{"id":3958,"date":"2011-01-29T09:36:34","date_gmt":"2011-01-29T17:36:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=3958"},"modified":"2011-01-29T09:44:37","modified_gmt":"2011-01-29T17:44:37","slug":"ayn-rand-republican-hypocrite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/01\/29\/ayn-rand-republican-hypocrite\/","title":{"rendered":"Ayn Rand: Republican Hypocrite"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many on the extreme right, the Republican Party, look to Ayn Rand as the guru of the plutocratic corporatism that they call capitalism.\u00a0 But like virtually all Republican leaders, the deprivations she would impose on others did not apply to her.\u00a0 Republican belief in free enterprise applies to the poor and middle classes only, and is translated, \u201cYou\u2019re on your own!\u201d\u00a0 For Republicans, only the rich get the benefits of socialism.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"29rand\"Ayn Rand was not only a schlock novelist, she was also the progenitor of a sweeping \u201cmoral philosophy\u201d that justifies the privilege of the wealthy and demonizes not only the slothful, undeserving poor but the lackluster middle-classes as well<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Her books provided wide-ranging parables of “parasites<\/strong>,” “looters<\/strong>” and “moochers<\/strong>” 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<\/span><\/strong> under the name of Ann O’Connor (her husband was Frank O’Connor).<\/p>\n

As Michael Ford of Xavier University’s Center for the Study of the American Dream wrote<\/a>, \u201cIn the end, Miss Rand was a hypocrite<\/strong> but she could never be faulted for failing to act in her own self-interest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her ideas about government intervention in some idealized pristine marketplace serve as the basis for so much of the conservative rhetoric we see today. \u201cThe reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand,\u201d said Paul Ryan, the GOP’s young budget star at a D.C. event honoring the author\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Alternet<\/a>><\/p>\n

Does this remind you of Teabaggers screaming, \u201cGet your government hands off my Medicare\u201d during the health care debate?\u00a0 Somehow it does not occur to these people that for a well-to-do author, or a Republican legislator for that matter, to demonize the safety net, but to avail themselves of its benefits makes it clear what arrogant hypocrites they are.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many on the extreme right, the Republican Party, look to Ayn Rand as the guru of the plutocratic corporatism that they call capitalism.\u00a0 But like virtually all Republican leaders, the deprivations she would impose on others did not apply to her.\u00a0 Republican belief in free enterprise applies to the poor and middle classes only, and […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3958\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}