The 99% Want Your Altruism, says AlterNet's Levine "In recent years, we have entered a phase where

e it is apparently okay for major pol itical figures to publicly embrace Rand despite her contempt for Christianity." Bruce E. Levine in AlterNet; page 2 http://www.alternet.org/reproductivejustice/ 153454/how_ayn_rand_seduced_generations_of_young_men_and_helped_make_the_u.s._in to_a_selfish Oh, so that's it, the 'Christianity' thing. How many know she she said, "Jesus w as one of the first great teachers to proclaim the basic principle of individual ism.......But when it came to the next question, a code of ethics to observe for the salvation of one's soul.......one must love or help or live for others"? Ob jectivism Reference Center http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/texts/jesus.html She totally accepted that if Auguste Comte coined 'altruism' to mean, as defined by the Catholic Encyclopedia http://www.newadvent.org/ , as "a theory of conduc t by which only actions having for their object the happiness of others possess a moral value"; and by the Dictionary of Philosophy (Runes, editor) http://www.d itext.com/runes/index.html as "the discipline and eradication of self-centered d esire...[including] the self-abnegating love of Catholic Christianity redirected towards Humanity ,"--she totally accepted that if that was to be the definition , then that's what it meant. If you want to defeat evil, she said, take the auth ors or speakers at their word. Believe that they say what they mean and mean wha t they say. What altruists like Levine don't like is the idea that Rand said we ought not 'a bnegate' our 'selves'; that our 'selves' are all that make us what we are; that it is our 'selves' which Patrick Henry and James Madison wanted to protect with the Ninth Amendment. Levine also says "her philosophy that celebrated self-interest was a private ple asure for the 1 percent..." Are you part of the 99% that put 100 people out of w ork in NYC--in one smallish coffee shop, and in other small businesses--because no one could get there with the 99% mob being held at bay? I could go on with each new revelation of that hateful article, but you get the picture. The author is an altruist in the vision of Comte, and no other watereddown version of it. "The issue," Rand wrote, "is whether you do or do not have t he right to exist" without giving people like Levine and others a dime. Yes you do, and your dimes is all that author--and the others in the 99%-want fr om you, 'you cheap, greedy bastards', they would say to you, if they could. But unlike the 99% who claim they want your dime because somehow it belongs to them, Levine and his kind want you to hand that dime over to them and to all the othe r in the world who they define as 'needy', as in UNICEF needy, or as in Red Cros s needy, or as in Feed the Children needy. The article actually begins with a quote from Gore Vidal calling Rand's philosop hy that of an "egotist"; she was actually a rational egoist, and the difference is as wide as the Grand Canyon. The rational egoist "[does] not confuse altruism with kindness, good will or respect for the rights of others," Rand wrote, addi ng that altruism makes those impossible, because as Comte's idea goes, it also r ules out charity. Dictionary of Philosophy If you, for example, put money in the Salvation Army kettle at Christmas, and fe el good for helping others, then you have not 'abnegated' your 'self', because y ou are not supposed to have a self that can feel good. You're just supposed to d o it because others need it. The only thing Vidal got right was saying that "Ayn Rand's 'philosophy' is nearl

y perfect in its immortality..." The fact is that when Barrak Obama, former 'coo rdinator' for Chicago's largest social justice organizations, was elected Presid ent, sales of Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged, a tale of what happens when public of ficials 'abnegate' their 'selves' and government altruism becomes unstoppable, r eached the number one position on the best seller lists--fifty-two years after i t was first published.