NPR's Ayn Rand slanted story this am made her sound like a visionary & left out....

[mod mom]

:mad: NPR's piece on Ayn Rand made her sound like a visionary as if it was the working people, unions, pensions & taxes that lead to the economic crisis. There was no other side given to speak the truth only relying on Mike Wallace from 1959 to outline her immorality. No current talk of the "producers" destroying the country and how regulation protects all against the greed of the few. I'm limited to a few paragraphs but it's worth a full listen/read:


On Capitol Hill, Rand's 'Atlas' Can't Be Shrugged Off
by ANDREA SEABROOK

-snip

At the time, Rand's novels were almost universally panned. Her ideas were called "the height of immorality." Her followers, the objectivists, were seen as a radical sideshow in politics and economics.

-snip

"It's almost frightening how accurate a prediction of the future the book was," Mulvaney says.


In Atlas Shrugged, which Rand considered her masterpiece, the wealthy corporate producers are the engines of the American economy, but they are constantly stymied by invasive legislation and terrible government regulations.

-snip

http://www.npr.org/2011/11/14/142245517/on-capitol-hill-rands-atlas-cant-be-shrugged-off



OF COURSE, SHE DIDN'T PRACTICE WHAT SHE PREACHED:


However, it was revealed in the recent "Oral History of Ayn Rand" by Scott McConnell (founder of the media department at the Ayn Rand Institute) that in the end Ayn was a vip-dipper as well. An interview with Evva Pryror, a social worker and consultant to Miss Rand's law firm of Ernst, Cane, Gitlin and Winick verified that on Miss Rand's behalf she secured Rand's Social Security and Medicare payments which Ayn received under the name of Ann O'Connor (husband Frank O'Connor).

As Pryor said, "Doctors cost a lot more money than books earn and she could be totally wiped out" without the aid of these two government programs. Ayn took the bail out even though Ayn "despised government interference and felt that people should and could live independently... She didn't feel that an individual should take help."

-snip
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-ford/ayn-rand-and-the-vip-dipe_b_792184.html

[RoccoR5955]

1. I dunno, there was some revealing things in that article

Like that she was not an "Amurikan," and a "Ruskie," and that at in a time in the past, her ideas were not that of the vast majority of REAL Americans.
Just my take.

[mod mom]

3. The opposing opinion was Mike Wallace's from 1959!

To associate the current financial crisis based on what Rand wrote in the 50's is WRONG! It wasn't regulation or unions or pension that caused this crisis but the greed of a few and the DEREGULATION of financial products.

[barbtries]

2. i heard quite a bit of it on my way to work.

made the woman sound like a visionary and a saint. i was disgusted.

[Chorophyll]

4. It was "reported uncritically."

No one bothered to point out that we're now living with the results of 30 years of deregulation on corporations. And they're profiling another conservative "thinker" tomorrw.

:puke:

[mod mom]

5. PLS consider leaving comments at the NPR link. The Rand apologists are already there.

[salvorhardin]

6. Actually, Ayn Rand was practicing what she preached when she drew Social Security

She believed that she was only taking back what was stolen from her in the first place (bolding mine):

Since there is no such thing as the right of some men to vote away the rights of others, and no such thing as the right of the government to seize the property of some men for the unearned benefit of others—the advocates and supporters of the welfare state are morally guilty of robbing their opponents, and the fact that the robbery is legalized makes it morally worse, not better. The victims do not have to add self-inflicted martyrdom to the injury done to them by others; they do not have to let the looters profit doubly, by letting them distribute the money exclusively to the parasites who clamored for it. Whenever the welfare-state laws offer them some small restitution, the victims should take it . . . .

The same moral principles and considerations apply to the issue of accepting social security, unemployment insurance or other payments of that kind. It is obvious, in such cases, that a man receives his own money which was taken from him by force, directly and specifically, without his consent, against his own choice. Those who advocated such laws are morally guilty, since they assumed the “right” to force employers and unwilling co-workers. But the victims, who opposed such laws, have a clear right to any refund of their own money—and they would not advance the cause of freedom if they left their money, unclaimed, for the benefit of the welfare-state administration.
Source: http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/government_grants_and_scholarships.html

Ayn Rand was nothing if not skilled at rationalizing her philosophy.

[babylonsister]

8. So she justified her actions even though they went against

what she supposedly believed; sounds very familiar. I guess you CAN have it both ways!

[salvorhardin]

13. She was seeking restitution for theft

Ayn Rand viewed Social Security as theft. If someone steals your property in the first place, then you're morally justified in recovering your property. The government had been stealing her money for decades, so she saw nothing wrong with getting it back.

I'm not defending Ayn Rand by any means. I just think it's important to understand what she really believed because, like it or not, her words had a huge impact on our society.

[mod mom]

14. Do you know WHEN she wrote that piece you quoted because it sure sounds like

justification of hypocritical actions to me.

[salvorhardin]

15. It's an essay called "The Establishing of the Establishment"

From a posthumous 1982 collection of essays collected under the title Philsophy: Who Needs It. I'm not sure, but I've seen references that date "TEotE" to 1972, or ten years before she died. She started receiving Social Security benefits in December 1974.

Sure, it sounds like Rand is rationalizing her own hypocrisy to us, but to her it made perfect sense. While "TEotE" is from the later years of her life, it's no more than a restatement of what she was writing as far back as the mid-1930s. The idea that taxation of any form is tantamount to armed robbery is foundational to her work (or cult depending on your viewpoint :D ).

[mod mom]

17. She wasn't born here and no one stopped her from moving to a country

without any social net where unregulated markets could wreak havoc on the population/land.

I wonder how much her meth addiction (which I never knew about before today) contributed to rationalization that it was okay to utilize government assistance when it benefits her. Who would have guessed that a godless drug addict would become the patron saint of the GOP. Perfect.

BTW this is not a condemnation of atheists, as I am one myself.

[salvorhardin]

19. Lots of people were addicted to Benzedrine back then

It was a culturally approved drug in those days. If anything, her addiction to Benzedrine, and nicotine, and probably alcohol too, are more a condemnation of her notion of radical free will (also foundational to her philosophy) than her ideas about taxation and property theft.

[uponit7771]

20. The issue is she gets way more out of SS than she put in due to inflation alone. Medicare cost are..

...another obvious factor.

She's a hypocrite, that leaves these things out of her justification mostly like other conservative or freeloaders

[formercia]

7. NPR has been co-opted

No sane person would allow that obvious Propaganda.

The Reich-Wankers are determined to destroy NPR, by alienating the people who donate. They slashed funding, now, donations will bottom out. Mission accomplished.

[Chorophyll]

9. The Rightwingers don't even have to attack NPR.

Most of their programming is now supported by "corporate underwriters." That's the subtle and effective way to destroy NPR. Control the money, control the content.

[banned from Kos]

10. Rand WAS a visionary! But so was Savanorola and other whackjobs.

The crazy man who wrote the Book of Revelation was a visionary.

[RoccoR5955]

23. A hypocrite more than a visionary.

Visionary?!?! So is my bunghole!
She was a fantasizer, she was no visionary, she was a hypocrite, because she was on Social Security. If she was a REAL visionary, and stuck to her "beliefs," she would have refused to take Social Security.

[Ptah]

11. I felt it was a spot-on segment.

"In Atlas Shrugged, which Rand considered her masterpiece,
the wealthy corporate producers are the engines of the American economy,
but they are constantly stymied by invasive legislation and terrible government regulations."

""Every time you submit to a regulation, it diminishes your liberty,"
says Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa, speaking just off the House
floor a few weeks ago. King says he loves Rand."

"That's exactly what Florida Republican Rep. Allen West sees happening
in America today — and, he says, it's very dangerous.

"If you start to demonize a certain segment of your society that are
the producers, eventually they'll stop," he says.

That's just what they did in Atlas Shrugged. Rand's wealthy heroes go
into hiding, leaving behind the welfare class — Rand calls them "the moochers" —
and the government, or "the looters."

Put in today's language: "Job creators in America basically are on strike.""

http://www.npr.org/2011/11/14/142245517/on-capitol-hill-rands-atlas-cant-be-shrugged-off

-------------------

[mod mom]

12. "There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings & ..

"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged.

One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world.

The other, of course, involves orcs."

--unknown

[Courtesy Flush]

16. Not one word about the consequences

I heard the story, and they didn't mention that we've been living under her rules for last 10 years, and what it has done to the world economy.

[uponit7771]

21. +1

[Patiod]

18. So why don't people like Ron Paul follow her 100%

They pick and choose and stir in Jesus and anti-abortion and anti-drug, all of which would have horrified Rand, to make their philosophy less coherent but more palatable to their mouth-breathing constituency.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

22. She wrote bodice rippers dressed up as philosophy.

And, they were crappy in both disguises.