Hitchens and Ayn Rand

Christopher Hitchens basically dissed Ayn Rand, her books and philosophy in this video and I transcribed this for posterity and posted it as well on the Youtube comment for this video.

"I am invited to be unpleasant at the expense of Ayn Rand and Objectivism. Well, that is easy. Well, the novels, I mean, first, I keep trying to say, in my view, that there is more morality in a novel by George Eliot than there is any of the four gospels, all the four of them put together. I care very much about literature, as a place where real ethical dilemmas are met and dealt with.

So to have novels as transcendentally awful as Atlas Shrugged and the Fountainhead, sort of undermines my project. And then, though, I have some respect for the Virtue of selfishness, a collection of essays, I have argued about them with the chairman of the Federal Reserve, as a matter of fact.

By the way, a state federal reserve bank, is not a part of the libertarian protract. Although Mr. Greenspan seems to be a bit iffy about this self-evident proposition.

I don't think there is any need to have essays advocating selfishness among human beings.

I don't know what your impression has been, but some things require no further reinforcement.

Having a book strenuously recommending that people be more self-centered seems to be as the Anglican Church used to say in its critique of Catholicism, a work of Supererogation, too strenuous."

#hitchslap