In their own words: Ayn Rand, Paul Ryan, and Others

[_MeDotOrg]

Ayn Rand, writer and philosopher, author of 'Atlas Shrugged' and 'The Fountainhead', died 30 years ago. Her ideas exert a strong influence on many conservatives. Her quotes are shown in green:

A government is the most dangerous threat to man’s rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims.

"A well-constructed Union is the best way to control the violence of faction. Faction is a dangerous vice that occurs in popular governments. We welcome a plan that provides a cure for faction without violating the principles of liberty".- James Madison

I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. - John 3:16

"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman." - Thomas Paine

"Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country". - John F. Kennedy

Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue.

"And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said, Blessed be ye poor: for yours is the kingdom of God." - Luke 6:20

“I give out ‘Atlas Shrugged’ as Christmas presents, and I make all my interns read it. Well… I try to make my interns read it.” - Paul Ryan - Weekly Standard interview, 2003

"I just want to speak to you a little bit about Ayn Rand and what she meant to me in my life and [in] the fight we're engaged here in Congress. I grew up reading Ayn Rand and it taught me quite a bit about who I am and what my value systems are, and what my beliefs are. It’s inspired me so much that it’s required reading in my office for all my interns and my staff. We start with Atlas Shrugged. People tell me I need to start with The Fountainhead then go to Atlas Shrugged [laughter]. There’s a big debate about that. We go to Fountainhead, but then we move on....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...you can’t find another thinker or writer who did a better job of describing and laying out the moral case for capitalism than Ayn Rand.” - Paul Ryan, 2005, in a speech to the Atlas Society

"You know you’ve arrived in politics when you have an urban legend about you, and this one is mine,” - Paul Ryan - National Review, 2012, responding to the charge he is a disciple of Ayn Rand.

“I reject her (Ayn Rand's) philosophy", - Paul Ryan, Weekly Standard Interview, 2012

“I think the announcement is great news,” Aaron Day, CEO of the Atlas Society, on hearing that Ryan was Romney's choice for Vice President.

Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.

[_EAllusion]

A government is the most dangerous threat to man’s rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims.

I like that quote. 'Tis true. That you seem so strongly opposed to someone like Paul Ryan getting more power in the government suggests you sense the power of the government too. Name something else that holds more innate capacity to oppress US citizens.

"A well-constructed Union is the best way to control the violence of faction. Faction is a dangerous vice that occurs in popular governments. We welcome a plan that provides a cure for faction without violating the principles of liberty".- James Madison

That's quote is a defense of the idea that a large nation composed of the US colonies is preferable 13 separate colonial governments because it prevents internal warfare between nations. And James Madison is highly likely to agree with the first quote from Rand. He is, after all, the author of the bill of rights and philosophically favored significant limitations on government power to put hurdles in front of its ability to trample rights. In order to do that, you have to be able to recognize the government's tremendous capacity to trample rights because of its monopoly on force.

Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue.

"And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said, Blessed be ye poor: for yours is the kingdom of God." - Luke 6:20

This one is just flat quotemined. I suppose simply providing the full context can clear that up:

Watch money. Money is the barometer of society’s virtue. When you see that trading is done not by consent but by compulsion – when you see that in order to produce you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing – when you see that money is flowing to those who deal not in goods but in favors – when you see that men get rich more easily by graft than by work, and your laws no longer protect you against them, but protect them against you – when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice – then you will know that your society is doomed. Gold is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half property, half loot.”

If that isn't clear, what Rand is saying through one of her characters is how freely trade is allowed and property rights respected is a measure of how virtuous a society is. It isn't saying how wealthy you are is a sign of how virtuous you are.

[_Kevin Graham]

Ayn Rand, writer and philosopher, author of 'Atlas Shrugged' and 'The Fountainhead', died 30 years ago. Her ideas exert a strong influence on many conservatives.

Not least of which was Alan Greenspan, who finally admitted, after the financial collapse, that his entire Randesque worldview was wrong. He referenced her influence in his book and noted how anti-regulation he was, and how it was a paradox that as Secretary of Treasury, he had no intention of doing his job. He was not interested in supporting, let alone enforcing regulations.

[_EAllusion]

Not least of which was Alan Greenspan, who finally admitted, after the financial collapse, that his entire Randesque worldview was wrong. He referenced her influence in his book and noted how anti-regulation he was, and how it was a paradox that as Secretary of Treasury, he had no intention of doing his job. He was not interested in supporting, let alone enforcing regulations.

First, Greenspan never was Secretary of Treasury. Second, Greenspan softened his stance on some forms of regulation, but did not renounce his entire worldview or disassociate himself from Ayn Rand or even relatively laissez faire capitalism for that matter.

[_Kevin Graham]

I like that quote. 'Tis true. That you seem so strongly opposed to someone like Paul Ryan getting more power in the government suggests you sense the power of the government too. Name something else that holds more innate capacity to oppress US citizens

I think the problem is the anti-government paranoia which is for the most part unwarranted. Yes, technically a government could become so intrusive as to remove all your rights, but it is also true that the only reason you have these rights to begin with, is because your government says you have them. It is also ironic that those who tend to beat this drum about government intrusion on freedoms are the same people who have no problem with the government doing precisely that, so long as it dovetails with their religious beliefs. Hence, government should tell a woman what she has to do with her body when pregnant because God says abortion is a sin. And people who are convicted of murder should also be murdered by government forces, because the Bible says "eye for an eye." Never mind the fact the margin of error in death row cases. And do we really need to mention gay rights? The anti-government nut jobs would like nothing better than government coercion on the subject of gay marriage. And perhaps most overlooked of all is their blind support for a strict capitalist system without regulations, despite the fact that it leads to less freedom because it creates an ever growing poorer class and the middle class has to spend all its time working multiple jobs just to stay where they are. This results in a tremendous stress that is simply not experienced in other countries.

I remember when I was on my mission in Spain we used to joke about how we Americans like to pretend we have the most freedom. Because we looked around and people in Spain were having sex in the parks, shooting up drugs using needles provided freely by clinics, and we saw nude women on giant billboards, etc. The religious nuts in America use government to reduce American freedoms. Oh, and few people anywhere in Europe have to worry about going bankrupt because they got sick. One minor illness can ruin your entire life and that of your children, if you live in the USA anyway. But hey, we have that "free market" kinda freedom, at least.

But this isn't really a matter of government reducing freedoms, except to the extent that the lobbyists bribe government officials to further their corporate interests. In which case, the real problem can be remedied by making lobbying illegal, which should have been done a long time ago.

[_Kevin Graham]

Not least of which was Alan Greenspan, who finally admitted, after the financial collapse, that his entire Randesque worldview was wrong. He referenced her influence in his book and noted how anti-regulation he was, and how it was a paradox that as Secretary of Treasury, he had no intention of doing his job. He was not interested in supporting, let alone enforcing regulations.

First, Greenspan never was Secretary of Treasury. Second, Greenspan softened his stance on some forms of regulation, but did not renounce his entire worldview or disassociate himself from Ayn Rand or even relatively laissez faire capitalism for that matter.

That's right, Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

Greenspan certainly didn't soften his view on regulations when Brooksley Born predicted a disaster in the derivatives market, which was instrumental in the collapse of the financial system. He and his thugs went after her will all guns because she was trying to get someone to pay attention to the fact that there were trillions being unregulated in a very dark market.

[_palerobber]

A government is the most dangerous threat to man’s rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims.

I like that quote. 'Tis true. That you seem so strongly opposed to someone like Paul Ryan getting more power in the government suggests you sense the power of the government too. Name something else that holds more innate capacity to oppress US citizens.

when you look at the worst cases of oppression in this country over the last century, the perpetrators are nearly always private parties and businesses and the relief nearly always brought by some branch of government.

[_Kevin Graham]

You probably already know, but this is the event I'm referring to:

WASHINGTON — For years, a Congressional hearing with Alan Greenspan was a marquee event. Lawmakers doted on him as an economic sage. Markets jumped up or down depending on what he said. Politicians in both parties wanted the maestro on their side.

But on Thursday, almost three years after stepping down as chairman of the Federal Reserve, a humbled Mr. Greenspan admitted that he had put too much faith in the self-correcting power of free markets and had failed to anticipate the self-destructive power of wanton mortgage lending.

“Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief,” he told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Now 82, Mr. Greenspan came in for one of the harshest grillings of his life, as Democratic lawmakers asked him time and again whether he had been wrong, why he had been wrong and whether he was sorry.

Critics, including many economists, now blame the former Fed chairman for the financial crisis that is tipping the economy into a potentially deep recession. Mr. Greenspan’s critics say that he encouraged the bubble in housing prices by keeping interest rates too low for too long and that he failed to rein in the explosive growth of risky and often fraudulent mortgage lending.

“You had the authority to prevent irresponsible lending practices that led to the subprime mortgage crisis. You were advised to do so by many others,” said Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, chairman of the committee. “Do you feel that your ideology pushed you to make decisions that you wish you had not made?”

Mr. Greenspan conceded: “Yes, I’ve found a flaw. I don’t know how significant or permanent it is. But I’ve been very distressed by that fact.”

On a day that brought more bad news about rising home foreclosures and slumping employment, Mr. Greenspan refused to accept blame for the crisis but acknowledged that his belief in deregulation had been shaken.

He noted that the immense and largely unregulated business of spreading financial risk widely, through the use of exotic financial instruments called derivatives, had gotten out of control and had added to the havoc of today’s crisis. As far back as 1994, Mr. Greenspan staunchly and successfully opposed tougher regulation on derivatives.

But on Thursday, he agreed that the multitrillion-dollar market for credit default swaps, instruments originally created to insure bond investors against the risk of default, needed to be restrained.

“This modern risk-management paradigm held sway for decades,” he said. “The whole intellectual edifice, however, collapsed in the summer of last year.”

Mr. Waxman noted that the Fed chairman had been one of the nation’s leading voices for deregulation, displaying past statements in which Mr. Greenspan had argued that government regulators were no better than markets at imposing discipline.

“Were you wrong?” Mr. Waxman asked.

“Partially,” the former Fed chairman reluctantly answered, before trying to parse his concession as thinly as possible.

Mr. Greenspan, celebrated as the “Maestro” in a book about him by Bob Woodward, presided over the Fed for 18 years before he stepped down in January 2006. He steered the economy through one of the longest booms in history, while also presiding over a period of declining inflation.

But as the Fed slashed interest rates to nearly record lows from 2001 until mid-2004, housing prices climbed far faster than inflation or household income year after year. By 2004, a growing number of economists were warning that a speculative bubble in home prices and home construction was under way, which posed the risk of a housing bust.

Mr. Greenspan brushed aside worries about a potential bubble, arguing that housing prices had never endured a nationwide decline and that a bust was highly unlikely.

Mr. Greenspan, along with most other banking regulators in Washington, also resisted calls for tighter regulation of subprime mortgages and other high-risk exotic mortgages that allowed people to borrow far more than they could afford.

The Federal Reserve had broad authority to prohibit deceptive lending practices under a 1994 law called the Home Owner Equity Protection Act . But it took little action during the long housing boom, and fewer than 1 percent of all mortgages were subjected to restrictions under that law.

This year, the Fed greatly tightened its restrictions. But by that time, the subprime market as well as the market for other kinds of exotic mortgages had already been wiped out.

Mr. Greenspan said that he had publicly warned about the “underpricing of risk” in 2005 but that he had never expected the crisis that began to sweep the entire financial system in 2007.

“This crisis,” he told lawmakers, “has turned out to be much broader than anything I could have imagined. It has morphed from one gripped by liquidity restraints to one in which fears of insolvency are now paramount.”

Many Republican lawmakers on the oversight committee tried to blame the mortgage meltdown on the unchecked growth of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the giant government-sponsored mortgage-finance companies that were placed in a government conservatorship last month. Republicans have argued that Democratic lawmakers blocked measures to reform the companies.

But Mr. Greenspan, who was first appointed by President Ronald Reagan, placed far more blame on the Wall Street companies that bundled subprime mortgages into pools and sold them as mortgage-backed securities. Global demand for the securities was so high, he said, that Wall Street companies pressured lenders to lower their standards and produce more “paper.”

“The evidence strongly suggests that without the excess demand from securitizers, subprime mortgage originations (undeniably the original source of the crisis) would have been far smaller and defaults accordingly far lower,” he said.

Despite his chagrin over the mortgage mess, the former Fed chairman proposed only one specific regulation: that companies selling mortgage-backed securities be required to hold a significant number themselves.

“Whatever regulatory changes are made, they will pale in comparison to the change already evident in today’s markets,” he said. “Those markets for an indefinite future will be far more restrained than would any currently contemplated new regulatory regime.”

[_EAllusion]

I think the problem is the anti-government paranoia which is for the most part unwarranted. Yes, technically a government could become so intrusive as to remove all your rights, but it is also true that the only reason you have these rights to begin with, is because your government says you have them.

No. You have rights because that is how people, even when they collectively form a government, are ethically obligated to treat you. If a government fails to respect them, then your rights don't go away. You just have a government that doesn't respect your rights. Governments can and should act to protect your rights, sure, but that's an entirely different assertion than saying that your rights only exist because the government says so.

If you're so worried about anti-government paranoia, I think maybe you should learn to stop caring about who is in charge of the government. After all, if the government is so safely benign, who cares who is in charge of it?

It is also ironic that those who tend to beat this drum about government intrusion on freedoms are the same people who have no problem with the government doing precisely that, so long as it dovetails with their religious beliefs.

Yeah, there are tons of people who don't fit this stereotype.

http://www.theagitator.com/

Feel free to show me how this applies there.

Hence, government should tell a woman what she has to do with her body when pregnant because God says abortion is a sin.

Heh. All of a sudden you are hardcore in favor of absolute respect for individual property rights when the subject of abortion comes up? Why doesn't that extend to other subjects? Suppose we accept that a woman has a certain sort of sovereignty over her own body, such that it is permissible for her to remove intruders, persons or not, and a fetus is such an intruder. If a person's rights over how their own body gets used is that powerful, why doesn't that extend to whether the government can tax the fruits of my bodily labor?

What with me being a libertarian and all, I normally take a stronger view of one's property rights - including bodily property rights - than your average person. For instance, part of the reason I favor drug legalization is because I think your ownership of your body entails allowing you to make choices about what to put in it, even if it causes you harm. Oddly, abortion is one of those topics where tons of people (liberals mostly) can be so strict about it that they lap right past me into some hardcore position I can't find a credible moral theory to justify.

I'm not saying that's what you are doing here Kevin, but I am saying that you can favor some relatively strict ideas about respect for property rights without that extending into a position where a mother can expel a fetus (assuming for sake of argument that a fetus is a person) because she has total control over when her kidneys will be used. One can go far without going that far.

[_Kevin Graham]

when you look at the worst cases of oppression in this country over the last century, the perpetrators are nearly always private parties and businesses and the relief nearly always brought by some branch of government.

No kidding. I fear corporate powers much more than some boogy-man concept of "government." Americans who live in corporate environments experience what it is like to like under totalitarian regimes, they just don't realize it. People working for corporations have to understand they pretty much decide your life. Your income. Your sleep schedule. They decide your health care. In most cases they decide when you can eat and for how long, and even when you can pee. Many freedoms granted to us by government are abandoned the second we walk into a corporate environment.