A new right is being born, following the death of the older conservative movement. Fortunately for the left, the next American right is dominated by libertarians like Ron Paul and Paul Ryan, who worship at the shrine of Ayn Rand. (Michael Lind, “Bring it on Ayn Rand geeks,” Salon, 15 March 2010)
The fire
Ayn Rand is all about disowning, losing connection with, one's emotions, with guilt, as one becomes bulwarked in reason. Her words, pro-offered ways of thinking, are perfect for a time when we want some group of people to suffer -- it'll be groups like the homeless and "greedy" (hipsters on food stamps?) youth/students; watch for it -- to be responsible for all society's dependent ways, but removed from feeling any guilt, owing to an intact ability to in any way feel their pain. Rand will help (certain) people -- the guilty -- become less real to us, and enable the damage this state-of-mind permits, and I think a lot of progressives are actually up for the carnage. We'll see how many of them were well loved enough in life, to continue to want to help people in an age which demands the weak be maligned and sacrificed.
If a philosophical change in entitlement programs comes to mean that only the worthy receive them, I'm not entirely sure that youth-despising elderly wouldn't find ways to stoke the sacrificial fires in homage to one Ayn Rand. Let the ambitious youth we strive to stump, prove their worth, spare "us" their provocative ambitions and erosive intentions, by dispensing of them in the fire: Rand can be taken as mostly about the select surviving, while the rest fall flat -- and "we" may all be in the mood for that.
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