Rx for Capitalism

There were two significant ironies this week. The first was that I finished the last chapter of the biography of Ayn Rand, Ayn Rand and the World She Made by Anne C. Heller on the very same weekend that the Democrats stitched together the 60 votes in the Senate that were needed to pass President Obama’s Health Care Bill. Ayn Rand was the stalwart defender of capitalism, liberty and individualism in the 20th century and along with William F. Buckley and Milton Friedman ranks among the intellectual giants that fought against the evils of collectivism.
Rand was a Russian Jewish immigrant that saw firsthand the corruption of collectivism in Soviet Russia as she witnessed the destruction of her father’s livelihood at the hands of the Russians when they drove her father’s drugstore out of business twice. Today her seminal works, Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, and Anthem sell very well. Rand had her flaws and Heller fairly raises them in her book. She was given to black and white thinking. She could be irascible and cut off friends and relatives that rubbed her the wrong way. She did not stay faithful to her spouse. Still, her value as a backbone of capitalist thinking cannot be underestimated. And this biography comes at a time when capitalism is under the most severe full frontal assault since the 1930’s. The Health Care Bill threatens almost 20% of our economy with a government takeover. The EPA with its December 7 pronouncement to regulate carbon emissions and international bureaucrats in Copenhagen are threatening our economy with impossible burdens in the name of preventing climate change. Capitalists are being punished through higher taxes and a verbal assaults from the Obama Administration with bankers being labeled as “fat cats” and insurance companies accused using “smoke and mirrors” to stop reform. It is almost as if an Ayn Rand novel is unfolding in real time before our very eyes, with Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi starring as the bad guys.
The second irony is that it was Nebraska’s Senator Ben Nelson that caved in to give the Democrats a filibuster proof majority. This is Nebraska, the epicenter of self reliance, the same state that gave us Willa Cather, author of Oh Pioneers! This is the land that epitomizes rugged individualism. If Nebraska is responsible for handing over such a large chunk of our economy to the feds, is there any hope left?
Yes, Ayn Rand could be insufferable and doctrinaire at times, but we sorely need someone of her fortitude and intellectual reach today to defend capitalism and freedom.