About a decade ago, while a student at Chapman University, I organized a debate on the legacy of Columbus and set out to find the craziest people on the Left and Right to argue. On the Left was the fanatical Mexica Movement, who think everything European is inherently evil, and on the right was Onkar Ghate of the Ayn Rand Institute, who thinks everything European is far superior to the rest of the world (unless, of course, it's those pesky Eastern Europeans). Great time was had by all, with no minds being changed that night.
That rascally Ghate is still at it, for better or for worse, recently coming out to say Ayn Rand is better than Jesus.
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Writing for Fox News, Ghate makes the ridiculous argument that Rand's hyper-individualism is better for the United States than the wimpy Nazarene's lovefest. “If we are to reject the welfare state as immoral and thereby restore the
American dream of individualism,” Ghate wrote, “don't we need a rational morality that
challenges the centuries-old creed of self-sacrifice and instead argues
for the individual's moral right to his own life and happiness?”
Yeah, because all that Sermon of the Mount shit never did anything to help this country, right? Amazingly, Ghate dismisses the hallmark of Christianity and its subsequent gospel of care.
His essay is the best example of why most sane people consider the Irvine-based Ayn Rand Institute the political version of Scientology, with an undue worship of a bonkers wacko and a subsequent zealotry of spreading their Gospel that would've made the Apostles seem like the Pharisees…but Ghate himself, from what I remember, is a nice-enough guy.
