Rand Paul Uses Ayn Rand To Fight Compact Fluorescent Lightbulbs

"Admit it," says Dave Weigel, "you were waiting for this." What, pray tell, is he referring to? He's talking about Rand Paul, quoting Ayn Rand at length at a hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. See, Rand Paul is hopping mad at the compact flourescent lightbulb for existing, because it represents the "boot heel" of the "collective." Let's go to the tape:

PAUL: Ayn Rand wrote a novel, Anthem...It's a dystopian novel where individual choice is banned and the collective basically runs society. There's a young man, and his name is Equality 72521. He is an intelligent young man but he is banned from achieving or reaching any sort of occupation that might challenge him. He is a street sweeper.

Over time he discovers a subway and he rediscovers the incandescent light bulb. And he thinks, naively, that electricity and the brilliance of light would be an advantage for society and that it would bring great new things as far as being able to see at night, to read, and the advancement of civilization.

He takes it before the collective of elders, and they take the light bulb, and basically it's crushed beneath the boot heel of the collective. The collective has no place basically for individual choice.

Now, I'm not suggesting that this collective body is against electricity per se, or for quashing individualism. But I am suggesting that we're against choice.

Here's Eric Kleefeld with the required literary analysis:

In that book, of course, the protagonist was attempting through his individual experimentation and achievements to advance his society past a more primitive technology, the candle. In this case, however, regulations are being used in order to move society forward to the next generation of technology, after the incandescent bulb, on the grounds that it would save energy.

I mean, you might as well be evangelizing against modernity. The Collective has forbidden trepanation, in favor of its neurosurgical witchcraft!

Look, here's a link you can use to purchase incandescent lightbulbs. Stock up for the wagon train to Galt's Gulch!

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Comments

[shalbano]

04:18 PM on 05/22/2011

What is the problem? Why do you have one when someone speaks against a very real collective that doesn't care about you and wants to destroy you while you give your free will authority as a human being away to a collective of covens that protect corruption in government? You need to understand geopolitics and understand that Rand Paul is addressing the spritual structure that has a grip on your mind where you have become so dumbed down you can't discern that the collective is real and wants to destroy us all... as in all of humanity. But because you like torture and murder and you think it is so cool because you buy all of the episodes of "24 Hours" you think the collective won't touch you. Listen sweetheart, they don't give a damn about you and in the endgame you are part of it's genocidal plan. You people need to wake up in here.

[wwilcox]

08:28 PM on 05/18/2011

The common failing of those who quote from books to support their philosophpies is that they think they have philosophies. Without the book, they are incapable of the critical thinking necessary to distill a philosophy from observable fact. Rather, to justify their borrowed philosophy, they must reinterpret facts to support the philosophy. Therein lies madness.

[rainkitty]

03:28 AM on 04/20/2011

"The loudest of all the Republicans, right-wing attack-dog pundits and the Teabagger mobs fighting to kill health care reform and eviscerate "entitlement programs" increasingly hold up Ayn Rand as their guru.
Back in the late 1920s, as Ayn Rand was working out her philosophy, she became enthralled by a real-life American serial killer, William Edward Hickman, whose gruesome, sadistic dismemberment of 12-year-old girl named Marion Parker in 1927 shocked the nation. Rand filled her early notebooks with worshipful praise of Hickman.
What did Rand admire so much about Hickman? His sociopathic qualities: "Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should," she wrote, gushing that Hickman had "no regard whatsoever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. He has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel 'other people.'"
This echoes almost word for word Rand's later description of her character Howard Roark, the hero of her novel The Fountainhead: "He was born without the ability to consider others." (The Fountainhead is Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' favorite book -- he even requires his clerks to read it.)"
http://tinyurl.com/yk3n6rj

[OurSaySo]

06:36 PM on 05/27/2011

borrowing a reply from AndyClarkson, who commented extensively on this article:

Her only interest in Hickman was his unconventional attitude and the public\\\'s reaction to it. She was clearly morally against the crime he committed. All throughout her books is the moral requirement that an individual never initiate force against another -- and its philosophical basis: that the basis of an individual\\\'s life is his or her use of reason. Not force.

To leave the impression that Ayn Rand supported the crimes of a kidnapper/murderer is a baseless smear. You are on the edge of libel.

[deepthicket]

05:15 PM on 04/18/2011

Whiny little fellow, isn't he? And he worries about such important things too. Maybe if he had sneaked a little Sturgeon or Vonnegut or Twain under Ron's nose he would have grown up to be a grown up.

[John Hall 2]

01:17 PM on 04/17/2011

"PAUL: Ayn Rand wrote a novel, Anthem...It's a dystopian novel where individual choice is banned and the collective basically runs society. There's a young man, and his name is Equality 72521. He is an intelligent young man but he is banned from achieving or reaching any sort of occupation that might challenge him. He is a street sweeper. "

Mr. Paul, do you realize that your party's economic policy is effectively creating a "collective" of its own, purging opportunities for others while solidifying the status of wealth for the select few?

[xanas]

11:10 AM on 04/17/2011

The title of this article makes it seem like he's attacking CFLs. He's not. He's attacking the regulations that tell manufacturers they can't make incandescents.

[hexvex]

12:40 PM on 04/17/2011

That's what I thought when I first saw the title, glad I actually read the article!

[Dewts]

09:02 PM on 04/16/2011

the new lightbulbs are garbage. i work in a hotel and we change them constantly and constantly get complaints about low lighting.

[Hoosierbrad]

05:01 PM on 04/16/2011

Was Ayn Rand stupid enough to believe a man stumbling upon a non-working incandescent light bulb would be able to determine that it was a device for producing light? Wow, she was a dim bulb, indeed (pun intended).

[Cyrus Fox]

01:33 AM on 04/16/2011

The main difference here is you can still buy candles. Removing one item from public consumption reeks of control. If people want to pay more in electricty, it should be theie choice. Just like if you would rather pay the price at the pump for your gas guzzler, go ahead. Choice is being limited here, hence freedom is being limited because someone deemed we should not allow people to "waste" electricity.

At least incandescent bulbs are mercury free. Seeing how Americans suck at recycling(how many batteries have you just tossed in the bin? Be honest.) where do you think all that mercury is going to go from fluorescent bulbs? Probably into a landfill only to leech through the soil to an aquaduct and to a source of drink water near you. Hope I'm wrong.

[Atomkinder]

04:25 AM on 04/16/2011

How much mercury is being leeched into the environment by using an incandescent bulb via coal power vs tossing a CFL in the garbage? That said, maybe we just need to implement better recycling policies in which we can toss all our light bulbs into a paper bag, put that in the recycling bin at the curb, and have it all taken care of. Or is that too anti-choice?

[Cyrus Fox]

01:40 PM on 04/16/2011

It sure would be easier to capture the pollutants at one major hub(a power plant) then to have them distributed through a population. Recycling around the nation does need a boost and I would surely welcome more programs to take care of special waste. Some areas do already collect CFL bulbs and tubes but do so quarterly or annually(unfortunately only some folks and businesses care enough to collect them and then recycle them). If they want consumers to shift to CFL, why not provide an economic incentive for it, heck use an energy tax or an energy subsidy(or a combination) which makes the average consumer buy the CFL because it makes the most economical sense. Then all those who still require incandescent for their specialty fixtures/needs can still purchase what they require.

Incandescents provide a more pleasing continuous light spectrum rather than the discrete spectrum found in CFL. Many seizure prone individuals are wary of CFL's because of their discrete nature, I have a friend who only works in the sunlight or with incandescents due to an eye sensitivity he has developed. He gets bad migraines from the light. In CFL environments he must wear thick sunglasses proscribed by his eye specialist. Also there is the practical application of dimming, all incandescents dim without an issue, CFL's must be modified(CCFL's) and even then when dimmed the color range becomes colder(bluish) instead of the normal dimming effect of the sun and incandescents which become warmer(reddish).

[jbw1948]

11:15 PM on 04/18/2011

George Bush signed this into (lightbulb)law in 2007! Why are we still talking about it???

[Sheila Whitehead]

05:17 PM on 04/15/2011

Paul never had a brain

[Dewts]

09:04 PM on 04/16/2011

oh, you must have a medical doctorate from duke too then.

[xanas]

01:31 AM on 04/17/2011

I guess I might have to trust you on that, you would know what it's like not to have one.

[BetsyGlendale]

05:23 PM on 04/14/2011

I used to think of Ayn Rand as some kind of hero...then I grew up....

[kamact]

12:32 AM on 04/14/2011

Ayn Rand would have had a completely different philosophy if her family had recently lost all their money to the TBTF state-sponsored WS financial terrorists,...lost their jobs, lost their home, lost their savings,...and now living on the streets,...Every reasonable human unders this

[Frank J Hagan]

08:27 PM on 04/13/2011

Near death, Ayn Rand -- who suffering from lung cancer -- went on Social Security and Medicare. Guess someone finally saw the "light" of the feared collective ---

[Tom Joad]

08:22 PM on 04/13/2011

MEMO
To: Li'l Rant Paul
From: WalMart
Re: CFLs

Dear Li'l Rant:

In a move designed to give you a libertarian orgasm, our corporation, the largest retailer the world has ever seen, decided to sell only CFLs and LED lighting. Soon, all other retailers will follow suit. You see, gov't need not mandate this as the free-market (i.e. us, i.e. WalMart) has succeeded in removing all incandescent bulbs from the consumer market. So stop with the drama...

[inARCTICulate]

08:21 PM on 04/13/2011

I'm posting (not literally) what some one else said last night.
Hey freeenterprise guy
Don't the folks who make THOSE bulbs have rights?