Happy Place Diversion ~ What if God was One of Us?

The new Pope Francis from Venezuela is considered a "man of the people" who said the other day he wants a "Poor Church to Feed the Poor." And he is trying harder than any Pope within living memory to prove that early in his Papacy.

Pope Francis ditches bullet-proof "pope mobile" for open Jeep and frequent stops to embrace Easter week crowds. @thenation @hardball

— John Nichols (@NicholsUprising) March 24, 2013

Pope Francis will celebrate Holy Thursday mass in a juvenile detention center rather than the Vatican. @thenation @hardball

— John Nichols (@NicholsUprising) March 24, 2013

From USA Today - the Pope on Palm Sunday

The square overflowed with some 250,000 pilgrims, tourists and Romans eager to join the new pope at the start of solemn Holy Week ceremonies, which lead up to Easter, Christianity's most important day.

. . . Francis even climbed down from the vehicle, kissed a woman in the crowd and chatted briefly with her, and another man in the crowd leaned over a barrier to squeeze the pontiff on a shoulder — an unheard of familiarity in the previous pontificate of the reserved Benedict XVI.

. . . Francis said Jesus "awakened so many hopes in the heart, above all among humble, simple, poor, forgotten people, those who don't matter in the eyes of the world."
Francis then told an off-the-cuff story from his childhood in Argentina. "My grandmother used to say, 'children, burial shrouds don't have' pockets'" the pope said, in a variation of "you can't take it with you."

So lately I've been thinking about Joan Osborne's hit "What if God was One of Us?" When the song came out many people thought it was somehow sacrilegious, but I never understood that criticism. She is asking age-old questions about faith and belief that all real Christians consider. She sings about Jesus being a human, which according to scripture he was, which is the whole point of the New Testament and all his sermons. Jesus experienced human life and let his disciples ask him questions. He was a man of the people and went out amongst the sinners. He didn't shun the poor, the unwell, or the prostitutes (which the GOP would call "sluts"). He led by example. He never said a single thing about hating gay people, or black people, or anyone with a different religion. Yes, the Church has unfortunately had leaders who felt that way over the centuries, but that is not the message of Jesus or a reason to hate all Christians.



Gandhi said, "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."

Exactly. Many so-called Christians have forgotten the actual teachings of Christ, just as many denominations that consider themselves Protestant have drifted away from the simplicity of Martin Luther. Some churches have became more and more ostentatious and outrageous as they try to out-do the churches down the street instead of using their tithes to help the indigent and feed poor children. Jesus threw the moneychangers out of the Temple, and I think he would have the same reaction to all the politics in the church today. For instance, the Tea Partiers are so focused on what they think is "right" about abortion and the unborn that they want to sacrifice those who have been born, who are already existing and need our help: the elderly, the poor, the sick, and the downtrodden.

Many so-called Christians have spent the last ten years preparing for Armageddon, or the Rapture, or the Mayan Apocalypse. And because they consider themselves to be "The Chosen" because of which church they followed, they became so self-absorbed with either death or survival that they just didn't care about anyone else. That is not what the church teaches at all.


They even made fun of it on the Simpsons several times: once in "Bart's Comet", when Ned Flanders builds a Bunker just large enough to save his family and his neighbors, but then the whole town shows up; and in Thank God It's Doomsday in which Homer is scared by the Left Behind movies and believes the Rapture is coming soon, but discovers he isn't much of a Prophet after all. Unfortunately for modern Christianity, Homer-as-Everyman isn't far from reality. And throughout history the church has dealt with "false prophets." An aunt of mine who recently died said people would frighten children with the same stories back in the 1920s, and my Grandmother told me years ago that Haley's Comet caused the same fear at the turn of the century. Human nature just doesn't change very much.

But I still think it's much more sacrilegious to pretend to be a Catholic, Protestant, Jew - whatever - and ask "What would Ayn Rand do?" Or even worse, "What would Grover Norquist do?" Ugh. The GOP cynicism they spout while expecting us to believe they are devoutly religious has nothing to do with God or Jesus. They are NOT "one of us," nor do they care anything about the slobs on the bus. Christianity did not "create" the Congress we have right now, but I'm happy to say the elections last year when the "people" spoke are a good first step in getting the hypocrite Pharisees out of our government.

To President Obama and all the Smarmy Wonks in D.C.: No Grand Deal, Period

Some disturbing ideas are trickling out of Washington about Obama making a deal with Boehner to only tax the rich at 37%, while raising the retirement age to 67, with cuts to so-called "entitlements" still on the table. In other words, Obama and Pelosi are close to caving in negotiations instead of simply letting us go over the cliff in January.

I can't even express how made of fail this is. Please: Just. Don't. Do. It.

Ezra Klein writes on the Washington Post writes as if this is a done deal:

Talk to smart folks in Washington, and here’s what they think will happen: The final tax deal will raise rates a bit, giving Democrats a win, but not all the way back to 39.6 percent, giving Republicans a win. That won’t raise enough revenue on its own, so it will be combined with some policy to cap tax deductions, perhaps at $25,000 or $50,000, with a substantial phase-in and an exemption for charitable contributions.

The harder question is what Republicans will get on the spending side of the deal. But even that’s not such a mystery. There will be a variety of nips and tucks to Medicare, including more cost-sharing and decreases in provider payments, and the headline Democratic concession is likely to be that the Medicare eligibility age rises from 65 to 67.

That’s not a policy I like much, but New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait accurately conveys the White House thinking here: They see it as having “weirdly disproportionate symbolic power,” as it’s not a huge (or smart) cut to Medicare benefits, and most of the pain will be blunted by the Affordable Care Act.

Ezra Klein surely considers himself one of the "smart people" in Washington, and when in doubt, Rachel Maddow swoons in to tell him just how cute and nerdy he is. But the rest of us out in the real world don't have such a glowing opinion.

There's smart, then there's smart. I know Klein says he doesn't like the deal as he lays it out, but then he turns around and agrees with this hideous article by his fellow wonk Jonathan Chait which again takes the nerdy approach that all of this would somehow be "good" for the elderly and the Dems. Honestly?

Jonathan Chait in NYMag: Go Ahead, Raise the Medicare Retirement Age

Many of my liberal wonk friends have been making the case against raising the Medicare retirement age — see Sarah Kliff, Matthew Yglesias, and Jonathan Cohn. Their basic case is that raising the Medicare retirement age is a really stupid way to save money because it just forces people to stop buying health care through Medicare, which is relatively cheap, and start buying it through private insurance, which costs way more.

They’re all totally right about this. Still, when the question comes to what concessions the Democrats are going to have to accept, rather than what policy makes the most sense, raising the Medicare age seems like a sensible bone to throw the right.

. . . raising the Medicare retirement age would help strengthen the fight to preserve the Affordable Care Act.
. . . a side effect of raising the Medicare retirement age would be that a large cohort of 65- and 66-year-olds would suddenly find themselves needing the Affordable Care Act to buy their health insurance. Which is to say, Republicans attacking the Affordable Care Act would no longer be attacking the usual band of very poor or desperate people they can afford to ignore but a significant chunk of middle-class voters who have grown accustomed to the assumption that they will be able to afford health care.

Huh? Is Jonathan Chait serious? Turning Medicare into Obamacare for two years would be better somehow and would "prove" something to the Right, and then all will be well? Dream on, brother.

it strikes me as completely delusional, and almost evil, to imply that seniors should throw themselves on the sword so Obama can strike a Grand Bargain with Boehner, who after all belongs to a party who thinks the elderly (except their own mothers) are a bunch of takers and moochers. And Chait really expects this plan to win over Republicans? I just don't get the logic of any of this.

Save us from the "smart people," or as Paul Krugman calls them, the "Very Serious People."

Last night, Chait was getting plenty of flack for what he wrote:

FireDogLake: Jon Chait's Miserable Endorsement of Raising the Medicare Eligibility Age

David Dayen makes me wonder why someone as smart as Jon Chait would write such an idiotic column bit.ly/SLmIcm

— Dan Froomkin (@froomkin) December 7, 2012

I lack the words to describe how democratically perverse a deal that raises the Medicare eligibility age would be.

— Christopher Hayes (@chrislhayes) December 7, 2012

Ezra Klein using Maddow guest host platform to blatantly shill for Chait "surrender on Medicare age" plan. Unbelievable. Wow, wow, wow.

— Ryan (@RTMcNeely) December 8, 2012

In my opinion, if this is a trial balloon, it's already lost altitude, crashed and deflated into an impotent pile, like Mitt Romney's Limp Blimp in Florida just before the election.

How many times do we have to reject an idea before Washington gets it?

Paul Krugman writes there is going to be a day of reckoning and hell to pay if Obama makes this deal.

Ezra Klein says that the shape of a fiscal cliff deal is clear: only a 37 percent rate on top incomes, and a rise in the Medicare eligibility age.
I’m going to cross my fingers and hope that this is just a case of creeping Broderism, that it’s a VSP fantasy about how we’re going to resolve this in a bipartisan way. Because if Obama really does make this deal, there will be hell to pay.
. . . this looks crazy to me; it looks like a deal that makes no sense either substantively or in terms of the actual bargaining strength of the parties. And if it does happen, the disillusionment on the Democratic side would be huge. All that effort to reelect Obama, and the first thing he does is give away two years of Medicare? How’s that going to play in future attempts to get out the vote?
If anyone in the White House is seriously thinking along these lines, please stop it right now.

Indeed, Mr. Krugman. This way lies insanity for the Dems. We would rather go off the flippin' cliff any day than capitulate to Boehner and the GOP.

I also saw a rather unbelievable twitter conversation in which someone wrote that Medicaid was more important than Medicare because one affects "poor children" while the other affects the "rich older people." What does that even mean? That the elderly have no value? Let's recall once again that in the population known as the 99% out here, or the 47% or whatever, most of us AREN'T Rich! Therefore, it is a myth that the elderly are rich people living on the backs of the young.

There are millions of lower middle class seniors dragging themselves to crap jobs for years, standing on legs with varicose veins, putting off procedures due to bad healthcare programs, putting off dental work, sacrificing everything BECAUSE they care so much for young people - their children and grandchildren. They have to keep going for them, not for some cushy retirement. With the state of 401K's these days, real retirement isn't even an option if you aren't Mitt Romney.

AARP know this - that's the same group that boo'd Paul Ryan off the stage just a few months ago. Do you folks in Washington think we are going to stay quiet now? God help you if you believe that.

To hear this damned message about a Machiavellian deal being blurped out by a bunch of smarmy wonks is an insult to all Democratic voters. It's even an insult to all Republican seniors because they are just as poor as anyone else! Red states are poor states, so this is a stupid deal for Boehner as well.

In fact, I keep trying to calm myself down with the idea that this trial balloon is floating in order to turn seniors against Boehner, but I'm not sure. We've seen Obama try to make friends with Boehner before,to win over the Republicans in an almost cringeworthy way, like casting pearls before swine. Jon Stewart told him "they will never be your friends, so stop trying so hard." And yet, President Obama is idealistic enough to think he can still do it.

But at what cost, Mr. President? How many times are you going to alienate the base and give the Republicans another victory they can chortle about in their all-white all-men meetings to which you will never be invited? And meanwhile, the base is up in arms over another bad deal in which we get the shaft and learn to like it.

No more. No more. No more. NO MORE.

This thing is no better than the Ryan plan to throw the working poor under the bus to protect the tax base of the young.

You know - it's like the Ayn Rand thing - Atlas Shrugged - Atlas didn't care - Atlas went home and had a martini and forgot all about the old lady in the checkout line and the man working the jackhammer and the nurse at the hospital and the guy washing dishes in the restaurant. Obama loves to tell these All-American stories on the campaign trail, so why not remember them while dealing with Boehner?

Voters rejected Ryan and his Randian ideas on November 6. If Washington has forgotten that, the voters are going to remind them soon big time, to the point that you'll never forget it again! I promise you. No more. No more.

Snark in Pictures

Harry Reid Snarks that Romney Would Be "President of Half the United States"

You gotta love it! :) Our honey badger strikes again!

Harry Reid Via RawStory

“This week we learned that Mitt Romney only wants to be president of half the United States,” he explained. “If Mitt Romney were president he wouldn’t waste time worrying about the 47 percent of Americans who he believes are ‘victims,’ who Romney believes are ‘unwilling to take personal responsibility.’”

Reid continued: “For all we know Mitt Romney could be one of those who have paid no federal income tax. Thousands of families making more than a million dollars per year pay nothing in federal income tax. Is Mitt Romney among those? We’ll never know because he refuses to release his tax returns.”

“We know that Mitt Romney pays a lower tax rate than middle-class families, thanks to a number of things he’s done: Swiss bank accounts, Cayman Islands tax shelters. And we can only imagine what new secrets would be revealed if he showed the American people a dozen years of tax returns like his dad did.”

Romney Revealed ~ And He's Not Pretty

In Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, the main character keeps up appearances to the outside world and retains his youthful beauty even while doing vile things in private. His horrifying secret lies in a painting behind locked doors, a portrait of himself that shows the depths to which he has fallen. The shocking truth is that the portrait is the real soul of Dorian Gray, while his outward demanor is used to fool people. He is living a lie.

Yesterday we got a glimpse at the real Mitt Romney behind closed doors, and the portrait it paints is not pretty. In fact, in a campaign year when we thought we couldn't be shocked anymore after the gaffes of the summer, we find ourselves suddenly transported into a weird Night Gallery that the great Rod Serling would completely understand. Mitt Romney has been revealed.


People are waking up in the U.S. to a much different Presidential race, and even the Republican candidate seems like a different man. Literally.

Background: Secret Videos Mother on Jones

After hearing a relaxed Romney talking to his wealthy peers behind closed doors in the videos on Mother Jones, it's not such a stretch to see him more clearly as a parody of a rich man, a clueless wonder prattling on about himself and us-versus-them in a Louis IV way. But even that would be too kind. It's more like the scene in Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Grey when the evil portrait is revealed.

It's as if the scales have fallen from our eyes, as the Bible says. We used to see Romney as through a glass darkly, but now face to face. He is what he is, and it's not the nicely bumbling well-meaning candidate who walks like a robot or a conehead, or the "wild and crazy" husband and father who seems almost forgiveable.

Instead, we see and hear the privileged frat boy bully from Cranbrook, the one who attacked another student with scissors and slammed a door on a blind teacher. He's hideous Greg Marmalard from Animal House, all-grown-up and smoothly glib, schmoozing with his well-appointed frat brothers while dissing half the country as unworthy of his time because they refuse to vote for him. Yet he still expects loads of money from the donors because . . . well, just because he is who is he is - the fortunate son who always had everything, but has convinced himself and others that he is a self-made man. When he wins, the markets will magically go up and morning bells will chime, just because he's there in the White House, making the rest of the landed gentry and moneyed elite feel good about their taxes.

It's a nice fantasy, Mitt, but we ain't buyin it. Americans can spot a phony a mile away, and now that we see the real you, we know what always made us uneasy and distrustful of you in the first place, the reason for your low likeability ratings. This is a gut-check moment for the people, and there's more of us than 47%. Our votes do matter, Mr. Romney, even if our lives do not matter to you. We see you now.


David Corn of Mother Jones on MSNBC's Hardball

What he's really saying is that there are two Americas. There are strivers in the room, people of success, who take personal responsibility. Then 47% of the country won't take responsibility for themselves and they want a handout from government. So it was beyond dog whistles. It was beyond using welfare. And it seemed to me he was talking to people privately, a couple dozen people in the room, he was saying what he believed about half of America. He showed a lot of disdain and contempt for his fellow citizens.

Joan Walsh of Salon.com on MSNBC's Hardball

It sounds to me as if very much he believes it. I don't think he is playing a role at all . . . But the really astonishing thing . . . He is writing off, he is talking about one-half of our country with utter contempt. He's writing them off, he's talking about them as parasites and moochers. And the rare opportunity for the Democrats here is that he is talking about a large segment of the Republican base. Like it or not, there are a lot of white people, older white people in that category as well. So he's gone from stigmatizing, calling him (Obama) the Food Stamp President and doing this dog whistle stuff, to now it's just crystal clear. The country is 12% black, so if you're talking about 47%, you're talking about a lot of white people. So it's contempt for everybody. Equal Opportunity contempt. Hugely damaging.

.
Josh Barro on Bloomberg

You can mark my prediction now: A secret recording from a closed-door Mitt Romney fundraiser, released today by David Corn at Mother Jones, has killed Mitt Romney's campaign for president.
. . . Romney is the most opaque presidential nominee since Nixon, and people have been reduced to guessing what his true feelings are. This video provides an answer: He feels that you're a loser. It's not an answer that wins elections.

Jonathan Chait on New York Magazine

. . . the video exposes an authentic Romney as a far more sinister character than I had imagined. Here is the sneering plutocrat, fully in thrall to a series of pernicious myths that are at the heart of the mania that has seized his party. He believes that market incomes in the United States are a perfect reflection of merit. Far from seeing his own privileged upbringing as the private-school educated son of an auto executive-turned-governor as an obvious refutation of that belief, Romney cites his own life, preposterously, as a confirmation of it. (“I have inherited nothing. Everything I earned I earned the old fashioned way.”)
. . . The revelations in this video come to me as a genuine shock. I have never hated Romney. I presumed his ideological makeover since he set out to run for president was largely phony, even if he was now committed to carry through with it, and to whatever extent he’d come to believe his own lines, he was oblivious or naïve about the damage he would inflict upon the poor, sick, and vulnerable. It seems unavoidable now to conclude that Romney’s embrace of Paul Ryanism is born of actual contempt for the looters and moochers, a class war on behalf of his own class.

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Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Bombshell ~ The Romney Tapes on Mother Jones

That Mitt Romney is going down in flames is a given now thanks to some bombshell videos that will hasten Mitt's journey to Loserville. Or should I say "Potterville."

The videos given to Mother Jones and released yesterday show Romney at a fundraiser talking about Obama and the voters in the worst possible way imaginable. He condescendingly insults not only the President, but 47% of the country. Vile. Corrupt. Self-Serving. I can think of so many descriptions.

I started out a few months ago rather liking Mitt and almost sorry that he was the butt of every joke. As time went on I found him entertaining because he was such a train-wreck of a candidate. But after last night, I loathe him in a way that makes my skin crawl. It's obvious why he and Lyin' Ayn Ryan are like father and son - no feelings for society, out for themselves, lacking empathy for anyone in trouble, and not good for our country.

There are more videos to come, so tomorrow should be interesting!!!

Mother Jones Has the Scoop

Mother Jones has obtained video of Romney at this intimate fundraiser—where he candidly discussed his campaign strategy and foreign policy ideas in stark terms he does not use in public—and has confirmed its authenticity. To protect the confidential source who provided the video, we have blurred some of the image, and we will not identify the date or location of the event, which occurred after Romney had clinched the Republican presidential nomination.
[UPDATE: After a restriction was lifted, Mother Jones reported that this fundraiser was held at the Boca Raton home of controversial private equity manager Marc Leder on May 17.]

...There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.

...There is a perception, 'Oh, we were born with a silver spoon, he never had to earn anything and so forth.' Frankly, I was born with a silver spoon, which is the greatest gift you can have: which is to get born in America.

..."Had he (my father) been born of Mexican parents, I'd have a better shot of winning this."

...I have a very good team of extraordinarily experienced, highly successful consultants, a couple of people in particular who have done races around the world. I didn't realize it. These guys in the US—the Karl Rove equivalents—they do races all over the world: in Armenia, in Africa, in Israel. I mean, they work for Bibi Netanyahu in his race. So they do these races and they see which ads work, and which processes work best, and we have ideas about what we do over the course of the campaign. I'd tell them to you, but I'd have to shoot you.

...my own view is that if we win on November 6th, there will be a great deal of optimism about the future of this country. We'll see capital come back and we'll see—without actually doing anything—we'll actually get a boost in the economy. If the president gets reelected, I don't know what will happen. I can—I can never predict what the markets will do. Sometimes it does the exact opposite of what I would have expected. But my own view is that if we get a "Taxageddon," as they call it, January 1st, with this president, and with a Congress that can't work together, it's—it really is frightening.

Obama Campaign Response

“It’s shocking that a candidate for President of the United States would go behind closed doors and declare to a group of wealthy donors that half the American people view themselves as ‘victims,’ entitled to handouts, and are unwilling to take ‘personal responsibility’ for their lives,” Jim Messina, Obama for America campaign manager, said in a statement. “It’s hard to serve as president for all Americans when you’ve disdainfully written off half the nation.”

Mitt Romney wants to help all Americans struggling in the Obama economy. As the governor has made clear all year, he is concerned about the growing number of people who are dependent on the federal government, including the record number of people who are on food stamps, nearly one in six Americans in poverty, and the 23 million Americans who are struggling to find work.
~ Statement from Romney Spokesperson Gail Gitcho


Mitt's Lame Apology

"Well, um, It's not elegantly stated let me put it that way I'm speaking off the cuff in response to a question and I'm sure I can state it more clearly in a more effective way than I did in a setting like that and so I'm sure ill point that out as time goes on."

Full Transcript Here

More on the Ryan & Ayn Connection

Yesterday, I wrote a long essay on the influence of Ayn Rand on far-right politics ~ Read it Here: Ayn Rand and the Politics of Egomania

My husband thought I should point out that what I called "Randian" philosophy is actually known as "Objectivism." That's not very important to me because the name of the movement just confuses people: it sounds very intellectual and fair-minded when it isn't. Followers of Ayn Rand are not really objective, as I pointed out in my essay - their goal in life is to celebrate themselves as wiser and more creative than lesser mortals. Since they create their own reality, then of course they believe they are more objective than anyone else. It's actually just about the egotistical "me me me." While Rand's characters are free spirits, they very much want to influence society by keeping other people in their places economically, those who don't "deserve rewards." As I wrote yesterday, it's a bizarre philosophy that resembles a credit card commercial, with the elite having gold cards and the "parasites" getting nothing. Equality doesn't enter the picture, even for women. The point of Rand's books is very much like the "Greed is Good" speech from Gordon Gecko in the movie "Wall Street" in which he sets the very wealthy people on a different plane from the rest of society.

If you believe the old adage "politics ain't bean-bag," then let's say that Ayn Rand's philosophy is like "dodge-ball on steroids." Not for the faint of heart, or for the humanistically-minded. It's quite hard to balance Ayn Rand with a belief in Jesus, or admiration for Gandhi or Mother Theresa or Buddha or any great soul who preached self-sacrifice and lack of materialism. Ayn Rand would probably say all of them were losers who should have tried to find happiness through earning money instead.


More essays and exposes are popping up all over the internet, and tonight on MSNBC both Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O'Donnell did lengthy segments on Ayn Rand. We should all learn as much as we can about this topic because it is going to be around till November, count on that.  This election is going to pivot around big ideas, and I think that is good.

The New York Times: Atlas Spurned

Mr. Ryan’s rise is a telling index of how far conservatism has evolved from its founding principles. The creators of the movement embraced the free market, but shied from Rand’s promotion of capitalism as a moral system. They emphasized the practical benefits of capitalism, not its ethics. Their fidelity to Christianity grew into a staunch social conservatism that Rand fought against in vain.

Mr. Ryan has attempted a similar pirouette, but it is too late: driven by the fever of the Tea Party and drawing upon a wellspring of enthusiasm for Rand, politicians like Mr. Ryan have set the philosophy of “Atlas Shrugged” at the core of modern Republicanism.

U.S. News: Paul Ryan's Dangerous Ayn Rand Obsession

The late Rand's entrance into this presidential election, thanks to Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, is more serious than it seems. Sweet reason has a hard time with Rand glorifying selfishness as political doctrine. Now that "selfishness ethic" happens all the time, accompanied by vicious attacks on the federal government and people who work for it, in the Republican-run House. It's not all the author's fault, but Ryan's devotion to Rand is yet another Republican insult and injury to classic American ideas of fairness, squareness, and civic-mindedness.

New Republic: Ayn Rand's Long Journey to the Mainstream

Before the Tea Party, Paul Ryan had been one of the few conservatives willing to openly embrace Rand as a formative influence. Most conservative politicians preferred to cite thinkers like F.A. Hayek or Milton Friedman, who were both more high-brow than Rand and neutral on the topic of religion. But the very aspects of Rand that made journalists shudder in the 1960s—her angry division of the world into “producers” and “looters,” her cheesy novels—made her into a Tea Party favorite. Protestors at Tea Party rallies waved signs asking “Who is John Galt?” (a reference to the hero of Atlas Shrugged) and used Randian logic to argue that health care reform was immoral.

It may seem incredible that fictional plotlines are being used to critique policy, but it’s important to recognize that Rand has remained popular precisely because she was a bestselling novelist rather than a dry theorist. Rand waved off specific questions about how her policy proposals—like the abolition of taxation—would work, emphasizing her role was to inspire her readers to high moral purpose. With Galt’s Gulch, the capitalist Shangri-la of Atlas Shrugged, she brought to life the dream world of the successful striver surrounded by equals and unencumbered by the poor, the weak, or the unlucky. Only in this fictional world could her heroes duck the hard questions of fate and chance, for in Rand’s novels, everyone gets what they deserve.

Ayn Rand Versus the Pope

. . . this is the same man who gives copies of “Atlas Shrugged” as Christmas presents and once told the Atlas Society in 2005:

But if we’re going to actually win [the fight between individualism and collectivism] we need to make sure that we’re solid on premises, that our principles are well-defended, and if we want to go and articulately defend these principles and what they mean to our society, what they mean for the trends that we set internationally, we have to go back to Ayn Rand. Because there is no better place to find the moral case for capitalism and individualism than through Ayn Rand’s writings and works.

Four years later, Ryan’s brother said, “Paul can still quote every verse out of Ayn Rand.”
. . . Everyone has ideological idiosyncrasies, but some people hold beliefs so diametrically opposed to each other that you have to question their sincerity or their intellectual integrity. To tweak Lincoln’s famous line, a mind divided against itself cannot stand. And Paul Ryan is nothing if not divided against himself.

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Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Ayn Rand and the Politics of Egomania

Via fishink.us

Ack ~ was there ever a more overrated writer than Ayn Rand? When I read her stilted books in college, it never occurred to me that 30 years later there would be people running for office who used her fiction as some kind of political philosophy. She basically makes my eyes glaze over, and since I can think of dozens of better writers who made political points with much more eloquence. Rand's plots are depressing, and her characters are cold, calculating, cynical, negative and selfish.

Of course that might explain the appeal to the Nay-Saying Right, including Paul Ryan, even though he claims to have rejected Randian ideas. But one look at his slash and burn budget makes me think he is just backpeddling for political expediency, and still is firmly in the land of Rand.

Ryan is supposedly a Catholic, and most right-wingers are also Christians, but believing in the Bible and Ayn Rand's philosophy at the same time creates cognitive dissonance. If you accept the teachings of Jesus to reject earthly things such as money, to love your fellow human beings and help the poor, then it's hard to justify an ego-based world-view, unless you are Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, or Rupert Murdoch:

“A man's ego is the fountainhead of human progress.”
― Ayn Rand

“And here, over the portals of my fort, I shall cut in the stone the word which is to be my beacon and my banner. The word which will not die should we all perish in battle. The word which can never die on this earth, for it is the heart of it and the meaning and the glory.
The sacred word:
EGO”
― Ayn Rand, Anthem

“My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose.”
― Ayn Rand, Anthem

Jesus threw the money-changers out of the Temple, and urged his followers to give away their possessions. Ayn Rand is having none of that - money is the highest good because it makes us happy, and the search for money innately honorable because it feeds the "creative"ego. In fact, anyone who doesn't worship money is a loser - Mitt Romney would understand this!

“Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to become the means by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of other men. Blood, whips and guns--or dollars. Take your choice--there is no other.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“Economic power is exercised by means of a positive, by offering men a reward, an incentive, a payment, a value; political power is exercised by means of a negative, by the threat of punishment, injury, imprisonment, destruction. The businessman's tool is values; the bureaucrat's tool is fear.”
― Ayn Rand

“Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think.”
― Ayn Rand

Money is the "root of all good"? That works for people like Donald Trump, but I wouldn't say he has more "capacity to think" than Barack Obama. Money being equal to "values" is right out of the Ronald Reagan playbook.

What about Jesus's view of taxes ~ "render unto Caesar those things which are Caesar's, and unto God those things which are God's." What about Jesus being a martyr after his arrest, dying on the cross to save our sins? Nope. For Ayn Rand, the individual comes before the government, and there's just no point in this silly self-sacrifice for others. The Star Trek idea expressed by Mr. Spock that the "needs of the many outweigh the needs of a few" would be blasphemy to Ayn Rand. It's all about Me Me Me Me Me.

“A government is the most dangerous threat to man's rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims.”
― Ayn Rand

“My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose.”
― Ayn Rand, Anthem

“Self-sacrifice? But it is precisely the self that cannot and must not be sacrificed.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.”
― Ayn Rand

“I came here to say that I do not recognize anyone's right to one minute of my life.”
― Ayn Rand

What about the poor and the sickly, to whom Jesus ministered and said would always be with us? What about the "poor in spirit" whom he said are blessed in the Sermon on the Mount? Well, "those people" just aren't trying very hard, according to Ayn Rand. They need to "imagine greater" and earn their own rewards - like a commercial for a credit card company. This gets to the heart of Ryan's budget plan, which insists that being poor is a choice, and that even people in dire trouble have no right to ask the government for help because they haven't "earned" it. This is what the "welfare-to-work" controversy is all about - "those people" have to get out there an earn, even if they don't have a car, even if they have to leave their children home alone, or work three jobs around the clock. They have to "earn their reward. It's also why the far right hates Obama's healthcare plan, and say they want to do away with Medicare, something close to Paul Ryan's heart.

“We are on strike, we, the men of the mind.
We are on strike against self-immolation. We are on strike against the creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties. We are on strike against the dogma that the pursuit of one's happiness is evil. We are on strike against the doctrine that life is guilt.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

For Rand, the root of all evil is actually "Altruism," defined in The Fountainhead as living for others. That's taboo because it doesn't glorify the ego. People who are not creative thinkers or producers are "secondary" or "parasites."

If this sounds familiar, just think back to the Republican Primary when Obama was being called the "Foodstamp President." Reagan's villifying of "welfare mothers" is a good example of the "parasite" view of society. Randians hate the term "community organizer" because that implies that communities are good things, or that people might want to help each other get organized. It's wrong to help others because it takes time away from your navel-gazing creativity. In Rand's view, it's wrong to ask for help, and it's wrong to give help - both are equally abhorent. Better if you just ignore everyone and seek your own happiness because anyone less successful is a parasite anyway - don't waste your time!

Excerpt from Howard Roark's Speech in The Fountainhead 

“The basic need of the second-hander is to secure his ties with men in order to be fed. He places relations first. He declares that man exists in order to serve others. He preaches altruism.
“Altruism is the doctrine which demands that man live for others and place others above self.
“No man can live for another. He cannot share his spirit just as he cannot share his body. But the second-hander has used altruism as a weapon of expoloitation and reversed the base of mankind’s moral principles. Men have been taught every precept that destroys the creator. Men have been taught dependence as a virtue.
“The man who attemps to live for others is a dependent. He is a parasite in motive and makes parasites of those he serves. The relationship produces nothing but mutual corruption. It is impossible in concept. The nearest approach to it in reality—the man who lives to serve others—is the slave. If physical slavery is repulsive, how much more repulsive is the concept of servility of the spirit? The conquered slave has a vestige of honor. He has the merit of having resisted and of considering his condition evil. But the man who enslaves himself voluntarily in the name of love is the basest of creatures. He degrades the dignity of man and he degrades the conception of love. But this is the essence of altruism.
“Men have been taught that the highest virtue is not to achieve, but to give. Yet one cannot give that which has not been created. Creation comes before distribution—or there will be nothing to distribute. The need of the creator comes before the need of any possible beneficiary. Yet we are taught to admire the second-hander who dispenses gifts he has not produced above the man who made the gifts possible. We praise an act of charity. We shrug at an act of achievement.

Again, Jesus's tale of the Good Samaritan stopping along the road to help others becomes irrelevant. By Ayn Rand's definition, the Samaritan - and Jesus - were slaves to their idealogy. Mr. Spock's "The Needs of the Many" becomes "The Needs of the Creator." Those last few lines there are precisely what Republicans mean when they say that we are slamming Mitt Romney's achievments if we dare question his great wealth, or when Ann Romney points out that they have plenty enough to tithe to the church, therefore they are trustworthy. Wealth is an indicator of "goodness" to Ayn Rand. Clothes make the man (or woman). Appearances are not deceiving - they are reality. To me that is the old familiar Puritan Ethic, including the witch trials, but Rand rewrote it in her own image without the Biblical imperative of caring or sacrificing for others, or ever admitting you are wrong - which the Puritans did after years of witch-burning and persecuting Quakers.

So is it possible to be remotely religious or humanitarian and still be a Randian? No problem - the author tells us we can figure out such contradictions. Simply make up your own reality as you go along, and don't give a damn about what anyone else thinks. You can insist that you are a Christian but still be insulting, nasty, self-absorbed, spiteful, intolerant, and bloodthirsty. You know, like Ann Coulter's admonition to invade Middle Eastern countries, "kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."

You can be a Christian and love assault rifles, or believe women are like cattle. You can hate African Americans, Mexican Americans, Hawaiian Americans, Chicago Americans - whatever - this is your show, so hate anyone you please. You can make up conspiracies and believe you are a victim, as when normally fierce and hawkish Sarah Palin labeled Katie Couric's simple question about reading material as an "attack by the lamestream media." The Birther movement is also in this category because they don't worry when shown the President's original long-form birth certificate. They merely make up another conspiracy theory to explain it and move on. The birth certificate was a forgery, or it was a conspiracy between Kenya and the Hawaiian newspapers. In the minds of Orly Taitz or Joe Arpaio or Donald Trump, Obama remains an Illegitimate Kenyan Muslim with Foreign European Socialist Ideas and He Wants to Start Martial Law and Take Away Our Guns. I Want My Country Back! Ayn Rand would understand, I think.

“Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“Place nothing above the verdict of your own mind.”
― Ayn Rand

“But why should you care what people will say? All you have to do is please yourself.”
― Ayn Rand

“Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

Yes, stand by an idea, like Orly Taitz or Joe Arpaio as they beat the Birther drum. If you think something up, it has to be right. That's integrity. Be a polemicist like Ann Coulter or some of the "Young Guns" from the Tea Party in Congress - their way or the highway, no compromise ever, and no thought for the public good. You don't have to make sense to others, and if they diss your ideas then screw them. Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck have been living by that creed for years. But then, so did Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Ladin, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Adolph Hitler, and Napoleon.

Make up your own system and stand by it - what can go wrong?

In an Essay called The Cartoon World of Ayn Rand, Professor Emeritus Donald Demarco of St. Jerome University in Ontario writes:

The striking disparity between her immense popularity and the dubious quality of her work provides an important insight into American society. The logical explanation appears to be that Ayn Rand appeals to people who are hesitant to grow up, preferring to cling to a cartoon version of life where the fictional heroes are people of uncompromised rectitude, and utopia is within everyone’s grasp. Listen to a few excerpts from the hero of Atlas Shrugged, John Galt, who goes on and on for no less than fifty-eight pages, delivering a monotonous and tedious paean to individualism:

The world you desire can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.

In the hopeless swamps of the not quite, the not yet, and the not at all, do not let the hero in your soul perish and leave only frustration for the life you deserved but never have been able to reach.

Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark.

Ayn Rand may have been better positioned as a Madison Avenue advertizing executive. She offers hope for the hopeless, but one that is a pure fabrication, cleverly packaged and delivered in purple prose. She has a genius for marketing, but not for logical persuasion.

You would think that since Rand believed that each person was creating their own reality, that she wouldn't judge others or look down on anyone, but that's not the case. In her characters, selfishness breeds self-righteousness. You have to be the "right sort" of egomaniac in order to get her seal of approval.

“There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist. ”
― Ayn Rand

And there you have the problem with Ayn Rand as a philosopher. Not "I think, therefore I am," but "I am always right because I just am" and "I will judge who is worthy and who is not."

I don't really care if she is atheistic - the problem is that her ideas are immoral under any philosophy, and she is anti-society, period. How can someone run for office while making promises to real people, but be totally out for number one all the time? How can a politician see himself as a "creator" when he is getting a salary and benefits from the government, therefore being just as much of a "parasite" as the "secondary" citizens who are pariahs in Rand's view?

That's where she loses me.

I've seen several people on Twitter saying that Paul Ryan's interest in the author's works is a "myth" made up by the "lamestream media. I'm sure Ryan would like us to believe that, but Ryan is on the record talking about Rand's influence on his philosophy, leading him to where he is now:



From the New Yorker

His father’s death also provoked the kind of existential soul-searching that most kids don’t undertake until college. “I was, like, ‘What is the meaning?’ ” he said. “I just did lots of reading, lots of introspection. I read everything I could get my hands on.” Like many conservatives, he claims to have been profoundly affected by Ayn Rand. After reading “Atlas Shrugged,” he told me, “I said, ‘Wow, I’ve got to check out this economics thing.’ What I liked about her novels was their devastating indictment of the fatal conceit of socialism, of too much government.” He dived into Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, and Milton Friedman.

In a 2005 speech to a group of Rand devotees called the Atlas Society, Ryan said that Rand was required reading for his office staff and interns. “The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand,” he told the group. “The fight we are in here, make no mistake about it, is a fight of individualism versus collectivism.” To me he was careful to point out that he rejects Rand’s atheism.

In 1988, Ryan went to Miami University, in Ohio, where he got to know an economics professor named William R. Hart, a fierce and outspoken libertarian in a faculty dominated by liberals. The two quickly discovered their shared fascination with Rand and Hayek. Ryan got his first introduction to movement conservatism when Hart handed him an issue of National Review. “Take this magazine—I think you’ll like it,” he said.

Of course, Ryan has denounced Rand because he has realized it's more politically expedient, and because the author was an atheist, which might not appeal to the Tea Party evangelicals.

From a National Review Article called "Ryan Shrugged"

“I, like millions of young people in America, read Rand’s novels when I was young. I enjoyed them,” Ryan says. “They spurred an interest in economics, in the Chicago School and Milton Friedman,” a subject he eventually studied as an undergraduate at Miami University in Ohio. “But it’s a big stretch to suggest that a person is therefore an Objectivist.”

“I reject her philosophy,” Ryan says firmly. “It’s an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview. If somebody is going to try to paste a person’s view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas,” who believed that man needs divine help in the pursuit of knowledge. “Don’t give me Ayn Rand,” he says.

Anyone can change their mind about a writer, but I'm not sure Ryan is being honest when he says he rejects Rand's philosophy. His budget, for example, is just the sort of selfish and draconian document that one of Rand's characters might invent to save society. Personally I don't want to live in a society like that. And it worries me that Ryan singles out Thomas Aquinas who wrote a few strange things of his own.

"As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active power of the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of a woman comes from defect in the active power."

EEK!  That quote certainly  fits with Ryan's "Personhood of the Male Seed at Conception" bill, but it still seems quite Randian as well - women as defective parasites living off male power. If that's the best Paul Ryan has to offer in terms of an alternate philosophy to Ayn Rand, then he needs a new library card.

Learn More about Paul Ryan

Boston Globe: Ryan's Selection Shrouded in Secrecy

New York Times: Small Town Conservative

 Media Matters: What Wisconsin Journalists Say about Ryan

Daily Beast: Ryan's Catholic Problem

Salon: Paul Ryan, Randian Poseur by Joan Walsh

Forbes ~ Ryan Would Slash Federal Senior Services

Washington Post: The Fight to Define Ryan