When Ayn Rand Collected Social Security & Medicare, After Years of Opposing Benefit Programs

ayn-rand-social-security

Image via YouTube, 1959 inter­view with Mike Wal­lace

A robust social safe­ty net can ben­e­fit both the indi­vid­u­als in a soci­ety and the soci­ety itself. Free of the fear of total impov­er­ish­ment and able to meet their basic needs, peo­ple have a bet­ter oppor­tu­ni­ty to pur­sue long-term goals, to invent, cre­ate, and inno­vate. Of course, there are many who believe oth­er­wise. And there are some, includ­ing the acolytes of Ayn Rand, who believe as Rand did: that those who rely on social sys­tems are—to use her ugly term—“parasites,” and those who amass large amounts of pri­vate wealth are hero­ic super­men.

Rand dis­ci­ple Alan Greenspan, for exam­ple, ini­ti­at­ed the era of “Reaganomics” in the ear­ly 1980s by engi­neer­ing “an increase in the most regres­sive tax on the poor and mid­dle class,” writes Gary Weiss, “the Social Secu­ri­ty pay­roll tax—combined with a cut in ben­e­fits.” For Greenspan, “this was no con­tra­dic­tion. Social Secu­ri­ty was a sys­tem of altru­ism at its worst. Its ben­e­fi­cia­ries were loot­ers. Rais­ing their tax­es and cut­ting their ben­e­fits was no loss to soci­ety.”

One prob­lem with Rand’s rea­son­ing is this: whether “par­a­site” or titan of indus­try, none of us is any­thing more than human, sub­ject to the same kinds of cru­el twists of fate, the same exis­ten­tial uncer­tain­ty, the same ill­ness and dis­ease. Suf­fer­ing may be unequal­ly dis­trib­uted to a great degree by human agency, but nature and cir­cum­stance often have a way of evening the odds. Rand her­self expe­ri­enced such a lev­el­ing effect in her retire­ment. After under­go­ing surgery in 1974 for lung can­cer caused by her heavy smok­ing, she found her­self in strait­ened cir­cum­stances.

Two years lat­er, she was paired with social work­er Evva Pry­or, who gave an inter­view in 1998 about their rela­tion­ship. “Rarely have I respect­ed some­one as much as I did Ayn Rand,” said Pry­or. When asked about their philo­soph­i­cal dis­agree­ments, she replied, “My back­ground was social work. That should tell you all you need to know about our dif­fer­ences.” Pry­or was tasked with per­suad­ing Rand to accept Social Secu­ri­ty and Medicare to help with mount­ing med­ical expens­es.

I had read enough to know that she despised gov­ern­ment inter­fer­ence, and that she felt that peo­ple should and could live inde­pen­dent­ly. She was com­ing to a point in her life where she was going to receive the very thing she didn’t like.… For me to do my job, she had to rec­og­nize that there were excep­tions to her the­o­ry.… She had to see that there was such a thing as greed in this world.… 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.

Final­ly, Rand relent­ed. “Whether she agreed or not is not the issue,” said Pry­or, “She saw the neces­si­ty for both her and [her hus­band] Frank.” Or as Weiss puts it, “Real­i­ty had intrud­ed upon her ide­o­log­i­cal pipedreams.” That’s one way of inter­pret­ing the con­tra­dic­tion: that Rand’s phi­los­o­phy, Objec­tivism, “has no prac­ti­cal pur­pose except to pro­mote the eco­nom­ic inter­ests of the peo­ple bankrolling it”—the sole func­tion of her thought is to jus­ti­fy wealth, explain away pover­ty, and nor­mal­ize the sort of Hobbe­sian war of all against all Rand saw as a soci­etal ide­al.

Rand taught “there is no such thing as the pub­lic inter­est,” that pro­grams like Social Secu­ri­ty and Medicare steal from “cre­ators” and ille­git­i­mate­ly redis­trib­ute their wealth. This was a “sub­lime­ly entic­ing argu­ment for wealthy busi­ness­men who had no inter­est what­ev­er in the pub­lic inter­est.… Yet the tax­pay­ers of Amer­i­ca paid Rand’s and Frank O’Con­nor’s med­ical expens­es.” Ran­di­ans have offered many con­vo­lut­ed expla­na­tions for what her crit­ics see as sheer hypocrisy. We may or may not find them per­sua­sive.

In the sim­plest terms, Rand dis­cov­ered at the end of her life that she was only human and in need of help. Rather than starve or drop dead—as she would have let so many oth­ers do—she took the help on offer. Rand died in 1982, as her admir­er Alan Greenspan had begun putting her ideas into prac­tice in Reagan’s admin­is­tra­tion, mak­ing sure, writes Weiss, that the sys­tem was “more favor­able to the cre­ators and entre­pre­neurs who were more valu­able to soci­ety,” in his Ran­di­an esti­ma­tion, “than peo­ple low­er down the lad­der of suc­cess.” After well over three decades of such poli­cies, we can draw our own con­clu­sions about the results.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ayn Rand Helped the FBI Iden­ti­fy It’s A Won­der­ful Life as Com­mu­nist Pro­pa­gan­da

Free Audio: Ayn Rand’s 1938 Dystopi­an Novel­la Anthem

In Her Final Speech, Ayn Rand Denounces Ronald Rea­gan, the Moral Major­i­ty & Anti-Choicers (1981)

Flan­nery O’Connor: Friends Don’t Let Friends Read Ayn Rand (1960)

Ayn Rand Argues That Believ­ing in God Is an Insult to Rea­son on The Phil Don­ahue Show (Cir­ca 1979)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness


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Comments (109)
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  • Jonathan collins says:

    I wish this web­site was as forth­com­ing when a lib­er­al pipe dream burts as it is when a con­ser­v­a­tive’s does. That notwith­stand­ing, Rand did pay into the social secu­ri­ty sys­tem, and the monies she received, were right­ly hers.

  • John says:

    Real­ly? Ayn Rand wrote pub­licly about her tak­ing back wealth that was con­fis­cat­ed from her, and you choose not to even cite her response. You are the worst kind of intel­lec­tu­al fraud.

    Her posi­tion on this mat­ter is quite clear, and is quite log­i­cal­ly con­sis­tent. If you sup­port a pro­gram such as Social Secu­ri­ty, if you advo­cate in favor of it, you are sup­port­ing theft. You are, in every sense of the word, an accom­plice. You do not deserve any ben­e­fits from such a sys­tem.

    But, if you have active­ly and con­sis­tent­ly opposed such pro­grams, you are not an accom­plice. You are a vic­tim. You are enti­tled to resti­tu­tion of that which was stolen from you.

    It is pret­ty clear to me. It is also, in my opin­ion, cor­rect. You may dis­agree, but only some­one of lim­it­ed intel­li­gence would­n’t be able to rec­on­cile her phi­los­o­phy with her actions in this instance.

  • Brian says:

    Like oth­ers here, I don’t think she was a hyp­ocrite because there are two parts to Social Pro­grams; pay­ing and receiv­ing. If she had not paid, her the­o­ries could have been test­ed because she could have used/invested the mon­ey she was forced to pay into Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid. I would pre­fer to do that myself, but I am not giv­en a choice, there­fore I too will accept my mon­ey back when the time comes.

  • John Donohue says:

    Josh Jones,

    Two com­menters have already smashed your entire essay. So have hun­dreds of oth­er peo­ple who actu­al­ly under­stand Ayn Rand, when hun­dreds of times peo­ple have tried to pin con­tra­dic­tion on Ayn Rand for retriev­ing $11,000 of the vast­ly high­er amount tak­en from her by a coer­cive sys­tem. So, I can’t even say to you, “nice try.”

    It would be a con­tra­dic­tion for Rand to not get the mon­ey back. A pro­duc­er respects the wealth he/she cre­at­ed, and to sim­ply let it be tak­en, when means exist to get it back, would be to dis­re­spect her entire belief sys­tem.

    As to real­i­ty imping­ing on ide­ol­o­gy, it is the ide­ol­o­gy of being legal­ly in thrall to one’s “broth­er” that has near­ly bank­rupt­ed the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment, and it now faces two impinge­ments: either Trump of anoth­er leader will spark a move to oblit­er­ate it, or if not, it will destroy our nation.

  • Robin Smith says:

    The point is is that when a lib­er­al pipe dream bursts, life goes on. When a con­ser­v­a­tive pipe dream bursts, peo­ple die.
    See the dif­fer­ence?

  • Bea says:

    Bri­an, “choice” is just that. If a gov­ern­ment pro­gram offends you, you have the right to refuse it. I sug­gest you do so rather than being offend­ed by tak­ing it. Rand could­n’t have had near­ly as much mon­ey in the kit­ty as she pulled out. She got into Amer­i­ca by ille­gal­ly over­stay­ing her visa until she found a hus­band, which allowed her to stay. She spruned the suf­fer­ing of oth­ers, felt it was just fine to let them die with­out help, and if you can jus­ti­fy this ide­o­log­i­cal crap, you’re a pret­ty sad excuse for a human, just as she, Alisa Rosen­baum, was.

  • Eric says:

    Is it a prob­lem of hypocrisy ? Or one of intel­lec­tu­al lucid­i­ty ? Is this rea­son­able, that one per­son needs to be near death or pover­ty to dis­cov­er at last the legit­i­ma­cy of ben­e­fit­ing from social secu­ri­ty pro­grams ? was­n’t she sup­pose to be a thinker ? Isn’t a “cre­ative mind” sup­posed to be capa­ble of sym­pa­thy ?

  • Jayn says:

    @John So, it’s okay to accept your share of the spoils of thiev­ery as long as you protest loud­ly about the immoral­i­ty of it before pock­et­ing it? While the peo­ple who paid in in good faith that they were sup­port­ing a just and equi­table sys­tem are vile thieves and moochers?Come on.
    Medicare was a near­ly new ben­e­fit when Rand start­ed col­lect­ing from it — she can­not have pre­tend­ed that she was only col­lect­ing what she had paid in for it — and the after­math of lung can­cer is not cheap. She threw the bur­den of her health­care on the taxpayers…which is fine if you believe that old peo­ple at the end of their finan­cial rope in poor health deserve care, but if you’re Ayn Rand or a believ­er in her creed that any­one who does­n’t have mon­ey at the end of their life don’t deserve health, then you’re being a hyp­ocrite to accept such help — and the fact that you’ve spent your life vil­i­fy­ing peo­ple who accept the help because they’ve paid into the sys­tem they believe in does not exon­er­ate you from that hypocrisy.

  • G. Williams says:

    She took the mon­ey because most lib­er­als, com­mu­nists and con­ser­v­a­tives are scared to die, you sound like you would be sur­prised how you could com­pro­mise your beliefs when the grim reaper is at your door. We are but humans after all. Many an athe­ist has asked for gods help on their deathbed. He is a lot less like­ly to help you than health­care could.

  • Fritz Doerring says:

    Argue as you like, Ayn Rand was wrong!
    It is clear­ly obvi­ous humans can­not
    take care of them­selves — in THE mass.
    We can­not devise even a gov­ern­ment that is prac­ti­cal; such ever has to be
    Revised in order to sur­vive. And if peo­ple, even just some, are so able in them­selves, why do they die also?

  • John Donohue says:

    Many false­hoods: here’s your cor­rec­tion on one: “She spruned [sic] the suf­fer­ing of oth­ers.”

    First, Rand’s entire project is about remov­ing the main cause of un-earned suf­fer­ing: coer­cion. True, she has no sym­pa­thy for those who cause their own grief. Do you? And do you think it’s your duty to force me to pay for peo­ple who are destroy­ing them­selves?

    Sec­ond, Rand’s actu­al life is filled with inci­dents of her help­ing fam­i­ly mem­bers and strangers with the right atti­tude.

  • Joe says:

    I am opposed to Social Secu­ri­ty, pro­gres­sive tax rates for the wealthy, mas­sive inher­i­tance tax­es and Medicare. Now I’ve said it, so I can moral­ly ben­e­fit from all of those pro­grams. Thanks Ayn for doing the men­tal con­tor­tions nec­es­sary to make me NOT a hyp­ocrite.

  • Elias says:

    How do you feel about the Amer­i­can tax dol­lars used to mur­der peo­ple in third-world coun­tries in the name of cor­po­rate inter­ests? Speak­ing of Rea­gan, how about his involve­ment in the School of the Amer­i­c­as facil­i­ty in Panamá?

    I count this as mon­ey stolen from Amer­i­ca, yet here you are defend­ing the brood moth­er of a dis­gust­ing jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for evil and greed. No doubt you sup­port Thatch­erism as well.

    Your ilk is account­able for the lax view towards the greedy bankers and dis­gust­ing cor­po­rate par­a­sites who robbed Amer­i­ca under Bush­es watch. I have no respect for scis­sor­bills and Pinker­ton apol­o­gists.

    To be clear not only is she a hyp­ocrite, her anti­so­cial phi­los­o­phy is book learn­ing at its worst. Utter­ly igno­rant and harm­ful to soci­ety and a thought virus that infects minds.

  • Manel says:

    I real­ly don’t under­stand amer­i­can val­ues. Why is it ok to use taxed, pub­lic mon­ey on pro­tect­ing US cit­i­zens by vio­lence (US mil­i­tary bud­get is more than all the oth­er coun­tries on the earth com­bined)… but it is not ok to pro­tect US cit­i­zens by giv­ing them clothes or food? What did Ayn Rand write about the mil­i­tary indus­tri­al com­plex?

    If the gov­ern­ment spend­ing is evil, why is it not there a strong grass­roots move­ment to stop spend­ing in the mil­i­tary? The only com­plain is about inef­fi­cient spend­ing (F35) not spend­ing as such.

    I am not writ­ing this as a crit­i­cism. I real­ly can’t under­stand the log­ic, or val­ues, behind this dis­so­nance. Can any­one hint at an expla­na­tion?

  • John says:

    @Jayn — Wow! You real­ly are slow.

    Let’s try again. Was her mon­ey tak­en from her against her will? Yes. Should she attempt to recov­er what was stolen from her with inter­est? Yes.

    See. Even a two-year old can under­stand that.

  • John Donohue says:

    Manel,

    The fun­da­men­tal pur­pose of the Unit­ed States Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment, as found­ed, is to pro­tect the nation from attack, and to adju­di­cate (fed­er­al courts) crimes and law suits that cross state lines. The U.S. was not found­ed, nor ever intend­ed to be, a “social democ­ra­cy” where the fun­da­men­tal pur­pose of gov­ern­ment is to use force to redis­trib­ute wealth from some cit­i­zens to oth­ers, and direct­ly pro­vide help­ing ser­vices to cit­i­zens.

    Here is the log­ic of Ayn Rand, as inter­pret­ed by me (oth­er Objec­tivists may say I have it wrong.): The fun­da­men­tal meta­phys­i­cal fact for humans is that each is a dis­tinct enti­ty, in full own­er­ship of their body, mind, and prop­er­ty. They are free sov­er­eigns. This is true for every indi­vid­ual. There­fore, “cho­sen action” must not include vio­la­tion of oth­ers’ sov­er­eign­ty.

    The deter­min­ing bright line is: force. One cit­i­zen must not force anoth­er; that is a crime. The gov­ern­ment must not proac­tive­ly force a cit­i­zen to do any­thing, nor pre­vent them from act­ing as they wish to act; that would be worse than a crime.

    The gov­ern­ment is the only enti­ty that right­ly deploys force. It must not ini­ti­ate force, only respond and rec­ti­fy crime, as its job to secure the free­dom and sov­er­eign­ty of every indi­vid­ual. (A cit­i­zen retal­i­at­ing against force in a moment of self-defense is not a con­tra­dic­tion here.)

    So, there is a fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ence between the use of force by gov­ern­ment to defend the nation, and use of force by gov­ern­ment to con­fis­cate wealth from its cit­i­zens to be used for social ser­vices.

  • Brian Gay says:

    Bea,

    You said: “Bri­an, “choice” is just that. If a gov­ern­ment pro­gram offends you, you have the right to refuse it.”

    You are dead wrong. If you had actu­al­ly tak­en the time to read what I wrote, you would see that I point­ed out the two parts of Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid; to pay and receive.

    You say I have a choice not to accept; that is true. But what I don’t have a choice whether to pay or not. If they gave me the option not to, I would not. How­ev­er, I will not pay for some­thing and then refuse it. That is just stu­pid and I don’t know of any­one who would do such a thing, ide­ol­o­gy or not.

    Bri­an

  • John says:

    @Manel — Some of us are opposed to any form of invol­un­tary tax­a­tion. It does­n’t mat­ter whether it it used for mil­i­tary pur­pos­es or health­care.

    With that said, I believe in the rule of law. The US Con­sti­tu­tion gives our fed­er­al gov­ern­ment a role in nation­al defense. But the US Con­sti­tu­tion gives the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment absolute­ly no pow­er to pro­vide clothes, hous­ing, health­care, or retire­ment ser­vices.

    That is a very impor­tant dis­tinc­tion to some of us.

  • Frank says:

    Ayn Rand seemed to under­stand that tak­ing the ben­e­fits was in con­tra­dic­tion to her phi­los­o­phy. That’s why a social work­er had to step in and con­vince her to do oth­er­wise.

    Rand knew she was essen­tial­ly com­mit­ting a hyp­o­crit­i­cal act. And yet her sup­port­ers today do their best to explain it away. A third-rate thinker gets a third-rate defense.

    Frank

  • Manel says:

    If you look at the con­sti­tu­tion, (it’s not “my” con­sti­tu­tion) it seems to con­sid­er defense and wel­fare

    ” 1: The Con­gress shall have Pow­er To lay and col­lect Tax­es, Duties, Imposts and Excis­es, to pay the Debts and pro­vide for the com­mon Defence and gen­er­al Wel­fare of the Unit­ed States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excis­es shall be uni­form through­out the Unit­ed States;”

    So how is that “gen­er­al Wel­fare” car­ried out? Should it? Is there any amend­ment that can­cels that goal? Or, what is inside of that “wel­fare” state­ment?

  • Mark says:

    It’s been said already many times here, and if any­one read­ing these com­ments does­n’t want to accept the dif­fer­ence between choice and coer­cion, then there’s noth­ing any­body else can say that’s going to make them accept it. All I’ll add is this: if you real­ly want to under­stand Ayn Rand and her phi­los­o­phy, then go straight to the source. There’s plen­ty of mate­r­i­al writ­ten by Rand herself–you don’t need to come to a hack site like this one to come to a con­clu­sion about the legit­i­ma­cy of what Rand had to say.

  • John Donohue says:

    “Gen­er­al Wel­fare” has indeed been used by Counter-Rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies (Pro­gres­sives, Social Democ­rats) to mean “pro­vide a social safe­ty net and direct ser­vices” to cit­i­zens. They do not care about the “Force” bright line I brought up.

    In fact, “Gen­er­al Wel­fare of the Unit­ed States” means: peace­ful streets, rec­ti­fi­ca­tion of crimes, pro­tec­tion of free­dom and prop­er­ty, free­dom of move­ment and asso­ci­a­tion.

    The way the oth­er con­cept of wel­fare must be car­ried out in a free coun­try: pros­per­i­ty, integri­ty, hard work, sav­ings and insur­ance to take care of one­self and fam­i­ly, and pri­vate vol­un­teer agen­cies to help the unfor­tu­nate few who are pre­vent­ed from self-suf­fi­cien­cy through no fault of their own.

  • Manel says:

    @John Dono­hue: Thanks for clar­i­fy­ing. Real­ly! I did not grasp how these val­ues were artic­u­lat­ed in the US. I start to under­stand… slow­ly (I live in Europe and these val­ues are not com­mon here).

    Two ques­tions … and a half (yes, they are “lim­it” ques­tions, but they help to define the edges of the phi­los­o­phy).

    a) Anti trust laws: would Objec­tivism agree on that? How would it jus­ti­fy enforc­ing that law? (or not)

    b) The gov­ern­ment as a safe­guard against “crime”: that only push­es the prob­lem back a bit? because “crime” is just what is against the law, and by manip­u­lat­ing the law, one can jus­ti­fy gov­ern­men­tal vio­lence against basi­cal­ly any­thing? What is the check and bal­ance against that? Spe­cial­ly under your state­ment “The gov­ern­ment must not proac­tive­ly force a cit­i­zen to do any­thing, nor pre­vent them from act­ing as they wish to act; that would be worse than a crime.”
    b.1) Forced con­scrip­tion as an exam­ple of b)

    What is your view on those?

    Again, thanks!

  • John Donohue says:

    Forced con­scrip­tion is indeed a vio­la­tion of a sov­er­eign cit­i­zen by gov­ern­ment. I per­son­al­ly fought against it 50 years ago, and Ayn Rand wrote specif­i­cal­ly against it. A nation with the high val­ue of free­dom, under threats from out­side, will have no dif­fi­cul­ty find­ing men and women to vol­un­teer to defend it.

    “…because “crime” is just what is against the law, and by manip­u­lat­ing the law, one can jus­ti­fy gov­ern­men­tal vio­lence against basi­cal­ly any­thing?”
    Yes, this is a true prob­lem. This is why tremen­dous dis­ci­pline and integri­ty must be kept to pre­vent the pass­ing of laws that vio­late the sov­er­eign­ty of indi­vid­u­als. “Crime” must be clear­ly, ratio­nal­ly, and seri­ous­ly defined as vio­la­tions by force. Ayn Rand became sor­row­ful that the peo­ple of the Unit­ed States did not main­tain this vig­i­lance, and allowed vast num­bers of wrong laws to be passed over the pri­or 120 years, each one chip­ping away at the fun­da­men­tals.

    Anti-trust is a more com­plex issue. There is exten­sive writ­ing by Objec­tivists on it. Here’s a link…

    http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/antitrust_laws.html

  • Neil says:

    The idea put across here, that her tax­es for social wel­fare were stolen from her, and that she was tak­ing back her stolen prop­er­ty, does not make sense to me. She chose to immi­grate to the US and become a cit­i­zen. Sure­ly she vol­un­tar­i­ly made a con­tract with the nation to pay all tax­es as per the laws. At the height of her fame she undoubt­ed­ly had the resources to move to anoth­er coun­try where less tax is paid. She had a choice in the mat­ter and decid­ed that the ben­e­fits of where she lived out­weighed her dis­agree­ment on the amount of tax she paid. So her tax­es were not stolen from her, and in the end she decid­ed to use the ser­vices that her tax­es pro­vid­ed.

  • John Donohue says:

    Forced con­scrip­tion is indeed a vio­la­tion of a sov­er­eign cit­i­zen by gov­ern­ment. I per­son­al­ly fought against it 50 years ago, and Ayn Rand wrote specif­i­cal­ly against it. A nation with the high val­ue of free­dom, under threats from out­side, will have no dif­fi­cul­ty find­ing men and women to vol­un­teer to defend it.

    “…because “crime” is just what is against the law, and by manip­u­lat­ing the law, one can jus­ti­fy gov­ern­men­tal vio­lence against basi­cal­ly any­thing?”
    Yes, this is a true prob­lem. This is why tremen­dous dis­ci­pline and integri­ty must be kept to pre­vent the pass­ing of laws that vio­late the sov­er­eign­ty of indi­vid­u­als. “Crime” must be clear­ly, ratio­nal­ly, and seri­ous­ly defined as vio­la­tions by force. Ayn Rand became sor­row­ful that the peo­ple of the Unit­ed States did not main­tain this vig­i­lance, and allowed vast num­bers of wrong laws to be passed over the pri­or 120 years, each one chip­ping away at the fun­da­men­tals.

    Anti-trust is a more com­plex issue. There is exten­sive writ­ing by Objec­tivists on it. Here’s a link…

    Go to Ayn­Ran­dLex­i­con dot com…search for AntiTrust_laws

  • John Donohue says:

    Neil says:

    “… she vol­un­tar­i­ly made a con­tract with the nation to pay all tax­es as per the laws.”
    Yes, she paid her tax­es.

    “…and in the end she decid­ed to use the ser­vices that her tax­es pro­vid­ed.”

    So? It sounds like you are agree­ing that there is no hypocrisy in Ayn Rand for receiv­ing Medicare/SS. Is that cor­rect?

  • Tom Gyory says:

    There is,no def­i­n­i­tion of the term wel­fare in the con­sti­tu­tion. The Founders cre­at­ed a con­tra­dic­tion by includ­ing this term and it should be removed. The def­i­n­i­tion of gov­ern­ment is force. Any­thing that needs to be enforced is a prop­er role of gov­ern­ment. The mil­i­tary, police and courts are the only prop­er role of a lim­it­ed gov­ern­ment.

  • Neil says:

    John,

    I think it’s more inter­nal­ly incon­sis­tent than hyp­o­crit­i­cal, but I val­ue com­pas­sion more than stick­ing to a prin­ci­ple or ide­ol­o­gy, so I would nev­er goad some­body for mak­ing this deci­sion near the end of their life.

    I would see it more as hypocrisy if she delib­er­ate­ly act­ed against pro­fessed beliefs, but I accept that she can see her actions as con­sis­tent (ie tak­ing back what was stolen). I’m also not call­ing her hyp­o­crit­i­cal as it is a more loaded and rhetor­i­cal way of attack­ing her actions.

    But it sounds incon­sis­tent because she makes the argu­ment that she has been coerced to do some­thing she does­n’t want to do and that she does­n’t val­ue (tax for wel­fare). But she has always had the choice to move to a nation where the small gov­ern­ment she aspires to is clos­er to real­i­ty. And she did­n’t. So it seems to me that she accept­ed the con­tract and was nev­er in the posi­tion of hav­ing some­thing stolen from her, so should­n’t see accept­ing wel­fare as tak­ing back what was hers. It would be dif­fer­ent if she lived in North Korea, but she did­n’t.

  • Neil says:

    (That is, I see it as incon­sis­tent to feel coerced on pay­ing tax when as a pow­er­ful US cit­i­zen she had enough agency to choose to leave the US if she want­ed. So she was nev­er coerced.)

  • John Donohue says:

    Neil,

    There’s no incon­sis­ten­cy in Rand’s posi­tion. She paid her tax­es. She col­lect­ed a small por­tion of her mon­ey back. Per­fect­ly con­sis­tent.

    When a cit­i­zen has no choice when coerced by gov­ern­ment, except: “well, you are always free to leave,” that is a direct attempt to unalien­ate the per­son from cit­i­zen­ship.

    It’s ter­ror­ism.

  • Manel says:

    @John Dono­hue: Thanks for your expla­na­tions. It is, as I said, a very dif­fer­ent “val­ue set” of the one I live in/with, but now I under­stand bet­ter.

    Although some of the ideas have indeed “passed on” to Europe (Tatcherism, etc), many are also very alien: maybe chris­tian­ism plays a role in mak­ing Wel­fare com­plete­ly accept­able. Also, vio­lence in Europe is irre­versibly linked to the two world wars, in which nobody won any­thing real­ly, except… peace. At an infi­nite cost. Even the brits, who the­o­ret­i­cal­ly were part of the “win­ning side”, basi­cal­ly con­sumed all their wealth in try­ing to resist Nazi Ger­many. The US has not had a big “domes­tic” war defeat, and in a Nuclear world, pos­si­bly nev­er will. That changes mind­sets!

    I can’t help but won­der what would Ayn think about the rise of Trump… but that is anoth­er sto­ry.

    Thanks all!

  • Seán Garland says:

    Excel­lent arti­cle and pitch of con­tent. Suf­fi­cient­ly digestible and infor­ma­tive to the unini­ti­at­ed as to encour­age fur­ther read­ing on the sub­ject.

  • Traba says:

    Mmmyeah…

    I’m all for free health­care over defense spend­ing. I think Ayn’s fears are worth lis­ten­ing to. How­ev­er, I like to put it this way: ALL orga­ni­za­tions, whether pub­lic or pri­vate must be scru­ti­nized to every last pen­ny. There are crooks in each case. There are peo­ple and oth­er orga­ni­za­tions always look­ing to game their way in and suck the wealth from them. From the North Kore­an par­ty offi­cial to the cush Aero­space / Defense con­trac­tor steal­ing from tax pay­ers.

  • Everett says:

    I’ve seen a lot of com­ments stat­ing it was not a con­tra­dic­tion that she was just get­ting back what she put in. There is no way you can say that with­out know­ing what was put in and what was tak­en out. Not sure if any­one has done the math on this spe­cif­ic case, but my under­stand­ing is that most recip­i­ents of Social Secu­ri­ty and Medicare ben­e­fits sur­pass the amount they put in, even after account­ing for the rates of infla­tion. The costs of med­ical treat­ment has grown far faster than the none med­ical infla­tion rate.

  • Stevo says:

    Oh man. You’ve got to read that Ayn Rand orga­ni­za­tion response. It’s pret­zel log­ic.

  • Jerry Biggers says:

    A com­men­tary on the crit­ics’ reac­tion to Atlas Shrugged – writ­ten 52 years ago – and still rel­e­vant! “It is hard to say which is the more elo­quent proof of its sig­nal rel­e­vance to the cru­cial issues of our age: the wide­spread admi­ra­tion and enthu­si­asm it has inspired – or the hys­te­ria of the attacks unleashed against it. The nature of those attacks is an instruc­tive index of the cur­rent intel­lec­tu­al con­di­tion of our cul­ture.

    Rand’s antag­o­nists have unfail­ing­ly elect­ed to pay her what is, per­haps, the great­est trib­ute one can offer to a thinker whom one oppos­es: they have all felt oblig­ed to mis­rep­re­sent her ideas in order to attack them.

    No one has dared pub­licly to name the essen­tial ideas of Atlas Shrugged and to attempt to refute them. No one has been will­ing to declare: “Ayn Rand holds that man must choose his own val­ues and actions exclu­sive­ly by rea­son, that man has the right to exist for his own sake, that no one has the right to seek val­ues from oth­ers by phys­i­cal force – and I con­sid­er such ideas wrong, evil, and social­ly dan­ger­ous.”

    Rand’s oppo­nents have found it prefer­able to debate with straw­men, to equate her phi­los­o­phy with that of Spencer or Niet­zsche or Spin­oza or Hobbes and thus expose them­selves to the charge of philo­soph­ic illit­er­a­cy – rather than iden­ti­fy and pub­licly argue against that for which Rand actu­al­ly stands.

    Were they dis­cussing the ideas of an author whose work was not known to the gen­er­al pub­lic, their motive would appear obvi­ous. But it is a rather grotesque spec­ta­cle to wit­ness men seem­ing­ly going through the motions of con­ceal­ing from the pub­lic the ideas of an author whose read­ers num­ber in the mil­lions.

    When one con­sid­ers the care­ful pre­ci­sion with which Rand defines her terms and presents her ideas, and the painstak­ing man­ner in which each con­cept is con­cretized and illus­trat­ed – one will search in vain for a non-psy­chi­atric expla­na­tion of the way in which her phi­los­o­phy has been report­ed by antag­o­nists. Alleged­ly describ­ing her con­cept of ratio­nal self-inter­est, they report that Ayn Rand extols dis­re­gard for the rights of oth­ers, bru­tal­i­ty, rapac­i­ty, doing what­ev­er one feels like doing and gen­er­al ani­mal self-indul­gence. This, evi­dent­ly, is the only mean­ing they are able to give to the con­cept of self-inter­est. One can only con­clude that this is how they con­ceive their own self-inter­est, which they altru­is­ti­cal­ly and self-sac­ri­fi­cial­ly renounce. Such a view­point tells one a great deal about the man who holds it – but noth­ing about the phi­los­o­phy of Rand.”
    (- Nathaniel Bran­den, in “The Moral Rev­o­lu­tion In Atlas Shrugged,” WHO IS AYN RAND? (N.Y., Ran­dom House, 1962 ).

  • Manel says:

    @Jerry Big­gers:

    No one has been will­ing to declare: “Ayn Rand holds that man must choose his own val­ues and actions exclu­sive­ly by rea­son, that man has the right to exist for his own sake, that no one has the right to seek val­ues from oth­ers by phys­i­cal force – and I con­sid­er such ideas wrong, evil, and social­ly dan­ger­ous.”

    Well, I do.

    I do think that com­bin­ing the three ideas, one can get ratio­nal­ly to do atro­cious stuff, and then get a com­fy jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of being right in that action. You choose ratio­nal­ly, (with­out empa­thy, which is out of ratio­nal­i­ty), you choose think­ing about your­self and nobody else, and then let’s see what hap­pens. To your chil­dren, for exam­ple…

    From Ayn’s Lex­i­con:

    “Love, friend­ship, respect, admi­ra­tion are the emo­tion­al response of one man to the virtues of anoth­er, the spir­i­tu­al pay­ment giv­en in exchange for the per­son­al, self­ish plea­sure which one man derives from the virtues of anoth­er man’s char­ac­ter”

    Spir­i­tu­al pay­ment? Self­ish plea­sure? In exchange??!

    While I am not so naïve as to not rec­og­nize the strength of ego­ism and self inter­est… that is los­ing half of your life’s hap­pi­ness. Have you heard the expres­sion “pay it for­ward”? It is impos­si­ble under these ideas.

  • Manel says:

    Re: the pre­vi­ous com­ment

    “The mere fact that man has the capac­i­ty to pro­cre­ate, does not mean that it is his duty to com­mit spir­i­tu­al sui­cide by mak­ing pro­cre­ation his pri­ma­ry goal and turn­ing him­self into a stud-farm ani­mal .…” (found in Ayn’s Lex­i­con)

    So hav­ing chil­dren makes you a “stud-farm ani­mal” and “com­mit spir­i­tu­al sui­cide”. Tell that to your moth­er !

    Fact is, yes, as an indi­vid­ual you have a duty and a right to free­dom, but also you are part of some­thing big­ger, whether you want it or not. You are part of a group, clan, coun­try and species. And the nature of that is that your real “nat­ur­al” goal is to per­pet­u­ate that species, you are wired for that, and some of the actions you will per­form and give hap­pi­ness to you (in a DNA-encod­ed, pre­his­tor­i­cal­ly deep hap­pi­ness way) are, from the point of view of an an indi­vid­ual, irra­tional, because they will be done *com­plete­ly* in behalf of oth­ers. Just as oth­er did the same so that you could exist! (Hi, mom!)

  • ATexan says:

    Ayn Rand despite her weird­ness should be required read­ing in high­school or col­lege lit­er­a­ture class­es. I dis­like some aspects of her object-ism but if you read Atlas Shrugged she does make some good point which have been in motion for some­time now regard­less of of the uni par­ty sys­tem.

    The orig­i­nal pur­pose of SS was to pro­vide a ‘sup­ple­ment’ to one’s life­time of work. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this pro­gram has been loot­ed over the decades along with some seri­ous cen­tral bank depre­ci­a­tion of the mon­ey.

    I don’t like cen­ters of pow­er whether cor­po­rate or gov­ern­ment, but Josh needs to move to Cuba or North Korea ASAP.

  • Carl says:

    Mon­ey was not tak­en from her against her will.

    By earn­ing mon­ey she accept­ed the rules of the state in which she earned those monies. If she did­n’t want to pay tax­es, she should­n’t have tak­en a job.

  • Susan Coffey says:

    It seems as if the mighty were laid low when Rand expe­ri­enced great need. She had to swal­low her pride and ask for the assis­tance to which she was enti­tled, even though she’d pre­vi­ous­ly chal­lenged the same assis­tance for oth­ers. Paint it any way you like, it’s still the same pic­ture, need ver­sus greed.

  • Veganwarrior says:

    A num­ber of Rand’s fol­low­ers espouse the virtues of objec­tivism and ratio­nal­ism, and so it is worth con­sid­er­ing whether her deci­sion was a ratio­nal one. It may cer­tain­ly have been irra­tional to have refused assis­tance at a time of need; irre­spec­tive of whether one believed their was an ‘enti­tle­ment’ to such assis­tance.

    By accept­ing state help Rand arguably behaved in a ratio­nal man­ner. Her beliefs, odi­ous as they may be to some, should not have pre­vent­ed her act­ing in self-inter­est once hard­ship approached. We may all have ideals about how we would like to see the world, but they may rarely be worth going to the gut­ter or the grave for; or con­sign­ing oth­er like­wise.

  • Michael Flores says:

    This is a blend of fact and a bend­ing of fact. Ayn Rand spoke in pub­lic as young as in her 20’s that peo­ple should col­lect Social Secu­ri­ty rather than let the mil­i­tary take it.

  • David Arceneaux says:

    What’s the cita­tion for this 1998 inter­view with Pry­or?

  • Kaleberg says:

    Rand’s phi­los­o­phy denies human real­i­ty. She took help from her moth­er and father when she was a child. Did she ever pay them back? Was their some ratio­nal nego­ti­a­tion as to terms of repay­ment? Of course not, that’s not how human soci­ety works. If here par­ents knew what they were rais­ing, they should have done the old fash­ioned, ratio­nal thing and exposed her, left her out to die.

    Whin­ers like Rand always annoy me. They take and take and take and whine like strick­en dogs when asked to put some­thing back in the pot. We should bring back 90% mar­gin­al tax rates and let the bil­lion­aires and mul­ti-nation­al cor­po­ra­tions who don’t like move else­where. Bil­lion­aires and mul­ti-nation­al cor­po­ra­tions are a dime a dozen. They’ll be replaced in a few months and good rid­dance to the ones who left.

    Maybe Rand should have been true to her phi­los­o­phy and not let any­one help her. She should not have had can­cer surgery, not because she could­n’t pay for it, but because she, per­son­al­ly, could not pay for the research involved in devel­op­ing it, the over­head of the med­ical sys­tem, the costs of its med­ical schools and so on.

  • Carol Burns says:

    It is hard to stick to your prin­ci­ples in the face of adver­si­ty, which explains why there are so many death bed reli­gious con­ver­sions. She did pay into the Social Secu­ri­ty sys­tem, which is not a sav­ings account but is an insur­ance plan. You pay in to the sys­tem which funds pay­ment to the cur­rent ben­e­fi­cia­ries. She was down on her luck and enti­tled, legal­ly, to col­lect, which is also true of many of the peo­ple she called losers and par­a­sites. I found her black and white views very appeal­ing when I was an ado­les­cent, but they did not hold up well over time. I am a 58 year old lawyer who had some kind of job since I was 11 years old. But I also rec­og­nize that I have been very lucky and oth­er peo­ple haven’t. That is why there is a safe­ty net, as Ayn Rand dis­cov­ered.

  • Beetinick says:

    […] Her posi­tion on this mat­ter is quite clear, and is quite log­i­cal­ly con­sis­tent. If you sup­port a pro­gram such as Social Secu­ri­ty, if you advo­cate in favor of it, you are sup­port­ing theft. You are, in every sense of the word, an accom­plice. You do not deserve any ben­e­fits from such a sys­tem.[…]

    So I sup­pose you are on the side of the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion that espe­cial­ly con­sid­ers pro­grams to sub­si­dize, incen­tivize or bail out cor­po­rate inter­ests and cor­po­ra­tions the grand­est of lar­ce­nies?

    Would your cha­grin expand to the for­eign mil­i­tary aid to sub­si­dize mil­i­tary expen­di­tures of for­eign gov­ern­ments as well.

    Unless you are ok with these above types of thefts, as long as the indi­vid­ual or fam­i­ly have no expec­ta­tion of sup­port from the very sys­tem that is meant to rep­re­sent them?

  • Todd's Written Word says:

    I think Open Cul­ture needs to post some­thing on log­i­cal fal­lac­i­es, as I notice a sub­stan­tial num­ber of com­menters that dis­agreed with Jones resort­ed to ad hominem argu­ments, specif­i­cal­ly attacks on his intel­lect. Claim­ing some­one has a lim­it­ed intel­lect does not dis­pute the argu­ment made by that per­son. Actu­al cita­tions to evi­dence, pro­vid­ed in a well-man­nered fash­ion, are more like­ly to sway an audi­ence. Addi­tion­al­ly, one could look at the Buckley/Vidal debate, in which Buck­ley resort­ed to homo­pho­bic ad hominem slurs, and see how that tac­tic can make the user look brutish and weak.

  • Wiser says:

    You are dense brick. The point is she spent MOST OF HER LIFE TRYING TO DESTROY THE SOCIAL SECURITY SYSTEM. ONLY TO USE IT WHEN SHE HERSELF NEEDED IT.

    She is a worth­less hyp­ocrite, PERIOD. Her ideas are null and void because she her­self went against them in the end, and out of con­ve­nience at that.

  • Wiser says:

    Lib­er­al ideas bust, huh?

    Yeah. I sup­pose the noble, hon­or­able, and true ideas of human rights, a unit­ed human­i­ty (for a change), and keep­ing our eco-sys­tem healthy instead of destroy­ing it is a bust. Because fuck it, a bright future for all human­i­ty isn’t worth it. We should just con­tin­ue to self-destruct our­selves and laugh insane­ly until we make our­selves go the way of the dinosaur by our own hand. Cause fuck it, anoth­er aster­oid is com­ing to destroy us all any­way.

  • Wiser says:

    “Ayn Rand wrote pub­licly about her tak­ing back wealth that was con­fis­cat­ed from her”

    BECAUSE SHE WAS TRYING TO DESTROY SOCIAL SECURITY BENEFITS, DIPSHIT. NOT BECAUSE SHE WANTED TO USE IT. YET SHE USED IT ANYWAY WHEN SHE NEEDED IT, HYPOCRITICALLY GOING AGAINST WHAT SHE WAS TRYING TO DO MOST OF HER LIFE.

    “You may dis­agree, but only some­one of lim­it­ed intel­li­gence wouldn’t be able to rec­on­cile her phi­los­o­phy with her actions in this instance.”

    Nah, nobody is dis­agree­ing with you. We are sim­ply call­ing you out on your lying bull­shit, mate.

  • Wiser says:

    Blah, blah, blah. All I heard is that you’re a piece of trash who is des­per­ate­ly attempt­ing to jus­ti­fy your own hypocrisy.

  • Wiser says:

    Carl says:
    “Mon­ey was not tak­en from her against her will.

    By earn­ing mon­ey she accept­ed the rules of the state in which she earned those monies. If she didn’t want to pay tax­es, she shouldn’t have tak­en a job.”

    Exact­ly what Carl said. The rest of you try­ing to defend Ayn are in denial and pathet­i­cal­ly brain­washed.

  • Matt says:

    The fun­ni­est thing about this is the com­ments with all the paulbots twist­ing them­selves into knots try­ing to jus­ti­fy and explain the hypocrisy that is evi­dent to any­one with func­tion­ing grey mat­ter. My oth­er favorite response is to point fin­gers at lib­er­als. Con­ser­v­a­tives love to respond to crit­i­cism of con­ser­v­a­tives by point­ing at some­thing lib­er­als may or may not have done. Is that real­ly the only argu­ment you tool­bags can ever come up with?

  • Matt says:

    “Mon­ey was con­fis­cat­ed from her!!!”

    Oh my god, do the right wing histri­on­ics ever end? She could have moved to any oth­er coun­try she want­ed or worked for cash or just not worked at all. She CHOSE to work in this sys­tem, know­ing full well the rules.

    Give me a break you lit­tle right-wing snowflakes

  • Jerry says:

    Oh is that why Ayn Rand wor­shipped child killer William Hick­man AFTER the pub­lic turned against him for mur­der­ing a child and hack­ing her body up?
    http://www.alternet.org/books/how-ayn-rand-became-big-admirer-serial-killer

  • SRP says:

    Holy crap is that a poor­ly strung togeth­er argu­ment. I mean, that may have been her rea­son­ing, but it is a sheisty premise at best. How about this, let’s keep the pro­grams and pay in while we all talk about how par­a­sitic they are, then be grate­ful when we can retire with ben­e­fits.

  • Mike says:

    @John Rand did­n’t “attempt to recov­er it.” She had no oth­er choice than to accept it.

    The long­stand­ing exis­tence of social wel­fare pro­grams and Rand’s own inevitable fall into their net should offer you and oth­er apol­o­gists a well-need­ed dose of humil­i­ty. Now swal­low.

  • Shannon says:

    You have no idea how the sys­tem works. You don’t pay into it for your own ben­e­fits; you pay into it for the ben­e­fits the pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tion receives. So essen­tial­ly, Ayn Rand was bitch­ing about hav­ing to pay for the retire­ment of senior cit­i­zens, call­ing it “theft”, but by receiv­ing it showed she had no prob­lem steal­ing it from the younger gen­er­a­tion. So yes, she was indeed a full-blood­ed hyp­ocrite.

  • Lisa M Tibbitts says:

    I am not sure if I ful­ly under­stand why she took ben­e­fits, if she did, hav­ing died with an estate and monies over 800,000 in worth. If she did it would appear she did­n’t need it and only did it to pre­serve her estate after her death. This would make sense for most peo­ple in her sit­u­a­tion the prob­lem is she dimin­ished the val­ue of oth­er humans, she was intel­li­gent but unkind and in the end showed any­one pay­ing atten­tion one of the ways she val­ued self­ish­ness. This is one more les­son from her, look out for your­self and your own inter­ests. If those inter­ests need to include safe­ty nets, sup­port pol­i­tics and groups who pro­vide them and take con­trol of your own life.

    Safe­ty nets mean police and health­care work­ers do not need to spend their days pick­ing up dead bod­ies from decrepit homes and off the street, less dis­ease and less rot­ting flesh smell for all of us, peo­ple do not need to sell their own organs to live or keep their chil­dren alive, or resort to slav­ery to sur­vive. Pay atten­tion to the world, learn his­to­ry, hell, watch les mis­er­ables and be glad we aren’t sell­ing our teeth in the street or buy­ing them from poor peo­ple whose life took a turn for the worse.

  • John shot says:

    FAKE NEWS

  • simon says:

    Hi John,
    “The fun­da­men­tal meta­phys­i­cal fact for humans is that each is a dis­tinct enti­ty, in full own­er­ship of their body, mind, and prop­er­ty.” This state­ment is dubi­ous to say the least. We are not closed sys­tems. If the input of oth­ers sig­nif­i­cant­ly deter­mines our notions of per­son­al iden­ti­ty and the cat­e­gories we use to inter­pret, explain and inter­act in the world, then sure­ly this has impli­ca­tions for the notion of sov­er­eign persons/entities?

  • Dave says:

    Pre­cise­ly.
    The fun­da­men­tal ten­ant of this “phi­los­o­phy” is more than just flawed, it is out­right false. Peo­ple are NOT whol­ly iso­lat­ed sys­tems, but utter­ly reliant on our com­mon envi­ron­ment. And that’s just the phys­i­cal aspects of biol­o­gy, not account­ing for the social aspects of human inter­ac­tion. But Ayn Rand was real­ly so nar­cis­sis­tic that she thought she was above not just oth­er humans, but the very laws of physics. Her death put the lie to that asi­nine fool­ish­ness.

  • Elle Beaumont says:

    At what point is smok­ing ones way into lung can­cer not caus­ing ones own grief? In point of fact, how much suf­fer­ing is not caused by the self itself?

  • Chris Merry says:

    So Social Secu­ri­ty, the most pop­u­lar and nec­es­sary pro­gram in this coun­try. So every­one who is for keep­ing it are thieves. You have an incred­i­bly sim­plis­tic view of the world. You have a prob­lem with giv­ing peo­ple in their six­ties 1200 a month just to make their lives a lit­tle eas­i­er? I imag­ine you are just will­ing to let them die in the streets because they did­n’t save for retire­ment. I bet you’re proud to be con­sid­ered an Objec­tivist, as well as a social Dar­win­ist You obvi­ous­ly have no con­cept of how many peo­ple nowa­days are liv­ing pay­check to pay­check do to those poli­cies that that a‑hole Greenspan put into action. Rea­gan’s class war­fare poli­cies of shift­ing the tax bur­den onto the work­ing and mid­dle class and being just super sweet to the poor and call­ing them “wel­fare chis­el­ers”. Rea­gan was an evil sack of shyte. He did the plu­to­crats bid­ding. any­body who con­sid­ers altru­ism a bad thing, makes me con­sid­er them repro­bate.

  • muck says:

    Your argu­ment is com­plete­ly unfound­ed. How can she be a vic­tim of a pro­gram that ben­e­fit­ed her?
    That is illog­i­cal.

  • Z says:

    The point must be seen in a wider sense. Even if she had been able to hold onto all her resources it is very unlike­ly she could have bought any work­ing care with it. Because the divid­ed funds are not only a mon­e­tary one, but also an invest­ment against a mass of ills.

    Mean­ing there would be no cures for the “filthy rich” either in such a hypo­thet­i­cal Rand world, because there would not be enough of them or their dis­eases to make such research worth­wile.

    There is this sim­ple rea­son for med­ical just like any tech­nol­o­gy to have explod­ed in devel­op­ment at con­ver­gence over the last 100 years after all. Mass.

  • Marshall Godfrey says:

    Nobody died in the burst­ing of the lib­er­al pipe dream called the Sovi­et Union? LMAO.

  • Josh Dodson says:

    That is by far the best arti­cle I have ever read; at least the best arti­cle writ­ten by some­one with a per­cep­tion of my 8 year old. Even she under­stands what it means to pay back what is owed. She, at 8 years old under­stands the dif­fer­ence between sup­port­ing a pol­i­cy that is theft, and reclaim­ing what has been stolen. I sug­gest you con­tin­ue your quest for edu­ca­tion, and when you start to grow, revise this arti­cle to match your men­tal growth.

  • E. Roycroft says:

    Today’s busi­ness lead­ers are not Ayn Rand’s idea of busi­ness lead­ers — they are cagy manip­u­la­tors who have learned how to game the sys­tem (gov­ern­ment and Wall Street) not run a fac­to­ry.
    They have no inter­est in pro­duc­ing any­thing — send it over­seas to con­trac­tors who do that dirty work. Her busi­ness lead­ers could go to the fac­to­ry floor and do any job there them­selves. What does Rex Tiller­son give us? The knowl­edge, paid for by his com­pa­ny, that glob­al warm­ing is real; this led to Exxon tak­ing steps to pro­tect their prop­er­ty from the results, while at the same time lying for decades to the pub­lic about the harm of fos­sil fuels, and Ayn Rand would not have admired that! Safe­ty net is need­ed because peo­ple are not always able to sup­ply their needs — how I wish there had been help to keep my father in school when his father died. Instead, at age 14, he went to work in a fac­to­ry to sup­port his moth­er and two younger sis­ters — in his spare time he went along the rail­road tracks to pick up coal. The only rea­son we have mas­sive wealth inequal­i­ties is because mon­ey buys politi­cians, who pass laws favor­ing mald­is­tri­b­u­tion of wealth. Want to see a s**thole nation? Stay around a few more years and you will see our poor being no bet­ter off than throngs of peo­ple in India, where kids are on the street beg­ging and there is no pub­lic school and no pub­lic sewage or water in places. Watch the rich get rich­er.

  • johnjohn says:

    Open Cul­ture
    “The best free cul­tur­al & edu­ca­tion­al media on the web”
    You for­got “unbi­ased”.

  • God says:

    Actu­al­ly that’s not entire­ly true. She actu­al­ly took out far more mon­ey then she ever put into social secu­ri­ty, as do most peo­ple. That’s how it works.

  • God says:

    Except she took out way more than she put in, mak­ing your argu­ment null-in void. Even an idiot should be able to under­stand that.

  • Jackie says:

    It does­n’t mat­ter how she looked at it or how she jus­ti­fied it. It only mat­ters what it actu­al­ly is. You know, being objec­tive and ratio­nal about it all.

    It is not resti­tu­tion for tax­es or monies stolen, but an enti­tle­ment ben­e­fit for tax­es paid. That is what it is. You have to be insane to think oth­er­wise. Clear­ly, the social work­er had to con­vince her because she knew. Fol­low­ers that did­n’t accept it knew too. Any­one with a brain knows.

    A ben­e­fit that like­ly paid out in the form of medicare insur­ance and oth­er ben­e­fits way more than paid into it. Pay­ing for the results of avoid­able unhealthy habits at that.

  • Jackie says:

    Just go to wikipedia and read a lit­tle about her beliefs about cer­tain peo­ple. Read about the psy­chopath ser­i­al killer she hung out with and her thoughts about him and how it is believed he is a mod­el for char­ac­ters in her sto­ries and her oth­er behav­ior.

    Pret­ty hor­ri­fy­ing stuff, her col­lec­tion of enti­tle­ment ben­e­fits that treat­ed some self induced con­di­tions aside.

  • Dennis says:

    Not true. What she wrote and what she did are dif­fer­ent. That’s why this web­site is call­ing out hypocrisy.

    That’s what she and Karl Marx have in com­mon: Both of their the­o­ries were flawed and impos­si­ble to ful­ly car­ry out, and nei­ther author did so.

  • Vanessa Johnson says:

    In 1981 she denounced every­thing she once preached. In her last days she under­stood just how wrong she was!
    Those who call Social Secu­ri­ty a hand­out are wrong. The Great Depres­sion was hor­ri­ble, many once wealthy peo­ple found them­selves in soup lines and sleep­ing in tent cities, a place they nev­er thought they would be. The Social Secu­ri­ty pro­gram was start­ed to ensure it nev­er hap­pens again.Yes we still strug­gle with home­less­ness and we still have hun­gry peo­ple but with­out this pro­gram, that every­one con­tributes, our streets would be full and civ­il unrest could eas­i­ly occur. It’s not a per­fect pro­gram but it beats the alter­na­tive.

  • Wayne says:

    So pro­mot­ing the gen­er­al wel­fare would not include spend­ing tax dol­lars to pro­tect the pub­lic from epi­demics like Yel­low Fever, Cholera, Malar­ia, Zika, Typhoid, Tuber­cu­lo­sis, Ebo­la, HIV, Smallpox,Influenza,etc or to pro­vide safe pub­lic water sup­ply sys­tems from inter­state or inter­na­tion­al waters such as the Great Lakes or Nia­gara Riv­er or Col­orado Riv­er, or to pro­tect or reim­burse the pub­lic for dam­ages caused by hur­ri­canes, floods or land­slides caused or inten­si­fied by human caused faulty con­struc­tion, sto­tage or dis­pos­al of haz­ardous mate­tials, or cli­mate change, or ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties?
    Should it be the per­son­al respon­si­bil­i­ty of per­sons liv­ing down­stream or down­wind from haz­ardous indus­tri­al or mil­i­tary facil­i­ties to relo­cate to safe moun­tain­tops or under­ground bunkers or pur­chase high cost dis­as­ter insur­ance poli­cies to pro­tect them­selves from neg­li­gence or crim­i­nal activ­i­ty of the wealth pro­duc­ing cap­i­tal­ists or cor­po­ra­tions?

  • Matt says:

    Rand was a cold heart­ed bitch. Rega­nomics has helped destroy the mid­dle class for far to long. Hope­ful­ly those acolytes still alive die soon­er rather then lat­er.

  • Angel says:

    Oh no, she accept­ed ben­e­fits from a sys­tem she lit­er­al­ly paid into — the impu­ri­ty!

    Except this is total­ly fine and no, she had argu­ments FOR using it, since she already paid for it. Stop this neck­beard, “ayk­shewuh­ly” lev­el intel­li­gence

  • Angie says:

    Ayn was such a pho­ny and obvi­ous­ly not the foun­tain­head of what­ev­er the F she imag­ined she was.

    Irri­tat­ed lib­er­tar­i­ans stomp­ing on here to com­plain she paid into the sys­tem: stick a cork in it. Seri­ous­ly. Deploy the hip­po-crates. Ayn is a fake.

    Your phi­los­o­phy is a fake, which is why she was unable to live with­in it. Accept this basic truth and stop being such arro­gant chil­dren about it.

  • WATSON says:

    ahhh
    hypocrisy at its finest

  • WATSON says:

    the mon­e­tarist sys­tem dic­tates that costs rise in order to prof­it from hard­ship … and Rand fell vic­tim to it — like so many oth­er peo­ple far less well off that her

    then there’s the “hero­ic super­men”
    where were these peo­ple when rand need­ed help?
    far too busy being indi­vid­u­al­ists and self­ish bas­kets

    eight years of care
    i fail to see how pub­lish­ing a few books — instill­ing self­ish­ness into late 20th cen­tu­ry dia­tribe — paid for that care .… it prob­a­bly all went on deca­dent liv­ing and a jet set lifestyle … did Rand even do one day‘s hard work in her entire life — i seri­ous­ly doubt it

    and as for the naysay­ers and sup­port­ers of right wing revi­sion­ism … the far right wing in oth­er words — lit­er­al­ly nobody cares about your indoc­tri­nat­ing kool aid — except for the peo­ple already poi­soned by your rhetoric — so go jump off the near­est bridge when you get ill and the rul­ing class­es aban­don you — instead of ponc­ing off the long suf­fer­ing tax pay­er

  • AMARINEI PANAITE says:

    Dacă toți colegii mei de Face­book au scris in alte limbi,Eu o sa scriu in românește .Ura

  • johny why says:

    John Dono­hue plz share your source of the def­i­n­i­tion of “Gen­er­al wel­fare” that you stat­ed. Does the US Con­sti­tu­tion exclude health care from the def­i­n­i­tion?

  • Sergio Santana says:

    Left­ist hypocrisy is real­ly wide­spread. In Brazil, left­ists crit­i­cize con­ser­v­a­tives for going to free col­lege and even for using roads LOL. They pre­tend not to real­ize that we’re enti­tled to what we have paid, even if we face the real­i­ty: left­ist ideas are the worst response to prob­lems and cre­ate many oth­er prob­lems, includ­ing unem­ploy­ment and pover­ty.

  • Johny Why says:

    @Sergio, so Brazil­ian Left­ists say that con­ser­v­a­tives should NOT go to free col­lege or use the roads? Do Brazil­ian Left­ists say it’s OK for Left­ists to go to free col­lege and use the roads?

  • Johny Why says:

    @Vanessa John­son: accord­ing to this oth­er arti­cle, Rand did NOT denounce every­thing in her last speech. To the con­trary, she reaf­firmed her views.

    She said the Reli­gious Right was a threat to per­son­al free­dom, because they sought to force their val­ues (like anti-abor­tion) on the rest of soci­ety. This is con­sis­tent with her life­long posi­tion that indi­vid­u­als should not be coerced.

    http://www.openculture.com/2014/10/in-her-final-lecture-ayn-rand-denounces-ronald-reagan-the-moral-majority-anti-choicers-1981.html

  • Rik Elswit says:

    Rand had every right to col­lect SS and Medicare. BUT.…..don’t you think she owed an apol­o­gy to the Amer­i­can peo­ple, whose social safe­ty net she worked so hard to end? A pub­lic apol­o­gy. She was, after all, a pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al, and opin­ion mak­er, and the cir­cum­stances of her life should have made it clear to her that she was wrong.

    How about some­thing like:

    “I was wrong. At the end of my life, when I was sick and fac­ing bank­rupt­cy, Medicare and Social Secu­ri­ty were there for me, as promised, even though my cir­cum­stances were of my own mak­ing. I’d like to thank the Amer­i­can Peo­ple, and I’d like to apol­o­gize for the dam­age I attempt­ed to do to the sys­tem that ls sup­port­ing me now, at the end of my life.

    But she was an intel­lec­tu­al cow­ard, and died ungra­cious­ly.

  • Mike Kelley says:

    I’m anti Rand but you’re right. Except in that sit­u­a­tion Rand by her own log­ic would only be enti­tled to what was tak­en from her and not the enor­mous over­age lik­ley that a pro­longed expense from lung can­cer would cost.

  • D. Ball says:

    Actu­al­ly you’re the one who’s slow.…… and vile.

  • Fredrik Wiksaas says:

    Ayn Rand was stu­pid enough to smoke cig­a­retts, which caused her health to be destroyed. The ill­ness and the aid she rece­vied was there­fore caused by her own stu­pid­i­ty. Of course, it might be, like the mod­ern cli­mate sep­tics (sic) dis­miss sci­ence, that she did­n’t believe smok­ing caus­es can­cer. Both the pro-smok­ers then and the cli­mate sep­tics now seem to fol­low the same cap­i­tal­is­tic, not-sci­ence argu­ments.

  • sd says:

    “If a gov­ern­ment pro­gram offends you, you have the right to refuse it”
    Bea, don’t be stu­pid. If you attempt to refuse it, the IRS puts you in jail.

    What you mean is you have the right to refuse the pro­ceeds, when you already paid into it. In oth­er words, any­one who dis­agrees with gov­ern­ment actions should be irra­tional­ly self-destruc­tive because you want them to.

  • Steve Springer says:

    This is a twist­ed ratio­nal­iza­tion for hypocrisy

  • Steve Springer says:

    Ayn Rand went to a good deal of incon­ve­nience to be a part of the Amer­i­can social con­tract, com­plained at an epic scale about it, then despite her vocif­er­ous objec­tion regard­ing it, relied on it. She was an ungra­cious guest, and a hyp­ocrite.

  • Joe says:

    She was a genius, she rev­o­lu­tionised every field of phi­los­o­phy.

  • Frank says:

    John hit the nail on the head back in Decem­ber of 2016 when he called you an intel­lec­tu­al fraud. Her posi­tion on receiv­ing SS ben­e­fits after hav­ing paid into the sys­tem was artic­u­lat­ed well before her ill­ness. This is just a smug, posthu­mous, hit piece on an intel­lec­tu­al giant who would have eat­en your lunch had she had the chance, lit­tle man.

  • vikingvista says:

    Not many blogs can main­tain a dis­cus­sion for 4 years. Should we take it into a 5th?

    Although in the 1970’s the SS and MC pro­grams still had tax rev­enues exceed­ing out­lays, it was still the case that all rev­enues were sim­ply spent by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, as today. Rev­enues exceed­ing MC/SS out­lays were sim­ply spent on gen­er­al bud­get items, with a Con­gres­sion­al promise to lat­er replace them with gen­er­al rev­enues.

    This is rel­e­vant to the resti­tu­tion argu­ment. If a thief steals your prop­er­ty and imme­di­ate­ly con­sumes it all, then resti­tu­tion becomes impos­si­ble, unless the thief some­how becomes suf­fi­cient­ly pro­duc­tive in the vol­un­tary soci­ety, or has oth­er suf­fi­cient eth­i­cal assets–which is not how gov­ern­ments work.

    The fact of the mat­ter is, the mon­ey every­one pays into the MC/SS sys­tem is all con­sumed away that very year. The mon­ey that recip­i­ents receive each year is entire­ly from that year’s tax rev­enues. This means that you can­not receive resti­tu­tion for your pre­vi­ous vic­tim­iza­tion with­out vic­tim­iz­ing oth­ers. Any liq­ui­dat­ed assets would have to be equal­ly due to all tax­pay­ers, in pro­por­tion to the tax­es they paid, which of course would be far less than what was tak­en.

    The resti­tu­tion argu­ment, to be con­sis­tent with Rand’s vol­un­tary­ist prin­ci­ples, requires that the per­pe­tra­tor has an eth­i­cal source of rev­enues to pay the resti­tu­tion. Since that is not the case, any demand for resti­tu­tion is at the expense of oth­er inno­cents, and in vio­la­tion of Rand’s prin­ci­ples.

    Any vol­un­tary­ist, to be con­sis­tent, would have to accept the fact that they were vic­tim­ized by the forced pro­gram, but that eth­i­cal resti­tu­tion is impos­si­ble. The only moral action would be to refuse all pay­ments and advo­cate end­ing or chang­ing the pro­gram.

    Per­haps one might argue that those advo­cat­ing the uneth­i­cal pro­gram some­how deserve to have their funds tak­en, and those should be used to pay resti­tu­tion. But action and advo­ca­cy sure­ly do not both mer­it mate­r­i­al pun­ish­ment. And, there would be no way to iso­late advo­cates from vic­tims any­way.

    Real­ly the clos­est to a ratio­nal Objec­tivist argu­ment for receiv­ing MC/SS, is the ‘liv­ing in an unnec­es­sary world I did­n’t cre­ate’ argu­ment (which is acces­si­ble to any ide­ol­o­gy). Unnec­es­sary anti-Objec­tivist actions are inex­tri­ca­bly mixed with every­thing one needs to live (which Rand rec­og­nized). So, your choice then real­ly is either to imme­di­ate­ly end your life, or live as close to your prin­ci­ples as you can, with­in the avail­able world.

    Note that this use of dis­ap­proved sys­tems no more dis­proves Objec­tivism, than Amer­i­can com­mu­nists using cap­i­tal goods dis­proves com­mu­nism. E.g., North Kore­ans who escaped star­va­tion using the NK gov­ern­ment food pro­gram did not ben­e­fit from that pro­gram, but tru­ly were vic­tim­ized by it.

  • Ty Byrnes says:

    It is unfair to rely on the say-so of one per­son about why Rand took social secu­ri­ty and under what cir­cum­stances. Rand was not against vol­un­tary offers of help. In fact, if one under­stand her rea­son­ing, she would have encour­aged peo­ple to help each oth­er. If she accept­ed Social Secu­ri­ty and Medicare, then giv­en that she had paid into the the sys­tem dur­ing her adult like (all of her life most like­ly for SS and for about 10–15 years of Medicare), then she was sim­ply seek­ing to get a return on her tax dol­lars in a sys­tem she did­n’t like but lived with­in. Her rea­son­ing, he chief con­tri­bu­tion to soci­ety, is 100% intact in this sto­ry. That it is the social work­er who twists the truth and under­mines Rand’s think­ing, is not sur­pris­ing

  • Bart Millar says:

    i saw a com­ment upstreat that those who cause their own suf­fer­ing don’t deserve as much sym­pa­thy as hap­less vic­tims of cir­cum­stance. rand was impov­er­ished due to her lung can­cer treat­ment, caused by her heavy smok­ing.

  • Ella Starr says:

    How help­ful that you talk about how a robust social safe­ty net ben­e­fits indi­vid­u­als and soci­ety. My par­ents are get­ting old­er and I want to help them with Medicare when the time comes. I will find a great health care clin­ic to help.

  • Joanna Crews says:

    How convenient.your side step­ping her hypocrisy .

  • Brad Bothell says:

    1. A reply here indi­cat­ed she only got back $11k in ben­e­fits but paid in much more. 2. Was it even pos­si­ble for her to not con­tribute to those pro­grams? 3. I’ve encoun­tered 1000s of Social Moral­ist Democ­rats like you through my CA polit­i­cal activism, the pejo­ra­tive, condemning,.smug left­ist words and atti­tude your trade­mark. Your scam on Us the Lit­tle Sh*ts is this: “You delud­ed Lit­tle (most­ly) Minor­i­ty Work­ing- & Mid­dle-class Stiffs and your fam­i­lies will pay what­ev­er I demand from you in fees, tax­es and bonds to con­tin­ue “enjoy­ing” our col­lec­tivized Social Democ­ra­cy of Cal­i­con­fis­ca­tion I actu­al­ly am enjoy­ing and, in the process, you will accept a com­pro­mised std of liv­ing (par­tic­u­lar­ly, hous­ing) and the unac­cept­able qual­i­ty of the gov­ern­ment ser­vices pro­vid­ed through the “benev­o­lence” of we Democ­rats for you, all in the name of assist­ing I and my fel­low (chiefly) White Con­trol-freak Left­ists work­ing out the psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­tress­es in our heads, just so we can social-moral­ly accept our­selves.”

  • Dan says:

    What if Rand had fall­en on hard times ear­li­er on her life, say in her 30s,she smoked like a chim­ney, so she could have eas­i­ly con­tract­ed can­cer ear­li­er on before she accrued ben­e­fits. As an indi­vid­ual who appar­ent­ly had decid­ed she and sahe alone was respon­si­ble for her wel­fare, she could have saved the mon­ey she spent on fags and put it away to cov­er any med­ical ben­e­fits, she was in fact ( if we use your own beliefs ) a feck­less and worth­less per­son, as she failed to pro­vide for her health cov­er as she should have done, in addi­tion she could have refused to pay tax­es or con­tribute to any ben­e­fit schemes and cho­sen to be incar­cer­at­ed , instead she chose to be like the rest of us and con­tribute to the com­mon good as many humans have been doing since back to the ear­li­est tribes. In cri­sis sit­u­a­tions its been proven that those who work togeth­er have far high­er sur­vival rates than those who just took the ‘every per­son for them­selves ” approach. Rand was a los­er and so are her adher­ents.

  • dan says:

    obvi­ous­ly, you have no idea what the term ‘lib­er­al’ means , it does not apply in any respect to the sovi­et union.
    lib­er­al “relat­ing to or denot­ing a polit­i­cal and social phi­los­o­phy that pro­motes indi­vid­ual rights, civ­il lib­er­ties, democ­ra­cy, and free enter­prise.”

  • DrCruel says:

    The last big Left­ist pipedreams have left 100 mil­lion peo­ple dead in the last cen­tu­ry alone, and today have brought back slave based cot­ton pro­duc­tion and cre­at­ed a new indus­try around invol­un­tary live organ dona­tion, pri­mar­i­ly tak­en from dis­si­dents of the CCP. By con­trast, Tea Par­ty protests regard­ing high tax­es seem to at best mild­ly incon­ve­nience super-rich Democ­rats in the fed­er­al and state bureau­cra­cies. Is that what you mean?

  • DrCruel says:

    By your def­i­n­i­tion, Ayn Rand was a lib­er­al while Democ­rats and social­ists are clos­er to fas­cists.

  • João C. says:

    If Rand was coher­ent she would nev­er have stayed in the USA, she would have gone to the jun­gle or the desert in Africa or some­where else where there was no state or gov­ern­ment at all.
    Same for most of her fol­low­ers. Act accord­ing­ly to what you preach and move to Soma­lia.

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