When I was going to college in the 1960s, she was already quite fashionable among conservatives, who lauded her "brilliance" and ignored the fact that she described a United States which had no black people -- with all that this implied about American capitalism. And when we went through the boom times -- under Reagan, Clinton, and Bush 43 -- her popularity soared even higher.

There were two reasons for this. One was sex. She said in so many words that unless you were a capitalist, you were lousy in bed. This made capitalists feel good about themselves, even as they turned to Bible-thumping preachers (whom Rand, a militant atheist, loathed) to drum up the votes they needed to hold the White House and Congress. The height of this hypocrisy was the sight of Randians cheering on the impeachment of Bill Clinton, conveniently forgetting that Rand's heroine in "Atlas Shrugged" boasted on national network radio of having committed adultery.

The other reason, however, was the greed which Rand said was the engine of the economy, which meant that anyone who made money could argue that he really WAS helping his fellow man, even though that was certainly not his intention, since helping your fellow man was liberal horseshit that was ultimately responsible for Stalin and Mao.

Nobody in this corner of the right-wing universe ever seemed to remember that Rand had no illusions about people with money. She knew damn well that some of them had gotten it through inheritance or outright theft, and didn't deserve a penny of it. The hottest circle of hell in "Atlas Shrugged" was reserved for James Taggart -- the scion of the Taggart railroad fortune and an utterly venal and incompetent (and, of course, impotent) human being. In her novel, of course, Taggart eventually went bust, which is yet another way in which her world doesn't square with reality.

And so, when a man whose life story is a dead ringer for James Taggart's was elected President in 2000, nobody on the right noticed that the man really had never accomplished anything in his 20-odd years in the business world EXCEPT making the Texas Rangers baseball team into a success by getting the taxpayers of Arlington, TX, to agree to pay the highest sales tax rate in the nation (at that time) to finance the stadium that turned the franchise around. In other words, George W. Bush's ONLY business success rested in his ability to get the government to pay for a private enterprise. Any Randian with an ounce of intellectual integrity would have spotted this socialist concept easily, but Randians are too busy denouncing liberals these days.

Which brings us to the present -- everybody in the fucking country knew that there were mortgages being written that shouldn't have been over the past few years, but the assumption was that when the music stopped, it would only be those who couldn't afford the homes they were in who would be caught with their pants down, and fuck them. Again, nobody on the right noticed that most of the American capitalist world (and, to be fair, a good-sized chunk of the rest of the capitalist world too, though not as much) was making the IDENTICAL mistakes that ordinary people taking out mortgages they couldn't afford were making. Bear Stearns is sinking out of sight today because it ALSO believed in Santa Claus, and the stock market is gearing up for a Monday to remember as I write these words because Bear is hardly the only sucker out there.

The belief was that regulation of markets was the problem, and electing a President who didn't believe in regulation would unleash the creative power of capitalism forever. The intellectual underpinning for this concept was Ayn Rand's belief that markets would, in some mysterious fashion, always make things come out right.

I, too, believe in markets, actually, but I also understand two things that Randians never have -- money is fungible and life is short. When the probability of being able to steal a lot of money through dishonest dealings is high, people will always be around to do it because WHY NOT? Their money is as green as what I've earned through honest labor, and if they cansalt away enough to live a comfortable life without having to work any more, WHY NOT? It's true of drug dealers and it's true of mortgage companies which push people into mortgages they KNOW won't be paid, and then resell those mortgages to sucker bankers.

James Taggart rarely goes broke in this country, as long as the government is run by people who are like him. And right now, that's what we've got.

Nice piece except you seem to be arguing that Rand is not the problem; it's people who didn't pay attention to her real message who are the problem, i.e., the Taggarts

Well, maybe Ayn Rand...and her husband.

skpit

Excellent comment, important reminder of where modern privateers come from.

Good lord, Ayn Rand was a vicious old shrew that the world's much better off without. I've never read a single one of her doorstops mind you (much better as packing material, or insulating your walls), but for all the marginally-bright assholes that have used her cut-rate philosophy to justify their extraordinary sense of entitlement and to obscure their luck in the birth lottery, then she's suffered a mountainous cosmic debt.

(And to how said may confuse notions of meritocracy with themselves, that was a nice deconstruction on their own terms.)

I like to recommend Matt Ruff's Sewer, Gas, and Electric as a comic Rand-tidote. (It's been so long since I've read it--2004 must be a reprint--I should go back and see if it's as near amusing as I remember. He had the Empire State Building sustain a plane crash, if I recall, which can't go over so well these days.) Good stuff.

slasher:

Seems like we should have kept the Seagall - Glass act? Business was more interested in short term gains rather than letting the market determine what was best.

It's absoulutly amazing that those who scream the most about scocieties morallity,(larry elder,douch limpabaugh,ann coulter,sean hannity,john fund,lil'bush,lil'cheney,etc.) seem to think morality stops at the door of corporate profits and the global economy.How are we not standing up to these misguided ,immoral blind fools and saying "enough is enough.The unfetterd profit of the "free market '' does little good to the domestic tranquillity,standard of living,and this countries soviernty.It is obvious that these lowlifes do not have any concern for their fellow countryman.We are just a market to these unethical scum and we do not matter.These "people " need to be educated in how to be decent people and what it means to be loyal americans.

Ayn Rand got me bedded on many an occasion, she was the thinking woman's aphrodisiac back in the early 70's. Just had to rifle through those thick pages, they'd come begging for it.

You know, that's the problem with getting old. I knew, when I wrote this post, that I'd get a ton of responses and when I saw seven, I got ready for the onslaught. NOT ONE is really critical. Sigh. In the days of my youth, this never would have happened.

Anyhow, TGOAR, you said in a few short sentences what I was trying to say only far more effectively and cogently. Thanks.

You might be blaming Rand, but it is painfully obvious she never claimed that "helping fellow man" led to Stalin. You blamed her, but did not read the follow up commentary like The New Left, apparently. And while she might have loathed the Bible Thumpers, no doubt if alive today she'd prefer their homeschooling efforts (well--if still legal. In Cally it is not, by decree now due to the activist courts) over the trainwreck of public SKOOL's historical revisionism and PC whining---rife in the NEAs methodology of producing more dolts who admire government prowess. Promise.

She said, as has Micky Kaus, BTW--that altruism was a lousy was to conduct policy and politics and economics since there is no demarcation line of where to leave off from the public versus the private. The failure to understand this DID give us Stalin in the East, but the Welfare State in the West. That's not a good thing either. It just keeps pols in power on the backs of perpetual cossetted poverty.

The problem with your piece is you create a straw man in the "free market" ideas of Rand and then attribute our ills to that. When in reality you present the all too real evidence that we do not have 'free markets" if we did the banks that bought bad loans would go under, the housing market would correct itself and prices would PLUNGE leaving many people who were prudent with their money the chance to now purchase homes. But as usual our socialist mentality, and yours I believe is that the government needs to intervene to protect us. I agree that the right is predisposed to "protecting" the wealthier citizens of the country, but "protecting" the poor is just as unjust, by confiscating others work and wealth to do so. What you failed to recognize is that neither side in this country is remotely anything close to a "Randian". Randians hate both Bushes, can barely tolerate Reagan etc., Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Hannity all despise her, so attributing her beliefs or influence to them is either a fallacy or ignorance.

"When in reality you present the all too real evidence that we do not have 'free markets' if we did the banks that bought bad loans would go under, the housing market would correct itself and prices would PLUNGE leaving many people who were prudent with their money the chance to now purchase homes."

No, actually, the economy would crash, GDP would follow, and everyone would suffer, prudent or not. That's the problem with modern economies--everything is interconnected. If the leadership at your company is incompetent, you'll end up out of a job no matter how good a worker you are. And if major elements of the country's financial system crash and burn, they take the rest of us down with them.

If your company goes bankrupt, you can find another job; but if your economy goes to hell, you can't find another economy, unless you're prepared to move to China. And even then you may not be safe. The U.S. economy has a colossal impact on the economies of other nations.

Bailouts like Bear Stearns are an ugly way to fix these things, but the alternative is a return to the days of the Great Depression.

Glass-Steagall act.

[Bailouts like Bear Stearns are an ugly way to fix these things, but the alternative is a return to the days of the Great Depression.]

Go read your history. The great depression got worse year after year throughout the '30's. The stock market crash was bad for the country. But FDR's attempts to help were a disaster.

Did he have good intentions? Undoubtedly. Was he a Soviet stooge? Of course not. But results, not intentions, are the measure of policy. And by that measure, FDR's New Deal wa an unmitigated disaster for the country.