A Road to Serfdom

“I grew up on Ayn Rand,” Ryan said at a Washington, D.C., gathering seven years ago honoring Rand. “The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand.” – Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 12 August 2012

Today Mr. Ryan wants to distance himself from Ayn Rand. In an interview with the über-conservative National Review Online, he said it was an “urban legend” that Ayn Rand was a special obsession of his.

Unfortunately, for Mr. Ryan, his affection for Ayn Rand’s philosophy is well documented. It has been declared in conservative publications promoting Mr. Ryan’s fitness for office. In a 2005 speech to the Atlas Society Mr. Ryan stated that Ms. Rand’s Atlas Shrugged was required reading for all his office interns and staff. In 2009 Mr. Ryan produced campaign videos in which he emphatically praises the morality of Atlas Shrugged. Videos are still available on YouTube of both events. Randism undergirds his budget proposals. Mr. Ryan’s brother Tobin has stated, “Paul can still quote every verse out of Ayn Rand.”

There are no verse numbers in Ms. Rand’s writings. It is not surprising, however, that cult members refer to them as if they are sacred scripture.

Mr. Ryan was motivated to denounce Randism by recent criticism of his budget proposals by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and others who see nothing compatible between the doctrines of Ms. Rand and Jesus Christ. (See blog archive for October 23, 2010, “The Threat.” It begins, “The election of President Barack Obama aroused a truly un-American, anti-democratic, virulently un-Christian ideology in our country.”) Mr. Ryan’s recent elevation to national prominence makes his denials all the more urgent. Conservative publications, in a fit of collective willful amnesia, are busy burnishing Mr. Ryan’s claims to Catholicism. As understandable as these attempts at subterfuge are, we should not be fooled. He is a Randian. The only question is, what is Atlas Shrugged?

The Plume quality paperback Centennial Edition of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged is a monster of 1,168 pages of abused English. Ms. Rand’s characters are not believable. They act illogically and speak unnaturally. The situations depicted are inconceivable outside the pages of a very bad book. Nevertheless, this is Ayn Rand’s magnum opus, the full statement of her worldview, her diagnosis of what is wrong with the world and prescription for the cure. In what follows it may appear that too much is attributed to characters of what is merely a work of fiction. Ms. Rand intended Atlas Shrugged to be more than a mere work of fiction. The cult that follows her – which includes Mr. Ryan and every Tea Party protester with a “Who is John Galt?” sign – have received Atlas Shrugged as fact, not fiction.

Atlas Shrugged is a dystopia that presents the United States as a collapsing republic surrounded by socialistic “People’s States.” Most commentaries focus on two types of characters Ms. Rand presents.

Foremost are the “men of the mind.” These are the individualists, the creators, the people who live by reason. They are presented to us in various states of egoism. The progress of the novel in part is to follow these individuals as they grow to appreciate the importance of selfishness. Their selfish pursuits create things and uphold the world. They are the Titans. Ms. Rand spares no superlative as she describes these “giants of productive energy” who are “equals” in pursuit of “higher and still higher achievements of their own” (p. 453). These supermen do not owe anyone anything. They are self-made, self-directed, and serve only themselves.

The second type of character is the looters. They are parasites who live off the achievements of the “men of the mind.” Included here are government officials. All government officials, from the bureaucrats to judges, are corrupt, foolish, and incompetent. Civic responsibility in Ms. Rand’s world is just an excuse the looters use to take from the creators. Included among the looters are aesthetes, intellectuals, writers, and family members. Family relationships are the worst. There is not one family relationship that is not dysfunctional. That includes mother-son and husband-wife. All the siblings are rivals.

Rand describes the looters as “…whining rotters who never rouse themselves to any effort, who do not possess the ability of a filing clerk, but demand the income of a company president, who drift from failure to failure and expect [the producers] to pay their bill” (p. 453). There is more but it does not get any more reasonable.

Between the “men of the mind” and the looters is another category of citizen that populates the America of Ayn Rand that is not noticed by the commentators. These citizens are far from being the equals of the “men of the mind.” However, they have a certain Randian “moral integrity.” They are the “serfs” (p. 11). Because of their intellectual deficiencies the “serfs” can “never invent” anything but they “do their best, work … live by their own effort, and … give a moment’s silent thanks to the [producer] who gave them more than they could give him” (p. 453).

This is the America of Ayn Rand and Randians like Mr. Paul Ryan. It is an America where the superlative “men of the mind” deserve all the honor, glory, and money they can lay their hands on. It is an America where only looters impose taxes or government regulations on producers. It is an America where most people should be content to be serfs.

This is a brief description of a long book. It is fair. It is accurate. The three types of characters are Ms. Rand’s, not mine. Every effort has been made to describe these three types of characters in the very terms that she either did use or would use. If the idea of an America where serfs live in worshipful gratitude to their moneyed overlords is offensive, blame Ms. Rand. It is her book that is faithfully described here. This is her worldview and that of those who follow her.

F. A. Hayek published The Road to Serfdom in 1944. In it Mr. Hayek warned that “… the collectivist idea of empowering government with increasing economic control would lead not to a utopia but to the horrors of Nazi Germany and fascist Italy” (from the dust jacket of The University of Chicago Press Definitive Edition). Mr. Hayek went on to win the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1974 and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1991. Despite his rumored admiration for Ayn Rand, I hold Mr. Hayek as a philosopher and economist to be respected.

Nevertheless, he was wrong in The Road to Serfdom. The New Deal and the progressive economic programs that followed, for all their faults, did not lead to fascism in America. Most importantly, he was wrong not to recognize that there is more than one road to serfdom. Government certainly is not the answer to all of society’s ills, and Mr. Hayek’s warning is helpful. However, the unbridled “Capitalism” of Ayn Rand leads us down another path to serfdom every bit as dire.

All commentators regard Mr. Paul Ryan as an intelligent man. He is an intelligent man despite the fact that he fails to recognize that Atlas Shrugged is poorly written rubbish. He is an intelligent man despite the fact that he failed to recognize that the morality of Atlas Shrugged is a complete contradiction of Christian morality. He is an intelligent man despite the fact that he thinks citizens will not recognize his ignorance and duplicity.

The Republican presidential ticket of Willard Mitt Romney and Paul Davis Ryan presents this nation with the temptation to trust that there are indeed moneyed overlords who will create jobs as long as they are not taxed or their enterprises regulated. It is a temptation to go down a road to serfdom.

Senator Ron Johnson and The American Jobs Act

Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson recently replied to President Obama’s address to the joint session of Congress. In email sent to Wisconsin voters, Senator Johnson called The American Jobs Act “the definition of insanity” because, to the Senator’s way of thinking, it merely repeats American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA).

Actually, Mr. Johnson could not bring himself to use the proper titles of either the ARRA or the President’s proposed legislation. The latter is simply the “latest government stimulus program.” Neither could Mr. Johnson address any of the specifics of the proposed legislation.

Mr. Johnson did begin with ad hominem.

“As I sat listening carefully to our President, it was painfully clear that his remarks were merely a campaign speech. His proposals were designed to assist in his reelection campaign, rather than a serious attempt to forge alliances, address our massive debt, strengthen our economy and create jobs.”

It has been difficult for Republicans to deal with a president who is arguably the best communicator to occupy the Oval Office since President Ronald Reagan. It is particularly grating as this president follows eight years of Mr. George W. Bush, who was the master of malapropisms. President Obama, however, repeatedly spoke to the concerns of both Republicans and opponents in his own party. He appealed for their support in terms of their own goals. Mr. Johnson’s claim that Mr. Obama’s address was only a campaign speech is inaccurate and unfair.

Certainly Mr. Obama’s speech cheered his supporters and annoyed his opponents. It is undeniable that Mr. Obama is running for a second term and the speech did not hurt that effort. That there was a political aspect to the speech is unsurprising to any mature observer of our government. Characterizing the detailed proposal the President set before the joint session of Congress as merely a campaign speech, however, only reveals the weakness of Mr. Johnson’s position.

That weakness is manifest as Mr. Johnson sputters on in his email.

“Even worse, the overall substance of his proposals were nothing more than a rehashing and repackaging of the same big government, ideological agenda that our President has already tried – driven our debt up another $4 Trillion - and have failed miserably. These ideas would simply double down on that failure.”

Mr. Johnson needs a grammarian. Verbs are supposed to agree with the subject of a sentence. “Substance” is singular and requires the singular “was” not “were.” He should have chosen “rehashing” or “repackaging.” Using both is redundant. The accusation that the President’s “ideological agenda” drove up the debt “another $4 Trillion” calls for another sentence and should not have been smashed into this one. (Trillion should not be capitalized.)

Mr. Johnson ignores the niceties of grammar and the specifics of the President’s speech because all he has is Tea Party boilerplate. Mr. Johnson rants about “big government” but says nothing about the President’s expressed goal of jolting the private sector back to life. He ignores the President’s proposals to help small business. He makes no mention of the President’s tax cuts for middle class consumers. He is oblivious of the need to help the long-term unemployed.

In sum, Mr. Johnson’s complaint does not touch upon anything the President actually said, but merely repeats the talking points of the House radical Republicans. By ignoring the proposed American Jobs Recovery Act, he fails to prove that it is merely a repackaging of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

The most significant falsehood of Mr. Johnson’s missive is his assertion that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 was a failure.

“Since his inauguration, during admittedly tough economic conditions, President Obama has taken America 180 degrees in the wrong direction. His failed $800 billion stimulus, Obamacare, Dodd-Frank and the explosion of his Administration's other job killing regulations have combined to put a stranglehold on our economy.”

Mr. Johnson’s only concession to the President is that he took office “during admittedly tough economic conditions.” This is a gross understatement. The President took office after decades of deregulation of the financial market initiated by Republican President Ronald Reagan and fostered by Randian Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. Republican policies resulted in the 1980s Savings and Loan Crisis, the 2001 Internet Stock Bubble and finally, beginning in 2007, greatest financial meltdown since the Depression.

Mr. Johnson conveniently ignores the details so that he can continue to rail against government regulations. He specifies no regulations that kill jobs. It is he, not the President, who fails to learn from history.

(Note: Inside Job (2010), the Academy Award-winning documentary film about the late-2000s financial crisis directed by Charles H. Ferguson and narrated by Matt Damon is one-sided, and, I believe, unfair to President Obama. Its subject is complicated. Nevertheless, it is a good introduction to all the facts that Republicans would have us ignore.)

The Republicans have blocked the full implementation of the Dodd-Frank bill, so it is impossible to attribute anything good or ill to it. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act – which Mr. Johnson calls “Obamacare”—will not be fully implemented until 2014. That leaves only the so-called “failed $800 billion stimulus,” ARRA, as a possible “stranglehold on our economy.”

Did the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 fail to increase employment? Mr. Johnson and his fellow Republicans have repeatedly said that it did. The economy is still in recession. Unemployment is still high. The ARRA did fail to meet with the administration’s projections. All of this, together with the fact that many citizens cannot distinguish GDP from GPS, makes the Republicans’ simple declarative statement, “The stimulus failed,” persuasive.

Repeat a falsehood long enough and you will convince the masses. This is particularly true with a subject as complicated as the economy.

On September 27, 2010, the independent FactCheck.org posted, “The economic stimulus package is a favorite target of Republican candidates and groups, but more than a few ads falsely claim it did not create or save any jobs. … The truth is that the stimulus increased employment by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million people, compared with what employment would have been otherwise.” (FactCheck.org, “Did the Stimulus Created Jobs?”) 

The Richmond Times-Dispatch PolitiFact.com examined Republican Eric Cantor’s May 26^th, 2011, statement, “They (Democrats) passed a nearly $1 trillion stimulus bill which failed to get people back to work.” The Virginia publication rated Mr. Cantor’s statement false after consulting experts from both the right and the left.

Both of these publications based their conclusions in part on the 2010 report of the Congressional Budget Office, which stated: “… CBO estimates that ARRA’s policies had the following effects in the second quarter of calendar year 2010:

•    They raised real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP) by between 1.7 percent and 4.5 percent,
•    Lowered the unemployment rate by between 0.7 percentage points and 1.8 percentage points,
•    Increased the number of people employed by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million, and
•    Increased the number of full-time-equivalent jobs by 2.0 million to 4.8 million compared with what would have occurred otherwise …” ( http://www.cbo.gov )

If Senator Ron Johnson had been doing his job, he would have known about the CBO report.

What animates Mr. Johnson, however, is not concern for the unemployed or the challenges of a global economy in recession. Mr. Johnson, as I pointed out in October of 2009, is an advocate of the Atheistic Capitalism of Ayn Rand. He is a true believer in an ideology that holds that government involvement in the economy, in any way, at any time, is wrong. From health care, to stimulus, to regulation, the government can only kill jobs.

Mr. Johnson writes, “President Obama simply and sadly does not understand the basic economic truth that expansion and job creation must come from the private sector, not government.”

One hopes that President Obama understands that in difficult economic times, remedies must be sought from both the private and public sectors. Progressives hope he understands that the history of this country is in part the history of a mixed economy, with the government playing a positive role in protecting the country from the excesses of capitalism. Mr. Johnson and his ilk hanker for a pure capitalism that has never existed and is every bit as false as Marxist-Leninist millennialism.

It is the insupportable small government advocacy of Mr. Johnson and his Republican colleagues that will take us in the wrong direction, as the August unemployment figures indicate.

“On September 2nd the government reported no net jobs were created in August. To be precise, private firms created 17,000 jobs while governments trimmed payrolls by the same amount. Adjusting for striking mobile-phone company workers, underlying private job growth was actually more like 60,000, consistent with an economy still growing; but barely.” (The Economist, “A Choice of Medicines,” September 10, 2011.)

The Economist does not say so, but I suspect the “governments” that trimmed their payrolls are the state governments run by Republican governors, like Wisconsin’s Scott Walker. Among the jobs trimmed are those of school teachers. President Obama’s American Jobs Act calls for the hiring of teachers to train students to be competitive in an increasingly global job market. This is just one small detail that shows that President Obama is the one working for America’s future, not Mr. Johnson and his small-government colleagues.

President Obama’s American Jobs Act is not all that progressives wanted. It is more than they expected. It is not a magic bullet. It will not immediately reverse the global recession. Mr. Johnson may choose to ignore it. The Congress should pass it and press on to strengthen both the private and public sectors of the economy.

Failure among the Faithful

I'm just not cool with the government insisting that an excessively large and growing share of the output of the motivated and responsible achievers ought to be diverted to the unmotivated and irresponsible. -- A Christian’s posting to Facebook.

It does not matter who wrote the above. The sentiment is common, particularly and sadly among politically conservative Christians.

The argument is that any tax on corporations and persons of wealth to fund programs to help the poor, sick, and elderly is immoral. When the government uses its power of taxation for any other than military appropriations, it is an act of theft. The rich are rich because they are “motivated and responsible achievers.” The poor are poor because they are “unmotivated and irresponsible.”

This argument is straight out of Ayn Rand’s essay “Collectivized Ethics” from the book, The Virtue of Selfishness. “Only individual men have the right to decide when or whether they wish to help others,” Rand pontificates, “society – as an organized political system – has no rights in the matter at all.”

Rand offers no supporting evidence for her assertion. There is not any. The progress of Western civilization itself is the refutation of Rand’s thesis. More on that another time.

I have no reason to believe that the Christian who made the above post to Facebook has read Rand. However, as I posted on 23 October 2010, Randism has poisoned our political discourse (See “The Threat").

Take for example the untenable distinction of the rich as the “motivated and responsible achievers” from the poor who are “unmotivated and irresponsible.” There is no empirical evidence for this. In fact, it runs the other way. Most rich individuals in the United States acquired their wealth the old-fashioned way – they picked rich parents. The poor, conversely, are to be faulted for not choosing parents of ample means.

It is, however, of little concern that our Christian has imbibed a bit of Randism or does not know the social science that refutes his simplistic distinction between rich and poor.

What is disturbing is that the Faith has little or nothing to do with the political thought of too many conservative Christians. Instead of the compassion of Christ, we have the cruelty of Randism. Instead of concern for the weakest in our country, there is a perverse concern for the supposed imperiled rights of the most powerful.

I do not doubt that most conservative Christians believe this is a fallen world, corrupted by the sin of our first parents. Nevertheless, they also seem to think that, miraculously, justice has been preserved in the distribution of wealth in this country. They seem to think our Lord was issuing a command when He said, “The poor will always be with you.”

A Short Sermon

And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man brought forth plentifully; and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ And he said, “I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones; and there I will store all my grain and all my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; take your ease, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you; and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.” – Luke 12:16-21

Begin with the first sentence. Begin with what is verbed in the first sentence. It is “the land” which is the first actor in this parable. It is “the land” that brings forth fruit. The rich man merely receives what “the land” brings forth.

The rich man does not consider that the land was there before him. The rich man considers only himself, talks only to himself, plans only for himself, and lives only for himself. Note the monotonous possessive pronoun – my crops, my barns, all my grain, all my goods and finally my soul.

The rich man thinks himself a completely autonomous, self-made individual, owing nothing to the land, family, community, or even God. He is supreme monarch of all he surveys. He is captain of his own soul.

If it were not for the first sentence, if we looked at things only through the rich man’s eyes, we would undoubtedly admire his efforts. We would commend his plans for his future. We live in a country that heedlessly praises the self-made individual. We live in a fallen world with the Old Adam hanging around our necks.

With the first sentence our Lord pulls us back. Our Lord would have us see our life and all our possessions as they are in God’s eyes. The Lord gives the land and seed to the sower, the first rains and the latter rains. The Lord gives us life and places us in families and communities. The Lord calls upon us to love our neighbor as ourselves.

The rich man loves only himself, plans only for himself, and hoards what he has been blessed with for only himself.

This is a parable of our Lord. It is not a political treatise. The parable is not in the least way a promotion of Socialism or a condemnation of Capitalism. It would be wrong to think the parable condemns private property.

The Gospel is more radical than any political or economic philosophy. The Gospel does not call for revolution or seek to upend the way men attempt to organize life in this fallen world. The Gospel cuts to the hearts of men and gives them eyes of faith by which they are to view their lives and all they possess.

The rich man is condemned not because he is rich, or because he is prosperous, or even because he makes plans for the future. The rich man is condemned because he is ungrateful for the land, ungrateful for the fruit it produces, ungrateful for the community he lives in, and most of all, ungrateful for the life given to him. All these are from the Lord.

The rich man’s ingratitude is born of nothing less than idolatry. He is the only thing that matters to him. He worships himself.

Now one must be careful not to abuse this parable and make it into a political tract of some kind. On the other hand, one must not ignore the application of this parable to Christians living in these times. It would be negligent, in particular, to ignore the explicitly anti-Christian political philosophy to which this parable applies.

Ayn Rand would have hated this parable. The individualism that she espoused is the individualism of the rich man in this parable. Rand’s individual lives only for himself. The poison of Rand’s individualism has infected our public life through her latter-day disciples, Paul Ryan, Ron Johnson, Rand Paul, and a number of other radical Republicans.

One does not have to probe the pronouncements of the radical Republicans to see that in much of what is said there is a lack of gratitude for the work of the laborer, an idolatrous affection for the rich, and a disregard for the neighbor who is in need. Supporting all of this is the myth of the self-made individual.

We do not live in a Christian country. We live in a country that has always tolerated Christianity. We live in a country that allows the preaching of the Gospel. For this, thanks be to God. It is incumbent upon preachers to preach that radical Gospel in all its truth and purity. Such preaching should invoke gratitude for all the Lord’s blessings on this land. It should also renounce idolatry in all its forms – including Randian individualism.

One can only pray that politically conservative pastors are strengthened to be faithful to their calling.

Liberal Discipline

Children’s Crusade

There was a bit of overtime this week. As an office temp with no benefits, I milk every assignment for as much cash as possible. When the contract is fulfilled at this assignment, there is no telling when, if ever, I will get another assignment. Working four hours on Saturday morning is easy money.

When I got off the bus on Downer Avenue, it was cool but sunny and pleasant. I looked forward to enjoying the rest of the weekend.

Then I saw the picketers. They had small white cardboard signs attacking Governor Scott Walker. They were walking in a circle in front of Sendik’s grocery store chanting, “We like teachers. Not Scott Walker,” and “Shame on Walker. Shame on Sendik’s.” The picketers all appeared to be college students from the nearby University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee (UWM), although I received reports later that there may have been one woman beyond college years in the group.

Comedy of Errors

Readers who are not citizens of our fair city need a little background.

Sendik’s is the name on three different grocery store chains in Milwaukee and its suburbs. In the beginning, an Italian family named Balistreri founded Sendik’s. How the stores came to be called Sendik’s is too complicated to recount here. (It involves the purchase of a stove by the Italian patriarch with a thick accent.)

Over time, the Balistreri cousins reportedly had … ahh, differences. Now there is one chain of nine stores that advertises itself as Balistreri owned and operated for over 80 years.

Another branch of the family owns the store on Downer Avenue in Milwaukee and stores in the suburbs of Bayside and Elmbrook.

Then there is the scandal of Balistreri cousins selling the Oakland Avenue store in Shoreword to the Nehrings. The Nehrings shamelessly advertise their store as A Milwaukee Tradition for more than a Century. (Yeah, right. And my name is Michelangelo.)

Let us return to our story. Anti-Scott Walker activists selected the nine-store Balistreri-owned Sendik’s for boycotting and protest action because the owners reputedly supported Mr. Walker in the November election. A Facebook page is dedicated to the cause and lists the stores to be boycotted.

The college students picketing the store on Downer were at the wrong store. They picketed from noon to one o’clock. Two protesters were arrested for disorderly conduct. Reportedly, after one hour of heavy lifting on Downer, the protesters proceeded to protest at the Nehring’s store on Oakland Avenue. This store also was not part of the chain singled out by the activists running the Facebook boycott page.

There is one thing that both the Nehring’s Sendik’s store on Oakland Avenue and the Downer Avenue store have in common beyond the fact that they are not the target of the Facebook activists. They are both within walking distance of UWM.

The blogosphere and talk radio would have you think union thugs are harassing local businesses. There were no union thugs on Downer Avenue. These were naïve, ill-informed, foolish college students getting a little drama into their lives. It is quite likely that these students came from suburbs to study in the big city. They may not have had cars to travel to the Balistreri stores, but “Hey, there are two Sendik’s in the neighborhood. Let’s do a show!”

Bad Aim

This whole comedy of errors calls for an adult conversation about the anti-Scott Walker boycotts. Boycotting is the wrong tactic. Boycotting benefits no one but Mr. Walker. Boycotting aims at the wrong target and hurts the very workers that Mr. Walker’s fiscal policies hurt.

Those who funded Mr. Walker’s gubernatorial campaign and those who voted for Mr. Walker are not the enemy. There is nothing illegal or immoral about contributing to Mr. Walker’s campaign. There is nothing illegal or immoral about voting for Mr. Walker. Those who supported Mr. Walker need to be persuaded, not punished.

Mr. Walker has made a career of misleading Wisconsin voters. As Milwaukee County Executive he pitted suburban voters against city voters. As governor, he has pitted union workers against non-union workers for the benefit of his corporate sponsors. Stripping the public sector unions of their 51-year-old bargaining rights was not a plank in his gubernatorial campaign for the simple reason that if it were he would not have been elected. Even the pro-Walker Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (MJS) admits this.

If all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. At least some of the anti-Walker party seems to think they only have a hammer. That hammer is a boycott. The hourly workers at Sendik’s or M & I Bank or Johnsonville Brats are not nails, however.

Boycotting reputed supporters of Mr. Walker is the wrong tool. Boycotting is effective when its aim is to change behavior. Those who funded Governor Walker’s campaign cannot take back their funding. Those who voted for Mr. Walker cannot take back their vote. Now that these supporters have fulfilled their purpose in the last election there is no reason that the ideologue Mr. Walker will listen to them. He has loftier goals.

But Isn’t Liberal Discipline an Oxymoron?

“Between Feb. 14 and March 12 more than a million people protested in and outside the Capitol,” Steven Walters writes in the MJS. “No one was injured; 16 citations were issued for minor violations.”

I suspect Mr. Walters’ figures are cumulative. Over the period he cites, I suspect some people are counted twice. I know of one MPS teacher who was there for four days. Nevertheless, there were tens of thousands of citizens outraged by the policies of Mr. Walker.

Rueters reported that on Saturday, March 12, the number of protesters was anywhere from 85,000 to 100,000 according to Madison police estimates. The news service observed that this “would top the size of protests in Madison during the Vietnam War.”

On the other hand, the pro-Walker MJS has buried any mention of the size of the March 12 crowd and then has never put a number on it. On Sunday, March 13, it tepidly reported, “The crowd that gathered in Madison was the biggest yet during four weeks of protests.” This understatement is on page 18, bottom right hand corner. The very bottom.

There have been attempts by Governor Walker’s administration and its allies at Fox and on talk radio to portray these citizens as dirty rioters imported to the state by greedy unions, causing cost overruns in police service and millions of dollars in damage to the Capitol.

The protestors were in fact clean, upstanding Wisconsin citizens exercising their rights to peacefully assemble and petition their government. Well, except for that guy on the tractor pulling the manure spreader. It seems that Mr. Tod Pulvermacher “has been convicted of drunken driving four times and has no valid driver’s license” (MJS, 3-16-11). Exceptions must be granted in such a large crowd.

Honest citizens, both conservative and liberal, should be nothing but proud of the uprising of citizens in Madison. Did we mention no one got hurt? Should we not be proud that the police, from the chief down to the patrol officers, professionally kept the peace? Should we not remember that protests in the sixties, over issues every bit as important, shared nothing of the character of this lawful assembly of citizens in Madison?

The fight must go on. The policies of Mr. Walker are dangerous for Wisconsin and the country. The loyal opposition, however, must exercise discipline.

Boycotting hits the wrong targets. Pouring glue into the locks of businesses is vandalism that every citizen should decry. These actions merely feed right-wing talk radio and Fox News. The wrong target is being hit.

On the other hand, the recalling of the senators who support Mr. Walker is on target. The recall of Mr. Walker himself in January 2012 is necessary.

These recalls require persuading citizens who voted for Mr. Walker that he misled them, that his senate supporters are culpable, and that neither the Governor nor his Senate supporters are working in the best interests of Wisconsin. This is hard because it requires patience, maturity, and the work of marshaling the facts. It is easy because the facts are against Mr. Walker and the good citizens of our Wisconsin do not share to his radical Libertarian ideology.

These recalls require disciplined liberals. 

The Threat

The election of President Barack Obama aroused a truly un-American, anti-democratic, virulently un-Christian ideology in our country.

This ideology promotes vice as virtue, and evil as good. This ideology has long been in plain sight but, until recently, was never taken seriously. Powerful persons in the government have subscribed to this ideology. They have done real damage to our country and have not been held accountable. Elected officials have adopted this philosophy and have made plans accordingly for the future of the nation.

If this ideology succeeds in seducing the republic, it will not only radically change our government, it will subvert the Judeo-Christian ethos that guides our public discourse. This ideology, awakened by the election of Mr. Obama, threatens this country in much the same way as Nazism threatened the Weimar Republic.

Forget Mr. Obama portrayed with Hitler's mustache.

This threat is not from the Left.

It is from the Right.

The ideology is Randism – the pseudo-philosophy of Ayn Rand.

Ms. Rand preferred to call her philosophy Objectivism and opposed naming it after herself. We refuse to put lipstick on this pig. It is Randism – an ugly, vile ideology that nourishes everything that is ungodly in the fallen human soul. There is nothing "objective" about it.

When Rand declared selfishness a virtue there was no mitigating irony. Rand was Nietzsche without the humor. The freedoms she promoted are for the few, the elite, the producers, the creators. She held nothing but contempt for the masses – they were the looters, the parasites. The capitalism she promoted would result in cruel plutocracy where money is god. Your stock portfolio would be the measure of your moral worth. If you had a stock portfolio.

Rand's capitalism is capitalism with a demon's face.

Alan Greenspan, the Ronald Reagan-appointed chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006, was an unabashed acolyte of Ayn Rand. Her ardent capitalism was his. His faith in the false god of self-correcting financial markets brought on the financial meltdown of 2008.

This was Randism at its best.

Unfortunately, it is not the last of this ungodly ideology.

Paul Ryan, Wisconsin representative to the U.S. House, is a Randian who reportedly gives copies of Atlas Shrugged to all staff members. He is one of the young guns promoted by the formerly neo-conservative Weekly Standard for his obtuse Roadmap for America. According to his Web page, Representative Ryan is a Roman Catholic.

Ron Johnson, Wisconsin Republican candidate for the Senate, is a Lutheran who espouses the views of Rand, according to the Weekly Standard. Johnson is running against maverick Democratic Senator Russ Feingold.

The list of Randians could go on. Rand Paul, Glenn Beck, Libertarians, Lutheran college professors, and more are all going Galt on the Obama administration.

A few concluding observations.

First, to Paul Ryan's priest and Ron Johnson's pastor – wake up. You have parishioners whose souls are in danger.

No one can be a Christian and subscribe to the vile teachings of Ayn Rand. Do not take my word for it. She abused William Buckley for his Catholic faith. Rand hated any form of "altruism," which was her code word for any form of faith, Christian most of all. She was ardently opposed to Christianity and there is nothing in the Gospels that squares with Randism.

Secondly, Randism is not conservatism. It is a perversion of conservatism. William Buckley would have nothing to do with Rand. Barry Goldwater shunned her. Whittaker Chambers eviscerated Atlas Shrugged in Buckley's National Review. The recent promotion of Randism in The Weekly Standard and National Review presents us with nothing less than the corruption of conservatism.

Lastly, the United States of America is not the Weimar Republic. We have a wonderful Bill of Rights appended to the Constitution. We have a longstanding tradition of making full use of the right to free speech. We know how to argue like no other republic on the face of the earth.

So God Bless America.

And God keep America.

We have much to fear from plutocracy, oligarchy, and the fallen nature of man. It is the latter that feeds all the rest. Randism preaches selfishness. The old fallen nature says Amen.

Lord help us.