Back in my college days, I remember studying about Ayn Rand, the Russian-born novelist and intellectual parent of the philosophical movement called 'objectivism'. I tried reading a The Fountain Head and Atlas Shrugged but found them to be far too dry and dull to be of interest to me. I did learn from my classes that Ayn Rand was an radical atheist who opposed any form of religion, and that she was a fairly rabid anti-Communist who testified as a 'friendly witness' in front of the 50s' House Un-American Activities Committee which led by Senator Joe McCarthy which conducted witch hunts for supposed communist sympathizers.
Later on, at least philosophically, she found an admirer in Alan Greenspan, and today she, or more precisely, her ideas of completely unfettered and unregulated lazzis faire capitalism has found much favor by ultra conservatives such as Congressman Paul Ryan, Michele Bachmann, and many others.
Today I saw a great article on www.marketwatch.com about Ayn Rand entitled Ayn Rand's 'Death of the Soul of Capitalism'.
This article written by economist and well-known financial markets columnist Paul Farrell talks about how Rand's ideas are being taken to extreme by her current day adherents., and are inconsistent with the Christian fundamentalism almost all of them espouse
Rand once said, “Altruism is immoral and selfishness is good. Moreover, there isn’t a problem in the world that laissez-faire capitalism can’t solve if left alone to perform its miracles.”
That precept stated by Rand herself makes her 'philosophy'--so beloved of today's ultra right wing--a very strange belief since in fact Christian principles like charity and reverence of God are considered enlightened and are unwelcome in the ideal world as Rand envisioned it.
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