Congressman Paul Ryan, who has long publicly admired Ayn Rand, is now attempting to distance himself from her. In an interview in The National Review, published on Thursday, Ryan said “I reject her philosophy. It’s an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview. If somebody is going to try to paste a person’s view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas. Don’t give me Ayn Rand.” He further described as “a myth” the notion that he is an Ayn Rand acolyte.
Where oh where did such a “myth” arise? Perhaps from statements the congressman has made in the past? Such as:
“I give out Atlas Shrugged as Christmas presents, and I make all my interns read it.”
And:
“Ayn Rand, more than anybody else, did a fantastic job explaining the morality of capitalism, the morality of individualism, and that, to me, is what matters most.”
And:
“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.”
Or perhaps from his own recorded words:
At any rate, if his conversion from Rand to Thomas is sincere, I look forward to seeing this reflected in his politics. Perhaps he will revise his proposed budget, which slashes social programs while leaving military spending intact, and which lowers taxes on the wealthiest.
After all, it was St Thomas Aquinas who said Man should not consider his material possession his own, but as common to all, so as to share them without hesitation when others are in need.
And: Hence whatever certain people have in superabundance is due, by natural law, to the purpose of succoring the poor. For this reason Ambrose [Loc. cit., 2, Objection 3] says, and his words are embodied in the Decretals(Dist. xlvii, can. Sicut ii): “It is the hungry man’s bread that you withhold, the naked man’s cloak that you store away, the money that you bury in the earth is the price of the poor man’s ransom and freedom.”
The thought of Ayn Rand is the polar opposite of the thought of St Thomas and the Catholic Church. Her ethics, quite literally, are the ethics of Antichrist. Ignoring for the moment Mr Ryan’s attempt to rewrite his well-documented history, if he is sincere in turning from Rand to Aquinas we can expect to see this reflected in his political and economic views. If it is not, we can safely assume that this is just the latest attempt by yet another right wing Catholic to misappropriate Catholic terminology, to fool the unwary, and to hijack Catholic social teaching.
I’m glad to see that Congressman Ryan is leaving Rand behind… I was disappointed to find out via CeT that we was ever a devote.
But as to his budget… I certainly agree that military spending can and needs to be slashed dramatically, both of fiscal reasons and for reasons of public policy (cf. Bacevich).
Regarding the duty to *share* our material possessions, however… why do we need to seek to systemically and structurally implement this via compulsory taxation? Aren’t there other ways, ways which appeal to virtue and contribute to growth in virtue, that we might attempt?
IIRC, when I frequented CeT a couple years ago, there was a considerable distributist bent here. Is that gone, or am I just missing it?
It depends on how you define distributism; there is something out there that calls itself “distributist” but is no such thing, merely appropriating certain anti-Statist elements of distributism. Your comments re taxation make me think that you are of such a mind; taxation was seen as a tool by Chesterton and Belloc, a much needed tool to bring about justice and to fight the concentration of property in the hands of a few.
Actually and unfortunately, I’m not well-enough read in distributism to say what I am one, accurate or not. :-) I’ve enjoyed reading CeT because it was *different* than what you hear from both parties… my comment was prompted because, at least in the Ryan posts, it doesn’t sound as different as I thought it used to, but much like what we’d hear from the left.
Again — and with sincerity — I completely admit that I could be wrong about that and that my (mis)perception is due to the fact that I’m only looking at a couple posts which are seeking to critique one particular figure and his policies.
As you blog on that American Catholic blog, which is such a baby that it wouldn’t post something I wrote defending myself when I was criticized there (unfairly, complete with ad hominems), I would guess that “the left” is some sort of cuss word. I don’t think either side of the paradigm has a monopoly on good ideas and instincts, or idiotic ones either.
Like Dorothy Day, I like to say I am “left” on war, racism, empire, economic injustice, and labor. I am “right” on abortion, sexual morality, liturgy, and Christian doctrine.
LOL… read my posts at AC, Daniel (I don’t even know when I posted there last), and tell me if I’m still guilty by association.
I’d like to think that it’s possible recognize that there are multiple approaches to economic policy which accord with Catholic teaching, as opposed to only one, as some of the contributors at AC think and as it seems you may think. Again, I’m open to correction though.
You’re right; I was making assumptions.
And you are right that there is no single “Catholic economics”. On the other hand, certain approaches are incompatible with the principles the Church outlines. Among these are State socialism, libertarianism, and the Vienna School. And of course Ayn Rand is antichrist in the extreme. What I am objecting to, and this is only the latest version of this, is when politicians appropriate Catholic terminology to mask one of these other, contrary, approaches.
Congressman Ryan’s backing away from Ayn Rand strikes me as a change in his marketing or branding. Like a Corp, he just wants to sell something and will change or adjust the message if it can help the goal of selling the product. The underlying outlook is unchanged.
It’s possible Mr Ryan has had a change of heart but I severely doubt it. The truth will show up in what he does, what he legislates. I would bet the farm that only the “message” or tone of Mr Ryan will change but not the actual content or reality. It won’t take long to see. I don’t advise any breath holding.
The US is clearly a schizophrenic place. The two best selling books are the Bible followed by Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. Essentially the two most prized books are the Gospel and the anti-Gospel. How crazy is that? God and Mammon cannot both be served. A look at our society easily shows who is winning and who is really being worshipped.
Cong Ryan claims to have read both books. He was obviously unaware that one can’t serve two masters. His rhetoric, his actions, his enthusiasm for Ayn Rand’s cold, selfish, I humane philosophy showed that mammon was his true master. Jesus and the Gospel got lip service. Unfortunately Mr Ryan is typical in DC and among opinion or noise makers.
“inhumane” — in last post. Predictive text on my phone.
Mr. Nichols keep writing on Ayn Rand. She is a pervasive and pernicious influence on our society especially among the elite. Many of the Tea Party rubes holding the John Galt signs have probably never read her let alone understood her. “forgive them, for they know not what they do.”. The rubes are unaware that Mrs Rand & her true believers consider them to be moochers and parasites to be ground underfoot, “fuel to be burned.” Whittaker Chamber heard the real message of Ayn Rand to all but her select few, “to the gas chamber go.”
Dan…
Your tongue must be sticking right through your cheek ;-) Does it hurt?
I would not hold out much hope for this man’s integrity. He is a charlatan and a fraud. Like many in Congress…only worse because he’s actually smart and dangerous. How a man with any sense of integrity and self respect could flip in the way portrayed here is mind blowing. One day this…oh emabrassing?..so that. What’s tomorrow?
Ryan’s been an ideological “cause oriented” Congressional, think tanker and politician his whole adult life. What would old Ayn make of that “productive” life..all those gov’t checks and benefits for him and his lovely family.
He’s been ….spewing this Randian stuff FOR YEARS…YEARS. His disavowal shows how craven and cowardly he really is. The real move is to keep Cardinal Dolan off his case while the red hats are obviously having so much “fun” with Obama…to the Republican’s benefit…and Ryan’s path to more…you guessed it… POWER.
OREMUS
This is the current situation. Thoughts on how to respond to ensure that all have their needs met? It seems that capitalism is breaking the connection between work and adequate income right before our eyes:
http://robertreich.org/post/22204212722
Maybe, but recently he made a statement on Social Security that sounds like it came from Miss Rand:
“We believe that Social Security legislation, now billed as a great victory for the poor and for the worker, is a great defeat for Christianity. It is an acceptance of the idea of force and compulsion.”
Except that it actually was a quote from Dorothy Day she wrote in August 1945. Turns out she wasn’t exactly a fan of Big Government either, sarcastically calling the nanny state some so-called Distributists actually seem to long for “holy mother state.”
The article is here. It’s important, because too many that support Solidarity seem to use it as a mask for support of the Servile State.
Ms. Day later changed her mind that, Steven.
The state is not the be-all and end-all, but it IS the creature of God. It IS divinely-instituted and mandated to maintain and create the common good. If you are RCC, this is de fidei for you. One certainly cannot say this of corporations, which are, in fact, creatures of the state, meant to be under state control. Many in the United States, and ironically many Roman Catholic Christians, have apparently forgotten this.
And to those, Roman Catholic or otherwise, who would invoke the spectre of the state as it is presented in the Apocalypse, I would remind you that the United States of America is NOT North Korea, NOT the PRC, NOT the USSR, NOT Nazi Germany. In short, get real!
FrGregACCA
Fr. Blevins:
It IS divinely-instituted and mandated to maintain and create the common good. If you are RCC, this is de fidei for you.
I am not arguing against the point, and I doubt all but the most committed moral anarchist would argue it. Most people with sympathies to the Libertarian cause do so because they see the level of government at the Federal level as closest to the way the founding father intended our country to be and the way that is, for us, legitimate. If a Catholic believes in some of the tenants of libertarianism, it is, we should pray, tempered by the just demands of the common good (defense of property and person from force and fraud, defense of the institutions of the Church, standardizing the coin of our country.
And to those, Roman Catholic or otherwise, who would invoke the spectre of the state as it is presented in the Apocalypse, I would remind you that the United States of America is NOT North Korea, NOT the PRC, NOT the USSR, NOT Nazi Germany.
The U.S. is not, as of now, the PRC, NK, USSR, or Nazi Germany. But to invoke those states is to state what, in our time, is political evil in full flower. Every one of those states, however, had a time when people were freer and the legitimate rights and duties were held in higher esteem. Even the USSR and the PRC arose from revolutions that overturned an older order of things so badly that, if a person from the time of the Mandarins or the Tsars were transplanted in those states they wouldn’t believe they were in the same country. Nazi Germany started out as a republic up to Hitler’s election in 1933, remember.
Even the empire of the Antichrist, when it arises, will as likely as not be from nations where the people, even to the full flower of wickedness, believed “it could never happen to them.”
All these evil weeds from little seeds of sin did grow.
Fr. Blevins,
I noticed on your Facebook page that, among the books you list, there is Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals.
If we are to condemn any notion of libertarianism that was espoused by Rand as “the ethics of the Antichrist”, should not the same condemnation go to Alinsky, his methods, and the causes he espoused for the same reason? This is even more true since Alinsky dedicated the work to Satan.
Here’s a reminder, and here is a photocopy of the dedication:
Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins — or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer
Three points, Steven re: Alinksy
First, Alinsky obviously had no understanding of who or what Lucifer really is. That never stopped many Roman Catholic parishes in urban Chicago from working with the organization he founded. We must not be so freaking literal!
Second, Alinsky eschewed all ideology except “for the common good”.
Third, the use of Alinksy’s tactics have not been confined to any one ideological stripe.
Rad-baiting will get you nowhere.
Re: the Apocalypse. If you will notice, besides its obvious murderousness, especially of Christians, the antichrist regime depicted therein is characterized by being in bed with the economic powers-that-be. It is not exactly trying to be a countervailing force against the anti-democratic power that great wealth inevitably brings with it. Quite the opposite.
Re: Nazi Germany and the USSR. In both cases, each regime emerged out of political chaos. The Kerensky government was completely ineffective as was the Weimar Republic. In the latter case, Hitler came to power because the center, the center-left Social Dems, and the far left Communists refused to form a coalition to stop him from form a minority government. And this is the libertarian delusion. Reduce a legitimate, effective government to impotence and what will emerge will inevitably be illegitimate but ruthlessly effective.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Gregroy Ned Blevins, a commentator on this blog, is not a member of the Catholic Church. His eccesial community, The “Antiochian Catholic Church”, is a “independent catholic” community whose “bishops” claim an apostolic line through certain Old Catholic lines that are not canonically effective and likely are not valid. The ACCA claims validity of consecration through Joseph René Vilatte, a very strange fellow who, it could be said, truly define the term Episcopi Vagantes (Lat: Wandering Bishop). Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val (composer of the Litany of Humility and Secretary of State under Pope St. Pius X) considered Vilatte’s consecrations to have been commercialized and therefore invalid and unrecognizable.
Mr Blevins, you attempted to tell me what is de fidei for me as a Roman Catholic, whereas you are basically a Protestant in eastern vestments. As for your comments on “Rules for Radicals”, what is also de fidei, not merely for Catholics but for all who call themselves Christian, is that one may not perform evil so that good may come of it. Given what Alinsky wrote in that work, any priest wishing to make himself an acceptable persona Christi should have taken that volume only as a warning of the tactics of the enemy and devise ways of defeating them. You have apparently not only read the book, but from the comments you’ve made have taken to heart what a legitimate and Catholic society would consign to the flames.
“Ladies and Gentlemen”?
Father Gregory has never hidden the fact that he is not a RC priest. Good heavens, man, his blog is called “Vagante Priest”! You just look silly, trying to make a big deal out of this; you have really descended to ad hominem attacks. And one needn’t be a Catholic to call Catholics to be faithful to their own tradition.
Really.
An article on the Old Catholic lineages and their validity, or lack thereof, appears here.
As a word of warning, the author, Anthony Cekada, is himself no friend of the Church since he himself is a schismatic priest at a Sedevacantist “church” in the Cincinnati area that some of the members of my parish used to be members of. However, the article is well researched as to the history and canonical effect, and was written when he was still a priest of St. Pius X when they were still considered somewhat Catholic.
Sorry, the link is here.
Re: Blevins,
As per my comments on the Antichrist, I did not mean my comments to suggest that the antichristic deception would “countervail” democratic or any political movements. Indeed, the history I gave you should suggest quite the opposite; that coming of the antichrist will be desired by a great many, and this will inevitably be part of the “flow” of the political order.
The Church states this about the deception of the Antichrist in paragraph 674 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
The Antichrist’s deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgment. The Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism, especially the “intrinsically perverse” political form of a secular messianism.
Alinsky was definitely a believer in a secular replacement of the eschatological judgement; he desired a heaven on Earth just as many socialists and communists desire. As to your claim that he wasn’t “ideological”, that is a ploy used by communists and socialists throughout the centuries as pointed out in by Jonah Goldberg in the recent book “The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas.”
Steven, I have never claimed to be an RC priest. Priest? Yes. RC? No. But that is really beside the point, isn’t it? Sheesh! We go from rad-baiting to trying to incite a neo-inquisition! Get real, dude!
But that in no way affects my claim was to what is, or is not, de fidei for Roman Catholics concerning the status of the state (or, for that matter, this question of the common good). Am I wrong here? No, I am not. So stop the pathetic attempt at ad hominem argument, okay? Just because I’m not an RC priest doesn’t mean I cannot read.
Alinsky was Jewish. I don’t know whether he was practicing or not. I know of no evidence whatsoever that he “believed in a secular replacement of eschatological judgement”. That is just crap. Did he seek to better things on earth? Yes, he did. Many Christians should do as much. He puts them to shame.
And yes, I have read “Rules for Radicals.”
BTW, I heard Mr. Goldberg on NPR discussing his book about liberal cliches. The interviewer brought up a frequently heard RW cliche: “Government IS the problem”. Mr. Goldberg basically responded, “That may be a cliche, but that’s not the kind of cliche I want to talk about.” Oh well,
Here’s the bottom line, as stated by John Kenneth Galbraith: “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”
The more I suffer, the more I see others suffer, because of this blatant selfishness, the less patience I have with it, and I have NO patience at ALL when it comes to people trying to use Roman Catholicism, or any other form of Christianity, in this inherently antichristian, Randian and social darwinist exercise.
Blasphemy! Pure and simple!
And the end result in reaction? Naziism, Bolshevism, or worse! God will NOT be mocked! Go back and read the Letter of James, especially Chapter 5!
What we sew, this is what we will reap!
Well, from my perspective a liberal Protestant in vestments from a church with irregular orders, and that has women simulating the sacraments, is hardly a man to be warning about mocking God.
Yes, we are reconfigured in Christ for good works that we may walk in them. If we walk in them then much of what we “kick upstairs” doens’t have to be. If we don’t, then we are left with the Servile State Hillaire Belloc warned us would be the result of the Hegelian conflict between capitalism and socialism.
And Day’s remark about “holy mother government” is not simply about the size of the federal government, but a healthy distrust of the intentions of a state that increasingly takes over and crowds out the works the Church formerly performed. The philosophy of the government sought by many, including indeed some people claiming to be “conservative”, is a state that becomes for many the manifestation of the Divine on earth. That is to say, when men stop worshipping God they make the State god, as Chesterton warned.
” increasingly takes over and crowds out the works the Church formerly performed.”
The Church never came remotely close to performing works of the sort that Social Security and Medicare (and similar programs in other developed countries) are. The reduction of abject poverty and increase of public health in countries with modern govt run social safety net programs vastly outpaces the efforts of every Church and non-profit philanthropic organization on earth combined. We don’t live in pre-modern economies with the limitations of pre-modern technologies anymore. The increase in public health has come about in large part because of large bureaucracies mediating complex technologies and technological systems. Govt’s can maintain these bureaucracies. Govt/corporate joint ventures can maintain these bureaucracies. But to think that the Church alone or in conjunction with non-profits and philanthropists can handle them requires a faith that is beyond naive. History gives us a legion of examples of the state of public health and the incidence of abject poverty when left to the Church and/or other non-profit ventures. People like Ron Paul like to comment on the glory days (the 50s, I guess) when doctors used to, as he puts it, routinely offer free or reduced cost services to people who could not afford otherwise. Well, that is nice and sentimental to reflect on. But the fact is that medicare has greatly expanded access to health services and public health, and social security has greatly reduced abject poverty. The niceness of doctors, churches, non profits, philanthropists, and do-gooders never came close to seeing the same level of results. To destroy the public health – social welfare safety net (which is now slowly being done) is to send us back to the times when abject poverty is all around us and a much higher percentage of the population is dying or being made incapacitated by preventable and/or treatable conditions. Grown ups who are not sociopaths don’t go that route.
The social safety net wasn’t intended to allow people to live at their prior standard of living for 30+ years. It was intended — as you note — to keep people out of abject poverty, but much, much more is expected of it now.
Hardly. We have one cash welfare program left post the Clinton era and that is TANF. You have to have kids to get it. Other than that there are subsidies for housing, food stamps, WIC, SSD, SS, and Medicare/caid and a modest number of programs that are very, very specific and limited in demographic reach, say National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) and so forth. Our regulatory agencies are minuscule and weak in comparison to more civilized nations.
And the program which “started it all” so to speak and is the ire of Paulbots ( despite the fact that getting rid of it would place more Americans in abject poverty than the cutting of any other govt program) would be doing just fine were it left alone: http://blogs.reuters.com/david-cay-johnston/2012/05/04/social-security-is-not-going-broke/
It’s neo-liberalism 101 – create a fake crisis, introduce austerity measure, and then privitize, privitize, privitize. No thanks.
Ochlophobist,
If you have a moment, please direct some of these thoughts over to the National Review. There is a recent article by George the least of these Weigel on Rep Paul Ryan and the Georgetown faculty. Though often a poor source of Catholic thinking, the faculty there seemed to have discerned a theme in the Gospels about Christ’s concern for the poor & less fortunate of society and a decided lack of social Darwinism or laissez faire economics. I’m inclined to think the faculty was on to something here.
Mr Weigel and most of the commentators were highly concerned that an overly large and overly generous US welfare state was hurting the poor and robbing rich Christians of the opportunity to be charitable to the needy. I think their concerns are a tad off. Your thoughts on the bounty of private charity could be of help to the concerned hearts suffering from the dearth of charitable opportunities.
Sean
Sean, what’s the link?
Ochlophobist,
Not great with links.
If you google ‘National Review George Weigel’ and click “Ryan vs Georgetown you will get it.
A bizarre, yet common conservative view of Christian charity and the grave problems and moral hazard of gov’t assistance to the needy is laid out in the article and the combox. Both feel Paul Ryan’s approach strikes just the right tone in not letting the namby pamby leftist bishops telling good Catholics anything about helping the poor. Jesus said, “The poor you shall always have with you…”. So you know, why bother, plus I got a 10 o’clock tee time.
Sean
ps one of the last comments was interesting among the dittos. It said something like the ~~the concerns of right wing Christians are of inverse proportion to those express by Christ in the Gospels.
Oh the need for balance and proportionality in our thinking.
Re: Chris,
The point of such a society is how much of a social safety net would you need if property was well distributed, which of course would be a purpose of government along the lines of regulation (that is, regular-ization if I may coin a phrase for the sake of clarity). Likely not as much as you need in our corporatist society where many people are left at the margins, and some are taught they don’t have to work.
Now you are starting to make some sense, Steven. But then:
“People who are taught they don’t have to work”.
You mean, like people who are born with a silver spoon in their mouth?
There is a problem here that goes WAY beyond personal responsibility at either end of the spectrum. As technology increases efficiency, as capital intensivity increases, more and more can be done by fewer and fewer people. This greatly reduces demand for labor and thus, while we have oodles and oodles of poverty-level jobs, we have fewer and fewer reasonably remunerated “middle class” (working class) jobs. In the meantime, all of the gains from the increased productivity are going more and more to the top. Thus, the system as it is evolving is making it virtually impossible for many, if not most, people to support themselves by their work at a reasonable level.
Now, if we had a sane tax policy with a marginal rate well above 50%, if we taxed capital gains in most cases more nearly at the same levels as regular income, if we taxed the income of hedge fund managers and others of similar ilk like normal income, we would be in a position, via the government to invest in the rebuilding of infrastructure which would go a long way to putting so many back to work at reasonably well-paying jobs.
Beyond roads and bridges, which the government can afford to build anyways if it wasn’t in perpetual deficit, what do you call “infrastructure”? There has to be a real productive economy for the services to be of any service anyway.
You realize, of course, Steven, that the United States has had federal government debt every year of its existence except for maybe a twenty year period in the early nineteenth century? A period that corresponded to a recession?
Here’s the deal: “austerity” at this time will make the debt problem worse in the medium-to-long term because the debt, even without increasing at all in actual dollars, will increase as a percentage of GDP if the economy shrinks. OTOH, if we borrow and spend more NOW (well, if it is spent far enough down the SE foodchain), it will stimulate the economy and make it grow which will mean that the debt will become less of a percentage of GDP. That, coupled with, again, a higher marginal tax rate and the other tax measures I mentioned above, will enable to do deal with the deficit and debt in good time.
Re: infrastructure vs. “productive economy”. Not sure exactly what you mean by the latter phrase. I assume it has something to do with manufacturing. if that is the case, then obviously, both statements are true. Infrastructure is necessary to an economy that makes things.
Like I was saying…
http://robertreich.org/post/22542609387
Re: Blevins,
“austerity” at this time will make the debt problem worse in the medium-to-long term because the debt, even without increasing at all in actual dollars, will increase as a percentage of GDP if the economy shrinks.
If that is the case, then why have taxes at all as long as you don’t increase your debt greater than the GDP increases?
Of course, you would still have to reduce to amount of spending to the increase of the GDP, and your debt would have a greater and greater percentage of GDP as well.
So what are you saying? That it is pointless to attempt to balance our national checkbook?
BTW, you recently posted that the marginal tax rates should be > 50% (at which point the state doesn’t work for us, but us for the state). In reality, if you combine national and state taxes, the individual maximum tax rate is 45% and the corporate tax rate is 48%, so we are not far from your level now and we are nearer to bankruptcy than ever. The later places us just about on par with Japan and Germany for the highest corporate tax rates on Earth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_rates
Germany. Funny you should mention Germany, Steven. I love postwar Germany.
One of the last, best places where the economy, while not growing spectacularly, continues to chug along in a reasonably democratic, just, and SUSTAINABLE fashion even after absorbing the moribund remnants of what passed for an economy in East Germany after the collapse of the Iron Curtain.
Oh, and did I mention? Germany has a LABOR SHORTAGE these days.
Keynesianism works. When was this country most prosperous? Between the end of WWII and c. 1980. We hit a little bump in the road and the right used it as an excuse to begin the dismantling the New Deal, leading to the mess we have today, a mess that will only get much, much worse if this nonsense continues. We should adopt the German economic system lock, stock, and barrel.
Blevins,
Bush was hardly a conservative in any sense but the neo-con one, which is a socialism that desires an American Empire. In many ways Bush was more of a liberal than Clinton was, or did you forget the Plan B of Medicare or other drastic increases in domestic spending under his administration.
As I recall, Bill Clinton was, albeit through triangulation, the one that reduced the time a person could be on welfare and made other changes that actually reduced spending. We had surpluses, and the economy actually grew very nicely during between 1994 and 2001.
Sometimes the letter behind their names doesn’t exactly tell you who they really are.
“Greg” will be fine, Steven.
I fail to see how your comment speaks to the efficacy of the reign of Keynesianism in the American economy from WWII through 1981 and the relative lack thereof since.
It certainly does not speak to the economic structures of Germany vs. those of the United States.
It certainly does not, though Europe is in a hard recession just as we are, with the main difference being their President, Central Bank head, and paid economic flack don’t lie and say we’re in recovery.
What the times speak to is not so much Keynesianism, which confuses consumption with production as the engine of wealth. This has allowed Ben and his predecessors to gin up price bubbles and call it wealth creation when the country has large de-industrialized.
That’s called fraud and deceit. My morale isn’t improved by any of it!
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/05/the-fraud-theft-will-continue-until-morale-improves.html
Sorry. I meant “largely”, as in a loss of 42,000 factories in a decade under an Administration that actively promoted offshoring, especially to China.
You might also file that under “treason,” and I dare call it such!
I wonder why Germany has NOT deindustrialized…
Neither has Japan, and both have about the same corporate tax rate as I said.
I don’t know much about Japan, Steven, but if you are right, then the tax rates in Germany should drive that country to deindustrialize, but that hasn’t happened. Why do you think that is the case?
This is pretty funny: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/ayn-randers
Re: Ochiophobist,
There is also the classic Bob the Angry Flower cartoon. Atlas Shrugged, one hour later:
http://www.angryflower.com/atlass.gif
BTW, even Austrian economists and libertarians can get in on the act.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/mozart.html