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Sunday 19 August 2012

The American right’s individualist roots, which it shares with so many of the rest of us, are too deeply rooted for the kind of collectivism and state worship popular in European fascism. No mass marches in unison and in uniform have any appeal for most of our right wingers. The American right’s love of hierarchy and its authoritarian spirit take a different form, one very open to Rand’s version of the Nietzschean “superman” once the moral restraint growing from their earlier belief in natural rights had dwindled away to meaningless incantations. People defending Ayn Rand will object “Wasn’t she a firm defender of individual rights?” No, she wasn’t. Rights matter only when respecting them is inconvenient to the person doing so. When it mattered, Rand tossed away talk of rights as so much hot air. Not only that, as we shall see, she blamed the victims. Ayn Rand’s rights rhetoric was pretty icing atop a cold and hard Nietzschean cake that held the strong should dominate the weak, using them as resources for realizing their dreams. Paul Ryan’s ideal: Ayn Rand and the nihilism of the American right

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