WI Ayn Rand is the Republican's Reagan

You know how in all of the Republican debates or speeches all of the politicians speak how Ronald Reagan is their inspirational leader, the person who everyone looks up to. Have it so that in 2009 the Republican Party's moral and political weight, so to speak.
 
Aside from the indecipherably bad grammar of your post, as a red-blooded Republican, I can tell you that most of us consider Ayn Rand to be a joke at best; further more, most of us grow out of our 'objectivist' stage after leaving high school. Reagan is the ideal of our party because he is conservative, restrained, concerned about big government (but not defense spending), and ultimately a good, sane politian to look up to. From what I remember of Rand's correspondances, she was a cold bitch even to her fans - hardly a good role model.
For further reasons on why most serious Republicans don't like Ayn Rand, see Bioshock.
 

maverick

Banned
Aside from the indecipherably bad grammar of your post, as a red-blooded Republican, I can tell you that most of us consider Ayn Rand to be a joke at best; further more, most of us grow out of our 'objectivist' stage after leaving high school. Reagan is the ideal of our party because he is conservative, restrained, concerned about big government (but not defense spending), and ultimately a good, sane politian to look up to. From what I remember of Rand's correspondances, she was a cold bitch even to her fans - hardly a good role model.
For further reasons on why most serious Republicans don't like Ayn Rand, see Bioshock.

Don't forget he was a warm, likeable family man. Remember how even when he got shot by Hinckley, he was still making jokes about it while being taken to the Hospital.

I don't particularly agree with many of Reagan's policies, but he was likeable.
 
I agree that this not going to happen. A more interesting possibility is having Rand be much warmer towards the Libertarian Party instead of the following exchange:

Q: Libertarians advocate the politics you advocate. So why are you opposed to the Libertarian Party? [FHF: “Egalitarianism and Inflation,” 1974]

AR:They are not defenders of capitalism. They’re a group of publicity seekers who rush into politics prematurely, because they allegedly want to educate people through a political campaign, which can’t be done. Further, their leadership consists of men of every of persuasion, from religious conservatives to anarchists. Moreover, most of them are my enemies: they spend their time denouncing me, while plagiarizing my ideas. Now, I think it’s a bad beginning for an allegedly pro-capitalist party to start by stealing ideas.
 
Thats pretty much like the modern Labour Party swining behind Tony Benn, even amongst more left-wing grassroot members there might be idealistic leanings but just no, never happen. The phrase 'a safe pair of hands' springs to mind.

Rand wasn't a politican, not to take away from Reagen's attractive qualities but he like all other politicos pandered to the public via PR, Rand doesn't strike me as the kind of gal to do such a thing.
 
I agree that this not going to happen. A more interesting possibility is having Rand be much warmer towards the Libertarian Party instead of the following exchange:

Q: Libertarians advocate the politics you advocate. So why are you opposed to the Libertarian Party? [FHF: “Egalitarianism and Inflation,” 1974]

AR:They are not defenders of capitalism. They’re a group of publicity seekers who rush into politics prematurely, because they allegedly want to educate people through a political campaign, which can’t be done. Further, their leadership consists of men of every of persuasion, from religious conservatives to anarchists. Moreover, most of them are my enemies: they spend their time denouncing me, while plagiarizing my ideas. Now, I think it’s a bad beginning for an allegedly pro-capitalist party to start by stealing ideas.

She also called them the hippies of the Right. Frankly I'm confused why she loathed them so much, I've never read too much into Objectivism but is it really that removed from Libertarianism?
 
She also called them the hippies of the Right. Frankly I'm confused why she loathed them so much, I've never read too much into Objectivism but is it really that removed from Libertarianism?

Would you be suprise if I told you that Ayn Rand hated a lot of thing?
 
Anyone who seriously looks at Ayn Rand's ideal can realize how it would be an unviable political strategy (hell even libertarianism has little support.) Her brand of radical individualism/ objectivism would basically call for the end of everyone single government program. Besides, Ayn Rand hates everyone: women (they're week), gays (can't procreate), Christians or anyone with religion (put god before themselsves.) etc. If you are a super-wealthy, super-intelligent, super-powerful you'd love her world, but anyone else not so much. Besides, how can you have a radical individualist/ objectivist political party?
 

Valdemar II

Banned
She also called them the hippies of the Right. Frankly I'm confused why she loathed them so much, I've never read too much into Objectivism but is it really that removed from Libertarianism?

You should see the loathing between minor socialist parties in 70-80ties. The truth is that unless they accepted Rands word as the word of truth/God, she would hate/loath them, and their good chance that even if they did that she would still hate/loath them. Rand was fundamental a pretty horrible human being.
 
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Hnau

Banned
Rand was quite the extremist, yes. At the end of Atlas Shrugged (*smugly* which I read the entirety of... man that book was long), one of the characters is shown re-writing the Constitution, supposedly because the 'makers and movers of the world' were going to resurrect society, and one of the articles was that 'the state would have no power to abridge the freedoms of production and trade'. Ayn Rand is, in a way, advocating a dictatorship of a state-less sphere where business would never be tampered with. Her books suggest that she never believed democracy could result in this kind of society... not with any stability, at least... it could only be created by a coup, or in the wreckage of some apocalyptic scenario. Democracy is fundamentally anti-Randian... Therefore, she would never make a good politician.
 
The biggest sticking point would be Rand's contempt for religion, or indeed for any philosophy that has any compassion. While you could make an argument that some Religious Right/Conservative Christians are more concerned with being Rightwing/Consevative than being religious or Christian, their faith is still an undeniably a large part of who they are.

And where would the Republicans be without conservative Christians?

In fact where would Republicans be politically now if they followed Rand's philosophy when one of her true believers, Alan Greenspan, has been so utterly discredited, and has even admitted the beliefs he's followed most of his life were wrong and contributed to our present economic catastrophes? They fall to being a political party even smaller in number than the Libertarians.
 
Another, overlooked factor in the Rand-rest-of-the-liberterian-movement* was the anarcho-capitalistic part of said movement, Rothbrad and so on, which is the scary bunch if you look at the issues.
 

Hnau

Banned
boynamedsue said:
Man that book was bad.

You read it? Why'd you read a book you didn't like? The writing was terrible, I'll agree with you on that. A lot of repetitive parts. Way too long-winded... Ayn Rand needed a really aggressive editor. But, for me, I thought elements were very heroic-romantic. I like the idea of supermen, makers and shakers among us. I like the dystopic feeling of that world, the villains and protagonists so clearly cut. It was a world of ignorant parasites that Ayn Rand created, as if only a few noble souls held together all of society, outcasts that were both hated by the rest but truly better than them. Do I believe this fantastic scenario? Of course. But just as the Marxist worldview is such an interesting philosophical fantasy, the Randian worldview is the same. The perceptions of reality some people build up in their minds are astounding. That's why it was worth reading.
 

Deleted member 5719

You read it? Why'd you read a book you didn't like? The writing was terrible, I'll agree with you on that. A lot of repetitive parts. Way too long-winded... Ayn Rand needed a really aggressive editor. But, for me, I thought elements were very heroic-romantic. I like the idea of supermen, makers and shakers among us. I like the dystopic feeling of that world, the villains and protagonists so clearly cut. It was a world of ignorant parasites that Ayn Rand created, as if only a few noble souls held together all of society, outcasts that were both hated by the rest but truly better than them. Do I believe this fantastic scenario? Of course. But just as the Marxist worldview is such an interesting philosophical fantasy, the Randian worldview is the same. The perceptions of reality some people build up in their minds are astounding. That's why it was worth reading.

Glad you agree about the writing!

It is a total fantasy as you say, her views have nothing to do with the real world. I'd say that Marx, on the other hand, actually wrote am excellent analysis of 19th century capitalism, and that his views on the long term unviability of capitalism due to the impossibility of the perpetual concentration of wealth in a few hands is actually very relevant to the current economic problems.

What he didn't work out was that the state would act to preserve capitalism by creating more viable mixed economic models which would prevent revolution.
 
Glad you agree about the writing!

It is a total fantasy as you say, her views have nothing to do with the real world. I'd say that Marx, on the other hand, actually wrote am excellent analysis of 19th century capitalism, and that his views on the long term unviability of capitalism due to the impossibility of the perpetual concentration of wealth in a few hands is actually very relevant to the current economic problems.

What he didn't work out was that the state would act to preserve capitalism by creating more viable mixed economic models which would prevent revolution.
And he also didn't account for certain developments like the transfer of almost everyone into a salaried class of company workers, who are not revolutionary because they don't feel exploited but at the same time own no capital of their own. In his day such a thing would have been crazy talk, he can be forgiven for not forseeing it.

Also, he was too damn idealistic. Humans Are Bastards, after all.
 
And he also didn't account for certain developments like the transfer of almost everyone into a salaried class of company workers, who are not revolutionary because they don't feel exploited but at the same time own no capital of their own. In his day such a thing would have been crazy talk, he can be forgiven for not forseeing it.

Also, he was too damn idealistic. Humans Are Bastards, after all.
Stay on topic...stay on topic...

I don't know about Atlas Shrugged, but I seem to recall reading somewhere (the Introduction) that The Fountainhead's characters were written to be paper-thin archetypes.
 
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