Ayn Rand is a pain in the ass

A dear friend of mine posted a blurb in my guestbook a while back that said, in part "I was brushing up on my Objectivist Theory and related musings of Ayn Rand, and for some odd reason, Dan Langdon popped into my head"

Odd Indeed. I remember being somewhat mystified at the time, but wrote it off as part of her eccentricity (She's a darling girl, but a little too far to the right in politics for being the intelligent person she is. I just hope that her child turns out to be a flaming liberal.) Anyway, this popped into MY head because the other day I heard a program from the Ayn Rand Society (or some such nonsense) and it occured to me that there really are people who take her writings seriously. I mean, you always hear about them, but you assume that they're just overly earnest college Sophmores, and that they will snap out of it. Apparently not.

Ayn Rand, as you may know, wrote a series of hugely boring and overly long novels in the 30's or 40's glorifying self-interest. Actually, I'm not being fair: "The Fountainhead" would be a perfectly nice romance novel about architects if you took out the incredibly long speeches by Howard Roark and Ellsworth Toohey. But to the Randians (or whatever they call themselves) that's the best part.

Rand, like Ronald Reagan (who I used to think was the worst president ever until THIS one came down the pike) makes greedy people feel good about themselves, and legitimizes their baser instincts. Rand makes them feel smart by presenting them with big long books that are actually somewhat readable, while Reagan put a kindly face to being a selfish jerk. Neither of them were what I would consider a positive development for mankind.

I have never been on welfare, or receieved unemployment compensation, or student grants or any of the "giveaways" that people like Rand or Reagan deride (and I hope I never am in that position), yet I am fully supportive of these programs. The main reason is that I think we are wealthy enough as a nation to take care of everyone, but the other reason is this: When a nation becomes divided into greedy jerks with money, and lots of poor people without, people end up dead. Rand, a refugee from the Soviet Communists, should have realized that, but like I said, she was greedy, and not too bright.

So it just goes to show you that some people will buy anything if it makes them feel OK about being a jerk, when it would be much easier to just stop being a jerk.