The Satanic Budget: Death To The Weakling

A little over a week ago, Paul Ryan had to disavow his heroine, Ayn Rand, after his church—the Catholic Church—came down on him for espousing her philosophy. The truth is that Ayn Rand is the darling of the Republican Party and Ryan’s budget is based upon principles she has championed. 

I’ll be honest. Other than knowing the names of her books and the obvious conclusion one would come to upon reading the title The Virtue of Selfishness, I didn’t know a whole lot about her ideas and beliefs. So I did some research and even downloaded Anthem to my Kindle. It’s a short (100 pages in length) fable that shines a light on her beginnings in Russia and winds up encapsulating her philosophy. While doing my research, it struck me that a lot of what she had to say and a lot of what I’m hearing from the Right these days is eerily similar to another book I’ve had the occasion to research for my soon to be released novel CRAZY.

In the YouTube clip above, Rand states that if a person is weak, they are undeserving of love. In the book I used to research the character in my novel it states: Death to the weakling, wealth to the strong!

In Anthem, at the very end, the sacred word is identified: EGO. In the book I used to research my novel, it says: Rational self-interest would be encouraged and a healthy ego championed.

Rand equates altruism, the unselfish regard for or devotion to the well being of others, as a destructive force on society. She states: (paraphrased) “The equation of selfishness with evil has caused the arrested moral development of mankind and needs to be rejected.” In my research for my novel, the book I was using states: “There is no false altruism or mandatory love thy neighbor concept…(The philosophy espoused) is a blatantly selfish, brutal philosophy. It is based on the belief that human beings are inherently selfish, violent creatures, that life is a Darwinian struggle for survival of the fittest, that only the strong survive and the earth will be ruled by those who fight to win the ceaseless competition that exists in all jungles—including those of urbanized society.”

By now, I’m sure you’re wondering what book I was using for my research. That book is The Satanic Bible. That’s right! Those Bible thumping, Moral Majority, Tea Party fanatics are embracing tenets that could just as well have been written by Anton Szandor LaVey, the author of The Satanic Bible and founder of the Church of Satanism.

Everything Rand has written, everything she was about, dovetails rather nicely with the religion (if you want to call it that) of Satanism. So it follows that disciples of Ayn Rand would also find a lot to like in The Satanic Bible. To hell with the weak, for they are useless and a burden on society. Anyone who can’t pull their own weight, regardless of the circumstances, deserves no help because according to Ayn Rand and Anton LaVey, an individual’s primary moral obligation is to achieve his own well being. It isn’t a leap too far to come to the conclusion that if you can’t do that, then you don’t deserve to live. I can still hear the echoes of the audience at that Republican debate screaming “Let him die!” to the hypothetical question posed to Ron Paul about the 30 year old without health insurance who faced a life threatening situation.

That philosophy is on full display in the Ryan Budget, which cuts food stamps, programs for the poor and working poor, ends Medicare and Medicaid and replaces them with vouchers, raises taxes on the poorest Americans, throws out the Affordable Care Act, cuts everything from education to transportation and gives $3 trillion in tax breaks to corporations and the rich. As Jonathan Bernstein concluded in his May 4 article in the Washington Post blog, the effect of the Ryan Budget will be, with a few exceptions, to effectively shut down the entire federal government. The exceptions, I believe, are defense and never-ending tax cuts to the wealthy.

People like Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney and all the rest of those leading the Tea Party types around by the nose don’t have to worry if they get sick. They’ve got money! I can’t help but think of Alexandra Pelosi's video and that toothless guy who hates government but says he deserves food stamps. People like him go to the polls and vote against their own self interest in favor of a philosophy that cares absolutely nothing for them and they don’t even know it. It’s that whole “Keep your filthy government hands off my Medicare!” argument and it’s all because they are misinformed, fearful and angry. Maybe someone should tell them that their heroes are acolytes who worship at the altar of a philosophy that is interchangeable with the teachings embodied in The Satanic Bible.