Religious fundamentalism and free-market fundamentalism do not merely parallel each other. These two narrow, far-right ideologies often overlap.
What are more flawed: the ideologies or the ideologists that misrepresent them?
Read more: Fundamentalism 101: Religious and Free-Market Fundamentalists
‘Atlas Shrugged is so revered in right-wing circles that, as one ex think tanker admitted, people who hadn’t read it were described as “virgins.” (Without the readership of virgins it would have languished in obscurity.) Rand’s acolytes are always threatening to “go Galt” and deprive us of their beautiful minds, but they never really get around to it. Like the old Dan Hicks song says, “How can we miss you if you won’t go away?” Most parasites of the subsidized classroom know that, in Greek mythology, Atlas holds up the world. One Rand character asks another, “What would you tell him?” “To shrug.”
Warning to would-be Galts: Shrugging while holding a heavy globe on your neck and shoulders is orthopedically unsound and could lead to severe cervical spine injury. Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of physics knows that the easiest way to unload a heavy planet is by simply standing up straight. When was the last time you stood up straight? You, like John Galt, have been benefiting from government services all your life. The upstanding thing to do is to acknowledge that fact, and then man up and pay your fair share. (I assume you’re a man by your prose style, your chosen pen name – and by the fact that most of Rand’s followers are.) Instead, you guys are always threatening to “go Galt.” Which raises the question: Who’s stopping you?’
Read more: Objection to Abject Objectivism, or, John Galt is a Crybaby and So Are You
‘Growing up in a family with ties to founders of the Mormon Church, at an early age I learned a little about the church’s teachings. I read Mormon comic books for children that claimed humans in the Garden of Eden used to live to the age of 900 or so. I learned that God, in his wrath, had turned Cain black for killing Abel, which is why, until 1978, the church banned those of black African descent from the Mormon priesthood. I also learned that when you die, if you had lived a righteous life, you got your own planet to rule in celestial bliss.’
Read more: Vulture Capitalism and Predatory Cults: Mitt, Mormons and Money
Mystic Politics 