Is the European Project Falsifiable?

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"... I’ve developed the habit of asking proponents of the European project what would have to happen for them to stop adhering to it. Is there anything that might cause them to doubt their belief in the merger of European countries? The question is inspired by Karl Popper, who saw in the ability to answer this question the ultimate proof of a rational, scientific approach. He called this principle falsifiability: those defending a position – for example that European integration is important and necessary – should be able to say what would have to happen for them to abandon it. If they are unable to do so, their convictions are not rational or scientific, but ideological or religious...."

Popper introduced this question into the most important debate of his time and used it to expose Marxism. For it is impossible to falsify the view of history as a class struggle that will ultimately result in world revolution. It is a closed theory, based on a vision of the past (‘oppression’) and a vision of the future (‘revolution’), and nothing can possibly refute or prove it wrong. Marxism has an explanation for every possible event. If the workers revolt that is a confirmation of Marxist theory. If the workers do not revolt, then that is also a confirmation of Marxist theory, because failure to revolt is proof of their continued oppression. Whatever happens, we’re never to doubt Karl Marx’s prophecy.

The quasi-argumentation that currently justifies the European project is analogous in significant respects to the type of reasoning once employed by Marxist ideologues. Therefore, when I ask its supporters what would have to happen, or what would have to be proven, to make them change their mind, I never get an answer. Instead, a ritual-like repetition of the EU party line is rattled off, starting with the credo that ‘in the past, Europe waged war’ and that ‘unification brings peace’. The terrorist attacks in Paris, or indeed any other catastrophe (such as the eurocrisis), could never change that fundamental belief – because, so they’ll say, it’s a historical fact. Upon the suggestion that NATO’s role be included in our understanding of the peace we’ve witnessed since 1945, as well as the emergence of the Cold War, the rebirth of Germany as a democratic nation, the rise of the welfare state, the nuclear deterrent and a declining demography (all of which having absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the EU), the europhile won’t argue with you (lest he might be forced to concede). Instead, he’ll shift the subject and say: “But the EU brings prosperity.”

If one then explains that free trade is perfectly possible without Brussels’ centralized management of the economy, that countries outside the EU do perfectly fine, and the euro currency has driven several member states to the edge of economic abyss, the Europhile counters that, actually, the real purpose of the EU is to form a ‘block’ against emerging powers such as China and Brazil. To the objections, then brought forward, that the EU undermines the real and unique strength of Europe – its political, legal, and cultural diversity – and that all decisive breakthroughs in European history, including the Protestant Reformation, the Enlightenment, the industrial revolution, oversees exploration, technological innovation and economic competition, were possible precisely – and only – because of its decentralization, the true believer’s response is to remind you that Europe has enjoyed sixty years of peace. And so the argument comes full circle.

When people voice objections to further expansion of EU powers in referendums or opinion polls the conclusion is always: ‘We need to explain it better’. When its concocted schemes break down, as in the case of the euro, the answer is: ‘It was introduced too soon’. And when the open borders lead to enormous immigration problems and terrorist attacks, they call for a European army! Should you then point out, finally, that the Scandinavian countries and Britain will never agree to be ruled from Brussels by a federal government and an integrated army, the europhile generously suggests a ‘Europe of two speeds’.

Yes, why not have a two-speed Europe? It suggests an open worldview – tolerant and welcoming. Prudent. But what it really means, indeed, what is actually implied in the term, is that we are all on the same track – with the same destination. Some countries are going faster, others more slowly, but we’re all moving in the same direction. The Europhile simply can’t imagine two destinations. There’s only one destination, history moves towards one goal only. Some of us are pulling ahead (at full speed) while others are lagging behind (at a lower speed). But there can be no doubt about the final dot on the horizon.

Overwhelmingly, Europeans do not want the EU’s usurpation of their democratic rights of self government. Southern European economies are on the verge of collapse. Open borders have led to an immigration explosion and now terrorist attacks. A Weimar scenario is unfolding in Greece and Portugal. The Europhile draws only one conclusion: ‘We need more Europe’. His worldview is as hermetically sealed as that of the Marxist, and reality has absolutely no bearing on him. Over sixty-five years after the publication of Karl Popper’s The Open Society and its Enemies, the poverty of historicism is still with us, alive and well, and shared by the overwhelming majority of our hopeless elite.

Thierry Baudet

Thierry Baudet is the author of The Significance of Borders. Why Representative Government and the Rule of Law Require Nation States, and he is the founding director of the independent thinktank Forum for Democracy.

About the Author

Allen West -- Facts about Socialism

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"Then again, has anyone ever articulated to the American people what socialism is as a governing philosophy – and that it has failed every time it’s tried? Perhaps the GOP nominees should stop with the circular firing squad and just do a simple comparative assessment between the ideals of a Constitutional Republic and a Progressive Socialist state.

So I figured this ol’ southern fella would give them a helping hand, with five facts about socialism you need to share with every Democrat you know.

1. First of all, socialists believe in wealth redistribution. This is the most threatening principle for a free market/free enterprise opportunity economy. It seeks to punish those who have worked hard to earn and achieve and believes that it is the job of the state to “level a playing field.” We hear the poll-tested marketed lexicon of fairness, fair share, economic patriotism, and other gimmick words that sound nice. My question is simple; when will progressive socialists share their iPhones, iPads, and all the other niceties they have?

Wealth redistribution does not work because it basically says the indomitable individual industrial entrepreneurial spirit does not (and should not) exist. And if anything has built this great nation to its impeccable level of exceptionalism, it has been individual industrialism. But if socialists have their way, success and achievement become targets of envy.

You know, this past weekend the USA Women’s Soccer team won their third World Cup — unprecedented. Carli Lloyd completed a first ever hat trick in men’s and women’s World Cup history. Every team from all the nations represented had the chance to win the World Cup, but one team was the champion. It was the most widely viewed sports event and we even watched in our home. It brought out all Americans because we like winning. Socialists don’t like winning, they like believing they can choose the winners. Socialists would have redistributed goals from Team USA to Japan in order to promote fairness. We don’t accept that on the soccer pitch — why do we accept that as a governing principle for our nation?

2. Socialists believe in nationalizing the economic production of a country, they do not believe in the private sector, the free marketplace of ideas. They believe in their control and I remember one Rep. Maxine Waters making a mistake and saying that we should nationalize the airlines — she caught herself.

When you consider legislation offered such as Obamacare, it’s about government having a preeminent role and competing against the private sector. You hear the liberal progressive socialists of the left talk about government investments — that is simply not possible. Government does not invest, it spends, and it spends other people’s money.

And the fallacy of socialism is that it works out REALLY well until you run out of other people’s money. If the government gets into the business of public sector growth and engagement in the marketplace, you end up with crony capitalism. You end up with a government that believes it can pick those winners and losers in the marketplace — Solyndra anyone?

What’s worse, the private sector cannot compete with government nationalization of production because government can just raise taxes to increase capital, or print money. Folks out in the free enterprise world cannot do that — thank God.

But just as we saw the shares of three healthcare companies skyrocket after the recent SCOTUS decision in King v Burwell — government should not be able to mandate to individual citizens that they MUST purchase a private sector commodity — inconsistent with the Commerce Clause — but very beneficial to the business that the government has chosen to coddle. In these past Obama years, we’ve seen an incredible intrusion of the federal government into the private sector — case in point, college student loans. It never ends up well — but that’s what Obama, Sanders, and presumably Hillary Clinton embrace.

3. Socialists believe in the creation and expansion of the welfare nanny-state. That is the purpose of wealth redistribution: the move away from the opportunity society to the dependency society. And all one has to do is look at the increase of Americans in poverty and on food stamps in these past six years. Consider the Great Society programs of Lyndon Johnson, especially the REALLY nutty idea of government providing checks to women who have children out of wedlock…with an interesting caveat, no man in the home.

So government removed Dad from the home and that especially affected the black community which 50 years ago had almost 77 percent two-parent households — today that number is barely 25 percent. Socialists come up with these GREAT ideas — mostly billed as free — but the truly intended consequences are detrimental for the society. As Wall Street Journal editorial board member Jason Riley pleads in his book, Please Stop Helping Us. But that is the issue, in that socialism is emotional in its core and these elitists truly believe they can feel better by helping someone — when actually they are promoting the soft bigotry of low expectations.

The dependency society that results from the expansion of the welfare state breeds a lack of drive, determination, and initiative. Socialists do not believe we need a safety net for those who slip off the ladder of success and achievement, which advocates for the individual to get back up and climb. Socialists believe in a hammock — which eventually dry rots.

4. Socialists actually believe in social utopianism — they call it social justice. What this means is that socialists believe it’s not the individual who has the unalienable right to the pursuit of happiness. It is a collective right granted by testate to guarantee happiness. Which is why socialists believe they must redistribute wealth, nationalize production, and give everyone a hammock.

Socialists do not believe in individual exceptionalism – as a matter of fact, “you did not build that” — someone else made it possible. And therefore justice is the sharing of what you THINK you have achieved – you can bet Hope Solo and Abby Wimbach are not about to give up that World Cup!

Socialists do not believe that if you work hard you can have a better life. They believe you must work hard in to spread it around — shared prosperity — because that is what makes a society happy – and makes them feel good, the essence of collectivism as the individual is lost.

Heck, it was MSNBC commentator Melissa Harris-Perry who even stated that parents do not have their own children — that they belong to all of us. Way wrong answer there, Mel.

I don’t need reparations. I just wanted to be a part of the opportunity society, not one based on classifying me as a victim needing standards to be altered to achieve justice for me. Socialists don’t believe individuals can be a victors — not on their own. The State exists to provide its version of justice — which is horribly unjust. Socialists like Julian Castro believe Fair Housing means socially engineering neighborhoods, and if you do not fit their definition — a utopian vision — you are in violation of being socially just.

5. Lastly, Socialists embrace the secular society. Why? Because faith has to be rooted in the State. Here in America, if God is removed from the public sphere, then who becomes the grantor — and subsequently the taker — of your unalienable rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?

The recent SCOTUS decision on redefining marriage — well, it has resulted in a State punishing citizens for their religious beliefs. That is exactly why folks fled Europe for America in the first place — religious freedom and liberty. There is a reason why we sing God Bless America — and He has, but that is not what socialists prefer.

It was Karl Marx who termed religion as the “opiate of the masses.” Nah Karl, we just know you should never put your faith in man. The Founding Fathers invoked Divine Providence as they signed their 56 names to the Declaration of Independence. They realized King George III was a flawed human being and the divine rights theory was not the way towards individual liberty — freedom comes from the natural rights theory. And that is why our individual rights are granted from our Creator, God — not Obama, Sanders, or Clinton.

It is a time for choosing, America. This socialism stuff may sound enticing but let me end again with the words of Churchill: “Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.”

I hate being miserable, and I certainly don’t want to share misery with anyone. That’s not how we roll in America folks!"

What's a Fabian socialist?

The following essay was written by Jerry Bowyer for Forbes in 2008. We were warned. -- Gary DeMar

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Barack Obama is a Fabian socialist. I should know; I was raised by one. My Grandfather worked as a union machinist for Ingersoll Rand during the day. In the evenings he tended bar and read books. After his funeral, I went back home and started working my way through his library, starting with T.W. Arnold’s The Folklore of Capitalism. This was my introduction to the Fabian socialists.

Fabians believed in gradual nationalization of the economy through manipulation of the democratic process. Breaking away from the violent revolutionary socialists of their day, they thought that the only real way to effect “fundamental change” and “social justice” was through a mass movement of the working classes presided over by intellectual and cultural elites. Before TV it was stage plays, written by George Bernard Shaw and thousands of inferior “realist” playwrights dedicated to social change. John Cusack’s character in Woody Allen’s “Bullets Over Broadway” captures the movement rather well.

Arnold taught me to question everyone–my president, my priest and my parents. Well, almost everyone. I wasn’t supposed to question the Fabian intellectuals themselves. That’s the Fabian MO, relentless cultural and journalistic attacks on everything that is, and then a hard pitch for the hope of what might be.

That’s Obama’s world.

He’s telling the truth when he says that he doesn’t agree with Bill Ayers’ violent bombing tactics, but it’s a tactical disagreement. Why use dynamite when mass media and community organizing work so much better? Who needs Molotov when you’ve got Saul Alinski?

So here is the playbook: The left will identify, freeze, personalize and polarize an industry, probably health care. It will attempt to nationalize one-fifth of the U.S. economy through legislative action. They will focus, as Lenin did, on the “commanding heights” of the economy, not the little guy.

image: http://cdn1.godfatherpolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Obama_fabian.jpg

As Obama said, “the smallest” businesses will be exempt from fines for not “doing the right thing” in offering employer-based health care coverage. Health will not be nationalized in one fell swoop; they have been studying the failures of Hillary Care. Instead, a parallel system will be created, funded by surcharges on business payroll, which will be superior to many private plans.

The old system will be forced to subsidize the new system and there will be a gradual shift from the former to the latter. The only coercion will be the fines, not the participation. A middle-class entitlement will have been created.

It may not be health care first; it might be energy, though I suspect that energy will be nationalized much more gradually. The offshore drilling ban that was allowed to lapse legislatively will be reinstated through executive means. It may be an executive order, but might just as well be a permit reviewing system that theoretically allows drilling but with endless levels of objection and appeal from anti-growth groups. Wind and solar, on the other hand, will have no permitting problems at all, and a heavy taxpayer subsidy at their backs.

The banking system has already been partially nationalized. Bush and Paulson intend for their share purchases to be only non-voting preferred shares, but the law does not specify that. How hard will it be for Obama, new holder of $700 billion in bank equity, to demand “accountability” and a “voice” for the taxpayers?

The capital markets are not freezing up now, mostly because of what has happened, although community organizers’ multidecade push for affirmative-action mortgages has done enormous harm to the credit system. Markets are forward looking.

A quick review of the socialist takeovers in Venezuela in 1999, Spain in 2004 and Italy in 2006 show the same pattern–equity markets do most of their plummeting before the Chavez’s of the world take power. Investors anticipate the policy shift in advance; that’s their job.

It’s not just equity markets, though; debt markets do the same thing. Everywhere I turn I hear complaints about bankers “hoarding” capital. “Hoarding” is a word we’ve heard often from violent socialists like Lenin and Mao. We also hear it from the democratic left as we did during the 1930s in America. The banks, we’re told, are greedy and miserly, holding onto capital that should be deployed into the marketplace.

Well, which is it, miserly or greedy? They’re not the same thing. Banks make money borrowing low and lending high. In fact, they can borrow very, very low right now, as they could during the Great Depression.

So why don’t they lend? Because socialism is a very unkind environment for lenders. Some of the most powerful members of Congress are speaking openly about repudiating mortgage covenants. Local officials have already done so by simply refusing to foreclose on highly delinquent borrowers. Then, there’s the oldest form of debt repudiation, inflation. Even if you get your money back, it will not be worth anything. Who would want to lend in an environment like this?

Will Obama’s be the strong-man socialism of a Chavez, or the soft socialism that Clement Atlee used to defeat Churchill after WWII? I don’t know, but I suspect something kind of in between. Despite right-wing predictions that we won’t see Rush shut down by Fairness Doctrine fascists. We won’t see Baptist ministers hauled off in handcuffs for anti-sodomy sermons. It will more likely be a matter of paperwork. Strong worded letters from powerful lawyers in and out of government to program directors and general mangers of radio stations. Ominous references to license renewal.

The psychic propaganda assault will be powerful. The cyber-brown-shirts will spew hate, the union guys will flood talk shows with switchboard-collapsing swarms of complaint calls aimed at those hosts who “go beyond the pale” in their criticisms of Obama. In concert with pop culture outlets like The Daily Show and SNL, Obama will use his podium to humiliate and demonize those of us who don’t want to come together and heal the planet.

You’ve heard of the bully pulpit, right? Well, then get ready, because you’re about to see the bully part.

Read more at http://godfatherpolitics.com/20609/barack-obama-fabian-socialist/#fzBHPtvm75muSQ9h.99

Internet Sales Tax bill

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FT reports Republicans will not let the Internet Sales Tax bill pass this session of Congress.

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"Marketplace Fairness" is the cynically coined title  of a bill that denies fairness and manipulates the  market.

Markets need to be free, not encumbered by price and  quota loopholes devised by a greedy, economically illiterate government.   Sales tax is imposed by most states at the cash  register.  If the cash register is in another state,  they cannot impose or collect sales tax.  That is  NOT a loophole.  That's fairness.

By renaming "Sales Tax" as "Sales and Use Tax" they  try to assert that the tax is due from the consumer well  separated and apart from the cash register.  It's  crooked.

Where I live, the state sales tax is 9.75% until  last year when the county added 2% sales tax to  food.  I'm not talking fine upscale restaurant food.  I'm talking bread, milk, baby formula, vitamins,  cough drops, rice, flour, beans, your family's  GROCERIES!

Sales Tax is justified if at all by the  infrastructure, services, and facilities furnished by  the local government.  That means that the brick and  mortar retailers in town get:  Police and fire  services, meat, kitchen, elevator, deli scale,  building, fire marshal inspections, courts, prosecutors, public defenders, jails, and probation  officers to identify, apprehend, detain, try,  incarcerate, and rehabilitate offenders who  shoplift, embezzle, steal, purse grab, armed rob the  retailer or his customers.  It enables street  cleaning, pothole repair, sewers, water supply,  traffic signals, snow removal, accident response and  ambulance service, tornado sirens, early disaster  responders, and on and on.  All very expensive services for the benefit and protection of the  local retailers.   Not one of those benefits accrue to the  interests of the out-of-state merchant.  None,  bubkis, nada, zilch, zero!  "Marketplace Fairness?"   I think not.

Doctors, lawyers, chiropractors, accountants,  therapists, UPS, FedEx, the post office, storage  spaces, veterinarians (except for pet food) are not  required to collect sales tax, and we users of those  services are not required to tally and pay tax for  their use.  

We consumers-tax payers have been struggling more  and more every pay period to make our ends meet  since 2008.  Internet merchants enable us to find  bargains and broaden our choices.  It is a trade off:  We have to pay  shipping.  The state tax authority will want sales  tax on the shipping, you can depend upon it. Each  state, I suggest will need to hire two additional  people, with offices, parking spaces, and generous  benefits to administer the sales tax collections  from each of the 50 states and several territories  subject to US law.  That's 50 times 50 more tax  collectors!  They want every resident to file a  Sales & Use Tax Return?  An army of new auditors on our state's payrolls making government yet even that  much bigger than the productive working sector.  How  are they going to deal with creative merchants who  take their fulfillment to Canada, Mexico, France,  Hong Kong, or Antigua?

What about the five states that have NO sales tax?   Is my state going to put 11.75% sales tax on any  maple syrup I bring in from New Hampshire, crab legs  from Delaware, rocky mountain oysters from Montana,  or granola from Oregon.  "Fairness?"  Hardly.  It is favoritism paid off to the legislators with billions  for new spending.  That's what it is--a sweetheart  deal!   The mobsters in Brooklyn were less rapacious as this. 

This proposal is an unmitigated outrage and insult  to the taxpayers and consumers of this entire  nation.  How Senator Lamar Alexander, Bob Corker,  and other Republican senators could support this  just shows how badly we need Tea Party, low tax,  shrink government leaders now.  These "Marketplace  Fairness" Republicans are sellouts with no right to  our vote.

Test Everything!

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Nobel prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman said, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.”

These words are no less insightful today than they were when he wrote them in 1985. Despite our best efforts, we are all vulnerable to believing things without using logic or having proper evidence—and it doesn’t matter how educated or well read we are. Our brains seem to be hardwired to have our beliefs come first and explanations for our beliefs second. And although we are skilled at recognizing the cognitive biases in other people’s thinking, we often have blinders on when it comes to our own.

But there is a method for avoiding these pitfalls of human nature, and it’s called skepticism. By using rational inquiry and seeing subjects from a scientific perspective, we can approach even the most sensitive claims with clear eyes to ultimately arrive at the truth. And today, the need for skepticism has never been more dire as superstition and magical thinking experience a resurgence in our society and around the world.

Bob Precter warning

Tennessee Tax Free

"Tennessee is one of nine states that does not tax wage income. Research has consistently shown that the nine states without an income tax outperformed the United States average in the categories of population growth, economic growth, and employment.  In addition, the research has also shown that states without an income tax had much higher personal income growth rates than their higher taxed counterparts. 

State income taxes lead to higher government spending, and depressed economic growth. Since 1967, states that tax income have seen a 42 percent increase in government spending and a 64 percent decline in personal income.  Amendment 3 would ensure that TN remains fiscally and economically competitive by ensuring that no state or local income tax is ever imposed and that the incomes of hard-working Tennesseans are protected. 

As such, I urge you to vote YES on Amendment 3 this November. 

In Liberty,
Grover Norquist
President, Americans for Tax Reform"

Devil And Ayn Rand

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The Devil And Ayn Rand: Extending Christian Charity To John Galt’s Creator

More than sixty years after Whittaker Chamber's devastating review of Ayn Rand's 'Atlas Shrugged,' it's time to reconsider writing her out of conservatism.

By Hunter Baker

OCTOBER 7, 2014

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Poor Paul Ryan is probably still getting an earful from critics (many of them Christians) about his earlier enthusiasm for Ayn Rand. Somehow, he hadn’t gotten the memo on how disreputable the Russian émigré was and remains. Ryan must have missed “Dirty Dancing,” which has a famous scene in which a spoiled, rich, young man denies his responsibility to a working-class girl he has left pregnant. “Some people count and some don’t,” he says as he brandishes a copy of Rand’s “The Fountainhead.”

Now, if that’s what Rand says, then line her up with Adolf Hitler for history’s all-star firing squad. But is that what she said or intended? Does she deserve the condemnation heaped upon villains with vile philosophies? Perhaps there is a more charitable way to read the tales of Roark, Taggart, Rearden, and Galt.

Christians, in particular, have a deep ambivalence about Ayn Rand that probably draws as deeply from the facts of her biography as from her famous novels. When the refugee from the old Soviet Union met the Catholic William F. Buckley, she said, “You are much too intelligent to believe in God.” Her atheism was militant. It wasn’t so much that she didn’t believe in God as she was actively against the whole idea. If God existed, she felt, man suffered a degradation. Her heroic man, who tamed fire at his fingertips with a stylish and pleasure-giving cigarette, stood on top of creation and didn’t kneel for anyone. Rather than venerating the cross, Rand took the dollar sign as her holy symbol. Why? Because the dollar was a proxy for economic value. And for her, economic value was the primary pursuit of a life properly lived.

Critiquing the Whittaker Chambers Takedown

One of Buckley’s missions in politics was to police the boundaries of the conservative movement. He has been credited with delegitimizing the John Birch Society as a representative organization of the Right. In the case of Rand, he gave Whittaker Chambers the job of reviewing “Atlas Shrugged” for National Review. Chambers was a phenomenally gifted writer. We remember him for “Witness,” which may be one of the greatest memoirs ever written and certainly one of the best of the twentieth century. So great was his talent that he had earlier reached the elite ranks of Time where he had been paid like a star at a magazine that awarded no bylines. He was one of publisher Henry Luce’s favorites. Chambers hated Rand’s book. He thought her philosophy logically led to the extinction of the less fit. The piece characterized Rand’s message as, “To a gas chamber, go!” Chambers wasn’t impressed with her prose style, either. His take-down of “Atlas Shrugged” effectively read Rand and the Objectivists out of the conservative movement.

Whittaker Chambers hated Ayn Rand’s book. He thought her philosophy logically led to the extinction of the less fit.

In truth, the great Chambers probably treated Rand’s work unfairly in terms of the content if not with regard to writerly craft. Rand did have disdain for some people, but her lack of respect was not based on physical weakness, class, or color so much as it was aimed at those she thought lacked virtue. Contempt may have its place if it aims at a form of evil. The author certainly saw herself as wielding scorn in exactly that fashion.

One of the worst villains in the novel is Dagny Taggart’s brother, James. He is a rich man who refuses to run his (inherited) company on legitimate competitive terms. Instead, he prefers crony capitalism married to vague notions of social responsibility. Instead of out-competing his rivals, Jim Taggart hopes to have them outlawed. He courts politicians rather than excellence. By Rand’s reckoning, Taggart’s outlook and actions rank him with the lowest of the low. He is a powerful leech.

Productivity: The Great Life-Affirming Activity

The good society for an Objectivist is one in which a man stands or falls on his productivity. As Rand explained in her lectures on ethics, she saw production as the one great life-affirming activity. Man does not automatically or instinctively derive his sustenance from the earth or the sun. He must labor and produce. This was Rand’s bedrock and explains why she had such disdain for those who try to gain wealth through political arrangements. She saw this parasitism on multiple points of the economic spectrum from the beggar to the bureaucrat to the purveyor of incestuous corporatism. In the Randian view, a person with integrity creates value and exchanges it with others in an open and honest way. One does not cleverly reserve either a wage or a market. One earns them.

In Rand’s economy, a shiftless man of wealth would rank well below a blue-collar welder who performs his craft with excellence.

At this point it makes sense to return to the famous scene from “Dirty Dancing” in which Rand’s accusers put words in her mouth and leave no room for response. “Some people count and some don’t.” The implication, given the class dynamics in the film, is that the rich have worth and the poor do not. But Rand would have been outraged at the thought. In her economy, a shiftless man of wealth would rank well below a blue-collar welder who performs his craft with excellence (and probably also a talented dancer at a resort).

Her point of view is far more defensible if properly understood. Rand extols the captains of industry, the men and women who have a drive to change the world for the better and to get rich in the bargain. That much is certain. But the novels also make clear her love for any man or woman who performs a job well. She sees dignity, joy, and love in work rather than in wealth per se.

Ayn Rand Versus Christianity

The critical tension between Rand and Christian theology is on human worth. Christians affirm the inherent and very high value of individuals because of their creation in the image of God. Rand values human beings primarily for their achievements. A person who does not offer value (specifically, economic value) gets dubbed a “moocher” and “looter.” The language is inflammatory to most people, but rankles Christians even more so due to their devotion to the idea of the human being as a bearer of God’s image.

Rand was an atheist and clearly had an insufficient appreciation for (and accounting of) human solidarity, but she loved freedom and she understood the importance of work for human flourishing.

Rand’s atheism, materialism, and reduction of the human being’s value to economic productivity are all reasonable targets of critique for a variety of good reasons. Let those arguments continue to be made, though perhaps with less rancor. But it is important to be clear about the charges for which Rand should not have to answer. She was an atheist and clearly had an insufficient appreciation for (and accounting of) human solidarity, but she loved freedom and she understood the importance of work for human flourishing. And finally, although some accused her of fascism, she ardently opposed the cut-rate philosophy that makes an idol of the state.

Ayn Rand deserves some of the opposition she has received from Christians and many others. But she also deserves better.