"KY's elaborate practical joke" Rand PAUL sermonizes Senate about Ayn RAND

[UTUSN]

My own pearls of wisdom were going to be mutterings about how we (Dem Party) need to get a handle on beating clowns like this in elections, but then it occurred to me that perhaps we are so decadent, jaded, and cynical that we just don't care enough. IIRC, we had a fairly solid candidate who committed some out-of-touch gaffes like making fun of this a-hole's religion, or something (I'm sure I'll be corrected). So here we have him for six f-ing years with the fabled title of "Senator" being fawned over in the media every week.

The incomparable Gawker: "KY's elaborate practical joke" and "the 20th century's worst novelist."

*************QUOTE*************

http://gawker.com/#!5791512/rand-paul-teaches-the-senate-about-ayn-rand

POLIDICKS
Rand Paul Teaches the Senate About Ayn Rand

Kentucky's elaborate practical joke, "Rand Paul," has struck again! Not a month after equating reproductive rights to his freedom to buy different kinds of toilets, Paul is now summarizing Ayn Rand novels during Senate committee hearings.

"Ayn Rand wrote a novel, Anthem, it's a dystopian novel where individual choice is banned and the collective rules society. There's a young man and his name is Equality 72521. He is an intelligent young man but he is been from achieving or reaching any sort of occupation that would challenge him. He is a street sweeper. ....

"He takes it (the light bulb he "discovered") before the collective of elders, and they take the light bulb, and basically it's crushed beneath the boot heel of the collective. The collective has no place basically for individual choice."

Yes, the junior Senator from Kentucky just gave a book report about an Ayn Rand novel, and not even one of the famous ones. Paul's point, in summarizing Anthem, is that Big Government is "taking away people's freedom to buy products they want to buy," which is, of course, the Most Important Freedom, even more than The Freedom To Breathe Non-Cancerous Air. Your tax dollars at work, ladies and gentlemen: Using the 20th century's worst novelist to illustrate a morally and intellectually bankrupt position.

*************UNQUOTE*************

[sinkingfeeling]

1. I now truly believe the United States of America is done. The country of my birth no longer exists.

[Atman]

5. What is truly amazing is how quickly the fall has come about.

:cry:

[sinkingfeeling]

13. I was very hopeful up to the last decade. I think about how different things were until the

election theft of 2000. Then 9/11 and the craziness took over the world.

[originalpckelly]

2. I think Johnson & Johnson needs to recall that batch of KY.

It causes severe irritation.

[tanyev]

3. Did he mention that Ayn Rand was a pro-choice atheist?

Left that out, I guess.

[exboyfil]

10. I am expecting that alot of Ayn Rand

Republican types will have their brains explode when Atlas Shrugged comes out. I can hear it now, "Why did Hollywood add all the sex to that wonderful novel" How many conservatives have actually read it? What is another name for slut - Dagny?

[Volaris]

12. Well, of course he wouldn't. The current Conservative mantra is, after all.....

..Only if it works in my favor.

States' Rights?
Only if it works in my favor.

ACTUAL Libertarianism?
Only if it works in my (political) favor.

Universal Healthcare?
Only if it works in (MY State's) favor. ---see Massachusetts---

Electoral Fraud Inquires?
Only if it works in my favor.

TAX LAW
Most definitely Only if it works in my favor.

A Pro-active Congress (as it relates to Executive Oversight)
Only if it works in my favor.

The Imperial Presidency
it will ONLY ever work in my favor. (see previous)

and on, and on, and on......

and Dem's. seem so spineless, that it will keep on, keeping on, until ONE OF THEIR OWN calls them on their bullshit.
The Democratic Party of late seems to be in dire need of leadership that adheres to the cause, but what the country EQUALLY needs is AT LEAST one smart motherfucker in THAT party, that knows how to un-crazy the best of them, and ridicule the rest into crawling back under their collective Neo-Confederate-Bircher-Birther rock.

We may not have liked him a whole hell of a lot, (and his policy views even less so) but W.F. Buckley was the last of the of the GOP who, at least in a SMART-and-civil-discourse-kinda-way, had our back.
It's needed again. We have Rachel, Keith, Etc.
They have Beck.
as long as BECK speaks TO the Rep. Party, FOR the Rep. Party, this country is screwed. (Because in our system, NOTHING gets done except through legislative compromise, and those compromises don't always have to be a bad deal for one side or the other. They CAN be mutually beneficial, without screwing over We The People. But for that to happen, Glenn Beck CAN'T be your go-to guy, he isn't smart enough to get the nuance of a legitimate compromise.)

arguments to the contrary are always welcome
Peace
=)

[UTUSN]

15. You crystallized what I've been trying to forumlate about the TeaBaggers

All their yapping platitudes about "the Constitution" and "freedom" and all, really mean: "ONLY FOR ME."


They don't APPROVE of the Constitutional exercises and freedoms that others, especially those alien-looking others, choose to exercise in their own ways.

[Blue_Tires]

4. DU's Paul-loving contingent has been quiet lately...

Gusss that's a good thing...

[hifiguy]

6. Ayn Rand will go down as one of the

half-dozen worst and most destructive people of the 20th century.

She was a huge "fan" of a psychopathic child-murderer in her younger days (she thought he embodied the best of what came, laughably, to be called her "philosophy"). See http://michaelprescott.net/hickman.htm

She was a failed screenwriter who became a tenth rate novelist - is there ANY prose worse than hers - and developed a "philosophy" that is to actual philosophy what taking a dump on a canvas is to the works of Leonardo and Michaelangelo.

Solipsism, misanthropy, greed, selfishness and sociopathy do not a philosophy make.

As one blogger aptly put it, Rand is Nietzsche for stupid people. VERY stupid people.

And I read a LOT of Rand in my early 20s. Then I sat down and thought about what a society run on Randian principles would look like and nearly became sick to my stomach.

"Atlas Shrugged" may eventually rank with "Mein Kampf" as the 20th century book that did the most damage to the world. No one should be allowed to read either of these atrocities until they have attained a state of mental development where they possess actual critical-thinking faculties. They are dangerous to anyone with an undeveloped moral sense who is looking for simple answers.

Rand was an amoral and sociopathic MONSTER.

Edited to add link.

[Brigid]

7. He reads Ayn Rand?

Why? I read "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead," and regret the waste of time.

[hifiguy]

8. Agreed

Money quote from Kung Fu Monkey:

"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."

[Brigid]

11. I was an English major in college.

But we did not read any Ayn Rand. Now I know why. I read these novels later. I know bad writing when I see it.

[kenfrequed]

14. Also...

Orcs are far more humane that Ayn Rand.

[UTUSN]

9. My guess is that his Libertarian poppy thought "Rand" was a theme to name him with

and Randy ran with it. As for the waste of time, a person's mentality is like water, rising to its own level, so dudes like this can only work with what they've got.

Whoops, I'm committing my own condescension that loses us elections!1