There are a couple of interesting things about the above videos: one is that Johnny Carson did a more serious and in-depth interview of a controversial person than anyone we see now on television. (Maybe Rachel Maddow. Possibly Jon Stewart. Can you imagine anyone on Fox "news" letting someone they disagree with have their say like Carson did?). He knew the subject, he asked probing questions, and he let her answer at length, without interruption.
The other is that it's hard to understand how Ayn Rand could have become the hero of so many self-described family-values teabaggers. Until people explained to him what she was really about (the so-called intellectual heavyweight of the R party evidently has trouble reading for comprehension), Paul Ryan had acknowledged lapping her up like mother's milk. Good luck, in an election year, unlapping the uplapping. I guess it's just another example of teabaggers thinking they know and understand things that they, in fact, neither know nor understand at all.
I do feel bad for Buster Crabbe, though.
Someday I'm going to read Atlas Shrugged. I agree that there is an enormous gap between Randism and Republiconservatism.
ReplyDeleteI'm torn actually listening to her. On the one hand, her emphasis on rationality, on analyzing social pressures, on atheism, the idea that you shouldn't infringe on others' independence or allow others to infringe on yours all resonate with me. But there is a massive missing step for me between that and laissez faire capitalism. I just don't get it.
Furthermore, it seems like anyone I've actually met who believes this stuff is an asshole. It's an uncomfortable cognitive dissonance for me.
Agreed. And it's hard to see any USA USA USA conservative buying her idea that we shouldn't be killing other people or making our own people do it.
ReplyDeleteLike all ideas that are complicated, hers get cherry-picked to justify whatever the reader wants. In the case of teabaggRs, it's a way to rationalize (!) selfishness, and screw-you-edness. Assholes, as you said.
The problem they'd prefer to ignore is that rational self-interest includes supporting those things that allow society to exist. Sort of a "you didn't build that" kind of thing.