I HATE Ayn Rand. Hate her. And all her insane fascist hyper-capitalist followers.
These guys espouse her philosophy perfectly. It’s worth a skim, reading the whole thing causes glazed eyeballs.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/09/16/brook.moral.code.outdated/index.html?hpt=T2
It’s important to keep in mind that at the bottom of all these rabid tea-party conservatives are phony academics throwing their intellectual weight around, in the shadows of universities gilded by the financial oligarchy, publishing this garbage and ultimately winning a few victories such as inclusion on CNN.
What douchebags!
I LOVE Science, but we see how its mythos allows indifferent scum like these guys to say:
“Kings and aristocrats were swept aside to make way for the rights of man. This idea gave birth to a new nation, our beloved America, in which the individual was free to think and pursue his own happiness. A new person arose: the industrialist.
Slandered as robber barons, what these individuals actually did was earn fortunes by studying the discoveries of science and commercializing them.
A mind-boggling array of inventions and products ensued: automobiles, oil, radios, antibiotics, refrigeration, electricity, washing machines, air conditioning, indoor plumbing, airplanes and on and on, to our present world of personal computers and cell phones”
Really? Thanking the industrialist?
If the industrialist had their way we would have a 12 hour 7 day workweek with no minimum wage and no benefits, as it was before the socialists and anarchists encouraged the working class to show solidarity.
He goes on:
“Ask someone on the street to name a moral hero; if he isn’t at a loss, he’ll likely name someone like Jesus Christ or Mother Teresa. Why? Because they’re regarded as people of faith who shunned personal profit for the collective good. No one would dream of naming Galileo, Darwin, Thomas Edison or John D. Rockefeller.”
He lumps scientists with tycoons, one of the most respected and thoughtful professions with one of the most universally reviled. What makes science great in no way justifies greed. The modernization argument is used all the time to exploit, which is one reason we must always distinguish between being modern as a good idea and being modern as an excuse to violate the human rights of the poor. That is the moral rationale behind imperialism – e.g. it’s ok to kill the natives because they’re “uncivilized” and we are doing them a favor by forcing technology, mercantilism, and industry upon them.
Assholes like this are the brainpower behind the libertarian movement. Let’s not be fooled. It’s true we need a radical direction to go in, but while the ultra right has a voice, one will never hear the ultra left in the media.
Unlike what this guy would have you believe, we’ve been living with “profit” as a moral code for centuries now. Let’s try something else.
Active Philosophy 