On John Oliver’s show Last Week Tonight, he had a hilarious clip (sorry, embedding was disallowed so you will have to follow the link to see it) about Ayn Rand titled Why is Ayn Rand still a thing?, because she is still a big influence on Republicans with presidential ambitions people like Paul Ryan, Rand Paul, and Ted Cruz, who all proudly state that they are fans of her despite her support for abortion rights and her atheism.
But the oligarchy, which does not need votes and thus does not care about abortions or religion, loves her idea that one should only look after one’s own interests. Take for example, the Koch brothers. Recently, their vice-president for Policy ad Research made the following statement about what the ideal government should be, at a secret retreat attended by prominent Republicans like majority leader Mitch McConnell.
“Government is thus limited to a small, but absolutely critical number of tasks, basically keeping our neighborhoods and cities safe from crime, defending our country from those who might violate our national territories, our commerce at sea, and providing justice in a fair and apolitical — political court system.”
Notice that the only things they think are necessary for government are those that will give them the ability to exploit people and resources across the globe without any restraint (hence the desire for a strong military) and will protect themselves and their property from the people who come after them with their pitchforks (hence the need for police and courts to enforce their edicts).
As Mike Lux says about their vision:
In this ideal system, there would be no C, no Medicare, no Medicaid, no food or water safety protections, no national park system, no public education or student loan programs, no public roads and bridges. They would not have taxes on corporate profits or the wealthy at all. There would be no consumer, homeowner, or worker protections from Wall Street banks, big energy companies, pharmaceutical giants, health insurance companies, fast food companies.
Paul Ryan now shamelessly tries to disavow his love for Rand even though his devotion to her ideas is unmistakable.
Ya gotta admit. feudalism does have its good points. You don’t have to read those mind-numbing voter guides every two years, and you don’t have to worry about your investments crashing. That will make us much calmer while we are commuting to out third job of the day.
Compared with Randian individualism, it did. Feudal lords were supposed to have duties and obligations to their inferiors and they sometimes fulfilled them. Randian individualism follows Rob Roy’s principles:
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/03/13/notice-readers/
“The rigged inflation measures create illusionary real GDP growth. They also block cost-of-living adjustments to Social Security pensions. Indeed, the main purpose of the rigged inflation measures is to get rid of “socialistic” Social Security by allowing inflation to gradually erode away the real values of “entitlements.” Republicans always want to cut “entitlements” that people have paid for over their working lifetime with the payroll tax. But Republicans never want to cut the payroll tax. They need the revenues in order to bail out the big banks and to pay for never-ending wars.
Washington has been conducting needless wars abroad for 93 percent of the 21st century at a cost of trillions of dollars. More trillions have been wasted bailing out banks that deregulation permitted to become “too big to fail.” During the past seven years, millions of Americans have lost their jobs and their homes, and food stamp rolls have reached record numbers. These hurting Americans have been ignored by policy-makers in Washington.
Clearly, government in America is focused on something different from a healthy economy and the well being of citizens. We call it democracy, but it’s not.”
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/10/03/bad-news-jobs-front-paul-craig-roberts/
“As John Titus, Dave Kranzler and I have shown, these jobs are filled by those aged 55 and over who take the low paying jobs in order to supplement meager retirement incomes. The baby boomers are the only part of the US labor force whose participation rate is rising. http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/09/04/lie-serves-rich-roberts-titus-kranzler/ Of the claimed new jobs in September, 230,000 or 93 percent were jobs filled by those 55 and older. Employment of Americans of prime working age (25-54) declined by10,000 jobs in September from the August level. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t09.htm
As the US labor force continues its transition from first world to third world, real median family income will continue to decline. Ladders of upward mobility will continue to be dismantled, and income and wealth will continue to concentrate in the pockets of the One Percent. America is truly a country run for the few.”
Thats how to destroy a civil society.
I can’t find a link to the full speech? Is there one? Or a full transcript? Thank You.
John Doe,
I could not find one either. Since the meeting was a secret one, this may have been a portion of a smuggled recording.
kraut,
Thanks for the links. It is hard to imagine that Paul Craig Roberts was once an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Ronald Reagan and an associate editor of the extremely right wing Wall Street Journal editorial page!
That is why I posted the link to Robets.
For those once right wingers the development of the specific kind of capitalism in America and other western countries (that has more to do with entrenching an oligarchy than supporting a vital and vigorous system of competition that can deal with and solve problems and set free the productive powers of money and labour as Marx had analyzed it) has little to do with what the conservatives once held dear.