Man as Heroic Being
Posted: Sun Dec 11, 2016 8:02 am
Here's another one that will probably get the usual suspects up in arms but I think he raises a few solid points and there are some truths here. One of them is that Trump made "shamelessness acceptable". 
Altruism is like egalitarianism. It's a dirty word and concept only appreciated by the weak.
This was a nice win for objectivism.
Altruism is like egalitarianism. It's a dirty word and concept only appreciated by the weak.
This was a nice win for objectivism.
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/12/its-ayn ... -morality/If you have any doubts that the phenomenon of Donald Trump was a long time a'coming, you have only to read a piece that Gore Vidal wrote for Esquire magazine in July 1961, when the conservative movement was just beginning and even Barry Goldwater was hardly a glint in Republicans' eyes.
Vidal's target was Paul Ryan's idol, and the idol of so many modern conservatives: the trash novelist and crackpot philosopher Ayn Rand, whom Vidal quotes thusly:
"It was the morality of altruism that undercut America and is now destroying her.
"Capitalism and altruism are incompatible; they are philosophical opposites; they cannot co-exist in the same man or in the same society. Today, the conflict has reached its ultimate climax; the choice is clear-cut: either a new morality of rational self-interest, with its consequence of freedom... or the primordial morality of altruism with its consequences of slavery, etc.
"To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men.
"The creed of sacrifice is a morality for the immoral..."
In most quarters, in 1961, this stuff would have been regarded as nearly sociopathic nonsense, but, as Vidal noted, Rand was already gaining adherents: "She has a great attraction for simple people who are puzzled by organized society, who object to paying taxes, who hate the 'welfare state,' who feel guilt at the thought of the suffering of others but who would like to harden their hearts."
Because he was writing at a time when there was still such a thing as right-wing guilt, Vidal couldn't possibly have foreseen what would happen: Ayn Rand became the guiding spirit of the governing party of the United States. Her values are the values of that party. Vidal couldn't have foreseen it because he still saw Christianity as a kind of ineluctable force in America, particularly among small-town conservatives, and because Rand's "philosophy" couldn't have been more anti-Christian. But, then, Vidal couldn't have thought so many Christians would abandon Jesus' teachings so quickly for Rand's. Hearts hardened.
