming.

Okay, when I was 14 my mom told me to read Atlas Shrugged, and I thought it was exciting and sexy and cool. John Galt was a pretty sexy dude, but sorta like Jessica Rabbit, he was drawn that way. I love the Fountainhead, because I love architecture, and because in the movie I couldn’t tell you who was more fuckable, Cooper or Neal. Hell, I’d do ‘em both.But drawing political inspiration from these books? HAIL no. I mean, I read Sweet Savage Love when I was 14 also, doesn’t mean Rosemary Rogers got me carrying a banner for the Juaristas.Ayn Rand was a romance novelist masquerading as a serious writer. It only worked because she hailed from Commie-land, and all them Commie writers were SOOOO SERIOUS. Do you know who Rand originally wanted cast as Dagny, back in the 70s when Atlas Shrugged was a twinkle in some producer’s eye? Farrah Fawcett, back when she’d done nothing more serious than maybe that Saturn 3 movie.Of course, there are those that would assert that Rand saw the depth behind the teeth and hair and nipples. I say she was taking superficial to a whole ‘nother level.I understand the Ayn Rand followers about as much as I do the L. Ron Hubbard ‘uns. At least there’s no Objectivism religion. Yet.

Let me say up front that I am writing the following message from a libertarian perspective, just so there’s no confusion.First of all, what we have in the United States is no where near a free market, and it really doesn’t surprise me that our highly centralized federal corporatist system that we currently have just doesn’t work.”Libertarianism may have been a White Guy’s Idea of a Good Time back in Ye Goode Olden Days when “Colored Folk” picked up society’s slack and did all the heavy lifting for Whitey, but these days it’s just a thinly disguised excuse for racism and disdain for Poor People. I loathe Libertarians.”You don’t know what libertarianism is at all. Racists may like to delude themselves by calling themselves libertarians, but they aren’t libertarians at all.”"Go Galt”? Check.”Ayn Rand herself despised libertarianism, and I’m not here to defend Objectivism, so I’ll leave this alone.”Tea Party wingnuts? Check.”You used that one picture of the sign holder with a sign regarding tea bagging to dismiss the entire Tea Party protest thing, without even analyzing or refuting any of the ideas behind it. There are usually people who choose to do things in bad taste in every crowd, but it doesn’t make the real reasons why they were there wrong.”Alan Greenspan’s belief in an unfettered free market? Check.”Greenspan is a false poster boy for free markets. It’s easy to use him as a straw man to dismiss all free market ideas. I don’t feel the need to defend him.”Climate Change Deniers? Check.”I agree, they’re completely lame.”Aggressive Limbaugh-ish free market defenders? Check.”Limbaugh’s a racist idiot.”Sorta meek but equally hardcore Ron Paul-ish free market defenders? Check.”Why do you feel the need to group Ron Paul supporters in with this other crap? What’s wrong with defending what he stands for?Finally, the last two on the checklist are not worth discussing seriously, so I’ve left them off.

“Alan Greenspan’s belief in an unfettered free market?”Where do you get that notion from? Anyone with any knowledge of the principles Rand promoted will immediately realize that Greenspan is the antithesis of that. He long since discarded his interest in Rand, though he’s not above referencing it in order to save his ass. The main screwed with interest rates and monetary policy to his heart’s content – now he wants us to believe that it was because of a misunderstanding of the *free* market! Ha!Or are we supposed to believe that a single entity capable of swaying the entire market with the snap of a finger (as Greenspan could and did do) is anything like the laissez-faire capitalism of Rand?

Rand thought the word “libertarianism” was too broad a brush. She thought it sounded like a “made up” word. I have no idea then what to make of “Objectivism”. Silly infighting between the two camps didn’t really accomplish anything since all are Libertarians now. There are more active Libertarians running loose than Objectivists. The whole dime-store supermen thing is just so very 50′s.