Weird News about Ayn Rand and Objectivism

[Jon Letendre]

Not a poo poo head.

A weak-ass little thing, though. A gasligting, can’t discuss anything like an adult when he is challenged in the slightest, delicate little thing. Very delicate.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

3 minutes ago, Jon Letendre said:

Not a poo poo head.

See what I mean?

You keep getting it wrong.

I'm not the poo-poo head.

You're the poo-poo head.

[Jon Letendre]

Max once said you could not ever not have the last word.

“Poo poo” is now all you have,  and we can all see Max was right, you HAVE TO have that last word, even if it is just “poo poo.”

The big noble man who is strictly interested only in ideas HAS to be the last say “poo poo.”

[ThatGuy]

 

Not to throw fuel on the fire, but -ah, screw it; burn baby, burn:

"Rand’s influence on American political thought has been acknowledged by Martin Anderson, Reagan’s chief domestic and economic adviser; Hillary Rodham Clinton; Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve; John Hospers, philosopher and one-time Libertarian Party presidential candidate; perennial GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul; Charles Murray, author of Losing Ground; Robert Nozick, Harvard philosopher and National Book Award winner; and Clarence Thomas, associate justice of the Supreme Court."

Sciabarra, Chris Matthew. Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical . Penn State University Press. Kindle Edition.

 

“High-achieving women from Billy Jean King to Hillary Clinton have testified to their Ayn Rand “phase”…” Judith Wilt, “The Romances of Ayn Rand”, Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand, pg. 195, note 2

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Dear reader.

If you have kept with us up to now (having fun    ), I would like to take a break and talk about the ideas.

This whole kerfuffle is about an earlier post I made about a 2018 article in the Washington Examiner by Ethan Epstein called How Hillary Clinton Is Like Ayn Rand. 

Jon thinks this author understands Rand's ideas correctly. I say he doesn't.

Since Epstein's text is so small, here it is in entirety without the video and images:

Quote

The Hillary Unplugged tour made it to India this week, where the former presidential candidate modified her theory as to why she lost the 2016 election. This time, it wasn’t James Comey, or even “the Russians" that did her in. In fact, it was the Americans. Here is what she said:

[VIDEO OF CLINTON SPEAKING]

Forget the untoward spectacle of Clinton casting all of her opponents as people opposing “black people getting rights.” (There is a staff editorial about that on this website.) What I find particularly interesting is the bizarre strand of Ayn Rand-ism in Clinton’s sentiments.

She boasts, after all, that the areas she won represent “two thirds of America’s gross domestic product.” That’s true: The Democrats have in many respects become the party of America’s economic winners. But what’s odd is that Clinton’s economic analysis quickly becomes a moral judgment. Those Americans stuck in the parts of the country with flagging GDP (those “forgotten Americans,” as Donald Trump called them) aren’t just economically struggling. They are “backwards,” and opposed to civil and women’s rights.

In other words, Clinton’s remarks represent nothing so much as a bizarre strand of Ayn Randism. Clinton, like Rand, seems to be suggesting that “high GDP” people—a.k.a. America’s “producers”—people don’t just have more money than the rest of us. She’s saying they’re better people, too. And as for the Trumpian masses out in low GDP America? What a bunch of “takers!”

Is there a producer class and a taker class in Rand?

Yup. 

Does she attribute moral standing to both?

Yup.

But that's where Jon stops in his evaluation of Epstein's understanding of Rand. And here is what he overlooks as he goes directly into mocking and insulting and so forth.

Epstein said: 

Quote

The Democrats have in many respects become the party of America’s economic winners. 

Now think about why they are the winners. Have the Democrats become producers by manufacturing the car you use, grow the food you eat, make the clothes you wear? Etc.?  No. They cashed in on shipping the jobs and manufacturing of producers overseas and played at the crony corporatism game. 

So, yeah...

They are the winners. But it's a huge stretch to call them producers in a Randian sense.

I don't know where this guy Epstein got the idea that an information society ONLY is a producer society, but that's his unspoken premise.

When one includes software and information services along with industrial and farming goods as "product" as in Gross Domestic Product, I'm OK with that. But when the industrial and farming goods get eliminated and they still talk about the GDP as if it were the same thing, that's crap. Anyone who believes this shows that they don't understand Rand's ideas at all. Just having money to buy goods produced by slave labor overseas is not proof of a high GDP class.

To pretend it is is something I guess, but it's not Rand.

Then the inversion comes with Epstein.

Quote

And as for the Trumpian masses out in low GDP America? What a bunch of “takers!”

In other words, he calls "takers" the masses who were literally looted by real takers who jiggered cartel-like laws to outsource the productive work of said masses to sweatshops overseas, to local-government-protected raw materials sweetheart crony deals, to local government-enforced monopolies, and the like. And they all have to the gall to call that system "trade agreements" when they are merely using pull on a scale Rand never imagined. To add insult to injury, they slapped the word "free" on it as in "free trade." What all that means is crony trade, or even better, looter trade. And they used tariff structures to rig the game further against the looted folks. 

This is James Taggart stuff. Epstein calls the James Taggart folks (the Democrat winners) "the producers" and he calls the looted folks "the takers."

And then we have even more insult to injury. He says that Hillary Clinton is just like Ayn Rand because they both consider the people in their respective higher class "better people" in moral terms and the poor people inferior. 

Well, they both do that, except Clinton considers the looters the better moral people and the looted the inferior.

To Jon, this shows that Clinton is just like Rand. And then he wants to play sniff my balls about it.

I say if he didn't get this point about Epstein's misunderstanding of Rand on a first read, that to Rand the producers, not the looters, are the moral people, he needs to slow down and use his brain (which he has a good one) instead of his vanity.

Anyway, those are the ideas behind what we are talking about.

I'm addressing you, the reader, right now instead of Jon because he's still in "sniff my balls" mode and has no room in his head for ideas when he gets like that.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

33 minutes ago, Jon Letendre said:

Max once said you could not ever not have the last word.

“Poo poo” is now all you have,  and we can all see Max was right, you HAVE TO have that last word, even if it is just “poo poo.”

The big noble man who is strictly interested only in ideas HAS to be the last say “poo poo.”

You're the poo-poo head.

I'm not the poo-poo head.

You are.

[Jon Letendre]

Now do the stupidity of Ludwig Von Mises for finding the same message in Rand that Epstein finds.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

2 minutes ago, Jon Letendre said:

Now do the stupidity of Ludwig Von Mises for finding the same message in Rand that Epstein finds.

I wrote posts about that and the ideas behind it all.

On this very thread.

Read them, then mouth off.

[Jon Letendre]

So, so many cluttering words, though. So painful.

Was Von Mises wrong like Epstein, or not?

[Jon Letendre]

Should we care what Rand herself would think of dressing up as her to answer audience questions?

Does it “count”?

No one has answered.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

3 minutes ago, Jon Letendre said:

So, so many cluttering words, though. So painful.

Was Von Mises wrong like Epstein, or not?

I have no idea what you are talking about.

I've got a damaged brain from drug use.

[Jon Letendre]

And I have voices in my head.

This is obvious from my correct identification of certain messages in Rand’s work.

I wonder what voices Von Mises heard. He also correctly identified certain messages in Rand’s work, therefore he must have heard voices in his head,, right Michael?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Here's another idea for the reader (if you are still with us  ).

This is an important one.

The progressive, Democrats, liberals, etc., always play a game of labels.

They like to take the labels of people they cannot control, adopt those labels, then attribute the opposite meanings to them.

Even the word "liberal" used to mean liberty-oriented people. Not it means big-government control people. They just simply co-opted the label and started using it with the opposite meaning.

This is what happened in Epstein's article above. The label, "producer" was stripped from it's original meaning and applied to crony insider business people and "taker" was applied to actual producers who became poor from being looted.

I think it is a bad idea to allow them to get away with this label inversion game with Rand's labels.

A label is not an idea. A label stands for an idea. 

It's easy to get trapped by this.

But if you focus on ideas and not just labels, at least you have a shot at combating bad ideas.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

It's still a double-dog dare sniff my balls thing.

10 minutes ago, Jon Letendre said:

And I have voices in my head.

You have no idea what my quip meant and you are still playing kindergarten games.

So I will explain it, although I doubt you will grok it in your current state of mind.

I said you set up my quip and I couldn't resist because the set up was too tempting.

Here is what you said to set it up.

1 hour ago, Jon Letendre said:

It is still there.

What the hell are you talking about here?

You're certainly not talking to the reader. 

There are no referents. There's just a big honking "it."

That means you are talking to yourself and posting it with that post. You are not even addressing anyone.

I do that at times and thought it was funny. So I made my quip. You must be talking to a voice in your head to make a post like that. Once again, I do this, too at times. It's a brain fart.

And then here you came acting like a social justice warrior all outraged and shit and demanding a safe space.

Bah...

Got it?

Yeah... well...

I didn't think so.

Michael

[Jon Letendre]

But you didn’t criticize Mises for misidentifying the real producers.

Go back and see.

You objected to him simply for his saying that high producers are the better people, a correct identification of one of the messages in Rand’s work.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

8 minutes ago, Jon Letendre said:

But you didn’t criticize Mises for misidentifying the real producers.

He didn't.

Quoting Mises from your post.

On 3/6/2020 at 3:44 PM, Jon Letendre said:

It is a devastating exposure of the “moral cannibals,” the “gigolos of science” and of the “academic prattle” of the makers of the “anti-industrial revolu- tion.” You have the courage to tell the masses what no politician told them: you are inferior and all the improvements in your conditions which you simply take for granted you owe to the effort of men who are better than you.

Mises is not referring to looters as the superior ones like Epstein did and call them producers.

He is referring to producers in a Randian sense.

After all, he is talking to Rand about her book.

Let's keep mocking and playing poo-poo head because that's more fun than actually looking at the ideas.

Michael

[Jon Letendre]

“There are no referents. Just a big honking “it.”

How about simple context? How about slow down? And how about check the progresssion of the conversation?  Ask what “it” is? Glance up at my previous post?

That’s it! Read the post you purport to respond to before responding!

Let us check my immediately previous post ...

Jon said:

Ethan Epstein did not misrepresent Ayn Rand’s message when he said Killery was Rand-like for emphasizing that she vastly won in high-GDP areas of the country.

Many of her readers, even her hero Ludwig Von Mises, find the same message in her work.

They find it there because it is there.

No quantity of mental gymnastics will change it.

No quantity of laughs will make it go away.

 

Gosh, whatever could “it” be in “It is still there.”? Voices. Nice.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I said you wouldn't get it.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

btw - To my knowledge, Mises never found the message that looters are producers in Rand's work.

Epstein did. Mises never did--at least I never saw it.

[Jon Letendre]

4 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

He didn't.

Quoting Mises from your post.

Mises is not referring to looters as the superior ones like Epstein did and call them producers.

He is referring to producers in a Randian sense.

After all, he is talking to Rand about her book.

Michael

That’s correct, Mises was referring to Randian producers.

He said he liked how she said they are the better people.

[Jon Letendre]

Just now, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

btw - To my knowledge, Mises never found the message that looters are producers in Rand's work.

Epstein did. Mises never did--at least I never saw it.

Correct, Mises is not on record saying Rand said looters are producers.

Thank you for clarifying that.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

3 minutes ago, Jon Letendre said:

That’s correct, Mises was referring to Randian producers.

He said he liked how she said they are the better people.

And I've said that from the very beginning, yet you are on a crusade to correct me about it.

Correct me for what? God only knows. That's in your head, not mine.

And that's a mind game. Not an idea.

And I still will not sniff your balls. After all, the kindergarten games are more fun.

I'm not the poo-poo head.

You're the poo-poo head.

Michael

[Jon Letendre]

Why did you go personal again?

So that message about the better people really is in Rand’s work?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

8 minutes ago, Jon Letendre said:

Correct, Mises is not on record saying Rand said looters are producers.

Thank you for clarifying that.

Well, we all know Hillary Clinton is just like Ayn Rand, right?

You can play games with labels, but I'm not letting the ideas go.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

1 minute ago, Jon Letendre said:

Why did you go personal again?

Because I'm not the poo-poo head.

You're the poo-poo head.