Opening Obama’s Playbook – by Ayn Rand

The Red Side of Life ^ | 6/3/12 | RedInNewYork

[jmstein7]

“The Fountainhead” is to “Atlas Shrugged” what “Animal Farm” is to “1984.” Just like “Animal Farm” is not about farming, “Fountainhead” is not about architecture – it is about socialist ascent.

While “Atlas Shrugged”  is all the rage these days – and appropriately so – I strongly suggest that anyone who is truly interested in defeating Obama in November read “The Fountainhead,” because it subtly lays bare the Obama playbook. However, at some points, subtlety gives way to blunt frankness – the gloating revolutionary. In this case Ellsworth Toohey, the socialist villain, spells out several ways of accomplishing a socialist takeover. I urge you to read this carefully – I will reproduce his words, in relevant part, in a manner that constitutes “fair use.” If you read and understand these points, you will know – in your own way – what you can do to defeat Obama and socialism in general.

From “The Fountainhead”:

If you learn how to rule one single man’s soul, you can get the rest of mankind. It’s the soul, Peter, the soul. Not whips or swords or fire or guns. That’s why the Caesars, the Attilas, the Napoleons were fools and did not last. We will. The soul, Peter, is that which can’t be ruled. It must be broken. Drive a wedge in, get your fingers on it—and the man is yours. You won’t need a whip—he’ll bring it to you and ask to be whipped. Set him in reverse—and his own mechanism will do your work for you. Use him against himself. Want to know how it’s done?

There are many ways. Here’s one. Make man feel small. Make him feel guilty. Kill his aspiration and his integrity. That’s difficult. The worst among you gropes for an ideal in his own twisted way. Kill integrity by internal corruption. Use it against itself. Direct it toward a goal destructive of all integrity. Preach selflessness. Tell man that he must live for others. Tell men that altruism is the ideal. Not a single one of them has ever achieved it and not a single one ever will. His every living instinct screams against it. But don’t you see what you accomplish? Man realizes that he’s incapable of what he’s accepted as the noblest virtue—and it gives him a sense of guilt, of sin, of his own basic unworthiness. Since the supreme ideal is beyond his grasp, he gives up eventually all ideals, all aspiration, all sense of his personal value. He feels himself obliged to preach what he can’t practice. But one can’t be good halfway or honest approximately. To preserve one’s integrity is a hard battle. Why preserve that which one knows to be corrupt already? His soul gives up its self-respect. You’ve got him. He’ll obey. He’ll be glad to obey—because he can’t trust himself, he feels uncertain, he feels unclean. That’s one way. 

Here’s another. Kill man’s sense of values. Kill his capacity to recognize greatness or to achieve it. Great men can’t be ruled. We don’t want any great men. Don’t deny the conception of greatness. Destroy it from within. The great is the rare, the difficult, the exceptional. Set up standards of achievement open to all, to the least, to the most inept—and you stop the impetus to effort in all men, great or small. You stop all incentive to improvement, to excellence, to perfection... Don’t set out to raze all shrines—you’ll frighten men. Enshrine mediocrity—and the shrines are razed.

Then there’s another way. Kill by laughter. Laughter is an instrument of human joy. Learn to use it as a weapon of destruction. Turn it into a sneer. It’s simple. Tell them to laugh at everything. Tell them that a sense of humor is an unlimited virtue. Don’t let anything remain sacred in a man’s soul—and his soul won’t be sacred to him. Kill reverence and you’ve killed the hero in man. One doesn’t reverence with a giggle. He’ll obey and he’ll set no limits to his obedience—anything goes—nothing is too serious. 

Here’s another way. This is most important. Don’t allow men to be happy. Happiness is self-contained and self-sufficient. Happy men have no time and no use for you. Happy men are free men. So kill their joy in living. Take away from them whatever is dear or important to them. Never let them have what they want. Make them feel that the mere fact of a personal desire is evil. Bring them to a state where saying ‘I want’ is no longer a natural right, but a shameful admission. Altruism is of great help in this. Unhappy men will come to you. They’ll need you. They’ll come for consolation, for support, for escape. Nature allows no vacuum. Empty man’s soul—and the space is yours to fill. I don’t see why you should look so shocked, Peter. This is the oldest one of all. Look back at history. Look at any great system of ethics, from the Orient up. Didn’t they all preach the sacrifice of personal joy? Under all the complications of verbiage, haven’t they all had a single leitmotif: sacrifice, renunciation, self-denial? Haven’t you been able to catch their theme song—‘Give up, give up, give up, give up’? Look at the moral atmosphere of today. Everything enjoyable, from cigarettes to sex to ambition to the profit motive, is considered depraved or sinful. Just prove that a thing makes men happy—and you’ve damned it. That’s how far we’ve come. We’ve tied happiness to guilt. And we’ve got mankind by the throat. Throw your first-born into a sacrificial furnace—lie on a bed of nails—go into the desert to mortify the flesh—don’t dance—don’t go to the movies on Sunday—don’t try to get rich—don’t smoke—don’t drink. It’s all the same line. The great line. Fools think that taboos of this nature are just nonsense. Something left over, old-fashioned. But there’s always a purpose in nonsense. Don’t bother to examine a folly—ask yourself only what it accomplishes. Every system of ethics that preached sacrifice grew into a world power and ruled millions of men. 

Of course, you must dress it up. You must tell people that they’ll achieve a superior kind of happiness by giving up everything that makes them happy. You don’t have to be too clear about it. Use big vague words. ‘Universal Harmony’—‘Eternal Spirit’—‘Divine Purpose’ —‘Nirvana’—‘Paradise’—‘Racial Supremacy’—‘The Dictatorship of the Proletariat.’

 Internal corruption, Peter. That’s the oldest one of all. The farce has been going on for centuries and men still fall for it. Yet the test should be so simple: just listen to any prophet and if you hear him speak of sacrifice—run. Run faster than from a plague. It stands to reason that where there’s sacrifice, there’s someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where there’s service, there’s someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master. But if ever you hear a man telling you that you must be happy, that it’s your natural right, that your first duty is to yourself—that will be the man who’s not after your soul. That will be the man who has nothing to gain from you. But let him come and you’ll scream your empty heads off, howling that he’s a selfish monster. So the racket is safe for many, many centuries. But here you might have noticed something. I said, ‘It stands to reason.’ Do you see? 

Men have a weapon against you. Reason. So you must be very sure to take it away from them. Cut the props from under it. But be careful. Don’t deny outright. Never deny anything outright, you give your hand away. Don’t say reason is evil—though some have gone that far and with astonishing success. Just say that reason is limited. That there’s something above it. What? You don’t have to be too clear about it either. The field’s inexhaustible. ‘Instinct’—‘Feeling’—‘Revelation’—‘Divine Intuition’—‘Dialectic Materialism.’ If you get caught at some crucial point and somebody tells you that your doctrine doesn’t make sense—you’re ready for him. You tell him that there’s something above sense. That here he must not try to think, he must feel. He must believe. Suspend reason and you play it deuces wild. Anything goes in any manner you wish whenever you need it. You’ve got him. Can you rule a thinking man? We don’t want any thinking men.

Rand, Ayn, The Fountainhead (all emphasis is added)

READ THIS OVER AND OVER… AS MANY TIMES AS IT TAKES

[impimp]

Sounds like pagan garbage to me.

[Savage Beast]

In fact it’s pagan heresy to the Religion of the Left—heresy, anathema, and cause for silencing at any cost.

[jmstein7]

PING!

[Daveinyork]

“It stands to reason that where there’s sacrifice, there’s someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where there’s service, there’s someone being served.”

The quote of the day.

[mnehring]

Bump. Between Atlas Shrugged and Orwell’s 1984, we never thought this fiction would come true but every day it seems one more thing was more a prediction than a story.

[mnehring]

The rest of that quote is pretty damning as well... “...The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master...”

[jmstein7]

Good selection

[impimp]

Ayn Rand had two enemies 1. collectivist government and 2. religion. She wants to destroy both.

No thank you. Yes to the first, but not to the second.

[jmstein7]

Very true

[CORedneck]

Looks like the dogma for the religious left spelled out and not hidden. A couple is preventing happiness and reason.

[jmstein7]

Yes... I find her atheism troubling as well. As for the rest, she’s right on.

[impimp]

I think Huxley’s A Brave New World does a much better job of explaining the current state of things.

[jimfree]

I never perceived Rand to want to destroy religion. She did want to destroy illogic in public discourse. To the extent that the practice of religion elevates that, well...

[matt1234]

ping

[jimfree]

And to the extent that a religionist did not advocate the taking of money or the enforcement of behavior at the point of a gun she probably had no problem with us.

[mnehring]

I believe you are right. What she saw with many organized religions (which probably drove her to atheism) was something not very different than the political collectivists she opposed- an organized group demanding one give up self in the name of the collective and manipulating in to giving money or service to the body. Little faith, more structure. Churchanity versus Christianity.

[Publius]

Interesting take on Rand.

[PGalt]

...the socialist villain...

NAILED

Alinsky Rule 13: Pick the Target, Freeze It, Personalize It, Polarize It.

DEPOPULATE socialists from the body politic.

Names? OK, here...

http://cpc.grijalva.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=71&sectiontree=2,71

Live - FREE - republic

[jimfree]

If folks voluntarily contribute time and treasure to the collective that is their choice. And that likely would be blessed by the atheist Ayn Rand.

If folks, through their group, advocate that I be FORCED to pay more, do more, lose more at the point of the government gun, these folks regardless of their religious umbrella are not doing God’s work but rather are Satan’s angels.