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Just-Leave-Me-Alone Tea Party Hero John Galt Be Praised: The High Hypocrisy of Galt’s Creator, Ayn Rand, Who Died Ignominiously Swaddled in Her U.S. Government Benefits of Social Security & Medicaid
St Ayn didn't die nestled with her fabled John Galt in her imaginary mountain enclave, known as "Galt's Gulch." She took Government subsistence.
Rand took benefits under the name Ann O'Connor (her husband was Frank O'Connor). Thus the harsh, arch-anit-social welfare activist and critic died swaddled in U.S. GOVERNMENT HEALTH CARE AND SOCIAL SECUITY!
Tea Party's, "godless" St. Ayn expired bestowed with full government entitlements. This Tea Party false heroine none-the-less will be lauded on Lansing's capitol steps tomorrow. by the nefarious Dick Morris. How bogus is that?
Ayn Rand:
"The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breaches or fraud by the others, to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law. But a government that initiates the employment of force against men who had forced no one, the employment of armed compulsion against disarmed victims, is a nightmare infernal machine designed to annihilate morality: such a government reverses its only moral purpose and switches from the role of protector to the role of man's deadliest enemy, from the role of policeman to the role of a criminal vested with the right to the wielding of violence against the victims deprived of the right of self-defense. Such a government substitutes for morality the following rule of social conduct: you may do whatever you please to your neighbor, provided your gang is bigger than his."
- Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)
In St. Ayn's view accepting government assistance and social programs (paid for by the general public to serve us all in our old age or hour of greatest need and fewest/depleted resources) is the to give into an act of a "gang" that is "bigger" than the individual. It must be the lone man, standing alone, who must to be a true man. That ideal man, Galt, must be the sole source of his own destiny and welfare. The government, in Ayn Rand's eyes, as expressed by her rugged individualistic fictional hero, John Galt. (Now the main character in the new and much ballyhooed Tea Party/Libertarian cult film: Rand's Atlas Shrugged, just released) is "a nightmare machine designed to annihilate morality (a specialized definition by Rand espousing "selfishness as a virtue, and egoism as the highest achievement of her view of "morals.")
In Rand's Atlas Shrugged, the government, when it puts regulations and lawful restraint upon the intense and selfish purposes of man or corporations, takes up the "role of man's deadliest enemy" and most significantly Rand's assertion leads to her false conclusion that by extracting taxes from John Galt, St. Ayn's fictional, rugged entrepreneural individual, government is "welding" coercion and force, via its police powers, to collect taxes.
Washington Independent's David Weigel reported the following from "Ask Dr. Helen" Smith and others the subject of Atlas Shrugged:
"Smith (who is know for resurrecting the Galt Theme) was a little ahead of the curve of what has become an incredibly popular meme. Across the broad conservative movement, from members of Congress to activists to economists, Rand's final, allegorical novel is being looked at with fresh eyes. According to the Atlas Society, a think tank that promotes and analyzes Rand's work, sales of "Atlas Shrugged" have tripled since the presidential election.
"One congressman says that Rand wrote a "rulebook" that can guide conservatives through the age of Obama; another calls Obama's policies something right out of the mind of Rand. One economist says that Rand's fantasies have become reality. "Smith is one of many activists citing Rand to explain their decisions to sell their stocks, or to explain why the president's "demonization" of run-amok CEOs is aggravating the economic slowdown. The popular meme is giving critics of the president's policies a way to explain why, they believe, it's doomed to fail - because Rand predicted all of this.
"'...Rep. John Campbell (R-Calif.)- in an interview with TWI, 'I had a guy come up to me in my district and tell me that he was losing his interest in the business he'd run for years because the president wanted to punish him for his success. I think people are reading 'Atlas Shrugged' again because they're trying to understand what happens to people of accomplishment, and people of talent and energy, when a government turns against them. That's what appears to be happening right now.'
"The plot of Rand's novel is simple, despite its length - 1,088 pages in the current paperback edition. The United States is governed by bureaucrats, 'looters' and 'moochers,' who penalize and demonize creative people. The country is in decline because creative people are disappearing - they have followed the innovative John Galt to a mountain enclave, 'Galt's Gulch,' where they watch society crumble. Creativity has gone on strike (the working title of the novel was 'The Strike'), and the engine of capitalism cannot run without it."
Ayn Rand's Intellectual Dishonesty and Rank Hypocrisy: When the reality of cancer and pending death faced her, she willingly applied for and accepted the U.S. Government social programs: Social Security and Medicare."
Joshua Holland, writes the following in an article "Ayn Rand Railed Against Government Benefits, But Grabbed Social Security and Medicare When She Needed Them THE TEA PARTY AND THE RIGHT":
"'Ayn Rand was not only a schlock novelist, she was also the progenitor of a sweeping 'moral philosophy' that justifies the privilege of the wealthy and demonizes not only the slothful, undeserving poor but the lackluster middle-classes as well.
"Her books provided wide-ranging parables of 'parasites,' 'looters' and 'moochers' using the levers of government to steal the fruits of her heroes' labor. In the real world, however, Rand herself received Social Security payments and Medicare benefits under the name of Ann O'Connor (her husband was Frank O'Connor)."St. Ayn was a hypocrite, but she could never be faulted for failing to act in her own self-interest. As Michael Ford of Xavier University's Center for the Study of the American Dream wrote:
'In the end, Miss Rand was a hypocrite but she could never be faulted for failing to act in her own self-interest.'Her ideas about government intervention in some idealized pristine marketplace serve as the basis for so much of the conservative rhetoric we see today. 'The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand,' said Paul Ryan, the GOP's young budget star at a D.C. event honoring the author. On another occasion, he proclaimed, "Rand makes the best case for the morality of democratic capitalism.'
Wrote Rand in a 1972 newsletter:
"'Morally and economically the welfare state creates an ever accelerating downward pull.'"
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Journalist Patia Stephens wrote of Rand:
"'[She] called altruism a 'basic evil' and referred to those who perpetuate the system of taxation and redistribution as 'looters' and 'moochers.' She wrote in her book 'The Virtue of Selfishness' that accepting any government controls is 'delivering oneself into gradual enslavement.'"
Rand Capitulated to the Lure of Collectivism
Rand also believed that the scientific consensus on the dangers of tobacco was a hoax. By 1974, the two-pack-a-day smoker, then 69, required surgery for lung cancer. And it was at that moment of vulnerability that she succumbed to the lure of collectivism.
Evva Joan Pryor, who had been a social worker in New York in the 1970s, was interviewed in 1998 by Scott McConnell, who was then the director of communications for the Ayn Rand Institute. In his book, 100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand, McConnell basically portrays Rand as first standing on principle, but then being mugged by reality. Stephens points to this exchange between McConnell and Pryor:
"'She was coming to a point in her life where she was going to receive the very thing she didn't like, which was Medicare and Social Security,' Pryor told McConnell. 'I remember telling her that this was going to be difficult. For me to do my job she had to recognize that there were exceptions to her theory. So that started our political discussions. From there on " with gusto " we argued all the time.'
"'The initial argument was on greed,' Pryor continued. 'She had to see that there was such a thing as greed in this world. Doctors could cost an awful lot more money than books earn, and she could be totally wiped out by medical bills if she didn't watch it. Since she had worked her entire life, and had paid into Social Security, she had a right to it. She didn't feel that an individual should take help.'"
Rand had paid into the system, so why not take the benefits? It's true, but according to Stephens, some of Rand's fellow travelers remained true to their principles.
"Rand is one of three women the Cato Institute calls founders of American libertarianism. The other two, Rose Wilder Lane and Isabel 'Pat' Paterson, both rejected Social Security benefits on principle. Lane, with whom Rand corresponded for several years, once quit an editorial job in order to avoid paying Social Security taxes. The Cato Institute says Lane considered Social Security a "Ponzi fraud" and 'told friends that it would be immoral of her to take part in a system that would predictably collapse so catastrophically.' Lane died in 1968."
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