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Senator Margaret Chase Smith
The Four Horsemen of Calumny
By Richard Girard
After writing "Contra Rand" (OpEdNews May 6, 2011), I felt a strong desire to be hosed down with strong degreasers and disinfectants. My desire arose from a vain hope that I could wash the slime and stench I always feel when I deal extensively with the Goddess of the Market, as Jennifer Burns titles Ayn Rand in her recent biography of the woman that I believe better deserves the title "demon queen of Objectivism." Unfortunately, I know that like the aftereffects of being sprayed by a skunk, I will have to wait for the worst of it to wear off, no matter how many tomato juice baths I take.
What is defined as Conservatism has dramatically changed in my lifetime. What once were considered "conservative values" are now considered centrist or even center-left values. The reactionary values of the John Birch Society and the White Citizens Councils in the 1960's have become the values of many modern conservatives. Dwight Eisenhower, Gerald Ford, and Everett Dirksen would all be considered liberals by the modern conservative movement.
The primary difference between yesterday's conservative (Robert Taft, Barry Goldwater, etc.) and today's (Paul Ryan, Rand Paul, etc.) is the influence of the writings of Ayn Rand. The modern conservative has been inculcated in the immoral cult of Randism , with its Objectivist "philosophy," and its inverted message of Marxist doctrine (where roles of capitalist and worker are reversed), as much as any member of the Red Guard was by the Little Red Book of Chairman Mao.
Thomas Jefferson (in a letter to Thomas Law in 1814) called self-interest "egoism." But there is often confusion between "egoism," and "egotism." The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition copyright 1992 by Houghton Mifflin Company defines "egoism" as follows:
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a) The ethical doctrine that morality has its foundations in self-interest; b) The ethical belief that self-interest is the just and proper motive for all human conduct.
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Excessive preoccupation with one's own well-being and interests, usually accompanied by an inflated sense of self-importance.
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An inflated sense of one's own importance; conceit.
It defines egotism as:
1. The tendency to speak or write of oneself excessively and boastfully.
2. An inflated sense of one's own importance; conceit.
So while there is a tenuous, tertiary connection between the two words, their primary meaning is very different. Egoism is about a doctrine of self-interest; egotism is about boasting.
This leads us back to Ayn Rand and her quasi-philosophy of Objectivism. As I pointed out two years ago in my article "Illuminating Dichotomies," (OpEdNews, September 19, 2008), Conservatives have taken the position since Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan that human beings are ultimately motivated solely by self-interest, and that liberals have an unrealistic view of the world if they dare to believe anything else. Liberals in turn believe that conservatives have a limited, irrational, even paranoid view of the world. Liberals believe that the conservative Weltanschauung is so colored by their paranoid assumption that everyone is out for themselves, all of the time, it makes conservatives' judgment concerning human relationships at best questionable.
