Saturday, November 22, 2008

'Vulgar Randism'

From Digby here.

It's heating up. . . .

I don't believe in banning books or censoring curriculum, but just because Atlas Shrugged is a nauseatingly puerile exercise in hot capitalist fantasy doesn't mean it doesn't contain some dangerous and powerful ideas that need to be taken seriously and countered systematically. It's very bad for our culture for that piece of trash to be so influential. The Randians are donating millions of books to high schools and endowing chairs at universities to sell this pernicious protection racket for the malefactors of great wealth. Far more people have been exposed to this received conservative wisdom than have even a bare knowledge of Karl Marx (or Adam Smith.) It's not just another bad romance novel.

See here. As I mentioned in an earlier post, Alan Greenspan is--or was--a Randian and has, since the financial meltdown he helped precipitate, admitted the error of his ways.

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