The Influence of Ayn Rand on American Society...

Post Reply New Topic

Okay, you're a mass murderer!

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

It's not the right invective.

American conservatives are a mix of the greedy and the delusional. Sometimes these are the same people, such as with George W. Bush.

GWB isn't a mass murderer, he's just an idiot who started two wars for the wrong reasons, and then tens of thousands of people were collateral damage.

'Liberals' of an American stripe, not so much; hard-line communists, yes. It's pretty repulsive to see anyone trying to defend either of those two, along the lines of seeing a someone try to defend Hitler.

Hundreds of thousands.
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
note that this is just the 'official, doccumented' body count, of just one of the wars he got us in to.

Bill Clinton was a mass murderer, Dubya was a mass murderer, Obama is a mass murderer. They're all guilty.

Oh thank you so much!

In the Pacific War against the Japanese Empire (aka WW II, Pacific Theatre) approximately 700,000 civilian were killed in the B-29 incendiary raids. And that was a Just War!

Here is the brutal fact. In modern wars, there is going to be collateral damage no matter how much either side tries to avoid it. In the war between Israel and Gaza, Hamas deliberately places non-combatants in harm's way.

In the Gulf War V2.0, Saddam did not give a rat's patootie about protecting his population. And so it goes.

ruveyn

And what does that have to do with Ayn, cranking out a book about a myth, an American good guy making something useful, treating his employees well, who has constant conflict with government, unions, charities, and other grifters?

It was meant to be writ large, larger then life, pointing out that the useful did not lead tanks to take over other factories, purchase government protection for their industry, or slaughter millions to turn people to their way of thinking.

She was clearly against the Corporate State Axis, or the Millitary State Axis, or the Government as Capitalist and Millitary, that was eating up Europe, and Asia.

Between the Political takeover that fed all of the above, and the American way of being selfish, doing what you wanted, refusing to let the problems of the old world rule the new, and still being overall the most productive, she favored the best of America.

It took some fiction to fill in the holes, but it was all there.

It praised an economy not run by The State, Politics, Millitary, but by those that produce for other purpose, who also turned out to be the best at producing for a two front world war.

She explored and defended their views and motives. and did point out the rest could not live without them.

She supported Technocrats.

Compared, Hitler went to war with the 1894 Mauser, the finest rifle ever made, forty years before. The Gestapo tried to run war production at the Henkle Aircraft Factory, and they had to work around them. Stalin put a Political Commisar at the head of every factory, who knew nothing of production, but did wear a pistol. Engineers, master machinests, were about three levels down, and production was by numbers, not wether the product worked.

American tanks were inferior to German, as they were built by auto companies. Fill the quota, not the need.

Our aircraft on the other hand were much better, because they were new, hence not designed by the government, as the tanks were.

The Garand Rifle, and the Jeep, won the war. Innovation that put firepower and mobility in the hands of Willy and Joe. Also, we wore work clothes and boots, and were the worst dressed, but most practical.

Rand was exploring a new and rising class of technocrat, and trying to explain it in old terms. Their loyality was to the tech, and dismissed those who did not understand.

On the other side, Hinkel and Von Braun, used the war to develop their respective products. Hitler refused to fund long range bombers, which really cost them in the Atlantic War, they could barely reach England, and in Russia, where the vast distances defeated them.

A small automatic rifle was called a pistol, because Hitler would not fund a rifle.

He who fights the next war with the weapons of the last loses.

She was writing from an industrial era, but what she was seeing was a superior path that Gates and Jobs took.

Any time!

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

I am totally aware of the fact that Ayn Rand did not consider herself a libertarian and I'm glad she rejected that label because she was homophobic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivism_and_homosexuality

Funny, Rand should be so anti-gay, and especially anti-lesbian, considering that haircut of hers...


-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Hmmm... better than many homophobes today I read about . At least she believed in no discrimination. In this article it seems she had a very high opinion of men.

Let's get back to the original post.

That book you linked to focuses so much on Rand even though so many other people have promoted individualism in the past.

So all women with short hair are lesbians?
Nice generalization.

The Ancient Greeks told plenty of stories that promoted individualism - and they weren't homophobes like Rand.

From the emoticon I used, I think it was obvious I was joking.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer