Libertarian Lapdance

by digby

I have often felt that most of what is wrong with modern conservatism could probably be traced to the boys and girls of the right’s salad days when they stared dreamily into the dark, dark night thinking of the hottest man and sexiest woman they ever saw brought to the page: Dagny Taggert and John Galt. ***sigh*** They read “Atlas Shrugged,” found their adolescent self-absorbsion and callowness affirmed by a philosophy of greed and self-interest and that was it. “If I behave like an asshole, I will be doing the moral thing” (and hot chicks and dudes will want me!)
It is the last time many movement conservatives ever examined their beliefs again.

It turns out that the Ayn Rand Institute is busy indoctrinating another generation of 101st keyboarders, “libertarians” and wingnut welfare queens who will believe in magical thinking and politics as soap opera. They hold an Ayn Rand contest for teen-agers and college students and pay some pretty good prizes (for a contest that doesn’t actually produce anything useful in the world.)

It is quite serious — not in the mode of the Hemingway contest which delights in taking the minimalist master’s style to its most absurd. It’s possible that some of the contestants are just good All American opportunists who did it for the money. If so, good for them. (Talk about being hoist with your own petard.) But sadly, I suspect these kids are going to be the Kathryn Jean Lopez’s of their generations.

Behold, the winner of the “Atlas Shrugged” college essay contest, written in answer to this question: At his trial, Hank Rearden declares: “The public good be damned, I will have no part of it!” What does he mean? How does this issue relate to the rest of the novel and its meaning? Explain.

Throughout his life, Hank Rearden has been conditioned to accept guilt. He feels guilt because he cannot bring himself to value Lillian or Philip or his mother on the pretext of duty when no real value exists. He feels guilt because he is not capable of granting love undeserved. “You’ve got to be kind, Henry,” his mother insists. “You wouldn’t want me to think that you’re selfish” (433). This condemnation of selfishness oozes like poison from the world around him, overflowing his every accomplishment. He is trapped by the false conscience instilled in him: all that is done for the illusionary “public good” is virtuous; all that is done for the individual good is evil.

Hank Rearden’s most selfish act is his relationship with Dagny. Although his most noble ideals draw him to Dagny, he can at first see their relationship only as society views it: an immoral act fueled by the animal selfishness that is lust. “I don’t love you,” he declares after their first night together at Ellis Wyatt’s house. “I’ve given in to a desire which I despise” (238). Although Rearden recognizes his actions as “wrong,” he also knows that he cannot give them up. Subconsciously, he realizes that he is pursuing something of great value, but still he despises himself for being too weak to resist the “ugly weakness of man’s lower nature” (106), as he has come to acknowledge it. He is caught in the doctrine that he must always feel guilty for his pleasures, that joy in itself is sin

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It’s always the hot stuff that gets ’em. Selfishness and sex. Can you imagine what an utter disaster these people must be in bed?

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