The New Republic is, like Megan's Atlantic, a media enterprise/institution that's seen better days. (Not unlike me, in the interest of full disclosure. And I'm not naming names or pointing fingers here. Honest.)
But it's not intolerable. I was about to type that reading this TNR review of two new Ayn Rand biographies would not actually kill you; then I scrolled through the whole damn thing (It's loooong!) & if reading it all doesn't kill you, it will certainly make you stronger. Saving time for busy producers is what I'm all about, so I've extracted the best nugget I've found, as a possible explanation of glibertarianism. And it's not necessarily aimed at the name in our title, who can't really be called an "extreme libertarian." She's more of a LINO, or, as they say, "a squish."
Anne C. Heller, in her skillful life of Rand, traces the roots of Rand's philosophy to an even earlier age. (Heller paints a more detailed and engaging portrait of Rand's interior life, while Burns more thoroughly analyzes her ideas.) Around the age of five, Alissa Rosenbaum's mother instructed her to put away some of her toys for a year. She offered up her favorite possessions, thinking of the joy that she would feel when she got them back after a long wait. When the year had passed, she asked her mother for the toys, only to be told she had given them away to an orphanage. Heller remarks that "this may have been Rand's first encounter with injustice masquerading as what she would later acidly call ‘altruism.’" (The anti-government activist Grover Norquist has told a similar story from childhood, in which his father would steal bites of his ice cream cone, labelling each bite "sales tax" or "income tax." The psychological link between a certain form of childhood deprivation and extreme libertarianism awaits serious study.)Heh. Indeed.
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And it's not necessarily aimed at the name in our title, who can't really be called an "extreme libertarian." She's more of a LINO, or, as they say, "a squish."
Or as I like to (virtually) say, a "Republican."
That's funny, if it's true. Rand's path to libertarianism started when someone gave her something then took it away. Wasn't her mother just doing what was right to prevent Rand from being a moocher?
Also, this is hilarious:
http://michaelprescott.net/hickman.htm
Are all philosophers crazy? I ask that in all seriousness, because every time I read about a philosopher the bio ends with "and oh by-the-way they were crazy."
You just have to look at what Rand did to the people in her life to know that she had some very serious problems--she was manipulative and cruel, just for starters.
Half of America is just begging to be subservient and under someone's control. They want to be told that someone is better than them, so that someone will take care of them. God, Rick Santorum, Ayn Rand--they don't really care.
Shit, I'd love to put this to the test and can think of three suitable test subjects right now. The only problem is that I'd have to actually, y'know, talk to the fuckers...
Not to be a dick, but whatever happened to reading Atlas Shrugged?
brad tried but we got sick of the late night, crying phone calls. Eventually we had to have an intervention.
I'll do it. Or rather, I'll try to do it until I end up rolled up in a ball in the closet, sobbing. I'm burnt out on Jane Galt.
Which reminds me, she was full of it when she said she chose the name to gig liberals.
I've read it. I can synopsis it right now.
700 pages of hollow characters explaining how everyone should be selfish as hell. The villains are shallower than a 2-D caricature and provide something flimsier than a straw man for our "heroes" to knock over. The protagonists win via tortured twists of the plot as directed by the omniscient author that have no bearing on what could, would or should ever happen anywhere ever including in other solar systems, galaxies and universes. Also, if you disagree with Ayn, you deserve to die.
The end.
Still sounds better than yet another McArdle post making arguments backed up by imaginary numbers.
As I never tire of saying to extort admiration/sympathy, I read Atlas Shrugged last year. The whole thing. It's worse than you think, although AR's descriptions of inanimate objects have some oomph. The rest is pure crap on every level--like a fractal, you can zoom in or out and the crappiness is precisely replicated.
(Gore Vidal called it "nearly perfect in its immorality.")
The only reason to read it is, once you have, you need never take anyone who admires it seriously, about anything, ever again.
my favorite part is when she has hundreds of people die in a train crash but then says they all deserved it because they weren't Ayn Rand (or one of her followers).
Wait, so we have epic income stratification, with rich people throwing Caligula-style parties and poor people dying in the streets, because these idiots were subjected to petty child abuse? My childhood gave me PTSD, and the lesson I take from it is that *someone* ought to be watching the powerful every minute of every day or they're apt to abuse anyone they can get close to.
Makes you wonder if we'd have decent health care industry regulation now if their folks had just hit them harder.
I think the absence of empathy is usually due to child abuse, but some people do manage to come out of it with their mind and soul intact. Either they're stronger or they had some kind of outlet (a friend or relative, or maybe even a love of art or books or animals).
I thought a lack of empathy was a characteristic of either sociopathy or narcissism. I think the latter might have some genesis in rearing, but I thought that the former was seemingly inherent.
Yes it is, but it's not just sociopaths who lack empathy. My understanding is that sociopathy has biological roots as well, which the "mere" lack of empathy does not.
Authoritarianism isn't either/or, it's more like a continuum. Some have a little, some more, depending on basic personality, the severity of abuse as a child, and the mitigating factors, if any. Liberals can be authoritarian too, although usually they are not extremely so. We've seen a lot of people show complete and utter faith in Obama for no logical reason, ignoring what he says and does in favor of the image they prefer to hold in their head of their authority. And we've seen a lot of authoritarian people with just a little empathy in circumstances that affect them personally, like McArdle or Cheney.
McArdle is definitely a narcissist. I'm no health care professional, but it's pretty obvious. I am guessing that her parents both told her that she was superior and that she must be grateful that they gave her so many advantages, without which she would have nothing. You can her her mother's voice echo in her words--the world is not here to please you--and her father's voice--the rest of the world is lazy scum out to cheat the world (like unions).
She probably was made to feel excessively grateful for what they gave up to educate her at a ludicrously expensive school, making her afraid she couldn't live up to it (as indeed she can't; she is mediocre intellectually). But they also probably told her that she was superior to others, which she clings to to ease her conscience and her fears of inadequacy.
I could be totally wrong, of course, but it's not too hard to figure out people when you've read a great deal of their words and/or words about them. We reveal a tremendous amount about ourselves when we write.
I don't thikn she's a narcissist. She doesn't hold idiolized notions of love and she never expresses any selfdoubt, which is at the root of narcissism and usually manifests in some way.
Her seeming lack of close relationships, but social adroitness in more superficial settings are common in people with sociopathic tendencies.
Really, it cfould be either though. There is much overlap.
I think her insistance on superiority is proof of self-doubt, but like I said I'm guessing here.
Well, both are superior, but narccisists have doubt underlyinh. I don't see that as much in her
Hokey Smokes, I wasn't inviting cheap pop psych shots, but well done!
Are all philosophers crazy? I ask that in all seriousness, because every time I read about a philosopher the bio ends with "and oh by-the-way they were crazy."
In all seriousness, yes. To be a published/successful/discussed philosopher you'd have to be disturbed. I mean, they only talk & write about nothing &/or whatever they've imagined inside their minds all day & night. Crazy & self-obsessed.
I must go before I write/reveal anything else about myself.
Uhhhhh.
Ayn Rand was not a philosopher, any more than L Ron Hubbard was.
Words mean things, people, don't be know-nothings.
And no, philosophers are not crazy, that's offensively simplistic, at best.
Nietzsche, for example, did not "go crazy", he either suffered from syphilis or, as is more likely according to modern research, had a slow growing brain tumor behind an eye. Most of those claims are made by anti-intellectuals who want to cheaply invalidate someone's work without actually addressing it.
Or are made by Foucault and his descendants, who actually are crazy and want to give mental illness stature it does not deserve as some kind of sign of genius.
To say again, Ayn Rand was not a philosopher, she was a hack demagogue who expressed herself via text.
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