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Democrats and Ayn Rand

Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE

I have never understood why Democrats have always belittled Ayn Rand. Atlas Shrugged is reported to be the best selling book in history aside from the Bible.

I first read it in 1959, two years after it was published. It is a weak love story but a powerful critique of government policy and the effect of expanding government control over society.

I did not think about it much during medical school. I thought about it when the government started to control my medical practice.

In 1984 my son, Brad, insisted I read Atlas Shrugged again. It describes exactly the effect the government was having on the practice of medicine. 

I did not understand why Democrats in congress and the Democratic Party members become were so angry with Ayn Rand and her philosophy. I thought Democrats were problem solvers for the benefit of the people. 

I finally realized that Ayn Rand’s writings are a dangerous threat to the Democrats’ progressive agenda. The agenda is the government’s control over society turning free citizens into clients of big government. 

In this election year the Democrats have decided to combine their anti-Rand rhetoric with a Saul Alinsky tactic.

The Democrats are trying to immobilize Republicans’ replies through a replay of their anti-Rand sound bites. They are using the traditional mainstream media to spread their disinformation.

If a reader wants to know what Ayn Rand’s philosophy is read Atlas Shrugged. I suspect most critics have not read the book.

Democrats attack Ayn Rand by misrepresenting her philosophy as evil.

This year the Democrats’ attack dog is House Minority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.).

He accused Republicans of following author Ayn Rand’s advice that “compromise is always evil,” and warned that letting Republicans take over Congress would only lead to more gridlock and partisanship.” 

In reality comprise is usually evil. If a policy or law is wrong, compromising will not fix the problem that policy or law set out to fix. According to Ayn Rand there are issues in which compromise is evil. If a law or policy does not work compromise can be evil is if is not modified by compromise.

Steny Hoyer’s warning Republicans taking over congress would only lead to more gridlock and partisanship does not  logically follow the first part of his sentence.  

The House of Representatives have passed about 350 bills. A 98% of the House passed bills were with  bipartisan.

Harry Reid, chairman of the senate, has created the gridlock by not permitting these bills to be brought to committee or the senate floor for debate.

Harry Reid has been President Obama’s inarticulate creator of gridlock.

“Compromise is not evil,” Hoyer said. “It is the necessary and noble pursuit of those who govern responsibly in a democracy. We listen to one another. We come to an agreement.”

Harry Reid has not compromised on anything. Neither has President Obama.

How does Steny Hoyer have the chutzpah to make such a statement?

Why doesn’t the traditional media react to this ridiculous statement.

Steny Hoyer’s statement is the typical Saul Alinsky lie crafted to immobilize the enemy’s ability to have a strong reply.

If a policy is wrong and is not working or has not been working reasonable men should debate the issue and change the policy so it works to the benefit of the people.

The policy must be changed. It is the responsibility of both parties to change it to something that can work for the benefit of all the people.

Obamacare is a law forced through congress by a Democratic majority that is not working. Compromise can only make it worse.

Who is to blame for congressional gridlock?

Is it the Republicans or Democrats?

If there were a Republican majority in the Senate and bills passed both houses President Obama has threatened to veto the bills. He would then be responsible for his errors not Harry Reid. 

Hoyer accused House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and others as following Rand’s teachings when it comes to operating Congress. 

The implication is Paul Ryan is evil.

The message is President Obama knows what is good for the people. Therefore. elect Democrats to congress this fall.  

Which of President Obama and the Democrat’s policies have worked? All are failing at the expense of the middle class taxpayer.

President Obama’s policy decisions have been proven wrong daily.

  • He has created chaos in the healthcare system with Obamacare.
  • He has increased the costs of unsustainable entitlements programs.
  • Obamacare is another unsustainable entitlement program.
  • He has increased the deficit from $11 trillion dollars to $17 trillion dollars.
  • America’s foreign policy is chaotic.
  • America’s economy is still a mess and getting worse even though the President claims it is better.
  • People are more dependent on government.
  • Individual privacy had been violated.
  • Independence has been discouraged.
  • Individual responsibility has been discouraged.
  • Cronyism has been promoted..

President Obama wants to do away with racism yet makes every issue a racist issue and blames it on Republicans.

I think before Steny Hoyer and the Democrats start attacking Republicans who might have been influenced by Any Rand, he should read Atlas Shrugged or at least watch the three-part movie.

“He should reexamine his premises.”  (A John Galt quote).

President Obama’s own party members are running away from his concepts of big government and central control in order to be elected. 

They are sounding like Republicans.

The people are realizing that “Big Government” has had difficulty in doing anything efficiently.

These days government competence is all too often exposed as a fragile veneer. When an elite corps like the Secret Service can’t remember to lock the White House’s front door and alleged health technocrats can’t build a working Obamacare website for less than $2 billion, a sense of low-level worry about Ebola seems more than reasonable.”

 President Obama is always blaming his failures on President George W. Bush or his advisors.

Many of President Obama’s advisors are now blaming Republicans for their agencys’ shortcomings. Even Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Health Infectious Disease division, is implying Republicans are to blame for the agencey’s lack of efficient response to the Ebola virus epidemic.   

“Nor does it inspire confidence that the head of infectious diseases for the CDC is resorting to that promiscuous federal excuse—budget cuts.

Anthony Fauci recently told Congress that sequestration “has, both in an acute and in a chronic insidious way, eroded our ability to respond in the way that I and my colleagues would like to see us be able to respond to these emerging threats.”

Is this a joke? There are many other examples of shifting blame such as our foreign policy crisis in the middle east, the crisis with ISIS, nuclear Iran, Israel/Hamas and the Arab spring to name a few.

All these excuses remind me of the excuses that characters in Atlas Shrugged used when the world was falling apart.

As I listened to President Obama’s repeated statements that government was going to somehow fix what Obama calls “income inequality” it brought to mind several of the more depressing chapters of Any Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged, which you recall envisioned a dystopian world in which government “looters” stripped society’s producers, thinkers and creators of the fruits of their labor in the name of equalizing society.”

“The looting of the fruit of their labor provoked the producers to withdraw from society. Without producers, thinkers and creators there was an economic implosion and society rapidly declined and fell into chaos.” 

Every time President Obama mentions government enforced income equality or government-led opportunity I think of the villains in Atlas Shrugged such as the politician Wesley Mouch (New York Senator Chuck Schumer) or crony capitalist Orren Boyle (various green energy vampires) to name only two.

In the words of Yogi Berra, “It feels like Da Ja Vu all over again.”

  The opinions expressed in the blog “Repairing The Healthcare System” are, mine and mine alone.  



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