Ayn Rand was brilliant and far ahead of her time. She came here as an immigrant and discovered a land peopled with marks ripe for plundering, and in the best American tradition invented a religion in which she was both prophet and divinity. Its particular genius was that it recast the religion-like appeal of Communism in a guise that loo…
Ayn Rand was brilliant and far ahead of her time. She came here as an immigrant and discovered a land peopled with marks ripe for plundering, and in the best American tradition invented a religion in which she was both prophet and divinity. Its particular genius was that it recast the religion-like appeal of Communism in a guise that looked like opposition to communist totalitarianism but was actually just a copycat authoritarianism focused on worship of its leader.
Much of its appeal was to insecure adolescent males (young and old); it taught that the condition of being a morally immature, selfish, petulant seventh grade male, far from being a regrettable phase that one was supposed to pass through and grow out of, was in fact the highest stage of human development. This naturally found a ready audience with morally immature, selfish, petulant males of all ages who resented being expected to grow up.
Few cons are so successful or durable; it ran swimmingly for the whole of her excessively long life and survives its raison d'etre; even though it was invented solely as a gravy train for Ayn Rand personally, and her passing has folded up the carnival tent, like shingles, which evades our immune defenses by infecting the nervous system, the shill has become an endemic mind virus.
Ayn Rand was brilliant and far ahead of her time. She came here as an immigrant and discovered a land peopled with marks ripe for plundering, and in the best American tradition invented a religion in which she was both prophet and divinity. Its particular genius was that it recast the religion-like appeal of Communism in a guise that looked like opposition to communist totalitarianism but was actually just a copycat authoritarianism focused on worship of its leader.
Much of its appeal was to insecure adolescent males (young and old); it taught that the condition of being a morally immature, selfish, petulant seventh grade male, far from being a regrettable phase that one was supposed to pass through and grow out of, was in fact the highest stage of human development. This naturally found a ready audience with morally immature, selfish, petulant males of all ages who resented being expected to grow up.
Few cons are so successful or durable; it ran swimmingly for the whole of her excessively long life and survives its raison d'etre; even though it was invented solely as a gravy train for Ayn Rand personally, and her passing has folded up the carnival tent, like shingles, which evades our immune defenses by infecting the nervous system, the shill has become an endemic mind virus.
So let us not omit to give her her due.