Adrian Ryan over at SLOG has an interesting theory about conservatives…

Conservatives: Secretly Satanic? Confirmed!

As Grant Cogswell pointed out in his feature piece last week, there once was a man called Anton LaVey, and Anton LaVey, whilst he lived, tried really, really hard to be The Evilest Man Who Ever Was. Mostly he was just bald and vaguely douche-bag-ish: Like a martini-sipping Fu-Manchu in a priest suit who looked like he had to crap a walrus. But still. He tried really, really hard.

Indeed, Anton wanted to be evil, seriously evil, so he did the only evil thing an evil person in his evil position could do: He poured himself a stiff drink, sat down, and thought really really hard about, well, evil.

…

His conclusions and the crux of his Satanic philosophy ran thusly: We humans are, in every sense, rotten, rude, paranoid, and less than fresh. People are wicked and untrustworthy animals. All so-called “virtues” and “good deeds” are self-delusive ego-kicks, hip, hip, hooray. That’s the whole thing in a devilicious nutshell.

Sound familiar?  Well…yeah actually.  Ryan points us to a Colbert interview of George Will, who obligingly goes on just as he’s done for decades now about the difference between liberals and conservatives…

That’s right. Straight from the horsey mouth of the “leading pundit of conservatism in the nation”: The difference between conservatives and liberals is that liberals are fools who believe in the goodness of human nature and the basic equality of all people. Like in the, uh, Declaration of Independence and junk. (And, if you’ll pardon the expression, “The Bible”.) They believe misguidedly that “something straight” can be made out of the “crooked timber” that is humanity. Man is clearly rotten and selfish by design. There can be no myth of equality…um….it only translates to “mediocrity”, and…uh…Satan? Is that you? It’s me, George Will.

Of course you could argue that conservatives would strongly disagree with LaVey that this broken human nature means we should just go ahead and give in to our basest nature.  On the contrary, we need a strong government based on strong moral values to keep our base nature in check.  Well…actually…Your base nature.  You.  The common folk.  The rich and powerful are another story.  What Reagan and Bush have made pretty clear is that They get to indulge their every selfish greedy, crooked, broken desire to their heart’s content.  After all…they’re on top.  And isn’t that pure LaVey after all?

1. Blessed are the strong, for they shall possess the earth.  Cursed are the weak, for they shall inherit the yoke!

2. Blessed are the powerful, for they shall be reverenced among men.  Cursed are the feeble, for they shall inherit the yoke!

3. Blessed are the bold, for they shall be masters of the world.  Cursed are the righteously humble, for they shall be trodden under cloven hoofs!

4. Blessed are the victorious, for victory is the basis of right.  Cursed are the vanquished, for they shall remain vassals forever!

5. Blessed are the iron handed, for the unfit shall flee before them.  Cursed are the poor in spirit, for they shall be spat upon! 

-Anton Szandor LaVey, The Satanic Bible, The Book Of Satan, Chapter 5.

…and so on.  Yes, I have a copy…bought back in the early 70s just out of shear curiosity.  It never dawned on me until now to really look at how closely this guy’s ideas map to Ayn Rand’s and the greed is good conservative movement she spawned.  And if you think Rand would have been outraged at being compared to the likes of LaVey, you’re probably right.  She often claimed that her philosophy regarded predators as parasites, whereas the truly selfish man did not simply take from the weak, but rather created his own wealth.  But Rand was hardly averse to stealing outright from the weak.  In point of fact, she really did believe that was the prerogative of the powerful…

On the 125th anniversary of the Dred Scott decision, Ayn Rand — who surely would have approved of its fearless pronouncements on inequality — died at the age of 77. The right-wing cult philosopher and high priestess of tedium somehow managed to sell millions of copies of her nearly unreadable novels from the 1950s onward, including paperweights such as The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. On 6 March 1974, following a speech to the Army cadets at West Point, Rand was asked about the dispossession of American Indian land. In short, she approved of the idea.

They didn’t have any rights to the land, and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights which they had not conceived and were not using . . . . What was it that they were fighting for, when they opposed white men on this continent? For their wish to continue a primitive existence, their ‘right’ to keep part of the earth untouched, unused and not even as property, but just keep everybody out so that you will live practically like an animal, or a few caves above it. Any white person who brings the element of civilization has the right to take over this continent.

Blessed are the strong, for they shall possess the earth.  Cursed are the weak, for they shall inherit the yoke!  When they talk to you about morality, and Christian values, laugh in their face.  They don’t want to get government off your back, so much as get it out of the way so they can put a leash around your neck and a brand on your forehead and call you their own.  They are less Christ, then LaVey.

We are not devils.  We are not angels.  We are not destroyers, we are not creators.  We are not lords nor are we peasants.  We are human.  We are all of these.  There is no dark, there is no light, there is simply what we are.  The abyss isn’t our destiny any more then heaven is.  But the path to oblivion is paved with lies.  We neither sustain ourselves nor make a future possible by throwing ourselves into the arms of gurus who tell us we are something that we are not.  Ask the shades that walk the battlegrounds on this poor earth, where we killed each other by the thousands to appease the bottomless greed of the few and their hatred of everything fine and noble a human being can be.  Blessed are they who question, for they will wear no chains.