Ayn Rand Takedowns

I know, I know. Its like shooting fish in a barrel.  But the Gods of Humor demand it!

Hitchens on a roll




Scalzi on Atlas Shrugged ("Objectivism: the spongy white bread at the Great Buffet of Human Ideas")

That said, it’s a totally ridiculous book which can be summed up as Sociopathic idealized nerds collapse society because they don’t get enough hugs. (This is, incidentally, where you can start your popcorn munching.) Indeed, the enduring popularity of Atlas Shrugged lies in the fact that it is nerd revenge porn — if you’re an nerd of an engineering-ish stripe who remembers all too well being slammed into your locker by a bunch of football dickheads, then the idea that people like youcould make all those dickheads suffer by “going Galt” has a direct line to the pleasure centers of your brain. I’ll show you! the nerds imagine themselves crying.I’ll show you all! And then they disappear into a crevasse that Google Maps will not show because the Google people are our kind of people, and a year later they come out and everyone who was ever mean to them will have starved. Then these nerds can begin again, presumably with the help of robots, because any child in the post-Atlas Shrugged world who can’t figure out how to run a smelter within ten minutes of being pushed through the birth canal will be left out for the coyotes. Which if nothing else solves the problem of day care.

Matt Taibbi in Griftopia

“To sum it all up, the [Ayn] Rand belief system looks like this:

1. Facts are facts: things can be absolutely right or absolutely wrong, as determined by reason.

2. According to my reasoning, I am absolutely right.

3. Charity is immoral.

4. Pay for your own fucking schools.” 

Harry Potter and the Philospher's Obectivism

“Malfoy bought the whole team brand-new Nimbus Cleansweeps!” Ron said, like a poor person. “That’s not fair!” 

“Everything that is possible is fair,” Harry reminded him gently. “If he is able to purchase better equipment, that is his right as an individual. How is Draco’s superior purchasing ability qualitatively different from my superior Snitch-catching ability? 

“I guess it isn’t,” Ron said crossly. 

Harry laughed, cool and remote, like if a mountain were to laugh. “Someday you’ll understand, Ron.”

How to succeed as an Ayn Rand character

Bob the Angry Flower

Ayn Rand's Lord Of The Rings

In the midst of the commotion, Frodo rose and stood before the council of Elrond. He spoke in a trembling voice:

“I will take the Ring to Mordor, though I do not know the way.”

Elrond stared at him with his endless gray eyes. “If I understand well what you say, you will take the Ring to Mordor, and restore it to its rightful heir — Sauron Barad-dûr.”

“Yes,” said Frodo. “I shall keep the Ring from the foolish parasities who wish to destroy it. For shockingly, many wish to destroy the Ring! They wish to keep the Ring from the rightful ownership of the rugged individualist who made it as his own, in clear violation of the sign of the dollar. For the only role of the state is to protect a man’s property. What a man has made is his and he is under no obligation to help anyone else even if that would be… helpful.”

[...eleventy-thousand pages later...]

Then Frodo stirred and spoke with a clear voice, indeed with a voice clearer and more powerful than Sam had ever heard him use, and it rose above the throb and turmoil of Mount Doom, ringing in the roof and walls.

“I have come,” he said. “But I do not choose now to do what I came to do. I will not do this deed. I will not return the Ring to Sauron Barad-dûr. For though he created the Ring, I have now earned it through labor, which is the means of production. A is A. Labor equals value, thus I am a titan, a creator, a heroic individualist. The Ring is mine!”