They should show some compassion. Imagine how it must hurt the ARI big-brains to reflect upon Ayn Rand’s admonitions about evasion:
Dropping below the level of a savage, who believes that the magic words he utters have the power to alter reality, they believe that reality can be altered by the power of the words they do not utter – and their magic tool is the blank-out, the pretense that nothing can come into existence past the voodoo of their refusal to identify it.
I kid you nothing: It really says that. Lots more, too, and great stuff. No one could bitch about vice like Ayn Rand.
But still: The worm must turn. The longer the Ayn Rand Institute evades the Planned Parenthood abortion scandals, the more pellucidly obvious it becomes that they have nothing to say, that Ayn Rand’s argument for abortion is hideously anegoistic because it is anti-reality and that by championing abortion for the past fifty years, the Ayn Rand Institute is complicit in an unconscionable evil.
But they can’t say that, because that would be the truth.
And they can’t actually uphold Ayn Rand’s childish utilitarian argument for abortion because then they would have to acknowledge that they’ve known all along that abortion is self-destructive.
What the Ayn Rand Institute needs – pronto! – is a non-denial denial. They need to acknowledge the gruesome videos and abhor some side-issue aspect of the story, all while evading their own complicity in the charnel house entirely. Call it evasion by seeming-non-evasion – an install-it-yourself woolen eye-shade.
Planned Parenthood is pulling exactly the same ploy when it beefs that the videos are selectively edited. They’re not trying to refute inarguable facts, they’re just putting argumentative talking points into the mouths of their useful idiots.
So here are three specious story angles the Ayn Rand Institute can pivot to, thus to enlist useful-idiot assistance in making this horrible philosophical crisis go away:
- “Say what you will about abortion, but we can all agree that Planned Parenthood should not be tax-payer funded.”
- “This abortion nonsense was much ado about nothing – until government censorship reared its ugly head.”
- “Location, location, location: As Ayn Rand reminds us, if it’s outside the womb, it’s human. Inside: Toenail clippings. So be objective, and ix-nay on the extra-uterine abortions already!”
Working off the last idea, here’s a follow-up story:
“If property rights matter, it is viciously unjust to peddle merch outside the walls of the venue!”
Whatever. These whiny little boys are overwhelmed, overtired, overtaxed and overmatched. Their “philosophy for living on earth” is inadequate to address this real-life existential crisis and all they can do is dither and wither and writhe and seethe. No matter what they do now, it is well beyond obvious that the Ayn Rand Institute is a spent force – the pathetic, fly-blown gift shop that blocks the exits of an empty museum.
Here’s a Driven way of thinking: When you discover at step 27 that step 2 was exactly ass backwards, you don’t take 270 more steps trying to ameliorate the unhappy consequences of the error, you go back to the beginning and start over. If you are deeply dismayed by the Ayn Rand Institute’s cacophonous ignominious silence over the Planned Parenthood abortion scandal, I’m your huckleberry.
