The Ayn Rand Institute Takes a Loan from Paycheck Protection Program: Like Rand Herself, Her Followers Don’t Walk the Talk

Image via YouTube, 1959 inter­view with Mike Wal­lace

Final­ly bow­ing to pub­lic pres­sure, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has revealed which com­pa­nies received loans from the Pay­check Pro­tec­tion Pro­gram (PPP) cre­at­ed to sup­port small busi­ness­es dur­ing COVID-19. To no one’s sur­prise, the pub­lished list report­ed­ly includes a host of priv­i­leged enti­ties: the ship­ping busi­ness owned by Mitch McConnel­l’s wife Trans­porta­tion Sec­re­tary Elaine Chao; busi­ness­es asso­ci­at­ed with mem­bers of Con­gress (from both par­ties); the law firm of David Boies; elite pri­vate schools like Sid­well Friends and Saint Ann’s; Grover Norquist’s Anti-Tax Group; the law firm run by Trump’s long­time per­son­al lawyer, Marc E. Kasowitz; bil­lion­aire Kanye West’s com­pa­ny, Yeezy; the fine art stu­dio for mil­lion­aire sculp­tor Jeff Koons, a ven­ture that rais­es mon­ey for Trump’s cam­paign and the RNC, etc.

Add to the list the Ayn Rand Insti­tute–an orga­ni­za­tion named after Ayn Rand, the Russ­ian writer who exalt­ed the self-reliant indi­vid­ual and crit­i­cized social wel­fare pro­grams that sup­port the vul­ner­a­ble. As she wrote in The Virtue of Self­ish­ness, “The right to life means that a man has the right to sup­port his life by his own work (on any eco­nom­ic lev­el, as high as his abil­i­ty will car­ry him); it does not mean that oth­ers must pro­vide him with the neces­si­ties of life.” In short, if you can’t make it, you’re on your own.

Rand’s polit­i­cal the­o­ry col­laps­es when it con­fronts every­day real­i­ty. At the end of her own life, Rand, suf­fer­ing from lung can­cer, had to grudg­ing­ly rely on social secu­ri­ty and medicare to make ends meet. Now, reports Reuters, the insti­tute bear­ing her name has request­ed (and appar­ent­ly received) “a Pay­check Pro­tec­tion Pro­gram (PPP) loan of up to $1 mil­lion.” All while show­ing no grat­i­tude to the Amer­i­can tax­pay­er. The Ayn Rand Insti­tute deemed the loan “par­tial resti­tu­tion for gov­ern­ment-inflict­ed loss­es.” (Also see their lat­est jus­ti­fi­ca­tion here.) Some will con­sid­er that spin–a way to jus­ti­fy accept­ing gov­ern­ment largesse.

Watch­ing Ayn Rand talk below, it seems like a prin­ci­pled Ran­di­an would have gone, hat in hand, to a pri­vate char­i­ty instead.

via Lithub

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Christo­pher Hitchens Dis­miss­es the Cult of Ayn Rand: There’s No “Need to Have Essays Advo­cat­ing Self­ish­ness Among Human Beings; It Requires No Rein­force­ment”

The Simp­sons Take on Ayn Rand: See the Show’s Satire of The Foun­tain­head and Objec­tivist Phi­los­o­phy