Was it Hypocritical for Ayn Rand to Accept Government Benefits?
A recently published article claims that Ayn Rand received both Social Security and Medicare payments from the government.
Along with a long list of un-substantiated smears, the author claims this is proof that Rand was a hypocrite and that her philosophy is fundamentally flawed.
It's interesting to see how much vitriol can be summoned up for an author who died 30 years ago. Very few other others can summon this sort of antipathy among the modern left.
I think it is powerful evidence of the bombardier's maxim "you know you are right over the target when the flak gets the heaviest." I think the Left is increasingly aware that Rand provides the most principled opposition to their ideology. After all, what other author or philosopher generates as much hate among them?
The author claims that Rand took these benefits "and said it was wrong for everyone else to do so." Even allowing that the first part of this claim is true, the second part is simply not.
If he, or any of the swarms of hate-filled leftists commenting on the article could be bothered to read Rand's essay "The Question of Scholarships", they would find she actually said,
"the advocates and supporters of the welfare state are morally guilty of robbing their opponents, and the fact that the robbery is legalized makes it morally worse, not better. The victims do not have to add self-inflicted martyrdom to the injury done to them by others; they do not have to let the looters profit doubly, by letting them distribute the money exclusively to the parasites who clamored for it. Whenever the welfare-state laws offer them some small restitution, the victims should take it . . . ."
What does it say about your side when you see it reduced to ignorance and lies? Can your arguments possibly be just if people must deceive to support them? Are you willing to be comrades in arms with liars like this?
Comments
Can you not distinguish the difference between taking advantage of a system you are forced into and calling for the creation of that system?
this is the defense of Ayn Rand taking social security payments?
Did these programs she despised help her live a better life when she needed it?
Yes, it would seem so.
If you think that's "interesting," you must find the right-wing vitriol for Karl Marx, who has been dead for about a century and a half, downright mesmerizing
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