Ayn Rand And The 2012 Presidential Campaign
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2012-08-20/ayn-rand-and-2012-presidential-campaign
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan as his running mate has brought new attention to the philosopher Ayn Rand. Paul Ryan says as a young man he was inspired by Ayn Rand's writing. In her novels “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead,” she described the virtues of private enterprise and the evils of government. Those ideas resonated with Ryan, and in a campaign video from 2009 he said, "Ayn Rand more than anyone else did a fantastic job of explaining the morality of capitalism, the morality of individualism, and this to me is what matters most." Ayn Rand was also an atheist, and Paul Ryan has distanced himself from Rand's religious views. But Ayn Rand remains an intriguing figure in American political thought. Senior fellow Onkar Ghate of the Ayn Rand Institute, Slate political reporter David Weigel and Stanford history professor Jennifer burns join guest host Tom Gjelten to discuss her influence.
Guests
Onkar Ghate
senior fellow and vice president of intellectual leadership at the Ayn Rand Institute.
Jennifer Burns
assistant professor of history at Stanford University and author of "Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right."
David Weigel
political reporter for Slate.
Comments
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The Ayn Rand supporter is a liar. There is evidence that she used an assumed name to hypocritically accepted social security and more from the government, notably medicare. Your guest is hiding the facts.
http://boingboing.net/2011/01/28/ayn-rand-took-govern.html
http://www.filthyliberal.com
"An interview recently surfaced that was conducted in 1998 by the Ayn Rand Institute with a social worker who says she helped Rand and her husband, Frank O’Connor, sign up for Social Security and Medicare in 1974.
Federal records obtained through a Freedom of Information act request confirm the Social Security benefits."
Ayn Rand has provided a way for those like Ryan who cloak selfish agendas with alleged religious beliefs.
"[The Native Americans] 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 they were fighting for, if 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, just keep everybody out so that you will live practically like an animal, or maybe a few caves above it. Any white person who brought the element of civilization had the right to take over this continent."
This is a woman I truly hate.
Precisely.
One of the most basic tenets of economics is that when demand exists, a supplier will enter the industry. This is as true in regard to management as it is for anything. In a society of 350 million people, we could replace a magnificant failure like Jamie Dimon, arguably with far better results, in a second.
This morning on NPR a study was mentioned that found that those of moderate and less than moderate incomes give away a larger percentage of their discretionary income than those with much higher incomes. Seems like the Ayn Rand theory is working.
I have yet to see anyone do anything by himself. We are not conceived by oneself build a business by himself. The test of individualism is to take a person who has lived all his life in New York and drop him in to central Africa and expect him to survive with out help from some one. If he does survive he has had training in survival by some one.
Also those who tout Rand tend to be executives of big business who are more dependent on others than any one else.
Then if one learns classical capitalism then takes the market machinations to there logical conclusion one finds that most of the people are less well off than they were before the imposition of capitalism.
Rand's objectivism calls for "enlightened self-interest", the definition of which is critical.
If enlightened self-interest includes a social safety net, then it contradicts laissez-faire capitalism.
If you believe that those who cannot pay for education, healthcare, food, and shelter should simply lie down and the sidewalk and die, then laissez-faire capitalism works, but what if those in that situation take up arms against you to get what they need to survive?
What about those who pay their workers wages so low that they cannot afford food, shelter, or healthcare?
Ultimately, enlightened self-interest for the ultra-wealthy must include a stable society and that requires living wages, education, and healthcare.
Onkhar, as an "intellectual leader", fails miserably in his intellectual dishonesty to fully address the extreme hypocrisy of Ayn collecting social security and medicare. Not a surprise. http://www.filthyliberal.com
Google: Rand and "William Edward Hickman": see what horrors arise.
Hickman was a serial child-murderer that Rand idolized as a "true superman", due to his obvious disdain for society's conventions. This is a sick, sick vision.
Alan Greenspan wrote the article, Gold and Economic Freedom in Ayn Rand's newsletter "Objectivist" in 1966. In that article he expertly and succinctly explained why a gold standard is necessary for economic freedom, and why statists must dismantle a gold standard and have economic power over the citizens. It is no secret Greenspan was a huge follower of Ayn Rand. Yet from 1987 to 2006 he served as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, which is the anti-gold standard agency! So, two points:
1. When someone says they are a disciple of Rand, they could still go completely against Rand's core philosophy.
2. "Capitalism" does not exist in America today, nor has it since the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve creates "capital" out of thin air and loans it out to push interest rates down. This government granted authority distorts markets and erodes savings and true capital creation. For example, a real free-market would let banks fail for taking too much risk.
America is a unique combination of individualism AND collectivism. Often these two positions are at odds with one another, but when they work together they define what America really is and can be. Rand (and her ilk) utterly failed to recognize this, which just goes to underscore her irrelevancy.
There's no Ayn R.
In Paul Ryan,
Because half a philosophy
Is no philosophy at all.
Isn't it another irony that Ayn Rand abhorred any form of collectivism.....but then made "heroes" out of the one percenters who collectively chose to drop out?
Republicans, Libertarians, and especially Tea Partiers want to discourage collective action and encourage individualism........TOGETHER!
Anonymous thought: politics and ethics are like mixing manure with ice cream......it makes neither one any tastier.
"makers" "takers" ARE CLASSES of people that Ayn Rand created. One is superior to the Randians, one inferior (and deserving of exploitation). Your guest is a liar.
Her books are FICTION and should be taken as such. To call her a "philosopher" is to also call any writer of fiction a philosopher, and they are not. They are elevating a woman who wrote a fantasy novel and it is patently ridiculous. Let's take Stephen King's "Silver Bullet" as a philosophy of behavior next and I can do it with equal validity.
"50 shades of Ayn Rand"
I do not think that the rapes are romantic variations of her fantasies. The results speak to the raped females identifications with their agressors.
We're talking about a chain smoking, spouse swaping, atheist, women's libber, jewish russian emigre. This is an icon of republican conservative philosophy?
I was listening to the broadcast of the Diane Rehm Show today, Aug 20th, and I'm writing in for the first time. The quest was that said Social Security is a plan by which money is taken from our young working force and given to our seniors is ABSOLUTELY WRONG. Social Security was started during our the last Great Depression in the 1930s. Workers paid in all their working years, and the government saved that money and it grew, with interest, and then it was to be paid back beginning at age 62 or when they retired. That age has been moved up a couple times, and at some point, money that was in the TRUST FUND for seniors was dumped into central pot and used for the general budget, and that is the reason that The Social Security Trust Fund is now going broke. To say that it is a Ponzi that the seniors, and anything like that, and we are taking money out of the paychecks of the working younger generations to give to our senior population in the form of Social Security is a complete and total falsehood.
Ayn Rand's classification of people into two groups - takers and creators - is fundamentally flawed. A person, over the course of their life, can be both. A creative person can become, during difficult times, takers - just as she did toward the end of her life. Likewise, a person that is a so-called "taker" can become a creator if given a leg-up at some point.
God help us if we become a society of "everyone for themselves". Even in the dawning ages of human-kind, we formed social groups to help us survive. There is a reason for this - from survival to flourishment.
Anyone who attempts to paint altruism as a failing, an evil, a weakness, and greed as good has a problem discerning the basics of what is right and wrong. This is symptomatic of the GOP and today's ingratious conservatives. Ann Rand has a self centered and twisted view of what it take to run a country and it was formed by the horrible society of her upbringing in Russia. She is NOT someone to emulate. She is someone to despise. Beware of those who would elevate her to anything more than fantasy writer. http://www.filthyliberal.com
"promote the general welfare" in the Constitution is not welfare checks, it is to provide an atmosphere for a free people to flourish and prosper.
I read "We the Living" when an old boyfriend recommended it to me and raved about the impact it had on him. When he also deried 'altruism' as an destructive force, it gave me pause, and ultimately some important insight into his character. That's what troubles me about Rand, and about how seriously people still take her these days. The bottom line is that many characteristics and styles of temprament can be overdone to the point where they are destructive to an individual or to others. A simple example is that we can be so giving and unselfish that we become a doormat as well as a poor example of how to live a balanced life. It is good to be a giver as well as a taker, and to choose carefully.
My initial sense of Rand was that although she was a product of her times, she also became a strident and shrill 'user' who lived her life somewhat differently from the rhetoris that she espoused. She took advantage of government programs, while also complaining them. She had an affair with one of her young acolytes, betraying both her husband and the man's wife. -This to me is a hallmark of someone who lacks moral values or an internal conscience. My ex-boyfriend also turned out to be a user and a self-absorbed person who really didn't care to build relationships unless he had the upper hand. Some people are givers, and others are takers.
Those that continue to take can drain you dry. And you can find them in the boardroom as well as in public housing projects.
My final point is that a couple of years ago I read a glowing piece on Rand in Newsweek or Time written by former South Carolina government Mark Sanford. I had to laugh because it served as the perfect example of someone who glorifies her philosophy in order to lie to his wife, children and constituents.
Interesting show, too bad everyone here had their minds closed and learned nothing!
In a review of Jennifer Burns' book, Dr. Edwin A Locke, who knew Ayn Rand, provides a stunning rebuke, e.g.,:
"I will show that the book is fundamentally flawed and the general tenor is negative.
"The most critical errors Burns is guilty of are superficiality and misrepresentation, specifically the failure to understand and present the essentials of Ayn Rand’s total philosophy as an integrated whole. More fundamentally, Burns does not really take ideas seriously."
The complete review is here: http://atlasanswers.net/jennifer-burns-2.
@IndieLady7
No problem. Sometimes I want to be so concise that I strip out the needed background.
And vocal tone would aid me putting context to my remarks, but nobody's invented an app for that yet. I'd buy it in a second.
The astute comment earier in the show pointing out the mention of the citizens' general welfare in the preamble of the US constitution, jogged me into contemplatiing Ms. Rand's historical place. It then struck me that her views are anachronistic in the light of major literary social commentary in the intervening years. From her writings, unless they are all a conscious sham, it seems that she either didn't bother to read Dickens, or didn't "get" him.
Doesn't sound like Franklin; please see http://alexandermarriott.blogspot.com/2011/11/curse-of-internet-fake-his...
This is authentic Franklin:
Private Property therefore is a Creature of Society, and is subject to the Calls of that Society, whenever its Necessities shall require it, even to its last Farthing; its Contributions therefore to the public Exigencies are not to be considered as conferring a Benefit on the Publick, entitling the Contributors to the Distinctions of Honour and Power, but as the Return of an Obligation previously received, or the Payment of a just Debt. The Combinations of Civil Society are not like those of a Set of Merchants, who club their Property in different Proportions for Building and Freighting a Ship, and may therefore have some Right to vote in the Disposition of the Voyage in a greater or less Degree according to their respective Contributions; but the important ends of Civil Society, and the personal Securities of Life and Liberty, these remain the same in every Member of the society; and the poorest continues to have an equal Claim to them with the most opulent, whatever Difference Time, Chance, or Industry may occasion in their Circumstances. On these Considerations, I am sorry to see the Signs this Paper I have been considering affords, of a Disposition among some of our People to commence an Aristocracy, by giving the Rich a predominancy in Government, [....]
Ayn Rand goes through a horrible, traumatic experience with the government and comes out on the other side believing in the virtue of selfishness. Anne Frank goes through a horrible experience and ultimately loses her life, but believes that "Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart."
I know who I hold in higher regard. (hint: it isn't Ayn Rand)
Please thank today's guest host for pointing out that a thinking person reads, analyzes, and considers. A politician, any person, need not mindless accept whole the ideas and dictates of any person. The suggestion that Paul Ryan need explain his statements about the influence of Ayn Rand on his thinking in conjunction with the rape of the female heroine was offensive.
My recollection is that a survey done, not that long ago, found that Atlas Shrugged along with the Bible was frequently cited by those asked as the most influential books in their lives.
I assure you I don't condone rape. I'm also a committed Christian. Nevertheless, there were ideas about capitalism, individualism, and free choice that were articulated and portrayed in Atlas Shrugged more clearly than I have seen before or since, to which I gave considerable thought, and realized that they very much reflect my beliefs. There is giving that is giving to create. There is also "giving" that creates dependency and entitlement. The latter is done to empower the "giver" and destroys the spirit and soul of those receiving.
Ideas and philosphies offered by an author are to be examined, considered, and tested against the reality of experience. One keeps what is worthwhile, like the sound proof of the importance of individual, free choice, and rejects what isn't, like atheism (a decision that I understood Ayn Rand reached truly based on her early experience - watching the church leaders -religion not faith- collaberate with those who pushed the collective as the ideal).
Thank you, Tom Gjelten, for pointing out that because one finds themselves greatly influenced by the ideas of another, one is not confessing to falling
or required to fall into lockstep with every utterance that came forth or was subsequently shared by that person.
What has happened to thinking, analyzing, sharing, and discussing in our nation?