The three and a half years he’s been in the
White House, Donald Trump has shown himself to be a greedy, self-involved, narcissistic,
sociopath. At the same time, Republican leadership in the U.S. Senate to be of
like mind with Trump. It’s not difficult to understand why; their brand of political
conservatism is, at its heart, sociopathic.
But the true inspiration behind their
hard-edged conservatism is neither Pinochet nor Friedman, but a mediocre, early
20th century novelist and self-proclaimed philosopher named Ayn Rand. Rand’s
brand of social Objectivism has been the center of extreme right philosophy. GOP
Senator Rand Paul, along with his former Republican congressman father, Ron
Paul, are hard-core adherents to Ayn Rand’s philosophy. Her belief system was
also behind the Tea Party movement.
The
problem is, Ayn Rand’s philosophy and writing are sociopathic.
The Russian-born Rand has been poisoning
the minds of self-absorbed adolescents for decades with her philosophy of the
individual as the center of the universe. That philosophy holds well with high
schoolers who truly believe the universe revolves around them. Most people say adieu to
Rand and her rants as they mature. Those that don’t become sociopaths— as Rand
was herself.
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| The terrorist-hero of The Fountain was based on a real-life psychopathic killer. |
Rand was so enamored with the idea of the
unfettered self, she developed an infatuation with the notorious psychopathic
serial killer, William Edward Hickman. In 1928, Hickman kidnapped his last
victim, a 12-year-old girl, and held her for ransom. When the girl’s father
paid the ransom, Hickman dumped the girl’s eviscerated and dismembered body in
the street. At the time, it was considered one of the greatest crimes of the
century.
Psychopathic 'Superman'
Ayn Rand felt otherwise.
In her notebooks, Rand wrote admiringly of
Hickman. “Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they
should,” she wrote. She added, using words eerily prescient of what the
Nazis would be saying a few years hence, that Hickman had “no regard
whatsoever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his
own. He has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and
feel ‘other people.’”
Hickman, who was executed in 1928,
became the model for Rand’s Fountainhead hero, Howard Roark, a
self-absorbed architect who wins a woman’s devotion by raping her, and ends up
committing an act of terrorism—blowing up the Fountainhead building—because he didn’t
get his way.
Howard Roark, like his real-life model, was
one sick puppy.
Rand’s self-proclaimed Objectivism
philosophy basically says man makes his own reality. Whatever he determines to
be, is. Evidence of how wide-spread this narcissistic philosophy is among the
extreme right of the Republican Party was seen when Karl Rove, then chief
advisor to President George Bush, told journalist Ron Susskind, “we create our
own reality … we’ll act again, creating other new realities.”
Former GOP House speaker Paul Ryan, also an
Ayn Rand fan, carried that same philosophy to the podium at the 2012 Republican
Convention when, as Mitt Romney’s running mate, he delivered a diatribe on the
Obama administration that was so separated from reality that even Fox News
criticized its lies.
Kindred Spirits
Ryan, in fact, has a lot in common with Rand.
Like her, Ryan likes to bite the hand that fed him. Ryan, youngest son of an
upper middle-class family, received Social Security survivors’ benefits after
his attorney father died of a heart attack. Since his family didn’t need those
benefits to survive on, Ryan stuffed them away and used them to pay for his
college education. Later he advocated doing away with Social Security for those
who do need it.
Ryan's home in Wisconsin was declared a national historic site, meaning the Ryan family receives a taxpayer subsidy to maintain it. Since graduating from college, Ryan drew a government paycheck, first as a congressional aid, then as a congressman. Now retired from Congress, Ryan continues to collect a government pension and tax-payer subsidized health care.
Ayn Rand, too, took advantage of a
government-sponsored education in the Soviet Union, and then turned against the
system as soon as it no longer benefited her. She was the beneficiary of many
government programs in the United States, as well. When her first play abruptly
closed in 1938, the Works Progress Administration took it on a nationwide tour
and paid Rand a weekly salary. In her old age, Rand regularly criticized those
living on Social Security, even though she was receiving Social Security
benefits under a married name.
Like Trump, Ayn Rand was an amoral, narcissistic,
sociopath, and her poisoned pen continues taint American political thought and corrupt
American political morals.
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UPDATE (July 8, 2020): Like the woman whose juvenile rhetoric they advocate, the Ayn Rand Institute admitted on July 7 that it had received up to $1 million in forgivable loans from the Paycheck Protection Program approved by Congress to help businesses during the Covid-19 crisis. The institute, which continues Rand's criticism of government welfare of any kind, used twisted logic to rationalized why it took the bailout. Apparently it isn't enough for the institute to keep Rand's childish philosophy of greed and selfishness alive, they also follow her hypocrisy, too.
For further reading:
Trump
Administration Embraces Ayn Rand's Disdain for the Masses
US
Republican leaders love Ayn Rand
The
new age of Ayn Rand: how she won over Trump and Silicon Valley
Ayn
Rand-acolyte Donald Trump stacks his cabinet with fellow objectivists
Romancing the Stone-Cold Killer: Ayn Rand and William Hickman
‘We Took PPP Funds and Would Do It Again’
In sign of the times, Ayn Rand Institute approved for PPP loan
