Obama: Ayn Rand Is For Misunderstood Teenagers

[madfloridian]

Ha Ha. I think that is true because I remember driving my parents crazy when I was reading The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. I was just about that age. I really did not get the message of the books, really was just reading them because it was the thing to do. I even went to see The Fountainhead with Gary Cooper a few years after it came out. I didn't like it, but wouldn't admit it to my parents.

In this case Obama was exactly right.

Obama: Ayn Rand Is For Misunderstood Teenagers

In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, President Obama said Ayn Rand's writings are appealing to those who are "17 or 18 and feeling misunderstood." But "as we get older," he said, people recognize its "narrow vision."

The relevant portion of the interview:

"Have you ever read Ayn Rand?

Sure.

What do you think Paul Ryan's obsession with her work would mean if he were vice president?

Well, you'd have to ask Paul Ryan what that means to him. Ayn Rand is one of those things that a lot of us, when we were 17 or 18 and feeling misunderstood, we'd pick up. Then, as we get older, we realize that a world in which we're only thinking about ourselves and not thinking about anybody else, in which we're considering the entire project of developing ourselves as more important than our relationships to other people and making sure that everybody else has opportunity – that that's a pretty narrow vision. It's not one that, I think, describes what's best in America. Unfortunately, it does seem as if sometimes that vision of a "you're on your own" society has consumed a big chunk of the Republican Party.

[No Elephants]

1. Ayn Rand would have been repugnant to me at any age.

My family and my church raised me a different way and certain things stuck despite adolescent rebellion. Probably because they resonated with me and felt right to me and made sense to me, independently of any authority that I would have felt rebellion against.

[madfloridian]

2. My parents were liberal, my church was Southern Baptist.

I am still recovering from the Southern Baptists, and the older I get the more liberal I become.

[No Elephants]

3. My parents voted Democratic, but I would not call them liberal, at least not as

that word is used today.

They were both factory workers who believed in unions and in Social Security at a time when Democrats believed in those things too, and not only in words.

My parents did not attend church, except for things like weddings and baptisms, but their faith was simple and unquestioned, at least by them.

Their lives were hard, but never once did they express or exhibit any doubt that God existed and cared about each and every human. Never once did I hear any anger at God for anything.

Terms like "thank God" and "God bless you" came out of their mouths all day--and they were totally sincere. "Thank you" was said a lot less often for a favor than "God bless you."

They said these things not like empty expressions, but like prayer. And I don't mean in a pious or fake way. Their speech was just a natural and inevitable extension of their core faith. I call it everyday speech as prayer.

Once, when I was maybe 5, my uncle, who lived next door to us, said, "Thank God."

Wanting to give a response that seemed correct to me, I replied, "Thank God for all good things." Shaking his head "no" and smiling very kindly at me, he said, "Thank God for ALL things."

The concept that I should thank God when something bad happened was a stunner at age 5 and it still is.

But, that was my family.

That same uncle practiced what he preached as he was dying in the hospital and knew he was dying. People would ask how things were and his only response ever was "Thank God."

[Enthusiast]

4. Mine were much the same. nt

[Enthusiast]

5. Thank God for your liberalness.

:hi: