Ayn Rand? Really..?

Whisper this quietly... I suspect few radicals ever read their own literature. Even though wingers of far left and right like quoting their heroes, I'd bet not many ever sit down and read their books.

How many Communists, for example, actually wade through Marx's crushingly boring 'Das Kapital'? Same goes for evil-but-dull 'Mein Kampf' or anything by Trotsky - the guy who made perpetual global war sound as interesting as reading the back of a paint can.

By the same token, I'd guess few conservative/libertarian/teabaggers - America's radicals de jour - have actually read 'Atlas Shrugged' either. Even though they name-check Ayn Rand like Tupac at a rap concert, I'd bet most of them have only done Wikiquotes at best. So I'll break the news (again): 'Atlas Shrugged' sucks ass. And if smug wingnuts keep trying to convince me there's anything worthy about that peevish pile of half-baked, pseudo-philosophical garbage I'm going to have to punch someone.

'Atlas Shrugged' is nothing more than Das Kapital played backwards like an old Judas Priest album. Whereas Marx argued for ownership of the means of production by the proletariat (i.e., those who make sh*t should be in charge), Rand would give the 'divine right' of ownership and control to the aristocratic class instead because they have money and are therefore better. How does that forelock-tugging self hatred jibe with teabaggery? Mystery to me.

Rand's snobby cod philosophy only reinforces inherited privilege and perpetuates the class system; blocks upward socio-economic mobility and takes a big steaming sh*t on the idea that wealth brings with it responsibility. In Rand's world, parasites are hosts and people who stupidly opt to work for a living are relegated to the status of ungrateful cattle.

Add to that Rand's rejection of religion, altruism, ethics, morality and common human decency as things not applicable to the rich, and what do we have? An atheist fascist plutocracy. Not exactly what the founders of the American Republic had in mind.

So how come Rand fans aren't drummed out of the oh-so-patriotic American conservative movement? How come today's Republicans appear to be pushing old-world aristocratism like philosophical crack? Easy. I bet they haven't read her either.