Loughner's favorite books included one by Ayn Rand

[LostHighway]

It's been said that Loughner is a leftist because he included the Communist Manifesto as a favorite book, but in fact if you look at his YouTube page he also lists "We the Living" by Ayn Rand along with "Animal Farm" and "Brave New World", as well as "Fahrenheit 451", all of which go against the idea that he was some sort of crypto-Stalinist. Why haven't folks in the media pointed out that he was a Rand fan?

Here's the entire list:

"Books:I had favorite books: Animal Farm, Brave New World, The Wizard Of OZ, Aesop Fables, The Odyssey, Alice Adventures Into Wonderland, Fahrenheit 451, Peter Pan, To Kill A Mockingbird, We The Living, Phantom Toll Booth, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Pulp,Through The Looking Glass, The Communist Manifesto, Siddhartha, The Old Man And The Sea, Gulliver's Travels, Mein Kampf, The Republic, and Meno."

[PBS Poll-435]

1. New and SHOCKING information

At this point here is what we really know.

He appears "disturbed"
He had an obsession with Rep. Gabrielle Giffords
He liked guns
He is a white guy in Southern Arizona
He has an obsession with literacy in the English Language
He shot a lot of people in public and killed several including a Federal Judge.




I don't care what he reads or claims to read. ("All of them, Katie")

[The Northerner]

6. +1

[Nye Bevan]

2. I guess the message of tolerance and nonviolence from "To Kill a Mockingbird" really struck a chord

with him.

[EC]

3. We have pointed out that he lists

"We the Living".

[stray cat]

4. He does not appear to be a convenient label for reality based political rhetoric

Why couldn't the mass murderer fit our box instead of bring a person?

[Yupster]

5. Yeah - that list is pretty much

all over the political map, from Mein Kampf to the Communist Manifesto.

I haven't read "We The Living." It's Ayn Rand's story about growing up in St Petersburg, Russia during the Russian Revolution. She was a teenager when the communists took over.

[pipi_k]

10. I read it a few years ago...

it was depressing as hell.

Although it did make me appreciate even more the life I live, even though I feel like it's too difficult at times. I couldn't even comprehend living the way she did.

[JVS]

7. "The Wizard Of OZ" Bimetallist freak!

[malaise]

8. The fact that the RW hacks chose to leave books of the list

is one more clue about their dishonesty and attempt at 'impression management'.

The good news is that we all can access facts for ourselves these days. KO et al have been exposing this for days. Fuck them.

[robcon]

9. Wow, talk about minutia; next we'll look at what TV shows he watched.

I have a feeling there are people who will do anything to get the killer on the 'opposite' side.

Sill, IMO.

[pipi_k]

11. I wanna know what vegetables he likes

If he hates broccoli and spinach, then I know he's "the enemy".



:7

[w4rma]

12. Rushbo and company have been trying to make him out to be a lefty. And lots of their patsys believe

them. I think you might believe the right-wing, too, robcon.

[w4rma]

13. That book seems to directly influence his beliefs more than any other book.

It's the only book that you have to be tied into a political movement to really even know about. The other books are very well known. Ayn Rand's book isn't as well known outside of certain groups and it's likely that he actually read parts of it.

[jeepnstein]

14. Since he's most likely mentally ill...

I would take anything he says he read with a grain of salt. Not everything revolves around politics and party identification. The odds are pretty good that he's just a straight-up nut.

Most of us have read lots of books through the years. Some of them were written by folks I don't necessarily want to emulate. Some times you just gotta get inside the other guy's head and walk around for a while, ya know?

[montanto]

15. extremists don't need a side.

From one of my favorite books, Heart of Darkness (RE: Kurtz):

"He would have been a splendid leader of an extreme party."

"Which party?"

"Any party."

We get too caught up in whether Hitler and Stalin were left of right, when the more fundamental issue is their megalomania, which will use any avenue to achieve its goals. Clearly this kid's political position was as schizophrenic as the rest of him. If pot didn't cause him to kill people, then neither did Ayn Rand. I think maybe it was the craziness and the heated rhetoric, and not the political perspective or a book.