As always, this is how I see it. If you see it differently, let me know.
Rand’s view
The part that brands taxation for government social programs as thievery or sees worker protections as outrageous interference with ownership or views union bargaining as blackmail—all that you can pin on Ayn Rand. Her fictional villains were those who would be called liberals in today’s culture: What liberals see as progressive taxation she saw as stealing from productive members of society for the benefit of the lazy and undeserving.
What she didn’t see
Look a little closer, though. Her heroes are gifted, rebellious, independent capitalists who ask no favors or anyone! The cronyism and pay-to-play bootlicking demanded by the current administration in Washington is the behavior of her villains, not her heroes!
She thought free market capitalists would be different. She was wrong.
Her background
Born Alissa Rosenbaum, the woman who reinvented herself as Ayn Rand was 12 years old when the Russian revolution exploded in St. Petersburg. Her family fled to the Crimea. Her father lost his business. She saw firsthand the sins of communism, and from those early impressions she extrapolated the evils to anything that smacked to her of what she called collectivism. Under Bolshevik collectivism, she saw cheating and corruption and a class of political elites lining their pockets while grinding down poor, hard-working citizens.
Again, She thought capitalists would be different. She was wrong.
Russia’s background
Russia, become the U.S.S.R., now Russia again – it’s a big, sprawling country, and top-heavy bureaucracy was not invented by Bolsheviks. Autocratic czars relied on a far-reaching network of bureaucrats to carry out their will. People’s representatives in government? Forget it!
The American story has been different
Americans set up a different kind of government, based from the beginning on representation. The “people,” of course, were originally only white, property-owning males, but other groups gradually gained suffrage. But Americans also have a long history of being taken in by and being fearful of extremes. That is, we as a people tend to see the world in either/or terms, and politically this comes down to the (false) dilemma of completely unregulated free market capitalism vs. toiling for the state under a red flag.
Two things have saved us over the years from the absurdity of either of the dismal extremes:
First, we have had, historically, a strong two-party system.
Second, the two parties have, until very recently, worked together to reach legislative compromises and actually get things done.
Because Americans are stuck in either/or thinking and because we have had two strong parties, government power has alternated between the two parties, and because of back-and-forth swings in power and because, generally speaking, civility reigned in Congress, bipartisanship worked.
Where we are now
The current president, however, said when on the campaign trail that if people voted for him, “You’ll never have to vote again.” Those in his party in Congress have acquiesced to his Cabinet nominations, however inappropriate or unqualified the nominees (until the most recent and most outrageously inappropriate, a man even Republicans could not stomach), and they have done everything to exclude and block Democrats, including withholding funds already appropriated to various agencies and programs.
Now there is the government shutdown, the longest in U.S. history. Senator Chuck Schumer, minority leader, on Friday, November 7, said the Democrats would vote to end the shutdown if Republicans would agree to a one-year extension of expiring ACA tax credits, without which many middle-class working Americans could see their monthly health insurance costs rise to unaffordable levels. Republicans say no, we open the government back up first, and then we negotiate. So, believe Mike Johnson? Why? Is he credible? Truthful?
Republicans do not want to work with Democrats. They do not want bipartisanship. They want everything their way (which is the Project 2025 way), with no input from the other side of the aisle. Although Republicans are in pro forma session right now, and although they have earlier this year sworn in two other people while in pro forma session, they still refuse to swear in the Congresswoman-elect Adelita Grijalva from Arizona. And as the president urges Republicans in Congress to get rid of the filibuster, he tells them there is no need to worry about future Democratic control because by getting rid of the filibuster, Republicans could pass legislation that would guarantee they would “never lose the midterms and we will never lose a general election” again.
What Republicans want is one-party rule.
Drawing the wrong conclusion
Ayn Rand can be forgiven for believing at age 12 that free market capitalists would be all for freedom in general and not for cheating and greed and corruption, and young people in general can be forgiven for falling temporarily under the spell of her "romantic realism, with heroes larger than life and her villains considerably smaller and smarmier. Most young people want to believe in heroes, whether they are Superman, Spiderman, or John Galt.
But for those willing to look dispassionately at American history, “experience has shown” (to quote from the Declaration of Independence) that completely unregulated, unrestrained capitalism is as destructive of life as collectivism, and a corporate “Big Brother” is every bit as much of an overpowering steamroller as a governmental “Big Brother.” Who wants to be enslaved by either one?
What threatens us at this juncture in our history is an unholy alliance of the two--unbridled capitalism enabled and rewarded by a would-be autocrat at the head of the federal government, a head backed by “representatives” doing the bidding not of the people who elected them but that of corporate interests willing to offer big rewards for the legislation and contracts they want.
All along, it wasn’t collectivism that was the problem. It was unchecked, one-party rule. If you vote Republican, is this really what you want? Think hard!
