The guy who shot a security guard at the Family Research Council’s offices was wearing a “backpack full of Chick-fil-A sandwiches.”
So is this like carbon offsetting?
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The Three Rs
Surprisingly good stuff on the Ryan/Rand connection, from the usually insufferable Lawrence O’Donnell:
How disappointed would Ayn Rand be in her formerly devoted public disciple Paul Ryan? Well, she wouldn’t miss his devotion very much. Because his recent betrayal just wouldn’t surprise her. Because Paul Ryan was never true to Rand’s philosophy. Right-wing hero Ayn Rand couldn’t stand Ronald Reagan. She urged people not to vote for Ronald Reagan and insisted that Reagan clearly did not believe in freedom and respect for the rights of the individual, because, among many other reasons, Reagan opposed the right to choose abortion.
That’s right, Paul Ryan, a Republican anti-abortion fanatic, has until very recently been publicly proclaiming his philosophical hero to be a woman who was a relentless champion of a woman’s right to choose. And Ryan’s pro-war stance in the Congress on every issue and every funding issue involving the Iraq War and the Afghanistan War would have disappointed Rand too. …
Ayn Rand was a much clearer and much more consistent thinker than Paul Ryan could ever be. And she would have seen through Paul Ryan’s phony devotion to her long before Catholics United and vice presidential politics made him turn on her.
Ayn Rand was smart enough to know that Paul Ryan used her. Used her to appeal to wacky conservatives who oppose every abortion and support every war, and then delude themselves into thinking they are devoted followers of Ayn Rand. Citing Ayn Rand was the right wing’s cheap way to sound intellectual, trying to sound like a thinking conservative.
Ryan was using Rand to label himself that way. Paul Ryan couldn’t have disappointed Ayn Rand, because she would have always known he was just using her. And despite all those pretty words he said about her for years and years, she knew he never really loved her.
(I do think that in the rest of his remarks O’Donnell exaggerates the distance between Ryan’s earlier “endorsement” and his current “repudiation” of Rand. The endorsement, however insincere, was always about ethics and politics; the repudiation is about theology.)
Theory and History
Check out this revolutionary breakthrough. (CHT Tennyson.)
Chikin Games
The following letter appeared in today’s Opelika-Auburn News:
To the Editor:
Rudy Tidwell’s defense (letter to the editor titled “Chick-fil-A COO’s comments twisted” on Aug. 4) of Chick-fil-A honcho Dan Cathy is bizarre. Cathy “did not directly condemn same-sex marriage,” Tidwell tells us; he simply “affirmed the biblical view of marriage as being between one man and one woman.”
Apart from the misrepresentation of the “biblical view” (which actually describes marriage as being between one man and multiple women), what on earth is the difference? It’s like trying to find a difference between saying “all dogs should be killed” and saying “only animals other than dogs should be allowed to live.” The two claims are logically equivalent.
Moreover, Cathy in fact went beyond this simple “affirmation,” inasmuch as he further opined that those who support marriage equality are “prideful, arrogant,” and “inviting God’s judgment” – which frankly sounds just a bit prideful and arrogant on Cathy’s part.
In any case, the outrage against Chick-fil-A is about more than just Cathy’s comments. Chick-fil-A has a history of donating to anti-gay hate groups, according to daikykos.com, including some that have advocated the criminalization of homosexuality. I’ll be eating elsewhere.
Sincerely yours,
Roderick T. Long
The phrase “according to dailykos.com” (or “daikykos,” as they inexplicably misprinted it) was added by and at the insistence of the O-A News, whose editor asked me for a citation for what I had thought was common knowledge, so I sent them to a Kos post that had useful links. Now it looks as though I’m taking Kos’s word for it. Oh well.
Cordial and Sanguine, Part 45: Not Quite a Palindrome
My latest at BHL: Ryan vs. Ayn R.
Give and Take
(CHT Tennyson; click the pic for more.)