Quote of the Day -Ayn Rand on Extremism

I am still reading Ayn Rand’s “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal,” this time her essay on the art of the smear.  Once again I am struck at how situations she pointed out nearly 50 years ago are still present in our society today.  I am unsure whether this is hopeful,  if the same things are still being done then maybe we haven’t gone as far down this road as I might fear, or not.

This particular quote is referring to an interview given by New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller regarding a man who was elected to an office at a Young Republicans Convention in 1963.  In this interview he is defining what he means by “the radical right” by means of four examples of the platform the young man was elected on.

  1. Abolish the income tax.
  2. Withdraw from the United Nations.
  3. Impeach Justice Earl Warren.
  4. The idea that General Eisenhower was a crypto-communist.

The first two tenets listed are legitimate “rightist” positions backed by many valid reasons; the third is a sample of purely Birchite foolishness; the fourth is a sample of the irresponsibility of just one Birchite.  The total is a sample of the art of smearing.

Now consider the meaning ascribed to the term “rightist” within the “package-deal” of “extremism.”  In general, the terms “rightists” and “leftists” designate advocates of capitalism and socialism.  But observe the abnormal, artificial stress of the attempt to associate racism and violence with “the extreme right”–two evils which even the straw man, the Birch Society, is not guilty, and which can be much more plausibly associated with the Democratic Party (via the Ku Klux Klan).  The purpose is to revive that old saw of pre-World War II vintage, the notion that the two political opposites confronting us, the two “extremes,” are: fascism versus communism.

If you were to exchange references to the Birch Society with references to the Tea Party,  this quote would perfectly understood.  How often is it repeated in the media that the Tea Party is racist and violent when those terms, at least violent, could be much more accurately applied to the Occupy protesters who are largely lauded by the left and the mainstream media.