To celebrate today’s announcement that Ayn Rand fanboy Paul Ryan will in a few months’ time be a heartbeat from the presidency—and to honor this special moment, marking the final syphilitic pus-spasms of America’s decline and fall–we are reposting for your edification Mark Ames’ 2010 article about the man behind the Rand: Ayn Rand’s unrequited adoration of a notorious serial killer, William Edward Hickman. Yes, Vice President-to-be Paul Ryan owes his entire “moral” worldview to a lowly groupie of serial killers, a 1920’s prototype of today’s “Joker” wannabees. Yes folks, in a few months’ time Americans will finally be able to stand up and declare: “We are all serial-killer groupies now.”
There’s something deeply unsettling about living in a country where millions of people go frothing batshit angry at the suggestion that maybe health care coverage should be extended to the tens of millions of Americans who don’t have it; or when they froth at the mouth in ecstasy at the thought of privatizing and slashing bedrock social programs like Social Security or Medicare. It might not be as hard to stomach if other Western countries also had a large, vocal chunk of their population who thought like this, but the US is seemingly the only place where right-wing elites can openly share their distaste for the working poor. Where do they find their philosophical justification for this kind of attitude?
It turns out, you can trace much of this thinking back to Ayn Rand, a popular cult-philosopher who plays Charlie to the American right-wing’s Manson Family. Read on and you’ll see why.
One reason why most countries don’t find the time to embrace her thinking is that Ayn Rand is a textbook sociopath. Literally a sociopath: Ayn Rand, in her notebooks, worshiped a notorious serial murderer-dismemberer, and used this killer as an early model for the type of “ideal man” that Rand promoted in her more famous books — ideas which were later picked up on and put into play by major right-wing figures of the past half decade, including the key architects of America’s most recent economic catastrophe — former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan and SEC Commissioner Chris Cox — along with other notable right-wing Republicans such as Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Rush Limbaugh, Rep. Paul Ryan, and South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford.
The loudest of all the Republicans, right-wing attack-dog pundits and the Teabagger mobs fighting to kill health care reform and eviscerate “entitlement programs” increasingly hold up Ayn Rand as their guru. Sales of her books have soared in the past couple of years; one poll ranked “Atlas Shrugged” as the second most influential book of the 20th century, after The Bible.
His time has finally come
So what, and who, was Ayn Rand for and against? The best way to get to the bottom of it is to take a look at how she developed the superhero of her novel, Atlas Shrugged, John Galt. Back in the late 1920s, as Ayn Rand was working out her philosophy, she became enthralled by a real-life American serial killer, William Edward Hickman, whose gruesome, sadistic dismemberment of 12-year-old girl named Marion Parker in 1927 shocked the nation. Rand filled her early notebooks with worshipful praise of Hickman. According to biographer Jennifer Burns, author of Goddess of the Market, Rand was so smitten by Hickman that she modeled her first literary creation — Danny Renahan, the protagonist of her unfinished first novel, The Little Street — on him.
What did Rand admire so much about Hickman? His sociopathic qualities: “Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should,” she wrote, gushing that Hickman had “no regard whatsoever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. He has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel ‘other people.’”
This echoes almost word for word Rand’s later description of her character Howard Roark, the hero of her novel The Fountainhead: “He was born without the ability to consider others.”
(The Fountainhead is Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s favorite book — he even makes his clerks learn it, much as Vice President-to-be Paul Ryan tried making his interns read Rand.)
I’ll get to where Rand picked up her silly Superman blather from later — but first, let’s meet William Edward Hickman, the “genuinely beautiful soul” and inspiration to Ayn Rand. What you will read below — the real story, details included, of what made Hickman a “Superman” in Ayn Rand’s eyes — is rather gory reading, even if you’re a longtime fan of true crime “Death Porn” — so prepare yourself. Because you should read this to give Rand’s ideas their proper context, and to repeat this over and over until all of America understands what made this fucked-up Russian nerd’s mind tick, because Rand’s influence over the very people leading the fight to kill social programs, and her ideological influence on so many powerful bankers, regulators and businessmen who brought the financial markets crashing down, means that it’s suicide to ignore her, no matter how dumb, silly or beneath you her books and ideas are.
Rand fell for William Edward Hickman in the late 1920s, as the shocking story of Hickman’s crime started to grip the nation. His crime, trial and case was a non-stop headline grabber for months; the OJ Simpson of his day. Ayn Rand joined the herd of Hickman groupies, and there were lots of them at the time—much like metalhead serial killer groupies today, the types who write letters to imprisoned serial killers. That’s Ayn Rand. Here, for example, is an old newspaper clipping showing how common it was for the growing legions of reactionary waffendweebs of the late 1920’s to sign up for the William Edward Hickman Fan Club:
Is serial killer William Edward Hickman (left) opening one of Ayn Rand’s fangirl letters?
Hickman, who was only 19 when he was arrested for murder, was the son of a paranoid-schizophrenic mother and grandmother. His schoolmates said that as a kid Hickman liked to strangle cats and snap the necks of chickens for fun — most of the kids thought he was a budding maniac, though the adults gave him good marks for behavior, a typical sign of sociopathic cunning. He enrolled in college but quickly dropped out, and quickly turned to violent crime largely driven by the thrill and arrogance typical of sociopaths: in a brief and wild crime spree that grew increasingly violent, Hickman knocked over dozens of gas stations and drug stores across the Midwest and west to California. Along the way it’s believed he strangled a girl in Milwaukee, and killed his crime partner’s grandfather in Pasadena, tossing his body over a bridge after taking his money. Hickman’s partner later told police that Hickman told him how much he’d like to kill and dismember a victim someday — and that day did come for Hickman.
One afternoon, Hickman drove up to Mount Vernon Junior High school in Los Angeles, and told administrators that he’d come to pick up “the Parker girl” — her father, Perry Parker, was a prominent banker. Hickman didn’t know the girl’s first name, so when he was asked which of the two Parker twins — Hickman answered, “the younger daughter.” And then he corrected himself: “The smaller one.” The school administrator fetched young Marion, and brought her out to Hickman. No one suspected his motive; Marion obediently followed Hickman to his car as she was told, where he promptly kidnapped her. He wrote a ransom note to Marion’s father, demanding $1,500 for her return, promising that the girl would be left unharmed. Marion was terrified into passivity — she even waited in the car for Hickman when he went to mail his letter to her father. Hickman’s extreme narcissism comes through in his ransom letters, as he refers to himself as a “master mind [sic]” and “not a common crook.” Hickman signed his letters “The Fox” because he admired his own cunning: “Fox is my name, very sly you know.” And then he threatened: “Get this straight. Your daughter’s life hangs by a thread.”
Photo of Marion (also spelled “Marian”) Parker
Hickman and the girl’s father exchanged letters over the next few days as they arranged the terms of the ransom, while Marion obediently followed her captor’s demands. She never tried to escape the hotel where he kept her; Hickman even took her to a movie, and she never screamed for help. She remained quiet and still as told when Hickman tied her to the chair — he didn’t even bother gagging her because there was no need to, right up to the gruesome end.
Suitcase containing some of Marion Parker’s remains and blood-soaked towels
Hickman’s last ransom note to Marion’s father is where this story reaches its disturbing apex: Hickman fills the letter with hurt anger over her father’s suggestion that Hickman might deceive him, and “ask you for your $1500 for a lifeless mass of flesh I am base and low but won’t stoop to that depth.” What Hickman didn’t say was that as he wrote the letter, Marion was already several chopped-up lifeless masses of flesh. Why taunt the father? Why feign outrage? This sort of bizarre taunting was all part of the serial killer’s thrill, maximizing the sadistic pleasure he got from knowing that he was deceiving the father before the father even knew what happened to his daughter. But this was nothing compared to the thrill Hickman got from murdering the helpless 12-year-old Marion Parker. Here is an old newspaper description of the murder, taken from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on December 27, 1927:
“It was while I was fixing the blindfold that the urge to murder came upon me,” he continued, “and I just couldn’t help myself. I got a towel and stepped up behind Marian. Then before she could move, I put it around her neck and twisted it tightly. I held on and she made no outcry except to gurgle. I held on for about two minutes, I guess, and then I let go. When I cut loose the fastenings, she fell to the floor. I knew she was dead. Well, after she was dead I carried her body into the bathroom and undressed her, all but the underwear, and cut a hole in her throat with a pocket knife to let the blood out.”
Another newspaper account dryly explained what Hickman did next:
Then he took a pocket knife and cut a hole in her throat. Then he cut off each arm to the elbow. Then he cut her legs off at the knees. He put the limbs in a cabinet. He cut up the body in his room at the Bellevue Arms Apartments. Then he removed the clothing and cut the body through at the waist. He put it on a shelf in the dressing room. He placed a towel in the body to drain the blood. He wrapped up the exposed ends of the arms and waist with paper. He combed back her hair, powdered her face and then with a needle fixed her eyelids. He did this because he realized that he would lose the reward if he did not have the body to produce to her father.
Hickman packed her body, limbs and entrails into a car, and drove to the drop-off point to pick up his ransom; along his way he tossed out wrapped-up limbs and innards scattering them around Los Angeles. When he arrived at the meeting point, Hickman pulled Marion’s head and torso out of a suitcase and propped her up, her torso wrapped tightly, to look like she was alive–he sewed wires into her eyelids to keep them open, so that she’d appear to be awake and alive. When Marion’s father arrived, Hickman pointed a sawed-off shotgun at him, showed Marion’s head with the eyes sewn open (it would have been hard to see for certain that she was dead), and then took the ransom money and sped away. As he sped away, he threw Marion’s head and torso out of the car, and that’s when the father ran up and saw his daughter–and screamed.
Marion Parker’s discarded limbs
This is the “amazing picture” Ayn Rand — guru to the Republican/Tea Party right-wing — admired when she wrote in her notebook that Hickman represented “the amazing picture of a man with no regard whatsoever for all that a society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. A man who really stands alone, in action and in soul. Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should.”
Other people don’t exist for Ayn, either. Part of her ideas are nothing more than a ditzy dilettante’s bastardized Nietzsche — but even this was plagiarized from the same pulp newspaper accounts of the time. According to an LA Times article in late December 1927, headlined “Behavioralism Gets The Blame,” a pastor and others close to the Hickman case denounce the cheap trendy Nietzschean ideas that Hickman and others latch onto as a defense:
“Behavioristic philosophic teachings of eminent philosophers such as Nietzsche and Schopenhauer have built the foundation for William Edward Hickman’s original rebellion against society…” the article begins.
Rand denounced the hanging as, “The mob’s murderous desire to revenge its hurt vanity against the man who dared to be alone.”
The fear that some felt at the time was that these philosophers’ dangerous, yet nuanced ideas would fall into the hands of lesser minds, who would bastardize Nietzsche and Schopenhauer and poison the rest of us. Which aptly fits the description of Ayn Rand, whose philosophy developed out of her admiration for “Supermen” like Hickman. Rand’s philosophy can be summed up by the title of one of her best-known books:The Virtue of Selfishness. She argues that all selfishness is a moral good, and all altruism is a moral evil, even “moral cannibalism” to use her words. To her, those who aren’t like-minded sociopaths are “parasites” and “lice” and “looters.”
But with Rand, there’s something more pathological at work. She’s out to make the world more sociopath-friendly so that people like Ayn and her hero William Hickman can reach their full potential, not held back by the morality of the “weak,” whom Rand despised.
Atlas Shrugging: Paul Ryan’s guru never forgave “the parasites” for hanging her first John Galt hero
That’s what makes it so creepy how Rand and her followers clearly get off on hating and bashing those they perceived as weak–Rand and her followers have a kind of fetish for classifying weaker, poorer people as “parasites” and “lice” who need to swept away. This is exactly the sort of sadism, bashing the helpless for kicks, that Rand’s hero Hickman would have appreciated. What’s really unsettling is that even former Central Bank chief Alan Greenspan, whose relationship with Rand dated back to the 1950s, did some parasite-bashing of his own. In response to a 1957New York Times book review slamming Atlas Shrugged, Greenspan, defending his mentor, published a letter to the editor that ends:
Parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should.
Alan Greenspan
As much as Ayn Rand detested human “parasites,” there is one thing she strongly believed in: creating conditions that increase the productivity of her Supermen – the William Hickmans who rule her idealized America: “If [people] place such things as friendship and family ties above their own productive work, yes, then they are immoral. Friendship, family life and human relationships are not primary in a man’s life. A man who places others first, above his own creative work, is an emotional parasite.”
The Russian Bag Lady Who Blew Paul Ryan’s Mind
And yet Republican faithful like GOP Congressman Paul Ryan read Ayn Rand and declare, with pride, “Rand makes the best case for the morality of democratic capitalism.” Indeed. Except that Ayn Rand also despised democracy, as she declared: “Democracy, in short, is a form of collectivism, which denies individual rights: the majority can do whatever it wants with no restrictions. In principle, the democratic government is all-powerful. Democracy is a totalitarian manifestation; it is not a form of freedom.”
“Collectivism” is another one of those Randian epithets popular among her followers. Here for example is another Republican member of Congress, the one with the freaky thousand-yard-stare, Michelle Bachman, parroting the Ayn Rand ideological line, to explain her reasoning for wanting to kill social programs:
“As much as the collectivist says to each according to his ability to each according to his need, that’s not how mankind is wired. They want to make the best possible deal for themselves.”
Whenever you hear politicians or Tea Baggers dividing up the world between “producers” and “collectivism,” just know that those ideas and words more likely than not are derived from the deranged mind of a serial-killer groupie. When you hear them threaten to “Go John Galt,” hide your daughters and tell them not to talk to any strangers — or Tea Party Republicans. And when you see them taking their razor blades to the last remaining programs protecting the middle class from total abject destitution — Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — and brag about their plans to slash them for “moral” reasons, just remember Ayn’s morality and who inspired her.
William Edward Hickman’s wet dream come true
Too many critics of Ayn Rand would rather dismiss her books and ideas as laughable, childish, hackneyed, lame, embarrassing–”Nietzsche for sorority girls” was how I used to dismiss her. I did that with the Christian Right, like a lot of people who didn’t want to take on something as big, bland and impervious as them. Too many of us focused elsewhere–until it was too late and the Christian fundamentalist crazies took over America. So this time I’m paying more attention–late as usual, but maybe there’s still time to head off the worst that’s yet to come–because Rand’s name keeps foaming out of the mouths of the Teabagger crowd and the elite conservative circuit in Washington. Ayn Rand is the guru, and they are the “Rand Family” followers carrying out her vision. The only way to protect ourselves from this thinking is the way you protect yourself from serial killers: smoke the Rand followers out, make them answer for following the crazed ideology of a serial-killer-groupie, and run them the hell out of town and out of our hemisphere.
This article first appeared in Alternet.
Mark Ames is the author of Going Postal: Rage, Murder and Rebellion from Reagan’s Workplaces to Clinton’s Columbine.
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101 Comments
Add your own1. Praguetory | August 11th, 2012 at 11:03 am
Are we Randroids nuts? Or just retarded?
2. CensusLouie | August 11th, 2012 at 11:27 am
Fuck fuck FUCKING shit Paul Ryan is now the GOP vice presidential candidate.
Folks, you don’t have to love or even like the Democrats or Obama, but please PLEASE punch anyone from now till November who tells you that there’s no difference between the two parties.
3. Ronald Reagan | August 11th, 2012 at 11:31 am
Conservatives are monsters.
Islamic governments are the posterchild for unabated conservatism. The Ayn Rand shit is pretty nasty too.
The conservative exists solely to cause harm to his fellow man and to consume resources.
4. David | August 11th, 2012 at 12:19 pm
Well are founding fathers must have been unethical tyrants too why else would they have coined the term “tyranny of the masses” and have both the senate and the president elected indirectly instead of by the people.
5. Anarchy Pony | August 11th, 2012 at 12:28 pm
And yet the internet is just surging with ‘tards that just gush for this psycho bitch. The world is fucked.
6. Matt Osborne | August 11th, 2012 at 12:35 pm
When I read “serial killer groupies” at the end of the intro ‘graff, I flashed on the dead-enders still supporting Bush at the end of his presidency. You could argue that 27% of America really IS serial killer groupies…wow.
7. aragorn | August 11th, 2012 at 12:41 pm
The best part is Rand (of course like all of ’em) goes on to become a complete hypocrite and takes social security and medicare when she got older.
8. 2012truth | August 11th, 2012 at 12:57 pm
Libertards all deny Rand influence.
Politico:
“In April, Ryan told the National Review’s Robert Costa that his supposed devotion to Rand’s teaching was “an urban legend.”
@CensusLouie, the “difference” between Dems/GOP is more about pragmatism than anything else. Servicing their corporate donors while finely tuning their rhetoric to appeal to their base demographics. Aside from culture war issues (because homosexual equality and birth control are the biggest problems in 2012 America) its the same neo-libertarian anti-regulation, anti-welfare, anti-tax puritanism whether its a D or R in the white house.
9. 2012truth | August 11th, 2012 at 12:59 pm
Given this Ryan troll’s very flaccid denial/repudiation of his/hers employer’s Randism, this troll may have to find a better troll-i-tude that just saying the “Exiled may have to go deeper than reposting an old article to make this one stick.” This troll is a professional with a love for the craft, after all.
10. Dr Sanchez | August 11th, 2012 at 1:34 pm
Good article. It can never be stated enough times that Ayn Rand wasn’t merely pretentious and wrong about everything, she was a fucking FREAK with a capital F.
Now I have a question Ames. Why do you keep calling Ayn Rand a “Russian Baglady”? My understanding is that she was Jewish – her real name was Alisa Rosenbaum. This could have some pertinence regarding her extreme ‘outsider’ mentality.
11. Ben | August 11th, 2012 at 2:01 pm
CensusLouie, I don’t know anyone who claims that there’s “no difference between the two parties”. There is an obvious difference: one’s the bad cop, and the other the good cop; it’s the tired 60s TV trope, where you’re encouraged to befriend the good cop because the bad cop is so terrifying.
12. ebrad | August 11th, 2012 at 3:19 pm
Hi, I’m a PR troll paid to push this false about-face about Ayn Rand that Paul Ryan’s handlers are trying to get the media to accept. Do you mind if I point you to a link of our propaganda that we’re now pushing? First, please whatever you don’t don’t read how the New Yorker totally debunks the work that trolls like me are doing:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/08/paul-ryan-and-ayn-rand.html
Now that you hopefully haven’t read that above which will show what a liar I am, I’m hoping you’ll read this from the National Review–you know, the mag that pushed us to war with Iraq and that promoted white supremacy during the Civil Rights marches—yeah, that same National Review. Here’s what they (we/Paul Ryan’s new imagemakers) have to say:
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/297023/ryan-shrugged-robert-costa
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/08/paul-ryan-and-ayn-rand.html#ixzz23HNraPmt
Oh, I see that the editors here saw fit to improve my inbred retarded comment. Wow, thank you so much! You’ve spared me a little dignity, which I have none of anyway.
This is perhaps the laziest troll comment trying to defend Ryan that I’ve posted yet. However, I will stay I had a good time sniffing Mr. Koch’s ass, which is what libertard trolls like me dream of doing day and night. Won’t someone please give me a spine? My back hurts from bending down to plutocrats my whole life.
13. 7daykatie | August 11th, 2012 at 4:06 pm
“Well are founding fathers must have been unethical tyrants too why else would they have coined the term “tyranny of the masses”
THE AEC INTERJECTS: Actually, this line above is warmed-over libertarian propaganda for billionaire bootlickers, they argue this because libertarianism is about servicing the pro-rich and therefore they’re fearful of democracy and majority rule.
The real Thomas Jefferson, not the fake libertarian propaganda version, was unambiguous about majority rule as necessary and the best form of government:
Sorry to cause you libertarian butt-hurt, but so long as you’re experiencing butt-hurt alone, as an individual, you’re experiencing freedom and liberty. Now get the fuck off my property, baggertarian scum. So saith the Almighty Exiled Censor.
14. zhubajie | August 11th, 2012 at 4:14 pm
1. Praguetor “Are we Randroids nuts? Or just retarded?”
Both.
15. Anarchy Pony | August 11th, 2012 at 5:21 pm
Damn, there is some hilarious AEC comment improvement today. Epic lulz.
16. Heywood Jablowme | August 11th, 2012 at 5:41 pm
Ahhhhh!!!! Fuck my american life!!!!
Killing brown people all over the world will continue whether you choose to fight in the arena or not! And don’t worry, non-voters; your crucifixion will be the opening act.
Oh and whomever’s gladiators win for him will also be crucified.
Also, watch out for those gun massacres we won’t be doing anything about. Cheers!
17. Texans4Freedom | August 11th, 2012 at 5:49 pm
wow I’m not bothered or hurt by this article one little bit no way nosirree! Also speaking of capitalism crimes, how about all of World War One (only Bolsheviks were the ones to pull out of war that killed 37 million. Then all the mass genocides by the “free market” British empire in the 18th and 19th century. And of course the 20th c. How about the mass murders the USA was responsible for? 3 million in N korea. 3 million in Vietnam. A million in Indonesia. Anyway, it’s a good thing I’m not a Randroid or I’d be having some serious tea bag slapping on my forehead now as I bow and scrape to the billionaires who despise me
18. charliebucket | August 11th, 2012 at 6:08 pm
Having an Ayn Rand freako in the highest level of government office is like having a devout and vocal satanist become the next pope.
Someone who doesn’t believe in the existence of society should on principle voluntarily waive any right to make authoritarian decisions about how society operates. But no…Libertarians never fail to prove themselves the ultimate have your cake and eat it too assholes in every possible way. Fuck them. Fuck them and their lies about “freedom.”
19. Al | August 11th, 2012 at 6:43 pm
I want to know more about this Paul Ryan guy and why he’s so evil. I mean, Romney picked him as VP so this guy has to be bad, but why? I know little about him except that he’s Ron Paul’s kid, and good ol’ RP wants to eliminate overseas wars/welfare and the war on drugs.
20. ebrad | August 11th, 2012 at 8:20 pm
I’m Dumb, probably. Effective, no. But are you Entertaining? Absolutely.
21. Ebrad the Corporate Shill | August 11th, 2012 at 8:28 pm
Damn, and to think I wasted so much time cooking up a long multi-paragraph comment when all I had to do was leave a single sentence of adoration. Thank you for showing me the way, AEC.
22. Anarchy Pony | August 11th, 2012 at 8:36 pm
@19, uh no, Ron Paul’s kid is Rand Paul. And Ron Paul also wants to gut all forms of regulation on business and elevate property owners to feudal lords.
23. Greg | August 11th, 2012 at 8:41 pm
Yes, we must get rid of these randian pigs just like Sergei Nechaev described. We must continue the revolution.
24. me | August 11th, 2012 at 8:50 pm
Um, Paul Ryan is not Ron Paul’s son. That’s Rand Paul. I know it is a little confusing. Let’s come up with some new names, people. And Paul Ryan hates women, children, old people, poor people, gays, and minorities. Just look at his policies.
25. brony | August 11th, 2012 at 9:15 pm
Everyone who reads Atlas shrugged = serial killer fan…
Great self-parody parody.
26. Ray Thor | August 11th, 2012 at 9:22 pm
Serial killers are a permanent social and criminal phenomenon that have been with us throughout the ages. The butchering of the 12-year victim is so reminiscent of the murders committed by “Jack the Ripper”.“JACK the RIPPER’s grisly murders of the East End ladies of the night hardly pales even by today’s standards of violence. Since 1892, Scotland Yard had retained a sealed file containing all the information from their “Jack the Ripper” murder investigations. It was to be opened in 1992. However, it is my understanding that much of the file is missing … … or has been destroyed. In my ebook novel, BLOODGUILTY, I wrote a fact and fiction account of the missing files. It reveals the identity of Jack the Ripper and uncovers a crime so vast in its undertaking that generations yet unborn would suffer its consequences. It is available on the KINDLE bookstore by RAYMOND THOR. Click here:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=sr_nr_i_0?rh=k%3Araymond+thor%2Ci%3Adigital-text&keywords=raymond+thor&ie=UTF8&qid=1344014633
27. Mason C | August 11th, 2012 at 10:10 pm
@15 Agreed. The AEC is on fire today, which makes me wonder just how fucked those comments were. Or it’s spillover from the article itself, which reads like a whipcrack.
28. casey j | August 11th, 2012 at 11:07 pm
So, did I just say that Ryan supports the dismembering of little girls?
I can’t tell if I’m trolling or just being my usual bottom bagtard self. In either case my mom is tripe.
29. sherlock | August 11th, 2012 at 11:20 pm
Based on the number of comments the AEC—blessed be thy name, o’ mighty exiled censor—seems to have graced with his heavenly presence/improved, there must be a lot of Bottom Baggers for Rand trying to prove their troll mettle on this here site.
30. carmichael Craig | August 11th, 2012 at 11:22 pm
This is the same kind of fascist thinking that lead to the Nazi death camps…. How else can you explain wanting to sweep away the poor, disabled, minorities, gays…. This is some scary shit….
31. firefox09 | August 11th, 2012 at 11:29 pm
hahahahahahaha
This is the most informative article I’ve read about Ayn Rand all week. And I read a lot of articles about Ayn Rand in any given week, but usually they are all from the Ayn Rand Institute. PS: Here is my vanity mirror altar to the one, the great, the beautiful, sad eyed Ayn.
32. zhubajie | August 11th, 2012 at 11:37 pm
“Having an Ayn Rand freako in the highest level of government office is like having a devout and vocal satanist become the next pope.”
Or having a raving Dispensationalist as Unitary Executive in the White House.
33. berry | August 11th, 2012 at 11:50 pm
This is the single most painful butt-hurt a libertarian such as myself has felt in a long time. Bad butt-hurt, not the good kind. I once thought I was so cool for being libertarian, I once that that reading Ayn Rand made me special, like I’m Dwight Schrute or something. Now I realize I’m just a sad nerd who sucks up to the rich for no reason.
Too bad I don’t have the courage to do what common sense says I should do. Instead, I’ll keep scuffing my knees on the ground as I worship you John Galts out there. And yes, it’s true: I am John Galt’s butt maggot.
34. zhubajie | August 11th, 2012 at 11:54 pm
The two parties are not alike; they are both bad, but in slightly different ways. Both are eager for unitary executive autocracy, both want to make people disappear into secret prisons forever (perhaps Dolan’s fate), both want to kill us after we’ve been fingered by some secret committee on who knows what evidence. (Probably lettres de cachet or the equivalent are coming, if they don’t already exist.)
35. Julia | August 12th, 2012 at 12:01 am
Meh, this is nothing. F.A. Hayek supported mass-murdering dictator Pinochet. Ludwig von Mises was a sexist douchebag who said women should remain in the kitchen. And let’s not forget Murray Rothbard’s “Right-Wing Populism” essay.
36. zhubajie | August 12th, 2012 at 12:02 am
Bush = Augustus
Obama = Tiberius
Romney = Caligula?
Rafalca = Incitatus
Different in details, alike in autocracy.
37. alexis | August 12th, 2012 at 12:15 am
@23
You mean the guy who said we should replace the people in power with thugs and destroy society. He also said some very misogynist things about women.
http://pages.uoregon.edu/kimball/Nqv.catechism.thm.htm
How is that social justice? I’d prefer the Randians.
38. tree | August 12th, 2012 at 1:02 am
I have to say I do dismiss Ayn Rands books as all you have described them as. They should be dismissed.
Shame it is also true that we should not dismiss the complete wankers that she inspired.
39. Galtic Warrior | August 12th, 2012 at 2:49 am
Mark Ames, if you raise taxes and the wealthy stop creating businesses, stop investing, and many leave the country. Then you have NO tax revenue. You create more tax revenue by GROWING the economy, not by raising taxes. Perhaps you’re the one that needs to study economics.
We need to tax the 50% who don’t pay taxes at all…AT ALL!
THE A.E.C. IS LEAVING THIS POOR BOOTLICKER’S COMMENT UP UNIMPROVED FOR YOUR ENTERTAINMENT. SHHH, DON’T REMIND HIM THAT THE TOP INCOME TAX RATE IN THE 1950’S WAS 91%. LET’S JUST OBSERVE THIS HOMO BOOTLICKERIUS SPECIMEN IN HIS OWN HABITAT, UNMOLESTED. IT’S KINDA GROSS, BUT KINDA CUTE TOO.
40. Kayla | August 12th, 2012 at 3:15 am
Dr BEEEEEEP and Dr BEEEEEEEP, have and continue to cause inreversible life threatening damages to Woman, Children, and the Vulnerable… These two Doctor’s are paid by the Governments to Kill people for Profit.
Please Participate in bringing these two to justice however you see fit… These work at the BEEEEEEEEEP, Ontario, Canada Hospitals, and Clinics
Kayla, Supervisor of Registered Nurse’s
41. Trevor | August 12th, 2012 at 5:55 am
It can’t be said enough that Ayn Rand was terrible in every possible way. And on that note – her “novels” were just thousand page rape fantasies. So Paul Ryan bases his economic views on rape. Real VP material there.
42. firefox09 | August 12th, 2012 at 8:21 am
Dude I just thought the article was funny recommended a similar article.
What’s with all that ann rand crap? I’d rather read Twilight than that, which is to say never.
43. Anarchy Pony | August 12th, 2012 at 11:09 am
Galtic warrior still comes around? And he still says dumbass shit like that? He has to just be a troll.
44. MRW | August 12th, 2012 at 11:30 am
He looks like Robin, of Batman and Robin.
45. 5ftflirt | August 12th, 2012 at 11:51 am
I am a troll hired to protect Ayn Rand and I’m trying to come up with a way of sewing doubt about your article. Sadly, I didn’t realize that Rand’s admiration for Hickman has been factually verified in Slate, in Goddess of the Market, and in the journals of Ayn Rand, screenshots of which can be obtained on Google Books.
46. seamonkeyholocaust | August 12th, 2012 at 11:52 am
What really cracks me up is that these fundie Tea Baggers are getting all hot for Ayn Rand who despised Christianity. Not only that, but Anton LaVey pretty much just gussied up Rand’s works for when he wrote the Satanic Bible.
Too bad they’re not bright enough to see the irony.
47. connor | August 12th, 2012 at 12:04 pm
Apparently, 95% of the people who commented here are either trolls, idiots (liberal or conservative, I personally don’t care), or people who have never actually read Rand.
48. Dimitri Ratz | August 12th, 2012 at 12:07 pm
Ve@39, fuck them if they leave the country. This country would be the better for it. Unfortunately its not true, about them leaving, since the corporate welfare keeps their tax day in the positive. Literally the bailout they get to their companies and low corporate taxes offsets any individual taxes they pay so they come out ahead on tax day. The 1950s 91% tax on wealthy individuals didn’t make them leave, because they loved this country. The filth we have now that complains about stopping the royalties they collect on the unwashed masses, I mean we’re nor a monarchy, we should just get them the fuck out, but I’m afraid even if the tax was raised to 91% these scumbag mother fuckers would stay. With 1% tax on land and property, some states higher (3% Texas per year) if their not running it, they would have no choice, but to sell it to avoid losses and even then would have to pay sales taxes while these industries get new owners who love their country and aren’t abandoning it. Unfortunately the filth doesn’t keep their word, and is too chicken wet shit to leave, their just lying and will just stay.
49. Dimitri Ratz | August 12th, 2012 at 12:17 pm
Also the money supply increased 35 times, because of free bailout money the filth got. No amount of welfare, social security, or percentage of income this filth pretends to pay comes close to the 3,500% increase in money supply to them. Their argument is no different then Soviets saying the 12% tax the citizens were paying is smallest in the world while dictating what they got paid, their by what is already not collected. Same game, different rules, and your getting played like a bitch.
50. Dimitri Ratz | August 12th, 2012 at 12:45 pm
@2, unfortunately there is no difference. Obama sold out to the banks just like Bush, just like Romney. All other differences are superficial trying to create the illusion of difference. I wish their was Occupy Wall Street Party, but their isn’t. I’ll have to review what else is out there in the water, Green Party, but admittedly my hopes are not high,well not low, but lightly interested.
51. Anarchy Pony | August 12th, 2012 at 1:40 pm
Here’s a thought, if rich fucks attempt capital flight, seize their capital, auction it off. Sure, where they gonna go Burmuda.
52. ButterflyMcGrew | August 12th, 2012 at 4:27 pm
“verified in Slate”? The story appears to have been all over the mainstream media. One could probably look it up…
53. kevin | August 12th, 2012 at 4:56 pm
Hi, I’m a troll whose job is to come here and pretend that the fact that Paul Ryan said his entire worldview was formed by Ayn Rand means nothing at all, and that Ayn Rand’s adoration of a serial killer is the same thing as Obama sitting on a board meeting with Bill Ayers. I really hope people are dumb enough to buy this because I work for a PR agency that trolls sites like this, and I get a bonus if people believe me.
54. SmokeTNT | August 12th, 2012 at 5:02 pm
Everyone is aware that Barack Obama IS IN FACT a mass murderer, right? And there are no vague connect-the-dot conclusions to filter down through historical hearsay.
That Barack Obama has killed large numbers of people is for me the reason why no one should know about Paul Ryan’s adoration of Ayn Rand. Of course, since Paul Ryan authorized moneys and approves of all the killing that Barack Obama has done, that makes Paul Ryan a mass murderer as well. But that’s besides the point.
55. Dimitri Ratz | August 12th, 2012 at 5:42 pm
Bermuda triangle
56. Matt | August 12th, 2012 at 6:06 pm
@39 “We need to tax the 50% who don’t pay taxes at all…AT ALL!”
Oh, you’re talking about churches, right?
57. Ayn Rand | August 12th, 2012 at 6:57 pm
We Randroid people are SICK. Too bad we get to vote.Too bad being a retarded Randroid is as painful as my existence is every waking hour.
58. esmerelds | August 12th, 2012 at 7:50 pm
The Invisible Hand: It’s been used!
http://wfmu.org/playlists/shows/40620
59. zhubajie | August 12th, 2012 at 8:03 pm
@46 seamonkeyholocaust: “What really cracks me up is that these fundie Tea Baggers are getting all hot for Ayn Rand who despised Christianity.”
It’s no big secret that Born-Agin fundies worship power and wealth, and thus Satan (who offered them to Jesus in the Wilderness (Matt. 4:8-9)). They just *call* him Jesus.
60. zhubajie | August 12th, 2012 at 8:46 pm
It would be an interesting research project to find out how many real, behind-bars, psychopaths read Ayn Rand and what they think of her works.
61. XYZ | August 12th, 2012 at 9:36 pm
Many years ago I would have a good laugh at the crap that Ayn Rand wrote. This was until I realised that America believes this to be serious political philosophy, economic theory and religion rolled into one.
Sadly and to my utter shock Ayn Rand is gaining a serious following in India as well. I blame the business schools and neoliberal economists and contrarian policy wonks that suddenly came into existence in the late 1990s. Ayn Rand makes up most of the informal philosophy reading list for the admissions interviews for the top business schools. Newspapers have slowly but surely framed the debate in favor of lax regulation, privatization of everything and CEO worship.
We even have a Cato funded expert Swaminathan Ankalesaria to weigh down thoughtfully on just about everything. Oh for a long while he was an active climate change denier. He was also shilled for Enron in the 1990s.
The effects of this propaganda are visible everywhere in India where the young among the middle class has assimilated most of the Randian objectivist bullshit.
62. Epsilon | August 12th, 2012 at 9:59 pm
So, you mean that the GOPniks choose a Reaganite Randroid. I’m shocked, is not like their whole party is composed of….wait.
More of the same so far, the one and only party puts in charge those loyals to the cause. “False equivalence” my ass, you are getting the Raptor Drones against OWS protests anyways.
FWIW, Ryan is a smooth salesman, so he just has to hold the frame on the debates and voila! President Romney. The partisan peasants of the GOP know that and they also know that anybody that Romney picked would be (righteously) lambasted, so they pushed for him.
63. Mason C | August 12th, 2012 at 10:25 pm
Any gang-rape of Ayn Rand’s pestilent tribe is incomplete without this hammering from the literary Zeus: http://www.esquire.com/features/gore-vidal-archive/comment-0761
64. damn red | August 13th, 2012 at 1:05 am
@59
When do we change the no true Scotsman fallacy, to no true Christian fallacy.
Or do Christians want to avoid another heresy?
Pretty sure the war nerd would cream himself over a modern christian holy war.
65. damn red | August 13th, 2012 at 1:09 am
@53
Dear Kevin,
If you plan on donating your bonus to charity. I believe you.
66. Fischbyne | August 13th, 2012 at 7:07 am
Commenter #10 asks why Ames calls Ayn Rand a “Russian bag lady” and not a Russian Jew. I’ll play the straight man on this one:
Calling her a bag lady is insulting; pointing out she was a Jew is not.
67. Darth Imperius | August 13th, 2012 at 10:09 am
Ayn Rand is an important figure in the intellectual revolution I call the Endarkenment (see http://www.sithacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/The-Age-of-Endarkenment.pdf for more about this memeplex). Her philosophy has become one of the most influential alternatives to both Judeo-Christian slave religion and its secular spawn, Marxism. As I have speculated here: http://www.sithacademy.com/2011/09/18/the-sith-path-from-here-to-empire/ , Objectivism may be the first stage in the ideological transition to the Sith Empire.
Now, as you rightfully point out, Rand is something of a schoolgirl Nietzsche, and she is far too rational and non-mystical for my taste. Nevertheless, she deserves a place of respect in the pantheon of Satatanic/Sithist philosophers and memomancers who have paved the way for the endarkened New World Order.
68. DrunktankDan | August 13th, 2012 at 11:39 am
I think Romney just signed his death warrant with Paul Ryan. It will be too easy to tell people what a romney/ryan government will take away from them givin free reign over the levers of power. The fact that some foaming at the mouth tea bagger psychos in my family are happy about it indicates that the selection is wayyyy too far to the right to win.
I fucking hope.
69. super390 | August 13th, 2012 at 7:09 pm
The fun part of Ryan is watching all the old white people who screamed in 2009 that:
a. Medicare is NOT socialism
b. Universal healthcare is a mortal threat to Medicare because it will take resources away from it
Now they will suddenly embrace Ryan’s plan to destroy Medicare with vouchers. Why?
Because when they say that broader care is a threat to Medicare, they mean that the “young” are a threat to the “old”. And the old are the only Real Americans, because the young act like ni**ers or actually ARE ni**ers. ANYTHING that a ni**er proposes is a threat to Real Americans, because the ni**er always schemes to usurp their proper place and rape their daughters.
Paul Ryan, on the other hand, is a Real American, and looks like these shitheads wish their Eminem-listenin’, fake-jive-talking minimum wage sons would look. So he can’t possibly intend any harm to old white people, see?
When I saw those old pigs protesting two years ago, I knew this day was coming.
70. Epode | August 13th, 2012 at 7:31 pm
This article was too painful for a troll like me. Sorry, I should just shuttup and stay in my mommie’s garage where I belong.
71. Gustavo Millebrand and Lavrentij Lemko | August 14th, 2012 at 6:20 am
Dearest eXholes,
Here is a C-SPAN booknotes interview with Nathaniel Branden, Ayn Rand’s very own rentboy, who dishes about his former bag lady lover:
http://www.booknotes.org/Watch/8219-1/Nathaniel+Branden.aspx
Cheers,
Gustavo Millebrand and Lavrentij Lemko, Turks & Caicos Islands
72. Galtic Warrior | August 14th, 2012 at 10:58 am
HEY YOU CAN’T IMPRVE THIS RETRDED COMMENT WAAHHH
73. Dimitri Ratz | August 14th, 2012 at 1:13 pm
Just seen Ayn Rand – Paul connection is top story on Google. But its New York Times. I’m so grateful that my cheap ass has been enlightened by your greatness before the herd even heard about this story. Will have to buy 10 copies all the eXiled books as a token of my appreciation, of course I can never fully repay you unless I dish out maybe like $2,000 a month for the next decade or so. I’ll do my best.
74. zhubajie | August 14th, 2012 at 5:22 pm
@39 “if you raise taxes and the wealthy stop creating businesses, stop investing, and many leave the country.”
Wealthy USians won’t like any other place they go to. If they go to a developed country, they’ll get taxed more, have far less political clout and they’ll be despised as ignorant barbarians. If they go to a developing country, their money may go farther, and they may seem to have a lot of political clout. But they’ll still have to deal with endemic diseases like malaria, pneumonia, TB, clap, syphilis, etc., which strike down the rich and the poor alike. Also, they will not only be despised as ignorant barbarians, they stand a good chance of being robbed and killed by people whom they’ve disrespected. Probably the guards they’ve hired to protect them.
75. zhubajie | August 15th, 2012 at 12:20 am
It occurs to me that, as cult leaders go, Ayn Rand wasn’t particularly successful or even cunning. L. Ron Hubbard was a contemporary and he had one of the biggest, most influential cults of the 20th century! He had lots of money and screwed lots of his victims, I mean followers. Lyndon LaRouche, quite as nutty as Rand, if in a different way, is still active, and enjoying the money of a second generation of benighted followers. Even a low level Pentecostal preacher like R. G. Stair is still having fun abusing 100 or so dupes at a time, squeezing money of them, screwing all the “sisters”, etc.
I suppose she did end up better than Aleister Crowley, who started off rich and ended up poor, dying in a flop house, muttering things like “sometimes I hate myself….”
Any one know what Ayn Rand’s last words were? It’d be hilarious if she was begging for divine mercy, like Faustus!
76. zhubajie | August 15th, 2012 at 12:28 am
@64 “Pretty sure the war nerd would cream himself over a modern christian holy war.”
Surely that’s what Bush’s invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were. Just before the Shock and Awe bombardment, BBC World Service interviewed Franklin Graham (son of Billy) about his and George W’s plan to send all Iraqis surviving the conquest a box of food, also containing tracts telling them all about the love of Jesus! They were all supposed to want to become S. Baptists, after being napalmed, etc. 🙂
I know that Karl Rove had to give a weekly briefing to a collection of End Times preachers and prophets (maybe profits) about how the events of the week fit in with Daniel, Revelation, Hal Lindsey’s Glorious Thoughts, etc.
I don’t know that O. is as superstitious as Bush but he isn’t acting a lot different.
77. JD | August 15th, 2012 at 6:22 am
I came out from the Right Wing. This article is long overdue. The Right Wing was taken over by her thinking approximately 1980. I remember sitting opposite now Governor Otter, at the Holiday Inn in Pocatello, Idaho during his first run for Governor in the late 1970’s when he told me, “John we’ve got to get Idaho out of the Union”.
That was after I founded the Idaho State Property Owners Assn. Before I discovered our Government wasn’t really the problem, it just wasn’t our Government any more. That has to be fixed.
When the Revolution begins, let it not be between Dem and Republican, but against both Parties and those who created them. You know? The Banks, The War Machine, Pharma, Monsanto, etc. They are the enemy of We The People. This country was an intentional Republic. Let’s get back to that.
Ayn Rand never had a clue about American History or its Economics but she in the end, she went visibly mad from her emotional disconnectedness to the Human Race and not from any political opinion.
78. Bob | August 15th, 2012 at 6:47 am
“Ayn Rand” was not her real name. It was Alice Rosenbaum, an anti-American immigrant Russian Jew who, even though a militant atheist, somehow supported Israel and considered Palestinians subhuman if not nonhman.
Today she’d be a neocon, all of whom are anti-American.
79. Paul Ryan | August 15th, 2012 at 1:06 pm
Bob 78. She was a bright and dainty refugee from Godlesssocialististan who found joy in New York and Hollywood libertarianism. She generously agreed to sexually please Nathan Branden because his wife, like mine, did not do rim jobs on me and sheep and refused to dye her pubes pink. She cared not a whit for royalties, and like me gave out copies of “Atlas Shrugged” to rugged individualists and Mansonites. She was proud of her Hebraic background and paved the way for William Kristol to meet Gertrude Himmelfarb and consummate their wedding on the grave of Trotsky while a TV audience watched as their genitals were bathed in a mixture of cow dung, gefilte fish, and Kool-Aid. She appeared on Phil Donahue, Firing Line, The Price is Right, and My Mother the Car. She wasn’t a neo-con. She was just Neo. So blow me, you Mormon turd!
Love,
Paul Ryan
Janesville, WI
80. TeaPartier | August 15th, 2012 at 4:21 pm
JD 77: That’s what the Tea Party is all about, at least the Tea Party that I belong to.
81. Deliverance Inbred | August 15th, 2012 at 4:49 pm
ah.. yes, this doesn’t hurt me at all, nosirre. That’s why I’m on comments, to show you how I, a retarded Randroid, am not hurt one tiny bit. Nossirree! Now hold on while I get fucked in the ear by my Uncle Jethro
82. zhubajie | August 16th, 2012 at 2:40 am
I’ve had many hours of pleasure, laughing at Libertarians. Here’s a couple good site.
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/10/01/what-i-think-about-atlas-shrugged/ [“it’s a totally ridiculous book which can be summed up as Sociopathic idealized nerds collapse society because they don’t get enough hugs.”]
http://critiques.us/wiki/Ayn_Rand
http://critiques.us/wiki/Critiques_Of_Libertarianism
http://critiquesoflibertarianism.blogspot.com/
83. zhubajie | August 16th, 2012 at 2:45 am
I have to wonder how she was able to immigrate. 1) The Soviet Union was not easy to leave in those days. 2) After 1924, immigration to the US was based on a quota system, and Russian Jewesses generally were not wanted.
84. zhubajie | August 16th, 2012 at 5:09 am
No one has mentioned Ayn Rand’s 30 years as a speed freak, but do a search on “Ayn Rand amphetamines” and you’ll get a lot of entertaining stuff!
85. Fischbyne | August 17th, 2012 at 7:05 am
@ 83. Rand escaped the Soviets by persuading them she was going to Hollywood to study our film industry, and then take this knowledge home to serve the revolution. No kidding. Instead, exported crude Soviet techniques of ideological indoctrination to free market capitalism, and probably undermined us more that way.
86. CB | August 21st, 2012 at 1:51 pm
@18:
It might seem hypocritical for Libertarians to attempt to gain executive office. But it’s not. Reading Rand, the real meaning of Libertarianism is perfectly clear: Narcissistic rich fucks who think the world revolves around them should be able to do whatever the fuck they want, and the rest of society needs to get the fuck out of the way. Authority is only bad in so much as it obstructs these Ubermensch. Freedom is only for them. The non-rich are parasites who don’t deserve freedom. Holding authority over them is A-okay.
Notice how in her admiration for Hickman, or in how she wrote the character of Roark, there is never any consideration for those affected by their actions? No mention of how freedom was taken away from others by her protagonists’ use of force.
So you see it is not hypocritical at all. It’s completely in line with the sociopathic foundation of Ayn Rand’s philosophy.
87. Butler T. Reynolds | August 22nd, 2012 at 5:12 am
Wow. You guys are so right about Ayn Rand. Talk about freaks, imagine the type of sad freak who would go into a comments section to defend her! If I were that person, I would hang myself. But thank god, there’s a moderator here to improve my retarded thoughts.
88. Hickman | August 24th, 2012 at 2:07 am
Perceptions, experiences, synapses. The depth of one person’s ideas of another person’s experiences will always be obsolete, incomplete, wholly misunderstood. You don’t know. And I don’t know. I can only measure ‘correctness’ out of the tolerance of a person’s own insanity. Adoring a serial killer’s qualities is probably a million times more enlightening than sitting there, with all you’ve learned from your civilized culture, thinking about how tragic or demented it was to live as Ayn Rand. Figure out if these people are spawns of Satan, but you will still perish despite the highs everyone gets for dismissing another person’s insights–no matter how above it you feel. To feign disgust over Ayn Rand would be the same as nodding my head in agreement that any of you hold some moral advantage…or discounting you, for that matter. We’re all fools. And those of you who are much too educated to fall for poppycock ways of life, well, your delusions will at least help you from encountering the pessimism of finding out that reason and logic are also man-made perceptions and ways of understanding the world around you. I’m only here to take in everyone’s opinion of the ‘truth’ so I can sit here and chuckle when I realize I’m the only one who tolerates our sad existence as creatures whose brains have the gift of creating delusions of ideals, never fully actualized, never fully appreciated for that folly. You are the product of something that is beyond you. We all are inclined to think that we’re on our way to a fuller, more correct understand. We all deem ourselves the great thinkers of today, or else we likely wouldn’t have the confidence to speak up and share our unbounded knowledge. But I think Ayn Rand was on to something…not because she was wise or righteous or sensible, but because it was possible for her to believe in something quite the opposite, something that proves human beings aren’t made to be one thing or move to a common goal. And human beings don’t need any other entity to destroy themselves–just a reason to feel like they’re not part of the problem and an image of someone unlike themselves to pin the blame on. Those who grasp that have minds that are wide open. Just so wide open that there is no control, no inhibitions, only the ability to fathom that any move can be made on this board game of Life. Any.
89. Hickman | August 24th, 2012 at 2:23 am
@Butler T. Reynolds, you aren’t that person, so you probably wouldn’t hang yourself. I may or may not have felt the impulse to defend Rand (or anybody’s viewpoint for that matter), but I do not feel an attraction for the noose. Not at all. Only when I fell in love with someone and it was unrequited did I feel any kind of suicidal impulse. That’s when I realized how based in delusion we are. Let’s build a science around an observation of something, then blame it all on A, B, or C.
It’s fun to watch everyone war over something that will never exist in a perfect or near-perfect state. I guess we have to pass the time somehow. Glad I get to sit and watch ‘reasonable’ discussions take place, then have another ‘reasonable’ discussion take place here to discount that point of view (which is a pleasant article, in passing), then try to offer the most vague explanation and try to pass it off as the most ‘reasonable’ rebuttal of all-time. I expect someone else to say something that’s been said before to discredit me, insult me with something simple and expected and agreed upon, or just inform everyone that I am proof enough that someone can be more deluded than Ayn Rand and/or serial killers. Props to the author for putting his two cents in, though. Great reads!
Have a great day!
90. arrowrod | August 25th, 2012 at 10:16 pm
When people commented on War Nerd stories, they were positive.
This is just a hit piece.
I thought you former Soviets were trying to play nice.
Your NKVD tendencies are still alive.
Good luck with Putin.
I’d go over to Putin, too. But my spiked butt plug is set to explode if I ever get more than 100 ft away from massa Koch, god praise his name and courage for liberty.
91. Patrick Crosby | September 10th, 2012 at 2:24 pm
There is a newly published ebook on Amazon.co. on this subject. The title is The New Feudalism: Romney, Ryan, and the Unknown Ideal of Ayn Rand. Might Paul Ryan be Ayn Rand’s ideal of a “Hickman with a purpose?” Priced so reasonably a feudal serf could afford it.
92. Fonnbonn | October 1st, 2012 at 7:43 pm
Randroids are we. We have the powers of sarcasm and oof is our sarcasm tough and bitter and biting. I dream about how my sarcasm hurts you from here inside of my parents’ house where I live. Nanu-nanu!
93. Fonnbonn | October 2nd, 2012 at 7:15 am
Look at the IP address and waste your time because that’s what I do
94. Junior's Ghost | November 27th, 2012 at 11:15 pm
How on earth does this Ryan-Romney-Rand monstrosity win 24 states.
Yes, they lost but Oh God is America really playing with fire by embracing this movement.
There’s a barbecue in our future and I ain’t looking forward to it.
95. cj | January 11th, 2013 at 11:35 am
I rarely contribute to these kinds of blogs. But I’m suck a ridiculous aynal licker, I find it delicious, I can hardly stand to be away from it. I think we should all just realize that there are socialists and then we have everyone else. I want everything for free. Don’t you? No one has the right to deny my right to have everyone else pay for my stuff. This is the American way. Am I right?
96. cj | January 15th, 2013 at 5:35 am
I’m hurt that you would improve my retard post. We’re clearly not on the same socialist team! All I wanted to do was help you ridicule others that don’t agree with us. Anyway, keep up the good work.
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98. Michael Girouard | September 21st, 2013 at 1:59 pm
I have been a fan of Ayn Rand for most of my life. I am unsure what point you are trying to make in your article. You hold up as great moral values things that have no great value. We don’t have to justify Rational Objectivism, we just live it. If you are going to criticize people for the heroes they admire, this must be a difficult time for you. I take exception to the fans of Chris Brown, most hip-hop artists, all of the Khardassians, Tiger Woods, Miley Cyrus, Wolf Blitzer- shall I go on? if you have issues with sociopaths, it must irk you to see them at the pinnacle of American culture. I know it irritates me to no end. And I don’t think that the people making these degenerates famous are practising any sort of values inspired by Ayn Rand, who at least had standards for behaviour, whether you agree with them or not.
99. Rick L. Winters | May 2nd, 2014 at 6:41 am
I have always been fascinated with serial killers and how they work inside. I have been studying them for over 10 years now and my second film Blank was all about psychopaths.
I am getting ready to make a long running web series titled A.S.K.E. (American Serial Killer in Europe) and am currently running a campaign at Indiegogo (http://igg.me/at/aske/x/4535).
I am looking for like minded people that are fascinated with serial killers to help support the project and get a better understanding of the mind within.
100. Gary D | March 30th, 2015 at 1:16 am
Almost Ayn Rand’s last words, to the poor Libertarian writer J. Neil Schulman: “I despise all libertarians.” Then after a pause, “Including you.”
The point of the article is obvious to anyone with the least critical thinking skills: Ayn Rand worshipped a serial killer because he showed his contempt for society and laws and this is perfectly reflected in her work.
101. jesus | October 1st, 2016 at 11:33 am
Was Ayn Rand an idiot or just a fucking asshole? Maybe both.
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