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What Kind of Monster Is This?


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Larry Hernandez

Mon Oct 05 2009, 09:31PM

Registered Member #6

Joined: Mon Jun 29 2009, 02:44AM
Posts: 21

Now that this summer of teabagger/deather/birther/ and overall right-wing derangement has settled down somewhat, it is time to look back and to wonder: “what the hell was all that?”

Some of “what the hell was all that” has been approached by my previous posts, so I won’t regurgitate them here. What has been on my mind for the last week or more are the deeper meanings of it all.

In that frame of mind, I am led to ask: “has anyone other than me noticed that much of what comes out of the right wing/tea-bagger crowd in the way of ideas and the underlying philosophy surrounding these ideas, seems to be the product of a truly confused mix of intellectually contradictory components?”

Specifically, I am thinking of the weird meshing of right-wing religiosity, standard conservative yearning for authoritarian answers to today’s problems, and a resurgence of lines of thought that come straight out of the school of Ayn Rand? Normally the first two bodies of thought and the third (Ayn Rand’s) should be as mutually exclusive as water and oil, but I hear all three sound-out from the same mouth and mind when today’s Right speaks.

Rather than to delve in my own words into what it is about the notions (I hesitate to call it a philosophy) of Ayn Rand that are so staggering in their incompatibility with Christian moral philosophy or the broad streak of yearning for authoritarian control that underlies modern conservatism, I direct you to two links. These links will elucidate the connection between much of today’s conservatism with Rand and authoritarianism, and the incongruities created by adhering to all three simultaneously.

Here first, is a link to a recent review of two new Ayn Rand biographies made by Jonathan Chiat in the New Republic: http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-arts/wealthcare-0?page=0,0

And second, the link to a discussion in Daily Kos about the link between so many of today’s Right Wing and authoritarianism: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/4/17201/25419

In his review, Jonathan Chiat gives a very useful overview of Rand that should ring loud bells in our minds as we try to square her thinking both with: 1) what we hear far too often from the teabag and other rightist crowd, and 2) with traditional Christian moral obligations, such as: responsibility toward the poor, of unselfish service to the common good, of the obligation to share. While Rand squares just right with what we are hearing from many of today's conservatives, she doesn't square at all with what I understand as traditional Christianity.

Even an agnostic like me can see that the two just don’t square in any logical manner or in any sense that is faithful to the essential teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. One can argue that is far easier to make a case that one can be a Marxist and a Christian at the same time than to be simultaneously a follower of Rand and a committed Christian.

In regard to the second link, a case can be made that while Rand’s line of thinking excluded yearning or submitting to authoritarianism, as Chiat demonstrates, her life was a study in the practice of authoritarian control. Rand would have made a first rate dominatrix. Perhaps that is what it is in Rand that draws muddle-headed conservatives to her like flies to dung.

As progressive Democrats, we must seek to inform our neighbors of the Frankenstein’s Monster-like nature of the thinking they are being pulled into by the deranged wing of the Republican Party and the conservative movement. Likewise, we have to confront the local Right-wing and seek to exploit the contradictions among its members. Obviously, they are all too eager to paper over these internal differences, but we shouldn’t help them at it by keeping silent.

And those of us who are Christians or Jews have an even more pressing obligation to call out the frightfully un-Christian or un-Jewish thoughts and practices that are present in a crowd that too often proclaims itself as superior in its religiosity. I can’t do it because I have little legitimacy on these issues, but you do. Think seriously about it. Do you want future generations to adopt their ways as representative of your belief system?


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