Via Michael Roberts The hypocrisy of ideology of the superiority of the rich and greedy, as propounded by the philiosopher Ayn Rand has been exposed. Ayn Rand has been followed as a guru for free markets, laisser faire and the rich's right to rule by the likes of Alan Greenspan, Paul Ryan and Rand Paul in the US. In a 1962 essay, Rand wrote of seventeenth century French businessmen: “They knew that government ‘help’ to business is just as disastrous as government persecution, and that the only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off.” But now the Ayn Rand Institute has accepted state bailout funding of up to $1m from the Trump administration. The Institute commented: "We will take it unapologetically, because the principle here is: justice, "adding that as "the government has no wealth of its own…. It can only redistribute the wealth of others." Related Ayn Rand, Pope Francis and the philosophy o
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51