02-05-2010, 06:58 PM
Jan Klimkowski Wrote:Taibbi delivers a highly enjoyable and astute kicking of the ultimate pseudo-prophet, Ayn Rand, and her pernicious, if near inexplicable, legacy in Greenspan and his criminal Wall Street buddies.
Here's Ayn psueding away at her finest:
Quote:If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose- because it contains all the others- the fact that they were the people who created the phrase "to make money". No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity- to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created.
Actually that quote-standing alone- is lovely. So long as no one understands just how wealth is REALLY "created" in this nation. I was an Any Rand devotee in my late teens. I devoured her every word. I loved the irony in Atlas Shrugged where she stated continually that "there are no contradictions" and raged against anything that looked like evil Communism. Yet her group of heros had .....a....commune!!! I think she failed to grasp the humor and irony there. I dread the movie- Atlas Shrugged- as it will fuel these waccos, the tea partiers who idolize a person-Rand- they have no clue about. Because they get their news and opinions from Rush and Glen Beck. Maybe I will go to one of their meetings so I can ask just how many have read "The Virtue of Selfishness" or "Capitalism the Unknown Ideal" (I could not stomach that one!!) Or even Atlas Shrugged. I am willing to bet they have read none of her books. These people don't read books, or even magazines. Remember Sarah Palin with Katie Couric: When asked what magazines she read ..."oh, all of them" and, like the twit she is, just kept repeating that. Guess "People" and "National Enquire" or "Newsweek" were a bit too much for her to recall.
I love Matt Taibbi!!! He's a regular isn Rolling Stone.
Dawn