It turns out, young Bruce Ramsey over at the Seattle Times isn’t the only big kid to publicly promote Ayn Rand’s novels this week. Seems that in an effort to impress his father, little daddy’s boy Rand Paul offered up a book report on Anthem on the Senate floor yesterday.
It’s a good first effort (public speaking is hard, guys!). But someone should remind Rand that a good book report is more than just a boring plot summary—he should try to apply a little critical thought to the text, to engage the author in a dialogue, rather than just feebly accepting everything at face value.
Obama: They want to give people like me a $200,000 tax cut that’s paid for by asking 33 seniors to each pay $6000 more in health costs?
Little Boy Rand: But an objectivist Southerner like myself knows that Freedom only exists when you can enslave the other 99.9 percent of the people.
You aren’t going to fool me this time, Constant. That’s no child!
Anthem is bloody awful but at least it, unlike Atlas Sharted, isn’t stolen from a Little Orphan Annie story arc.
Yes, he should do that, Paul. As should you… Though, I understand not wanting to open this up to another tired take down of the philosophy of the stupid. Tedious–like criticizing the epistemic foundations of religious faith. Engaging in a critical analysis of objectivism grants it importance that it simply doesn’t merit, but linking to “substantive” criticisms (which you haven’t, really) and failing to provide your own is dismissiveness that flirts with intellectual laziness.
Government regulating people choice, wow rand I guess you missed the point of government. Minors can’t buy cigarettes, I can’t drive without a license, I can’t even go through security for a plane without getting my knob slobbed. His argument has nothing to do with the law, he could say the same thing for any law or initiative, “we should have the choice, how can the government force us to do something?” THAT’S THEIR MOTHERFUCKING JOB.
Shaken baby syndrome.