krebscycle

The far right has inherited the traditional ideology that is called “idolatry” in the Bible. In the place of the world God created, they insist that their  twisted, crippled, mean little fantasy is reality. Forbes, which should know better has published an example of this stuff from people who idolize Ayn Rand but who are selling the strongly marketed right wing lie about the 18th Century United States being an exemplar of minimal government. 

In America, the government’s only job was to protect the individual’s right to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness from violation by physical force or fraud

Oh? Slavery?  Ever heard of it? Human beings defrauded of their liberty, chained, brutally beaten and whipped, forced to labor unceasingly by dint of terror? Ring a bell? Maybe we should also consider the  use of the state to defraud Native Americans of their lives and property? Or the way the state intervened in industrial disputes to shoot down workers. Federal Troops suppressed the 1877 Railway Strike –  I suppose in the cause of protecting the individual’s right to life, liberty, and property, just as the Fugitive Slave Gangs did when they dragged people back to slavery in chains.

And then let’s take a look at this marvelous bit of deception.

As Tocqueville famously observed at the time, “Americans of all ages, all stations of life and all types of disposition are forever forming associations. There are not only commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but others of a thousand types.” There were businesses, charities, social clubs, private insurance agencies to protect against disease and injury, and a whole lot more. By limiting government, Americans unleashed voluntary association.

This is what Tocqueville said:

In my opinion, the main evil of the present democratic institutions of the United States does not arise, as is often asserted in Europe, from their weakness, but from their irresistible strength. I am not so much alarmed at the excessive liberty which reigns in that country as at the inadequate securities which one finds there against tyranny. an individual or a party is wronged in the United States, to whom can he apply for redress? If to public opinion, public opinion constitutes the majority; if to the legislature, it represents the majority and implicitly obeys it; if to the executive power, it is appointed by the majority and serves as a passive tool in its hands. The public force consists of the majority under arms; the jury is the majority invested with the right of hearing judicial cases; and in certain states even the judges are elected by the majority. However iniquitous or absurd the measure of which you complain, you must submit to it as well as you can

The Randians like others of the far right are not actually in favor of limited government, they are in favor of anti-democratic government. They want to set up a clay idol, stand in front of it, and command the people to worship the Idol and its representatives.