Well! So this is the "morality" that the Republican Party embraces. This is the writer whose books Paul Ryan insists that his staff read when they come to work for him. The video is a 7-minute excerpt from an interview of Rand by Mike Wallace in 1957 which runs to nearly 30 minutes. I watched it all and found Rand's words and manner to be chilling. First of all, Rand's darting eyes and body language are strange, indeed. She is unable to look at Wallace for any length of time, and she seems to be shrinking back from him during the interview.
Rand's "morality" favors the rational self-interest of the thinkers who never allow emotion to influence their conclusions. Selfishness rules, and altruism has no place in Rand's "morality". If the policies of
laissez-faire are in force
, then the common good will result. Greed, which is as evident today as ever it was throughout history, the desire to accumulate more and more money and goods at the expense of those less fortunate, seems not to be noted at all. By simply leaving rational achievers to their own devices, without constraints, Rand and her disciples believe that all deserving people will benefit...somehow. By magic? As for the undeserving, who knows what becomes of them in Rand's morality?
This one interview sheds much light on where the far right, who have now become middle-of-the roaders in the Republican Party, get their ideas. What I don't understand is how a person who subscribes to Rand's "morality" can claim, at the same time, to be an observant Christian, Jew, or Mormon. Objectivism is in direct opposition to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to the teachings in the Hebrew Testament on mercy and justice.
Paul Ryan is Roman Catholic, and I have to wonder if he reads the church's teachings on social justice as assiduously as he reads Ayn Rand.
In an unusually pointed correspondence, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops urged lawmakers to consider the moral implications of their actions as they prepared to vote on the Ryan budget.
"We join with other Christian leaders in calling for a 'circle of protection' around our brothers and sisters at home and abroad who are poor and vulnerable," the bishops wrote in the spring. They said the "moral measure" of the debate "is not which party wins or which powerful interests prevail, but rather how those who are jobless, hungry, homeless or poor are treated."
....
And he [Ryan] pushed back at those who criticized him for abandoning the Catholic principle of "preferential option for the poor and vulnerable."
"Simply put, I do not believe that the preferential option for the poor means a preferential option for big government," he said.
There you have it from Ryan, the Pericles of Janesville. (
H/T to Charles Pierce.)
The entire 30 minute interview is
here at YouTube.
