by Wilma Howe-Bennett   

It’s times like this where I really, really miss our late roommate, Daniel Conan Weiner. He was a Libertarian (which, since I’m an unabashed and unashamed liberal, and WonderWifeTheEngineer was, at the time, an unabashed and unashamed Log Cabin Republican) used to make for some very interesting dinner-time conversations.

He’d have had an absolute hysterical laughing fit at what has happened to the Libertarian (now known as the Tea Party) Party, when their political theorizing has turned into actual fact, and they can’t wrap their consciousness around the simple declaration that the real world simply doesn’t work like their rosy vision of it should. Take a look at the Free State Project, which has been an absolutely abysmal failure (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_State_Project). After all their research and all of their huffing and puffing, they don’t even have 1,000 people on the ground in New Hampshire.

What’s even more interesting, I think, is that every single, solitary Libertarian (except for Dan) that I’ve ever known – and I’ve know a shitload of them – has been a worshiper at the Shrine of St. Ayn Rand.

I blush to admit that I was an enthusiastic promoter of her ideas, once upon a time. Fortunately, I got over it. Unfortunately, and catastrophically for our economic system, folks like Allen Greenspan didn’t. You can see the havoc still being wreaked by his application of Randian economic philosophy on our economy. You can especially see it in people like Paul Ryan, who requires everybody that works for him, even the volunteers, to read THE FOUNTAINHEAD and ATLAS SHRUGGED. You can see her philosophies regarding her version of reason and rationality here: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivism_(Ayn_Rand). Briefly put, Objectivism holds that reality exists independent of consciousness, that human beings have direct contact with reality through sense perception, that one can attain objective knowledge from perception through the process of concept formation and inductive and deductive logic, that the proper moral purpose of one's life is the pursuit of one's own happiness or rational self-interest, that the only social system consistent with this morality is full respect for individual rights, embodied in laissez faire capitalism, and that the role of art in human life is to transform man's widest metaphysical ideas, by selective reproduction of reality, into a physical form – a work of art - that he can comprehend and to which he can respond emotionally.

I go back once a year, and read everything that she ever published, just to remind myself how very much I dislike her philosophies and her collectivist viewpoint. And this, gangers, leads up to the special election last night in New York’s District 26. A DEMOCRAT, folks, took the Republican-ruby red district. The ReThug© that she defeated would have voted for the Ryan Budget Plan if she’d been in Congress at that time (in essence, throwing, not just Grandma, but everybody that needs Federal help to get meds and medical treatment IE Medicare and Medicaid off the cliff – literally), and the #3 person in the race was a Tea Partier. Totals: 47%, 43%, 8%. I believe – and I admit, I also HOPE with all my heart – that this election marks the beginning of the end for the Libertarian/Tea Party and their ivory tower philosophies, which are based wholly in the writings of a woman who was a collectivist in her writings and whose philosophies have caused and continue to cause more problems than we can support at this point.

Ms. Rand believed in reason and rationality about all else. Unfortunately, most people that take up that philosophy turn out to be ruthless sons-of-bitches (and ruthless bitches as well) who couldn’t care less about social responsibility, community responsibility and the debt that we owe our grandchildren and great-grandchildren to leave them with a higher standard of living. The debt peonage that most of us labour under these days is a direct outgrowth of Randian philosophies of “reason” and “rational behaviours”.

The Tea Party “patriots” and the Libertarians have lost this round. Let’s us all do our best to insure that they lose the rest.