Ayn Rand -Faith vs Reason

[mediamogul]

So, what? Is this thread starting again?

The right wing tea-partiers have appropriated Ayn Rand's ideology to provide theoretical support to the hard right's agenda of eliminating government, de-regulating business, and rationalizing their own selfishness.

The tea-partiers are rationalizing, since they ignore all the core concepts of objectivism and cherry-pick the things they want to implement. Since they ignore the premises, they don't understand the limits of application of those principles.

Objectivism and libertariansim has always been a theology. Something that is believed on apparent reason but in actuality could never work in a practical application of the principles involved. Laissez faire capitalism, rational egoism, and the elimination of government would spell the end for whichever country foolish enough to adopt these principles.

Actually, neither has ever been a theology - which specifically refers to religious study.
Laissez faire capitalism and rational egoism have been accepted as ideals to achieve by different countries over to history and they are all still standing. And objectivism never calls for elimination of government.

The Tea-Party is certainly based upon a reading of Rand's Objectivism, granted a misreading, and the Bible. Rand no doubt would completely reject their ideological twist on her theories the same way that Marx stated "I am not a Marxist" after seeing how the Paris Commune butchered his writings. All the basics are there: significant reduction in government, de-regulation of business, "greed is good", the rich deserve to be rich and the poor deserve to be poor, the histrionics about "big government control over people's lives",

My statement that Libertarianism is a theology (which is borrowed from Thom Hartmann) simply means it is believed by those who hold it's principles as an established system of belief though it has never been applied in practice. Many people believe in it as though it were completely rational, time-tested, and practically proven to work. I think it has never been applied in practice due to the fact that especially the laissez-faire capitalism and also removal of the safety net programs would generate a huge stratification of wealth and seriously decrease the quality of life for most citizens.

Also, laissez-faire capitalism has never been accepted or put into practice by an industrialized nation. Libertarianism calls for, essentially the elimination of government. Only the police, military, and legislative branch (but cut down to bare bones) would remain in terms of government. Most other services would be privatized. Rand's theories say basically the same thing. Objectivism is one of those things that works in theory but in practice would be disastrous. It is a complete misread of human nature, market forces and "natural order" of things.