The New Bosses in the General Assembly were in such a hurry to ram their agenda through the legislature, it’s taken awhile to catch up to all the damage they caused. I’m sure they’ll be proud to have made a “10 Craziest State Legislatures” list compiled by the evil liberals at Alternet. Closer to home, newspapers in North Carolina have been tallying the bad news and commenting on it. The Winston-Salem Journal published an editorial today that should be read by anyone who honestly thinks the New Bosses did what’s best for all North Carolinians. It’s about a tax change that allows corporations to shift earned income in North Carolina to other states, thus avoiding N.C. tax, and letting tens of millions of dollars flow out of the state’s economy. The editors of the Journal make it clear that the new law isn’t just a travesty; it’s a bipartisan travesty, as Gov. Perdue signed it into law, knowing full well that the lawmakers didn’t even understand what they were passing. As the Journal‘s editors write, “This is not the way to make laws.”
On another note, we’ve been fans of essayist Hal Crowther for a long time, which is why he used to appear in the pages of Creative Loafing. His latest piece, which you can read in its entirety here, is a masterpiece dealing with the oddly sad-but-funny race for the GOP presidential nomination. Crowther then segues into a blistering look at the rebirth of interest in Ayn Rand, including among some top GOP congressional leaders. Rand, a sociopathic atheist whose “philosophy” amounted to a glorification of extreme selfishness, is a favorite of U.S. House GOP budget “expert,” Rep. Paul Ryan. Here are some choice quotes from Crother’s column:
The Republican Party’s slapstick search for a leader would be heartwarming and sidesplitting, but for the tragic knowledge that one of these scrambling midgets will collect tens of millions of votes in the presidential election of 2012. Never have so many amounted to so little, talked so much rubbish, or dreamed of an office so far above their abilities.The odious hypocrite Newt Gingrich, who considered himself a serious presidential candidate until his entire staff abandoned him in disgust, rests his appeal on his intellectual superiority to Sarah Palin and Rick Perry — a distinction much like being a faster runner than Dom DeLuise.
A passion for the prose and philosophy of Ayn Rand tells us a great deal about an individual, none of it good. There are few surer signs of a poor reader, a poor thinker and an unpleasant person than a well-thumbed copy of Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead.
[Rand’s beliefs are] the same string of arrogant assumptions that spawned the Master Race theories of Herr Hitler: ego-deification, social Darwinism, arbitrary stratification of human types. Adapted for capitalism, it becomes the divine right to plunder — a license for those who own nearly everything to take the rest, because they wish to, because they can. Because the weak don’t matter. Let the big dogs feed. This repulsive theology was the work of a fairly repulsive person.
This article appears in Jul 19-25, 2011.
The quoted remarks on Rand are so wide of the mark of accuracy as to be almost beyond comment. Rand believed in liberty for *all* persons; she upheld a universal set of individual rights which no entity – government, business, or religious – had the right to violate. She did not believe in “plunder” – before something can be plundered, it has to be produced, and she believed in innovation and production guided by reason. She even praised labor unions. And she liked cats. Sounds mighty sociopathic!
You’re right Michael, though I don’t know if you “labor union” comment would characterize the full description of the philosophy’s position on THAT matter. Unions have the right to exist, but not to the unfair advantage they have been given by the state.
Brown and Choate, you guys obviously need to read up a lot more on Rand and her collection of fantasy ideas, most of which come straight from Nietzche and his view of the “superior” persons who should naturally rule the world. Her greed-based “philosophy” is one of the worst jokes perpetrated on the American public. Not to mention that she was a terrible writer. Seriously, the Hal Crowther quote is right on the money: “A passion for the prose and philosophy of Ayn Rand tells us a great deal about an individual, none of it good.”
This blogger clearly fears and hates individual rights. Freedom and individual rights are “self-ish”. As pertaining to the self with a moral right to one’s own life. This is called “individualism”, which is the opposite of “collectivism” which is basically marxism, socialsim, fascism, unconstitutional democracy etc. In socialism it is believed the individual has no right to their own life because being selfish is evil. Believing people have no moral right to their life leads ultimately to dictators and death. This is the opposite of the ruth, as one absolutely has a moral right to their life. Rand believed nobody has a right to violate anyone elses rights and it was the job of the government to protect every individual.
P.S. Rand was the anti-thesis of nazism. Anyone who thinks her philosophy of individualism was related to that collectivist ideology of nazism clearly does not understand her philosophy or, they are purposely misrepresenting her because they support collectivist ideologies and do not want to face the fact that nazism is a collectivist ideology as well based on the same moral foundation as their own collectivist ideology.
Nietzsche’s rebellion against altruism consisted of replacing the sacrifice of oneself to others by the sacrifice of others to oneself. He proclaimed that the ideal man is moved, not by reason, but by his “blood,” by his innate instincts, feelings and will to power—that he is predestined by birth to rule others and sacrifice them to himself, while they are predestined by birth to be his victims and slaves—that reason, logic, principles are futile and debilitating, that morality is useless, that the “superman” is “beyond good and evil,” that he is a “beast of prey” whose ultimate standard is nothing but his own whim. Thus Nietzsche’s rejection of the Witch Doctor consisted of elevating Attila into a moral ideal—which meant: a double surrender of morality to the Witch Doctor. – Ayn Rand
Here is the evil you write about, clearly explained in all its demonic splendor:
At a sales conference at Random House, preceding the publication of Atlas Shrugged, one of the book salesmen asked me whether I could present the essence of my philosophy while standing on one foot. I did as follows:
1.Metaphysics: Objective Reality
2.Epistemology: Reason
3.Ethics: Self-interest
4.Politics: Capitalism
If you want this translated into simple language, it would read: 1. “Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed” or “Wishing won’t make it so.” 2. “You can’t eat your cake and have it, too.” 3. “Man is an end in himself.” 4. “Give me liberty or give me death.”
If you held these concepts with total consistency, as the base of your convictions, you would have a full philosophical system to guide the course of your life. But to hold them with total consistency—to understand, to define, to prove and to apply them—requires volumes of thought. Which is why philosophy cannot be discussed while standing on one foot—nor while standing on two feet on both sides of every fence. This last is the predominant philosophical position today, particularly in the field of politics.
My philosophy, Objectivism, holds that:
1.
Reality exists as an objective absolute—facts are facts, independent of man’s feelings, wishes, hopes or fears.
2.
Reason (the faculty which identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses) is man’s only means of perceiving reality, his only source of knowledge, his only guide to action, and his basic means of survival.
3.
Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life.
4.
The ideal political-economic system is laissez-faire capitalism. It is a system where men deal with one another, not as victims and executioners, nor as masters and slaves, but as traders, by free, voluntary exchange to mutual benefit. It is a system where no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force, and no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. The government acts only as a policeman that protects man’s rights; it uses physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use, such as criminals or foreign invaders. In a system of full capitalism, there should be (but, historically, has not yet been) a complete separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church.