Once there was a serial killer. His name was William Hickman.
He was rather famous back in the 1920s. The son of a paranoid schizophrenic mother and grandmother, he would torture and kill cats as a kid. Anyone who knew him thought he was growing up to be a maniac. Like every good sociopath he stayed on his best behavior so as not to attract unwanted attention from strangers or the law.
After strangling a woman in Milwaukee and killing an old man for his wallet and throwing his body off of a bridge, he murdered a 12 year old girl in 1927, Marion Parker – because he wanted to. He was 19 years old.
He kidnapped her and sent a ransom note to her doctor father. After her father delivered the money to Hickman in his car, our psychopath drove away and tossed the little girl’s head and torso out of the car for her dad. He had dismembered her and proceeded to throw parts of her all over the highway.
Part of the body of Marion Parker – Age 12
Hickman was arrested and eventually hanged.
But Hickman had a groupie. Our groupie kept a journal filled with gushing praise for this killer of little girls. She loved his sociopathic qualities.
“Other people do not exist for him and he does not see why they should”. Our groupie writes; he 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.’”
Our groupie would be a writer and echo almost word for word this description of her hero character Robert Roark in her novel “The Fountainhead” – “He was born without the ability to consider others”.
Yes, our groupie is Ayn Rand, new fountainhead of Abraham Lincoln’s Republican Party.
Other people didn’t exist for Rand either. She worshiped a bastardized version of Nietzsche – a dittsy dilettante’s version of superman – those not bound by rules other than self-interest. She had an admiration for “supermen” like Hickman, not held back by the “morality of the weak”.
Of course no one in the media will discuss her journal, published 15 years after her death and available on Amazon.
What makes it so creepy is how Rand and now her followers clearly get off on hating and bashing those they perceive as weak – Rand and her disciples have this thing for classifying weaker, poorer people as “parasites” and “lice”, “moochers” and “takers” – who need to swept out of the way. Bashing the helpless for kicks; Rand’s hero Hickman would have appreciated that.
And yet Republican faithful like GOP Vice Presidential nominee Paul Ryan will read Ayn Rand and declare, with pride, “Rand makes the best case for the morality of democratic capitalism.”
Indeed. Except that Ayn Rand also despised democracy, as she declared: “Democracy, in short, is a form of collectivism, which denies individual rights: the majority can do whatever it wants with no restrictions. In principle, the democratic government is all-powerful. Democracy is a totalitarian manifestation; it is not a form of freedom.”
Especially for psychopathic supermen.
Within a few short years of the Hickman murders the world would see the rise of the would-be supermen, the ultimate Randian supermen in Italy and Germany – the Fuehrer / Duce leaders who demanded only that the people follow.
Our groupie would grow to hate Franklin Roosevelt for his help to the parasites and moochers leading her to unabashedly support Wendell Wilkie and later Barry Goldwater.
Meanwhile she continued to idolize the superman who had no feelings for the rest of humanity. Altruism was for the weak.
She was an avowed atheist from her teen years, was a sexual libertine and hated homosexuals (although she supported repealing all laws against them) and supported abortion rights which is funny considering how she is now worshiped by the Tea Party. She said she opposed the Vietnam War while calling the protesters “bums”.
Our groupie author would deride as a hoax the notion that smoking caused cancer continuing to smoke her two packs a day. Eventually she got lung cancer.
And rather than let principle stand in the way of self-interest she took Social Security and Medicare under her married name, Ann O’Connor. Her philosophy clashed with reality; she was old and had no health insurance. Welcome to the real world. Karma’s a bitch.
Ayn Rand on social security and medicare!! Jesus, where are the true journalists when we need them!!
She spent her life making the world safe for sociopaths, rationalizing their behavior as “freedom” and indeed turning selfishness in a pseudo philosophy.
Nietzsche for sorority girls.
Even Bill Buckley hated her.
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photo:William Hickman:
http://www.executedtoday.com/2009/10/19/1928-william-edward-hickman-ayn-rand/
http://murderpedia.org/male.H/h/hickman-william-photos-4.htm
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Wow, I have read several of Rand’s books but was totally unaware of this dark chapter in her background.
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Hi Doc – glad you liked. I posted an earlier version of this piece before the last Presidential election, The best part is the idea of Rand on Social Security / Medicare!
Regards.
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One word: Hypocrisy.
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Indeed. Regards
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