Ayn Rand Carnation Bottle
Want to make a collectivist bristle? Just say a kind word about Ayn Rand. Make sure to interrupt them mid-seethe so you can point out they only dislike Rand because she was an immigrant Jewish woman.
But why does the authoress really take so much flak from the pink-haired, nose-ringed, liberal arts degree barrista crowd? (You know – commies.) It’s the same reason you wouldn’t want to get caught with a copy of 1984 during your annual vacation to Pyongyang. Rand had seen these brutes’ worst work up close and in person, and she had the audacity to point out just what they think and are capable of.
Many people accuse Rand of extremism. “You can’t take individualism that far,” they’ll argue during a TikTok video they recorded in between bong rips. “Other people will suffer too much!” Oh ho ho! So it’s human suffering you’re worried about, is it? Well, if Rand were still around and kicking, she’d tell these profligates to lean in close so she could whisper something through the enormous hoops embedded in their ears:
The social system based on and consonant with the altruist morality – with the code of self-sacrifice – is socialism, in all or any of its variants: fascism, Nazism, communism. All of them treat man as a sacrificial animal to be immolated for the benefit of the group, the tribe, the society, the state.
Rand taught us that you simply can’t run from phony altruism. It’s despotism in its larval stage, and it must be squashed before it infests the whole house.
