Ayn Rand Nation: The Hidden Struggle for America's Soul

[Backlighting]

Has anyone read the book? Comments?

http://www.amazon.com/Ayn-Rand-Nation-Struggle-Americas/dp/B00BDHWKRU/

[Peter]

I may buy that book because the reviews and comments seemed positive.

[Peter]

From RANDPAC.

Dear Peter,

I wanted to share with you an op-ed authored by President Reagan's son Michael. Like most Republicans, I'm a big fan of Ronald Reagan. His foreign policy of peace through strength won the Cold War and freed millions from Soviet tyranny. I firmly believe the government's main constitutional duty is to provide for a strong national defense, and I will always act to ensure that. I hope you'll take a few moments to read Michael Reagan's op-ed below on the true nature of President Reagan's foreign policy and the lessons we should apply to current foreign policy.

In liberty, Senator Rand Paul

MICHAEL REAGAN: Rand Paul Gets It

I disagree with some of Rand Paul’s more libertarian positions, especially on social issues. And I’m certainly not endorsing him or anyone else to be the Republican nominee for president at this time. But Sen. Paul of Kentucky did two things recently that won my favor.

He showed the 2,500 conservative activists at the CPAC conference last weekend that he understands what the GOP must do if it wants to take the Senate this fall and win back the White House. And then on Monday he wrote a good column for Breitbart.com calling for his fellow Republican presidential wannabes to, as the headline said, “Stop warping Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy.”

CPAC, as all conservatives and political junkies know, is the annual bathing beauty competition for every Republican who’s ever had a daydream about running for president. Sen. Paul’s brand of libertarian-leaning conservatism has shifted the GOP’s center of gravity his way and everyone at CPAC knew it.

He was the landslide winner in the straw poll, taking 31 percent of the vote. Ted Cruz stumbled in second with 11 percent and neurosurgeon Ben Carson had 9 percent. The media’s favorite conservative, Chris Christie, managed 8 percent. At CPAC Sen. Paul had a personal victory, but he also did the right thing for the GOP. He went out of his way to give his full support to fellow Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, who’s up for reelection. It wasn’t because Sen. Paul is moving to the McConnell center of the GOP, it was because he wants his party to win the U.S. Senate in the fall. A Republican Senate is Prize Number One. Making friends and cementing cracks in the party is what’s most important right now and Sen. Paul understands that side of the equation.

In his Breitbart column he did two good things. He reminded his more bellicose fellow presidential competitors that their hero Ronald Reagan was a peacemaker and a negotiator, not a war-maker. Saying he admired Ronald Reagan because he “was not rash or reckless with regard to war,” Sen. Paul pointed out that my father, who believed in “Peace Through Strength,” was attacked harshly by the hawks in the Republican Party. He was called an appeaser for meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev in Iceland and for pulling American forces out of Lebanon after 241 Marines died in the suicide bombing there in 1983.

In his column Sen. Paul also told conservative Republicans something else they need to remember — something I’ve spent half my life preaching and he has been practicing. Sen. Paul wrote that he doesn’t claim to be the next Ronald Reagan and will not engage in disparaging his fellow Republicans for “not being sufficiently Reaganesque.” But, he said, no doubt thinking of Sen. Ted Cruz, “I will remind anyone who thinks we will win elections by trashing previous Republican nominees or holding oneself out as some paragon in the mold of Reagan, that splintering the party is not the route to victory.”

Splintering itself is something the GOP has become really good at doing. The 2012 presidential primary was a cluster suicide mission for conservative Republicans, which is why Moderate Mitt was the last candidate standing. Then, because 25 percent of evangelicals stayed home in November rather than vote for Romney, we ended up with “The Obama Horror, Part 2.”

Liberals speak with one voice. Conservatives are a squabbling family of factions — social conservatives, economic conservatives and libertarian conservatives. But if conservatives of all stripes want the GOP to win in 2016 they have to come together and pick their best candidate early, then let the party moderates fight among themselves and split their votes.

That’s what happened in 1980. My father was the only conservative in the primary and he got to watch as the George H.W. Bush moderates and Rockefeller Republicans beat each other up and split their votes.

That’s the way it should work in 2016 — after the GOP takes the Senate.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Joe,

About Ayn Rand Nation by Gary Weiss, here are some links below. I'm providing them as an informal resource of sorts, not to imply anything about you because you missed the discussions (like, "Hey, you dummy!" or that kind of thing. ). It's good you started a new thread.

Adam (Selene) started a discussion about it in February 2012 here. There are videos of Weiss on that thread.

Jerry Biggers started a small discussion about it in March 2012 here.

Around the same time, Dennis Hardin started a thread here. (George Smith had some choice things to say about Weiss .) Dennis also made an interesting post in another thread about it here.

I mentioned it at the beginning of 2013 here. I had just finished reading it and was going to write a review--I have a lot of notes I took, but Neil Parille was writing a review for JARS. So I decided to wait a while in order not to rain on his parade.

Here is the announcement of Neil's JARS review and a few more comments.

There are probably some other references to it throughout OL. And I probably should put my own review on my writing plate now. It's an important book in terms of journalistic-like interviews with different RandLand people from around America at the start of the Tea Party revolution. (The Tea Party and the 2010 election disaster for ObamaLand is what I think motivated Weiss to write it.)

Buy the book on Amazon with this link and OL gets a few pennies : Ayn Rand Nation: The Hidden Struggle for America's Soul by Gary Weiss - There are 51 reader reviews as of this posting.

Gary Weiss's site: Gary Weiss, author of AYN RAND NATION

Review by Victor Sperandeo on TAS: Book Review: "Ayn Rand Nation" By Gary Weiss

Review by Roberto Brian Sarrionandia on The Objective Standard: Ayn Rand Nation: The Hidden Struggle for America’s Soul by Gary Weiss

Review by Daniel Luzer at Columbia Journalism Review: Taking Tea with Ayn Rand

Review by Ellid at Daily Kos: Ayn Rand Nation: The Hidden Struggle for America’s Soul by Gary Weiss

I was going to stop here, but I saw the following review pop up at my pal Danny Barnes's site (hi Danny if you ever read this Never called you "Danny" before, but they say it doesn't hurt after the first time ):

Review by Greg Nyquist at Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature blog: Review of Weiss' "Ayn Rand Nation"

For those interested, there's a lot more stuff out there.

Google is your friend.

Michael

[Backlighting]

Joe,

About Ayn Rand Nation by Gary Weiss, here are some links below. I'm providing them as an informal resource of sorts, not to imply anything about you because you missed the discussions (like, "Hey, you dummy!" or that kind of thing. ). It's good you started a new thread.

Adam (Selene) started a discussion about it in February 2012 here. There are videos of Weiss on that thread.

Jerry Biggers started a small discussion about it in March 2012 here.

Around the same time, Dennis Hardin started a thread here. (George Smith had some choice things to say about Weiss .) Dennis also made an interesting post in another thread about it here.

I mentioned it at the beginning of 2013 here. I had just finished reading it and was going to write a review--I have a lot of notes I took, but Neil Parille was writing a review for JARS. So I decided to wait a while in order not to rain on his parade.

Here is the announcement of Neil's JARS review and a few more comments.

There are probably some other references to it throughout OL. And I probably should put my own review on my writing plate now. It's an important book in terms of journalistic-like interviews with different RandLand people from around America at the start of the Tea Party revolution. (The Tea Party and the 2010 election disaster for ObamaLand is what I think motivated Weiss to write it.)

Buy the book on Amazon with this link and OL gets a few pennies : Ayn Rand Nation: The Hidden Struggle for America's Soul by Gary Weiss - There are 51 reader reviews as of this posting.

Gary Weiss's site: Gary Weiss, author of AYN RAND NATION

Review by Victor Sperandeo on TAS: Book Review: "Ayn Rand Nation" By Gary Weiss

Review by Roberto Brian Sarrionandia on The Objective Standard: Ayn Rand Nation: The Hidden Struggle for America’s Soul by Gary Weiss

Review by Daniel Luzer at Columbia Journalism Review: Taking Tea with Ayn Rand

Review by Ellid at Daily Kos: Ayn Rand Nation: The Hidden Struggle for America’s Soul by Gary Weiss

I was going to stop here, but I saw the following review pop up at my pal Danny Barnes's site (hi Danny if you ever read this Never called you "Danny" before, but they say it doesn't hurt after the first time ):

Review by Greg Nyquist at Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature blog: Review of Weiss' "Ayn Rand Nation"

For those interested, there's a lot more stuff out there.

Google is your friend.

Michael

Michael,

Many thanks for all that.

Didn't know they existed. Didn't know the book was published until a couple days ago.

You're a top shelf consigliere:)

-Joe

[Backlighting]

Michael said "Liberals speak with one voice. Conservatives are a squabbling family of factions"

So true. Just like the five families.

[moralist]

"...splintering the party is not the route to victory.”

Amen.

A 100% ideologically pure candidate is an unattainable utopia.

Real world is the best guy with the best chance of defeating the Democrats.

Greg

[Peter]

An 85 to 100% ideologically pure candidate is for the primary. In the real world the best guy with the best chance of defeating the Democrats is to be voted for. So it really stumps me why such a large minority of the social conservatives refused to vote for Romney for religious reasons. I also have a peeve about Peikoff’s endorsements of Progressives to split the Executive and Legislative branches. Think of these names: Dewey, Goldwater, Ford, Dole, McCain, Romney. Would all freedom lovers now understand they were the better candidate versus the Progressives, Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Clinton, Obama, etc.?

When and if the current frontrunner Rand Paul is running in the primary in 2016, ALL OF US need to recognize what will be used against him: his ties to Ayn Rand – and his isolationism. For instance, when he was running for the Senate he mentioned Rand’s argument that a restaurant owner need not serve anyone he does not like, which most likely will be interpreted correctly as meaning some minority (and not someone without “a shirt and shoes” as many businesses in a beach resort town, like Ocean City, Maryland and New Jersey do.)

I hope we all communicate to the Rand campaign when the air heats up. Four-wormed is four armed, as Mr. Malaprop might say.

[moralist]

An 85 to 100% ideologically pure candidate is for the primary. In the real world the best guy with the best chance of defeating the Democrats is to be voted for. So it really stumps me why such a large minority of the social conservatives refused to vote for Romney for religious reasons.

It's because they're stupid.

I would still have voted for Romney even if he was a freaking Wiccan.

When and if the current frontrunner Rand Paul is running in the primary in 2016, ALL OF US need to recognize what will be used against him: his ties to Ayn Rand – and his isolationism. For instance, when he was running for the Senate he mentioned Rand’s argument that a restaurant owner need not serve anyone he does not like, which most likely will be interpreted correctly as meaning some minority (and not someone without “a shirt and shoes” as many businesses in a beach resort town, like Ocean City, Maryland and New Jersey do.)

I hope we all communicate to the Rand campaign when the air heats up. Four-wormed is four armed, as Mr. Malaprop might say.

Rand will make a great President.

He gets my money and my vote.

Greg

[Backlighting]

Rand gets my nod. All things considered, he is the best, imo.

[BaalChatzaf]

Rand will make a great President.

He gets my money and my vote.

Greg

Presidents do not possess dictatorial powers (unless Congress lets them). Congress (the House and Senate) consists of the sticky smelly residual one might find at the bottom or rotting barrels. So how well Rand could do is very much dependent on the quality of Congress. I weep for the Republic.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[moralist]

Rand will make a great President.

He gets my money and my vote.

Greg

Presidents do not possess dictatorial powers (unless Congress lets them). Congress (the House and Senate) consists of the sticky smelly residual one might find at the bottom or rotting barrels. So how well Rand could do is very much dependent on the quality of Congress. I weep for the Republic.

Ba'al Chatzaf

The very same American conservative public sentiment that could elect Rand in 2016 could also bury the liberals in 2014. The upcoming elections will be a referendum on how many Americans are still living in America...

...and it will be no end of entertainment to see what happens.... because you couldn't make this stuff up.

Greg

[Peter]

Bob wrote:

Congress (the House and Senate) consists of the sticky smelly residual one might find at the bottom or rotting barrels. So how well Rand could do is very much dependent on the quality of Congress. I weep for the Republic.

end quote

I hope the Congressional residue is from fermenting whiskey barrels and not trash cans. I enjoy the taste and concept of deliberately rotted yogurt, booze, beer, aged meat, sour kraut, sour cream, and vinegar.

Does anyone have a strategy if we get a Republican House and Senate, and for the time immediately after, when we enter the primary season starting in 2015? Rand Paul needs some advice. Lately, I have tried to email him to “stop putting his nose into a woman’s reproductive life,” but he is not receiving any mail at this time. I know Rand Paul’s anti-abortion stance is what he and his Dad think, and he needs the social conservative’s vote, but I think his very vocal stance is putting the young women’s vote at risk - again. I remember Romney’s first three month window wobble, cost him votes. Rand Paul could hold an anti abortion stance “personally” without attacking Roe v. Wade in the first trimester, and NOT CYNICALLY receive the votes he deserves.

[BaalChatzaf]

The very same American conservative public sentiment that could elect Rand in 2016 could also bury the liberals in 2014. The upcoming elections will be a referendum on how many Americans are still living in America...

...and it will be no end of entertainment to see what happens.... because you couldn't make this stuff up.

Greg

Dream on.

[moralist]

The very same American conservative public sentiment that could elect Rand in 2016 could also bury the liberals in 2014. The upcoming elections will be a referendum on how many Americans are still living in America...

...and it will be no end of entertainment to see what happens.... because you couldn't make this stuff up.

Greg

Dream on.

It's just an opinion of what I think might happen, Bob. But it will be great entertainment no matter what happens. Election years are always so much fun!

Greg

[jts]

The very same American conservative public sentiment that could elect Rand in 2016 could also bury the liberals in 2014. The upcoming elections will be a referendum on how many Americans are still living in America...

...and it will be no end of entertainment to see what happens.... because you couldn't make this stuff up.

Greg

Dream on.

It's just an opinion of what I think might happen, Bob. But it will be great entertainment no matter what happens. Election years are always so much fun!

Greg

It doesn't much matter which ass hole gets elected. You always get the same shit.

[moralist]

The very same American conservative public sentiment that could elect Rand in 2016 could also bury the liberals in 2014. The upcoming elections will be a referendum on how many Americans are still living in America...

...and it will be no end of entertainment to see what happens.... because you couldn't make this stuff up.

Greg

Dream on.

It's just an opinion of what I think might happen, Bob. But it will be great entertainment no matter what happens. Election years are always so much fun!

Greg

It doesn't much matter which ass hole gets elected. You always get the same shit.

Not always...

No calamity is uniformly experienced. Whether or not you become collateral damage all depends on where and how you live.

Greg