Different faces of the right wing (which, yes, includes fearless B.S. Obama)
One of the seminal moments in the presidential campaign slipped by at the Republican debate in Las Vegas on Oct. 18. It didn’t involve the frontrunners, and it had nothing to do with Herman Cain’s “9-9-9” plan or the sexual harassment claims.If you were watching, you’d have heard Ron Paul say, “We need to see everybody as an individual. And to me, seeing everybody as an individual means their liberties are protected as individuals, and they are treated that way, and they’re never penalized that way.”
Rick Santorum responded, “I disagree in some respects with Congressman Paul, who says the country is founded on the individual. The basic building block of a society is not an individual. It’s the family. That’s the basic unit of society.”
Ayn Rand had again loomed in the presidential campaign. It wasn’t the first time, and you can bet it won’t be the last. What this exchange demonstrated is that Rand’s views reach well beyond the advocacy of laissez-faire capitalism for which she is best known. They extend into a wide variety of other areas -- and they are capable of making the right, especially the religious right, as uncomfortable as liberals.
Paul is strongly influenced by the Russian-born novelist-philosopher. Rand believed that the individual is supreme, owing no duty to anyone else, including his family. Rand’s novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, which set forth her philosophy [which greatly influenced her main student, former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan, and the downward course of the USA]... More