{"id":36656,"date":"2016-12-26T01:00:38","date_gmt":"2016-12-26T06:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=36656"},"modified":"2016-12-14T21:44:20","modified_gmt":"2016-12-15T02:44:20","slug":"qotd-the-cultural-jack-bootprint-of-ayn-rand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2016\/12\/26\/qotd-the-cultural-jack-bootprint-of-ayn-rand\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The cultural (Jack-)bootprint of Ayn Rand"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>The Left tries to create a false dilemma that opposes progressivism to Rand-ism \u2014 or what they imagine to be Rand-ism, a blend of authentically Randian moralizing about moochers and takers with a kind of Rothbardian anarcho-capitalism, an atomistic society that denies community and despises the philanthropic impulse. Actual conservatives are more likely to be found in church, where, among other things, they exercise the philanthropic impulse in community.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>People just don\u2019t take books that seriously anymore. I think <em>The Bell Curve<\/em> might have been our last genuinely controversial book. If you were not around in the 1990s, it is hard to imagine how all-encompassing that controversy was: Everybody was reading <em>The Bell Curve<\/em>, or at least opening it up and turning immediately to the naughty bits. (Or at least pretending to have read it.) You could not not have an opinion on <em>The Bell Curve<\/em> if you were the sort of person who read books. My impression from the career of Michel Houellebecq is that the French-speaking world is still up for a literary controversy. I envy that a little. I\u2019ve always liked the story about the riot following the first performance of <em>Rite of Spring<\/em>, not because I like riots but because I want to live in a world in which people take Igor Stravinsky seriously enough to fight over him. The idea of a novelist \u2014 a mediocre one at that \u2014 occupying as much cultural real estate as Ayn Rand seems like a relic from another time. Which I suppose it is. <\/p>\n<p>I happen to be in New York City while writing this, surrounded by a who\u2019s-who of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. I don\u2019t expect to meet any Randians. But I\u2019ll let you know if I do.<\/p>\n<p>Kevin D. Williamson, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/article\/443033\/progressive-ayn-rand-obsession-misguided\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;The Parochial Progressive Obsession with Ayn Rand&#8221;, <em>National Review<\/em>, 2016-12-14.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Left tries to create a false dilemma that opposes progressivism to Rand-ism \u2014 or what they imagine to be Rand-ism, a blend of authentically Randian moralizing about moochers and takers with a kind of Rothbardian anarcho-capitalism, an atomistic society that denies community and despises the philanthropic impulse. Actual conservatives are more likely to be [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,28,53,41],"tags":[67,68,1020,517],"class_list":["post-36656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-media","category-politics","category-quotations","tag-aynrand","tag-objectivism","tag-progressives","tag-republican"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9xe","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36656"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36657,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36656\/revisions\/36657"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}