The Myth of John Galt

“We never think entirely alone: we think in company, in a vast collaboration; we work with the workers of the past and of the present. [Across] the whole intellectual world, each one finds in those about him the initiation, help, verification, [and] encouragement that he needs”

Antoine Sertillanges, La vie intellectuelle, 1920

No one knows who it was that first discovered iron, but legend has it that a man named Magnes who lived in an area of Greece called Magnesia was the first to notice the phenomena of magnetism. His dog was probably named ‘Maggie’.

Less legendary are the writings of Lucretius and Pliny the Elder[i]. Later, it was Hans Oersted who showed that magnetism was related to electricity, and it was left to Maxwell to codify the phenomena and establish the basis for the electromagnetic theory.

From there, it was a whole cast of actors, over many years, each making their own contribution, that lead to the innovation of the electric motor[ii]. John Galt, hero of Ayn Rand’s second-rate work of fiction, Atlas Shrugged, ‘took’ these ideas and incorporated them into his imaginary ‘static motor’.

The same dynamic occurred with respect to machine bearings, without which any motor would be worthless.

Henry Timken is credited with the invention of the roller bearing, and was awarded patent number 606635 by the United States patent office[iii]. But roller bearings were actually invented thousands of years before Timken was even a twinkle in his mother’s eyes.

The first use of roller bearings was by the ancient Egyptians, to build the pyramids. And even they couldn’t have made use of the idea without the invention of trees, and there’s no consensus on who invented them.

One can now extrapolate this theme of continuity to the invention of Reardenite.

The point of all this is that no one stands alone in space and time, no solitary figure changes the course of history. And, when there is a need, someone will step in to fill that need.

Rand, who claims to espouse values that can only be derived through logic and observation, fails to notice the continuity of the innovative dynamic: one person improves upon another’s work; one person sees the possibilities that others overlook, or one person combines the work of several others and ends up with an entirely new product.

In each case, as it is in reality, one adds to what’s already there, made possible only because that previous person did the same thing. Collectively (that word!) this is called history, which is a function of reality, unlike Galt, which is not.

None of this would matter if not for the many acolytes of this 3rd rate fantasy. Too many of our current policy makers and influencer's read the silliness that is Atlas Shrugged (usually while at a young age, more susceptible flights of fancy) and decided that she’s right. And worse. Among many of Ayn’s acolytes are those who cherry-pick aspects of her worldview, discarding the very threads of logic that would otherwise make it whole. 

In the same way that the flu spreads from one person to another, so has Rand’s self-defeating philosophy spread, and the result is that today we have many people in our society who fancy themselves as clones of Galt, who espouse her philosophy.

Paul Ryan fits this bill. This man is in a position to affect every person in the country, yet demonstrates no abilities that would legitimately place him there. Sure, he’s graduated college, but he parasitically used his father’s Social Security benefits to so. And, true, he has managed to get himself elected to congress. So did Gopher, from The Love Boat. So, no bragging allowed.

The personal independence that the philosophy embraces would not be possible without the sacrifices and hard work of those who came before, in many cases the sacrifice of others was a product of altruism, a despised activity in her constructed universe.

Never mind that many of these same people have never accomplished anything on their own, at the time the book was read by them, and therefore had no real-life experience to compare the fiction to. For someone such as Ayn Rand, who repudiates the philosophy she’s invented through the sheer implausibility of the notion of the ‘independent man’, to inspire others to a pretended state of independence, the irony of it all is invisible and therefore unreal.

Just like John Galt.

[i] http://www.howmagnetswork.com/history.html
[ii] For a very well defined and interesting timeline of the electric motor, see http://www.eti.kit.edu/english/1376.php and http://www.eti.kit.edu/english/1390.php
[iii] http://inventors.findthebest.com/q/387/2770/When-did-the-famous-inventor-Henry-Timken-invent-Roller-Bearing-for-Vehicles-Roller-Bearing-Tapered-Roller-Bearings

A Is Not A and Contradictions Do Not Exist

In Ayn Rand’s second-rate effort at creating a fictional world, “Atlas Shrugged”, the ‘producers’ (or ‘creative minds’ as Ayn would say) decide to punish the ‘moochers’ (or ‘reactive minds, as L.Ron Hubbard would say), not for actually mooching, as one might expect, but for not showing adequate appreciation for the producers’ efforts, all the while contradicting what is (or should be – according to the fantasy world Rand has set up) incontrovertible.

I’ll give you a moment here.

That is to say, if money, as the Randian ethos commands, is the most important metric[1] (Rand was known to wear a dollar sign brooch and a six-foot dollar sign was on display at her funeral[2]) in which to measure the worth of a person’s life, then the heroes of Atlas Shrugged are guilty of abrogating the most important tenet of her writing: Reason.

Reason dictates (according to Rand and her acolytes[3],[4],[5],[6]) that people must pursue their own self-interests, and that altruism is anathema[7]. Therefore ‘Going Galt’ is, in realty, an act of financial suicide (or at least, self-cutting). It also leaves the so-called ‘moochers’ control of the means of production. In other words, it is a gift.

Who then, are they really punishing? They left their railroads and all their other 1920’s era steam-punk production capacity in the hands of lesser beings, now the newly-minted next-generation of ‘productive minds’ who can’t be expected to withstand the pressure from the ‘moochers’ any better than they themselves could. The only real losers in this scenario are those occupying Galt’s Gulch.

Why any of this matters at all is because it illustrates well how distorted, and backward, many of the self-proclaimed adherents to Rand’s philosophy (particularly those holding public office, and even a few weasels too timid to run for office - yet demand inclusion to public discussions) act in real life. What’s worse, they seem not to be able to understand how wrong they’ve gotten their dear philosophy.

That’s not all their fault because Rand herself gets confused about it. If everything worth thinking or feeling should be the product of reason, how can she explain the irrational response of the ‘producers’ to go on ‘strike’, which will cost them money (the only true metric in life) just so they can punish the ‘moochers’ for not appreciating them more?

When did Rand assign appreciation value? Well, she never says it directly in any of her writings, but there it is in abundance at Galt’s Gulch. At least one pseudo-Randian values gratitude (and love), even while bitching he doesn’t get any.

That’s because despite all the chest-thumping and declarations of self-reliance and the refusal to acknowledge the need for those one looks down on[8], people, even those that inhabit Rand’s second-rate fiction, desire the acknowledgment, if not outright love, of other human beings.

As far as this silly notion that the captains of industry would ever ‘Go Galt’ – they already have – but they haven't gone all in.

After Obama was elected some claimed that this was exactly what some industries where doing – “Going Galt” was the term used[9], and it truly seemed that this was the case. If so, they were, in real life, purposefully diminishing their own worth.

I’ve noticed more than a few people talk about how they were ‘blown away’ or otherwise impressed with Rand’s work when they first encountered it, whether early in life or not, though usually the younger they were, the more they were impressed[10].

That’s exactly what happened with Paul Ryan. Though he’s tried to make the claim that his devotion to Rand is an ‘urban myth’, a Rand-style contradiction in itself.[11].

Rand’s philosophy has turned out to far more pliable and fertile than she could have meant it to be: A is A, but it is also not A. Contradictions do and do not exist.

Maybe she’s a better writer than I give her credit for.

[1] http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/fountainhead/context.html
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/1982/03/10/nyregion/followers-of-ayn-rand-provide-a-final-tribute.html
[3] http://paulryan.house.gov/
[4] http://www.paul.senate.gov/
[5] http://joshblackman.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/ayn-rand-school-tots.png
[6] http://www.atr.org/grover-norquist-a3016
[7] SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on Atlas Shrugged.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2003. Web. 30 Apr. 2014.
[8] “Ayn Rand and the World She Made”, Anne C. Heller 2009. Random House, NY
[9] http://washingtonindependent.com/32772/battling-obama-by-going-galt
[10] Ibid.
[11] National Review April 26, 2012

Paul Ryan: April's Fool

Paul Ryan has produced yet another budget plan, this one supposedly will balance the federal budget by 2024.

The budget, says Ryan, is “consistent with America’s military goals and strategies”.

Who’s to say that even if he has somehow been able to place the stylus at the right spot in the groove, that a new administration won’t change records once elected?

For this budget to make any sense, however, it relies on repealing the ACA. Cheese and rice, Ryan, don’t you understand that the ACA is here to stay? Can’t you wrap your mind around the fact that you and your republican blinder-wearers have lost this battle? Forty, maybe 50 votes that failed to repeal the act and you still seem to think it could happen?

Hell, there are countless ways any of us would like to turn back time, as Ryan is trying here. Personally, I regret that first cashew I had. Things have never been the same.

This is something I think is the as yet unspoken desire – to undo what some would call progress, like unemployment compensation, or even job creation mature enough to actually create jobs. I mean in this country.

I guess it could happen. Right after Ayn Rand rises from the dead and becomes his running mate.

The budget does provide for increased military spending, there’s no surprise there, considering that this generation of republicans seem only interested in going to war, and staying there. Care to place any bets on whether there’s increased funding for veteran’s benefits?

There are some things, according to the New York Times article, that I can live without: subsidies for the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Corporation for Public Bradcasting. I’m not thrilled about it, but I can deal with it. But not eliminating funding for the Clean Technology and Strategic Climate Fund.

Ryan says of the latter that it is “not a core U.S. foreign policy function”. Neither is corporate welfare subsidies, and I say if we have yet even more money for that, we can spend some money on clean air and water.

This is how we live now because of the tantrums thrown by this generation of republicans. Remember how, even with their different philosophies, there was always a core set of pols from either party who would, after a spate of jockeying, would sit down like adults, accept that you can’t always have everything exactly your own way and that you might have to live with a compromise, and actually do the people’s work?

But none of any of this matters one bit, as this last incarnation isn’t really a serious budget plan, it’s more like making a wild bluff at the start of a poker game, it’s meant only to throw your opponents off their square, to place them en prise.

Ryan's Hope

In a surprise move, Christian Schneider, the republican lapdog columnist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has come out to declare that Paul Ryan, of the ‘inner city culture’ fiasco, is the real victim of his latest verbal blunder.

In his Sunday, March 23 column, Schneider sets about trying to dislodge Rep. Paul Ryan’s foot from his mouth, as Ryan has demonstrated his inability to accomplish this feat on his own. Makes one wonder: How is it that this Captain of Individualism can’t even talk his way out of a mess he made on his own? Apparently, this spokesman for bootstrapism needs a helping hand.

Enter Christian Schneider, Conservative fixer.

If you haven’t already heard about it, here’s the statement that caused Ryan’s foot to become lodged in his mouth this time:

“We have got this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning to value the culture of work.”

In his column, Schneider compares that quote from Ryan to this quote from President Obama. See if you can pick out the big difference.

“in troubled neighborhoods all across this country – many of them heavily African-American – too few of our citizens have role models to guide them, “ and that “we know young black men are twice as likely as young white men to be ‘disconnected’ – not in school, not working.”

Schneider, who earlier in the column suggested that statements such as the one Ryan’s made are ‘dog whistles’ once only heard by a persons’ supporters, but now are something your opponents hear. Having said that, he then bemoans the notion that none of Obama’s supporters heard his statement as dog whistle. (For Pete's sake, Christian, can you at least try to follow your own logic?)

Did anyone see the big difference between the two statements?

In Obama’s, he didn’t try to masquerade who he was talking about, which is what happens when someone’s being forthright and is trying to be helpful. Ryan, on the other hand, for whatever reason, felt he had to cloak his real meaning in code, which is what happens when someone’s attempting stealth.

The fact that yet another right-wing Tea-Partying nut-job spouted off about other people not pulling their weight (Ryan, you plan on giving back that Social Security money that put you through school anytime soon?) isn’t what got people’s dander in an uproar.

No, it was his uber-lame attempt at backpedaling that did that.

Ryan channels Nathan Thurm in this pathetic effort turn the heat down:

"This isn’t a race based comment it’s a breakdown of families, it’s rural poverty in rural areas, and talking about where poverty exists—there are no jobs and we have a breakdown of the family. This has nothing to do with race."

See? I meant rural! Only the most rabid bleeding heart liberal could contort and construe what Ryan actually said about rural communities into a sick, disgusting statement about inner city black folks. Geez, agenda much, Lefty?

He also talks about the various government programs designed to lift people out of poverty over the last 50 years, forgetting that during the last 30 or so years, the right has managed to shackle many of those programs.

He also thinks that there is one ultimate solution – because a real solution would have done the trick – there should be no more poverty. He’s obviously never heard of a guy named Markov.

Schneider closes his column with an admonishment that if we keep pursuing the same policies, we’ll end up with the same results.

He may as well have been talking about the Trickle-Down policies of the last 30 years.

Falling Hard While Falling Short

You hear an awful lot from politicians, conservatives mostly, of how important the private sector is and how the public sector should be eschewed. They seem to forget, exactly as they are speaking those words, that they themselves are working in the public sector.

Maybe the reason we hear this repeated so often from conservatives is that they really do know how hard it is to work in the private sector and they’re trying their best to avoid it by getting elected or, if already in office, to stay there.

And, if not public office, at least a friendly think tank assignment.

It is a dog-eat-dog world, after all.

By working in the private sector, one can focus their talents on practicing self reliance and avoid the temptations of receiving public benefits of any sort, gumption...bootstraps...get up and go (but not this kind). 

So the narrative goes. Sounds good, at least at first blush. Yet, how come so many of those that espouse this philosophy do not adhere to it themselves?

Paul Ryan, a front-runner for a leadership position on the Hypocratic Party, is an excellent example of this phenomena. He works hard to try to deny others' government benefits that he was able to take advantage of. Then, he used the education he got to largely avoid working in the private sector. Why?

Could it be that Ryan feels it’s a lot easier to tell other people how to live, what to do, than to live up to those ideals himself?

Ayn Rand’s name often comes up (she is his hero), when someone invariably mentions the ‘makers’ and the ‘takers’, as Ryan has been known to do. It turns out she herself became a taker in her later years, receiving both Social Security and Medicare, after railing against any form of government assistance, yet she saw no irony in it, when she needed it.

Imagine. The Queen of Self Reliance relying on someone other than herself.

(One of Rand's biggest followers, Nathan Blumenthal (who went by 'Nathaniel Branden', in order to incorporate Rand's name in his) had an affair with Ayn and after he lost interest in the John Birch Society's pin-up girl, began seeing another someone who wasn't his wife. Ayn found out, excommunicated him, which led him to contemplate whether the "Collective" (Ayn's ironic term for her inner circle of friends) would try to assassinate him. Fun group, no doubt.)

This begs the question: If it’s okay to take Social Security, Medicaid, etc. with the justification that your own money was put into it and therefore, one is entitled (I apologize for my language - I hope there are no children in the room) to it, okay...okay – but then you have to stop criticizing others (like Ryan does, but spares any criticism of Rand) who are receiving, or have received, Social Security.

If, on the other hand, you maintain the position that Rand became a ‘taker’, then you must denounce her and her philosophy and never repeat it again.

We also have another member of the Hypocratic Party, Ron Johnson, purported job creator, famed Tea Partier, is another candidate for Hypocratic Party leader. This former CEO of Pacur LLC, a company which received a $75,000 federal grant in 1979 and between 1983 and 1985 used industrial development bonds to fund plant expansion.

Ron Johnson, Senator from Wisconsin, is an admirer of Rand. He's another pretender, posing as a self-resourceful businessman who tries hard to make it sound like he's all bootstrap. Except he isn't. He claims that he and his brother-in-law started Pacur. while this claim is technically true, it is also only technically true. The new company had in reality been in operation, and simply took it's one customer and re-named itself.

Again, nothing wrong with this, and at least it is in the private sector. Yet to hear Johnson talk about it, he make it sound as if he did it on his own. The reality is that he caught a break through the public assistance with loans and grants. That, and marrying a woman who's family had a thriving business didn't hurt, either.

And there, right there, is the rub. Both Johnson and Ryan caught a break and that break is what made the difference in their lives, and surely in the lives of their respective families as well. Others who would benefit from the benefits Ryan got, for instance, wouldn’t be able to leverage those ‘breaks’ as well as he did because we all don’t come from wealthy families to begin with. This group would be using that money to survive, not to thrive.

But if you get a break that’s available to anyone and after you get that break and no longer need it, you fight to deny that same break to others who do need it and are currently in the same boat you were in when you got it, is hypocrisy.

When you hold a position of power from where you can achieve that goal of denying other’s what you once had, then you are in the lead for the Hypocratic Party’s nomination.

Looking For Love

When we hear of the latest gaffe made by some politician, usually on the right, we all chuckle a bit at the apparent cluelessness that’s on display. It’s fun when a politician says something stupid or downright inane, it shows them, intellectual warts and all, and it reinforces the idea that maybe these big shots aren’t so high and mighty after all. It’s fun to watch other people make asses out of themselves, especially when they take themselves so seriously.

It’s the reason I watch primary debates.

Yet when these sort of comments are uttered in the heat of a political campaign, it seems to us so insipid of them to not understand that people are listening, and many are waiting for the chance to pounce on some verbal flub. For some, it’s the way they make their living and they’re counting on it to happen.

So when someone says that ‘married women can’t be raped by their husbands’ or that poverty is due to ‘inner city’ culture, it’s invariably followed by a near instantaneous onslaught of attention, mostly on the internet.

Can it be that these pols really are such intellectual lightweights and simply don’t understand why people sit up and take notice when saying some of the things they say? Or, is it because they are so rabid in their beliefs that they can’t understand why their statements aren’t taken as gospel and received with widespread acclaim and standing ovations?

It’s neither. What it is, is advertising.

In the current state of politics in the U.S. with endless election cycles, those aspiring for higher public office have to get noticed. To utter something outrageous is a calculated effort to be seen and heard.

In doing so, they differentiate themselves in some way from the rest of the pack. And, because campaign politics, primary campaign politics especially, is an exercise in ruthlessness and raw ambition if nothing else, even getting noticed for something bad is better than not getting noticed at all.

So when a Paul Ryan says that when we feed a hungry kid, we’re actually doing him long-term harm, he says that not so much because that’s how he feels (although that may be the case as well) but because he knows that that’s what that audience wants to hear, and no marks need be given or taken away for lack of accuracy.

Take the instance of Mitch McConnell taking the stage at CPAC’s 'open-mic nights' bearing a shotgun. What he’s communicating is ‘see, fellas, I’m one of you’. For history buffs, there's Richard Nixon and his peace sign wavery. Let’s not forget to wear our flag lapel pins either, and by the way, mine’s bigger than yours.

They are merely heeding Nixon’s (again with Nixon!) famous advice: If you’re a Democrat in a primary, run to the left. And if you’re a Republican in a primary, run to the right. Both should run towards the center in the general election.

And many have taken his advice, because as weird as Nixon was, he was not a stupid man. The problem is that in our never-ending election cycle, primary season never ends. That’s why we hear these outlandish, even insulting comments coming from the Ryan’s, the Rand’s, the Cruz’s:

They need to get noticed.