She Just Sounds Like a Nut

Today's Wall Street Journal features Stephen Moore's interview with the Republican challenger to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, Tea Party favorite Sharron Angle:  Writes Moore:

Liberal groups and Mr. Reid are gleeful that a "right wing extremist" has won the GOP nomination. At a recent fund raising dinner for the majority leader in Las Vegas, President Barack Obama labeled her "extreme, even for a Republican." Some Republicans privately grumble that she may be unelectable because of her staunchly conservative stands. And to be sure, some of her positions, such as banning fluoridated water or providing massages to rehabilitate convicts, seem a bit, well, odd.

But is she the kook Mr. Reid portrays her as in his TV ads?

I met with Mrs. Angle twice, first in Washington, D.C., late last month, then again during the Freedomfest conference last week in Las Vegas. In person, she seems anything but a threat to the American way of life. She is petite, has Irish red hair with and a pretty round face. She's friendly, but businesslike, and unlike most politicians, comes across as sincere in her convictions. Her husband, Ted, a 35 year veteran of the Bureau of Land Management (he explains that he's a conservative who worked to protect property rights, not violate them), stands constantly by her side as a confidant and de facto campaign manager.

There never seems to be any shortage of conservative pundits ready assure voters that these candidates from the far right only sound like shrill ignorant nut jobs when they speak in public.  If everyone could just sit down for a one-on-one chat with Sarah Palin or Sharon Angle or Michelle Bachman or George Bush as the pundit has, they would see that they ooze common sense and sincerity.  Pay no attention to candidate Angle who expects doctors to take a chicken in place of a co-pay, Moore and the WSJ are here to assure us once again that irrationality is no disqualifier when it comes to a candidate who will pursue a pro-business agenda.

Isn't It Ironic?

The more I read, the more I am struck by the irony of the title of the Stephen Moore article in the Wall Street Journal that inspired my reading in the first place: Atlas Shrugged: From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years.

When Rand wrote the book, it was complete fiction. America was enjoying a time of unprecedented prosperity in the 1950's despite the ascendancy of the "looters" and "moochers" that Rand so despised. Strong unions and a 90% top marginal tax rate did not destroy the economy or cause industrialists to close their factories and disappear.

In the last thirty years, however, American manufacturing has declined precipitously and the United States has gone from the biggest creditor in the world to its biggest debtor. All this happened as American economic policy turned in favor of Rand's "prime movers" with tax cuts for the wealthy and union bashing.

Atlas Slugged

I am trying to read Ayn Rand's Altas Shrugged. Since I made fun of the Wall Street Journal's Stephen Moore's last month when he recommended it to every member of Congress, I have noticed a number of allusions to Atlas Shrugged from the market pundits on CNBC. This morning, Rick Santelli openly proclaimed himself a Randian true believer.

While there is nothing surprising in finding Rand fans among CNBC pundits who regularly tout the wonders of free markets and the evils of government, I am curious about the frequency with which I have been hearing her referenced recently. It is possible that they have been making such allusions for years and I just never noticed, but I suspect that there is more to it than that. For one thing, the market failures of the last year have discredited many conservative economists forcing ideologues like Santelli and Moore to cite works of fiction as authority for their views.

I also wonder whether the more frequent references to Rand aren't in part a reflection of the breakdown in the coalition between uber-libertarians and conservative Christians that has powered the Republican party since 1980. I have always thought that it must have been rather painful for fans of Rand's militant atheism and her celebration of "prime movers" to suck up to the anti-intellectualism of the Religious Right. I wonder whether the more open embrace of Rand reflects a loss of patience with the bumpkinism of the Palin wing of the party.

I first tried reading Rand when I was in high school because a couple of guys in the chess club assured me that she was the ultimate font of all wisdom. However, rather than starting with one of her novels, I picked up The Virtue of Selfishness and I got bored with it pretty quickly. A couple years ago though, I caught The Fountainhead on cable and I enjoyed it pretty well. When I ran across a copy that my wife had read for some class in college, I decided to give it a try. I found Rand's prose pretty wooden, but imagining Gary Cooper, Patricia Neal and Raymond Massey delivering the dialogure helped a lot. Unfortunately, Atlas Shrugged is 400 pages longer and I don't have any positive associations to help bring this to life.

I am only about seventy pages in so far and I can't count the number of times that I have cringed in pain at the sledgehammer subtlety with which Rand drives home her themes. I had figured out pretty early that the character of the composer Richard Halley would be a paragon of misunderstood creative individualism like the architect Howard Roark in The Fountainhead. However, Rand takes no chances:

"The music of Richard Halley has a quality of the heroic. Our age has outgrown
that stuff," said one critic. "The music of Richard Halle is out of key with our
times. It has a tone of ecstasy. Who cares of ecstasy nowadays?" said another.

Ouch! Ouch! Alright! I get it, Ayn. I get it! Genius is unappreciated and resented by the masses. It is the one great truth that all high school chess club members understand.

Ayn Randian Douchebaggery from the WSJ's Moore

Saturday's Wall Street Journal carried a column by senior economics writer Stephen Moore titled 'Atlas Shrugged': From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years. Despite the column's title, I am not at all sure that Moore ever thought of Rand's novel as fiction:

Some years ago when I worked at the libertarian Cato Institute, we used to label any new hire who had not yet read "Atlas Shrugged" a "virgin." Being conversant in Ayn Rand's classic novel about the economic carnage caused by big government run amok was practically a job requirement. If only "Atlas" were required reading for every member of Congress and political appointee in the Obama administration. I'm confident that we'd get out of the current financial mess a lot faster.

You know what else would have been great Steve? In 1964, it would have been great if every member of Congress had read Gone With The Wind before they voted on the Civil Rights Act. Then they might have realized how much happier Blacks were when their masters took care of them in the good old days before Northern carpetbaggers filled their heads with crazy notions about voting and going to decent schools.