OPEN LETTERS
Open Letter to Readers of Ayn Rand
Here are a few other book suggestions other than rereading our beloved prophet for the hundredth time
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Dear Ayn Rand, Neo-Conservative, Neo-Libertarian, and Former Tea Party Readers,
We have all read Ayn Rand. We love Ayn Rand. However, it would be myopic to read only her books that cater to our message. It’s akin to having monobibliosis — a belief system on One Book.
Here are several classics that tie into our themes. Some of these, of course, may shock. Hold on! Don’t light the tiki torches and march to my estate in Fairfax, Virginia! Stay open-minded!
1. Jonathan Livingston’s “Seagull” — Wait! Bach’s “Jonathan LIvingston’s Seagull,” I presume.
The seagull learns to fly higher than any other seagull is a corollary to Rand. It’s individualism at its purest. Social Darwinism. If you lose a job or get downsized, it’s just because other seagulls were more powerful than you. And if your wing gets clipped or bitten by the more powerful seagulls, and you crash bill-first into the cold ground, well, who’s fault is that? Certainly not the government’s fault or concern.
2. Robert Pirsig’s “Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”
The intricacies of the massive Federal government are analogous to maintaining a motorcycle. It would just be better for everyone if we just junked the motorcycle into a landfill and resorted to Zen philosophy: not at all a godless philosophy from non-Christian, heathen Orientals, but in this new take: an effective euphemism for supply-side economics.
It is a quest for one man’s quest for Truth — an expose of America that’s turning less “white” every day. Phaedrus is the new Rand-type hero who asks the question: “How can one distinguish “good” from “bad?” That’s quite easy: “bad” is anything that reeks of promoting the general welfare, and “good” is anything that protects the rich from paying more than 15% in capital gains.
3. Erica Jong’s “Fear of Flying”
I’m sure many of you flipped through the pages of your mother’s copy in the 1970s to find the naughty bits. Admit it. We were young and foolish once, like most liberals, and we did have libidos then, but a rereading of this novel demystifies the feminist mystique.
Sure, Isadora Wing finds flight in her sexual liberation, but like Ayn Rand, she no longer feels confined by society — and she forges her own path like we all must do, without Orwellian government programs and social safety nets. Isadora certainly never mentions needing Social Security or welfare checks and disability checks and unemployment benefits or costly Food Stamps. If you take away the sexual frankness, she’s Ayn Rand incarnate.
4. Sartre’s “No Exit”
Many of you may automatically shun any book written by a Frenchman. But take a deeper look at those four confined souls in the drawing-room. Do they seem similar? Democrats in Congress? Hell is definitely other people — especially effete, liberal Democrats who can’t seem to walk out the door to freedom and liberty.
5. Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath”
What am I thinking, right? I know you were forced to read this supposedly liberal drivel in English, with our hearts bleeding for the poor Okies who were displaced by the Big Bad Banks of the World and were forced by the Owners of Free Enterprise in California to decamp in impoverished conditions, but that’s where the message gets skewed.
That’s only a literal interpretation, an interpretation of my very liberal English teacher. We can refashion Tom Joad as a new Ayn Rand hero — hearing the message of Jesus, J.C, or Jim Casy in the book, Tom Joad leads his people like Moses out of bondage to the Holy Land, and then as a true Hero, he forges a life for himself, breaking away from the bonds that tie him down.
For when the going gets rough, the tough get going — and not rely on Big Brother to save them. Steinbeck is saying that’s what everyone needs to do — look out for #1!
As Tom Joad says, “I’ll be there!” When Demoncrats try to keep our water pure and our air unpolluted through unhealthy regulations on healthy coal burning plants, “I’ll be there!”
Wherever there is some woman protesting, holding her bastard brat of a child against our law forces who must use force to keep the peace, “I’ll be there with another machine gun to help the militia — I mean, the police!”
6. Conrad’s “The Heart of Darkness”
Sure, on the literal level, it concerns a white European sent by a Corporation to extract a self-reliant renegade; yes, liberals have long framed the novella as a critique of European colonialism. Francis Ford Coppola — not Stanley Kubrick — used the novel to criticize the Vietnam War in “Apocalypse Now.”
But we don’t see the Apocalypse: The madman Kurtz is indeed the Hero in the new reading: is not mad — he is simply asserting his dominion over those who are inferior to his Ability to Rule.
He would rather rule in Africa than serve in Britain! Amen, my brother!
Happy reading! Stay open-minded, my Randites!
Yours Faithfully,
The President of the Ayn Rand Society
PS: Please ignore what Ayn Rand says about minorities and religion and anything else about being “WOKE.” Stick to her points that support our “collective world view.”
PPS: In case you forgot, here are other exceptional works to read, even out loud to your children during dinner and their soccer games:
- We the Living by Ayn Rand
- Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
- The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
- Anthem by Ayn Rand
- God of the Machine by Ayn Rand (Christian trigger warning alert)
- One Party Rule — It’s Okay if It’s Neo-Conservatives (a retelling of the life of Ayn Rand by Sean Hannity)
- I Slept with Donald Trump Every Night Because Every Woman Loves a Fascist by Ayn Rand, composed posthumously as a succubus and transcribed through a medium on Long Island. (Trigger warnings galore for explicit adult content and sexual perversions not deemed “family-friendly” in the “missionary” tradition of our political and religious and social evangelism)
Note: At the beginning, add THIS IS A SATIRE. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK. While not to be taken literally, it is to be taken seriously. Should I include this? Thanks!