Atheist abortion-rights advocate Ayn Rand would seem to be a hard sell for the religious right in America, but her ideas about money as the root of all good in the world have a surprisingly-strong appeal to the white evangelical Christians who form the Republican Party’s most active voting base. They have proven perfectly capable of ignoring everything they ought to dislike about Rand to embrace her ideas about poverty, charity, and the role of government in promoting the general welfare. Of course, what Rand has to say on these topics is very different from what Jesus says in the gospels. Here are six videos which demonstrate the way Rand’s philosophy has been slipped into the right wing bible somewhere between Romans and Revelations.
1. Pat Robertson tells an 80 year-old woman to get a job rather than stop tithing to his church. Because nothing means more than gifting what you can no longer afford to people who already have more than yourself — it’s the ultimate act of faith in the divine invisible hand!
[youtube]http://youtu.be/REgIl3jc7LI[/youtube]
2. Lakewood Church co-pastor Victoria Osteen tells her flock to “do good for your own self” instead of for God. Because the good you do should make YOU feel good, since that’s what’s really important here, right? Rand and her cultists are sincerely anti-volunteerism, discouraging any kind of charitable work that isn’t personally fulfilling. This is classic Objectivist philosophy restated as a Christian sermon:
[youtube]http://youtu.be/koIBkYl0cHk[/youtube]
3. Glenn Beck’s favorite pseudo-historian includes “capitalism” in the Ten Commandments of voting. David Barton is not a credible witness. He is a peddler of ahistorical nonsense disguised as historical research, but conducted according to ‘biblical principles.’ In his mouth, the words ‘private property’ should be understood as mammon.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/NTbgI0F4sFA[/youtube]
4. Congressman Paul Ryan tells the Atlas Society in 2005 how Rand influenced his personal and political philosophies. Ryan’s every scheme involving Medicare, Social Security, food stamps, etc. is grounded in Rand’s view of such programs as subsidies for moochers. He’s since tried to repudiate Objectivism, but no one actually ever accused Ryan of being part of her cult — just a rabid fan of her ideas.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/tFEyBKssP6Q[/youtube]
5. The Republican governor of North Carolina appoints an Environment & Natural Resources Secretary who believes in magic oil. Ayn Rand was hardly all-rational, all the time. Her novel Atlas Shrugged makes clear references to abiotic oil theory, a thoroughly-discredited geological conspiracy theory that she genuinely believed at the time. Right wing evangelicals love abiotic oil theory because it lets them disbelieve in fossils — and fossil-fuels.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/G2g1UJamQFM[/youtube]
6. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Wingnuttistan) says that “we are living in the days of Ayn Rand.” You don’t get a more religious Republican than Cruz, but his ‘End Times’ have more in common with John Galt than Jesus Christ.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/4wBjFf0gCV4[/youtube]
The Family Research Council is practically a profit-making arm of the Ayn Rand folks. They’re not as upset by Common Core as they are anxious to hawk their own material in its place.
In WWII, The Germans’ strategic plans called for them to invade and use the oil fields of Ukraine and Southern Russia because they did NOT have enough oil for their war machine. In fact, the majority of oil available to them, once the war commenced, was extracted from coal through a “cooking” and condensation/synthesis they developed. A poor understanding of this fact by scientifically-illiterate conspiracy buffs is probably the original source for this idea… the idea that you could get oil from “rocks”, albeit from another fossil fuel in solid form. Still, there is no excuse for otherwise normally rational people to believe the drivel that this has turned into… drivel that has NO scientific explanation of the process of how this “abiotic oil” is actually made, but just contends that there is some kind of “secret” that “the Russians” know about- from the Germans- but has been hidden to everyone else. It probably comes as a surprise to the Russians, who hired Fred Koch (the billionaire Koch brother’s Father) a chemical engineer from 1929-1932 to build oil “cracking” (refining) facilities for all of the oil they were extracting from their new oil fields down south in Ukraine and Khazakstan (years before WWII ! )
Nazi-era coal liquefaction is one origin of abiotic oil “theories” in our time, but the deeply-ironic Soviet-era source is Lysenkoism. It’s really weird (and probably quite indicative) that Rand was so deeply anticommunist except for all the communist pseudoscience.
Wingnuttistan? You need to be more specific. Would that be American or Canadian Wingnuttistan?
I’ll admit I laughed at this though the rest of the piece is scary. I’ve known for years this class warfare has been going on and only progressively getting worse. But these are the people who say “there is no class warfare” in one moment while spouting exactly what you put here moments later. I sometimes wonder if these ignorant people actually believe themselves or are just professional (but not very good) liars.
North and South Wingnuttistan are distinct from East and West Blogistan.
If there was ever anything that proves how stupid Christians can be it’s their worship of Ayn Rand… a woman whose morals were rock bottom. She slept around on her husband openly. She looked for the worst in people to admire. And she touted the intelligence in always putting yourself and what YOU want first before anything or anybody else in the world. What would Jesus say?
I remember National Review in the 1960’s denounced her atheism. Its a shame that the secular Ayn Rand followers didn’t end up dominating since they have a lot less followers. My friend was a Rand supporter when most of them were agnostic and atheists in the 1970’s.