Barack Obama

Archive for Tag “Barack Obama”


What Iran may gain from North Korea’s nuclear test

At Tablet Magazine, Lee Smith offers a provocative argument that if “North Korea has the bomb, then for all practical purposes Iran does, too.”

If this sounds hyperbolic, consider the history of extensive North Korean-Iranian cooperation on a host of military and defense issues, including ballistic missiles and nuclear development, that dates back to the 1980s. This cooperation includes North Korean sales of technology and arms, like the BM-25, a missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and reaching Western Europe; Iran’s Shahab 3 missile is based on North Korea’s Nodong-1 and is able to reach Israel. Iran has a contigent of Iranian weapons engineers and defense officials stationed in North Korea. Meantime, North Korean scientists visit Iran. And last fall, both countries signed a memorandum of understanding regarding scientific, academic, and technological issues.

Smith points to signs that North Korea and Iran have already formed a collaborative relationship, and singles out the incentives on both sides: Tehran wants nuclear technology, Pyongyang wants money. (North Korea is believed to have helped build a nuclear reactor for Syria, an Iranian ally.)


Obama’s Inversion of What Makes America Great

Recently, I appeared on PJTV’s Front Page with Allen Barton to discuss President Obama’s victory speech. What should be infamous about this speech is the section on what Obama thinks makes America exceptional:

“This country has more wealth than any nation, but that’s not what makes us rich. We have the most powerful military in history, but that’s not what makes us strong. Our university, our culture are all the envy of the world, but that’s not what keeps the world coming to our shores.

What makes America exceptional are the bonds that hold together the most diverse nation on earth.

The belief that our destiny is shared; that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations. The freedom which so many Americans have fought for and died for come with responsibilities as well as rights. And among those are love and charity and duty and patriotism. That’s what makes America great.”

What are these obligations that we must accept? If the kind of welfare programs that Obama champions is any indication, he surely means that we must be content in paying other people’s mortgages, student loans, medical bills, retirement pensions, unemployment benefits, or child care costs.

But the view that America is a land where we have innumerable, unspecified obligations towards each other is the complete opposite of what makes America great. What makes America great is the country’s founding spirit: that this is a land of opportunity where every individual has the right to his life, his liberty, and the pursuit of his happiness.

But can you really pursue your happiness in the fullest sense of the expression if your happiness must come second to paying for your unchosen obligations to provide others with a home, health care, or a retirement pension?

To hear me speak to this, and to how our Founding Fathers would never stand for today’s regulatory state, you can watch the full segment below.


Huffington Post: A Liberal Ayn Rand?

ARI senior fellow Onkar Ghate has a new article published in the Huffington Post.

In it he asks: “Here’s a radical thought. Instead of liberals dismissing Rand’s appeal to the American spirit of individualism and independence, as President Obama recently did in his Rolling Stone interview, why don’t liberals make Rand part of a new canon? Why let conservatives monopolize her?”

Read his answer here.


Obama vs. Rand on what made America great

So President Obama has read Ayn Rand.

Contrasting his ideas with what he takes to be Rand’s outlook, he tells Rolling Stone: “That view of life—as one in which we’re all connected, as opposed to all isolated and looking out only for ourselves—that’s a view that has made America great.” Though I don’t think President Obama understood Ayn Rand’s ideas (based on his description of them), it’s clear that he and Ayn Rand would have fundamentally disagreed about the source of America’s greatness.

A summary of Rand’s thoughts about, and reverence for, America can be found here, but let me highlight this one statement by her:

The most profoundly revolutionary achievement of the United States of America was the subordination of society to moral law. The principle of man’s individual rights represented the extension of morality into the social system—as a limitation on the power of the state, as man’s protection against the brute force of the collective, as the subordination of might to right. The United States was the first moral society in history. All previous systems had regarded man as a sacrificial means to the ends of others, and society as an end in itself. The United States regarded man as an end in himself, and society as a means to the peaceful, orderly, voluntary co-existence of individuals. All previous systems had held that man’s life belongs to society, that society can dispose of him in any way it pleases, and that any freedom he enjoys is his only by favor, by the permission of society, which may be revoked at any time. The United States held that man’s life is his by right (which means: by moral principle and by his nature), that a right is the property of an individual, that society as such has no rights, and that the only moral purpose of a government is the protection of individual rights.

President Obama’s view that we are “all connected” to one another means that each individual is subordinated to society, that each individual bears a responsibility to society as a whole. It’s on this basis that he and others from all parts of the political spectrum work to implement their particular views on how to redistribute wealth, disposing of the life and work of individual Americans in the process.

But it was America’s explicit rejection of such ideas, and her pursuit of and respect for individualism, that made this country great.


Obama on Ayn Rand: The annotated version

Obama portrait cropIn his recent Rolling Stone interview, President Obama was asked: “Have you ever read Ayn Rand?” His matter-of-fact answer: “Sure.”

It’s fascinating to read closely the key passages in Obama’s interview. I’ve reproduced his comments verbatim below, in the block indented sections (with italics for emphasis). Then I’ve interspersed links to Ayn Rand Institute articles that provide useful context for understanding what Obama said—and for identifying the falsehoods underlying his attacks on Ayn Rand.

[Q:] What do you think Paul Ryan’s obsession with her work would mean if he were vice president?

[A:] Well, you’d have to ask Paul Ryan what that means to him.

Paul Ryan and Ayn Rand (Ryan “clearly has been influenced by Ayn Rand, but he is not a devotee of her philosophy, nor does his nomination represent ‘Ayn Rand joining the ticket,’ to paraphrase the title of a recent article. Any fair account should take stock both of the areas where Rand has influenced him and those areas where they part ways.”)

Ryan, Rand, and Rights (“For anyone who believes in limited government, it is a positive sign that a leading politician talks seriously about individual rights, and this clearly is due in part to Rand’s influence. But to take rights seriously, as Rand advised? That will require a much more principled agenda.”)

Why Paul Ryan Is No Ayn Rand On Social Security (“On this issue, Ryan is worlds apart from Rand. Rand did not want to save Social Security; she wanted to end it.”)

Where Do Ryan and Rand Agree and Disagree? (“. . . when Ryan tackles issues such as entitlements, he often does so with a moral self-confidence that virtually no one else on the right has. I think that comes largely from Ayn Rand. Rand, more than anyone, taught how supporters of capitalism deserve the moral high ground.”)

Ayn Rand is one of those things that a lot of us, when we were 17 or 18 and feeling misunderstood, we’d pick up.

Ayn Rand’s Appeal (“The key to Rand’s enduring popularity is that she appeals not to the immaturity but to the idealism of youth.”)

Happy Birthday, Ayn Rand—Why are you still so misunderstood? (“A political movement truly shaped by Rand’s ideas would not flinch, as Republicans and Tea Partiers do, from charges that it is the mouthpiece of the rich and the mean-spirited. It would declare that it is a movement for all producers, proudly embracing the innovative rich, the ambitious poor, and everyone in between. If you earn your wealth through production and voluntary trade, a Rand-inspired political movement would affirm that it is yours by right.”)

Then, as we get older, we realize that a world in which we’re only thinking about ourselves and not thinking about anybody else, in which we’re considering the entire project of developing ourselves as more important than our relationships to other people and making sure that everybody else has opportunity – that that’s a pretty narrow vision.

The Dog-Eat-Dog Welfare State is Lose-Lose (“Capitalism—real capitalism, not the mixed economies that have existed for the past century—is the system based on private property, free production, and voluntary trade. It’s not a zero-sum game where people battle over a fixed pie. Each person is free to create wealth and to trade it with others, such that they all benefit. . . . That’s the beauty of capitalism. Because all economic relationships are voluntary, people only enter into them when each party thinks it’s to his advantage. . . . Capitalism isn’t dog-eat-dog: It’s win-win.”)

It’s not one that, I think, describes what’s best in America.

Atlas Shrugged: America’s Second Declaration of Independence (“ . . . to restore America to her greatness as the country dedicated to the individual, we must be willing to challenge moral ideas inculcated since childhood. . . . We must recognize that a moral code of individualism is the only code compatible with America’s uniqueness. Atlas Shrugged is America’s second Declaration of Independence.”)

Why Ayn Rand Is Still Relevant (“The only way to stop the growth of the state and return to the Founding Fathers’ ideal of limited government is to recognize that individuals not only have a political right to pursue their own happiness, but a moral right to pursue their own happiness. This is what Ayn Rand called a morality of rational self-interest. It is a selfishness that consists, not of doing whatever you feel like, but of using your mind to discover what will truly make you happy and successful. It is a selfishness that consists, not of sacrificing others in the manner of a Bernie Madoff, but of producing the values your life requires and dealing with others through mutually advantageous, voluntary trade.”)

Man’s Rights (“The Declaration of Independence laid down the principle that ‘to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men.’ This provided the only valid justification of a government and defined its only proper purpose: to protect man’s rights by protecting him from physical violence.”)

Unfortunately, it does seem as if sometimes that vision of a “you’re on your own” society has consumed a big chunk of the Republican Party.

The “On Your Own” Economy (“The Founding Fathers took a crucial leap forward . . . , declaring that the collective has no claim on you; that the government exists only to protect your right to live your own life, earn your own wealth, and seek your own happiness. Other people’s wants and needs are not your responsibility.”)

We’re Not in This Together (“When I hear the phrase ‘We’re all in this together’ I think back to high school. Were the straight-A students ‘in this together’ with the stoners who cut class? Were the band students ‘in this together’ with the jocks who beat them up? Was the teenage Woz ‘in this together’ with the rabble who spent their nights partying while he spent his nights designing computers in his bedroom?”)

Time to Read Ayn Rand? (“Not surprisingly, with all the attention, the culture is suddenly full of pundits and instant Rand experts eager to describe her ideas in a nutshell. And it’s natural to consider all this commentary in deciding whether Rand’s novels and essays are worth reading for yourself. But be careful; unfortunately, much of the commentary on Rand gets her badly wrong.”)

Of course, that’s not the Republican tradition. I made this point in the first debate. You look at Abraham Lincoln: He very much believed in self-sufficiency and self-reliance. He embodied it—that you work hard and you make it, that your efforts should take you as far as your dreams can take you. But he also understood that there’s some things we do better together. That we make investments in our infrastructure and railroads and canals and land-grant colleges and the National Academy of Sciences, because that provides us all with an opportunity to fulfill our potential, and we’ll all be better off as a consequence. He also had a sense of deep, profound empathy, a sense of the intrinsic worth of every individual, which led him to his opposition to slavery and ultimately to signing the Emancipation Proclamation. That view of life—as one in which we’re all connected, as opposed to all isolated and looking out only for ourselves—that’s a view that has made America great and allowed us to stitch together a sense of national identity out of all these different immigrant groups who have come here in waves throughout our history.

President Obama vs. My Grandfather (“One of the greatest things about freedom is the extent to which we can profit from collaborating with other people. As Ayn Rand points out, ‘Men can derive enormous benefits from dealing with one another. . . . The two great values to be gained from social existence are: knowledge and trade. But knowledge and trade are not gifts from the collective—let alone gifts that come with undefined strings attached. They come from the past and present achievements of other individuals.”)

Why Ayn Rand’s Absence from Last Thursday’s Debate Benefits Big Government (“Your life belongs to you, not to others. That is the root of Rand’s opposition to the entitlement state. It’s not because, as she is often accused, Rand hates poor people. It’s that she deeply respects the sanctity of the individual. Morally, no individual, no matter how poor or how rich, exists to serve others.”)

Free Market Revolution: How Ayn Rand’s Ideas Can End Big Government (“Rand, however, is not primarily a critic. She does not simply censure the mainstream—she defines and fights for a revolutionary ideal to replace it: a new philosophy of individualism. ‘My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.’”)


Obama has read Ayn Rand? About time

For years, there were people who studiously ignored Ayn Rand. Things are changing. This year we’ve already seen VP nominee Paul Ryan talk about his admiration for Atlas Shrugged (albeit later distancing himself from Rand’s philosophy), but now President Obama tells Rolling Stone that “sure,” he’s read Ayn Rand. Leaving aside whether he understood what he claims to have read (more on that here, here, and here), it is worth dwelling on this fact: Here’s the President of the United States, putative leader of the free world, critiquing (what he takes to be) Rand’s philosophic outlook.

I happen to think Obama’s take on her is wrong. Rand tackles — and provides original new answers to — crucial and timeless questions, such as what is the good? how should society be organized? what is government’s proper role? Her answers point toward a society that enshrines individual rights — as a moral ideal and a practical fact. It’s past time that Rand’s ideas get the hearing they deserve.


Ayn Rand’s Ideas Only for Teens?

I want to comment on one aspect of what President Obama said in Rolling Stone regarding Ayn Rand–specifically, that Rand is someone to take seriously only when you’re young and naive.

According to Obama, “Ayn Rand is one of those things that a lot of us, when we were 17 or 18 and feeling misunderstood, we’d pick up.” “Then,” he says, “we get older”—the implication being most people learn how the real world works and grow out of Rand’s purportedly childish ideas.

Is Rand’s appeal really limited to the youth? The birth of the Rand-inspired Tea Party in recent years—consisting of people of all ages fed up with government intrusion in their lives—would suggest not.

Then what exactly in a person does Rand appeal to? In an article published earlier this year, ARI senior fellow Onkar Ghate sought to answer that very question. He said:

If we actually consider the essence of what Rand advocates, the idea that her philosophy is childish over-simplification stands as condemnation not of her position but of the many adults from whom this accusation stems.

The key to Rand’s enduring popularity is that she appeals not to the immaturity but to the idealism of youth. This is why more than 29,000 students submitted entries this year to essay contests on her novels and, in the past five years alone, high school teachers have requested over 1.5 million copies of The Fountainhead, We the Living, Anthem and Atlas Shrugged to use in their classrooms. They know that students respond to her stories and heroes as to few other books.

“There is a fundamental conviction which some people never acquire,” Rand wrote in 1969, “some hold only in their youth, and a few hold to the end of their days—the conviction that ideas matter.” The nature of this conviction? “That ideas matter means that knowledge matters, that truth matters, that one’s mind matters. And the radiance of that certainty, in the process of growing up, is the best aspect of youth.”

In the introduction to her novel The Fountainhead, Rand expanded on the spirit embodied by the youth:

The best of mankind’s youth start out in life [with]…a foggy, groping, undefined sense made of raw pain and incommunicable happiness. It is a sense of enormous expectation, the sense that one’s life is important, that great achievements are within one’s capacity, and that great things lie ahed.

It is not in the nature of man—nor of any living entity—to start out by giving up, by spitting in one’s own face and damning existence; that requires a process of corruption whose rapidity differs from man to man. Some give up at the first touch of pressure; some sell out; some run down by imperceptible degrees and lose their fire, never knowing when or how they lost it. Then all of these vanish in the vast swamp of their elders who tell them persistently that maturity consists of abandoning one’s mind; security, of abandoning one’s values; practicality, of losing self-esteem. Yet a few hold on and move on, knowing that that fire is not to be betrayed, learning how to give it shape, purpose and reality. But whatever their future, at the dawn of their lives, men seek a noble vision of man’s nature and of life’s potential.

So don’t take Obama’s word for it—whatever your age, read Ayn Rand for yourself to learn the ideas that have inspired and intrigued millions.


Actually, Mr. President, Ayn Rand is Quintessentially American

In a just-published Rolling Stone interview, President Obama indicated that Ayn Rand’s world view is not one that “describes what’s best in America.” But if America is the land of liberty—the land where every individual, in the words of the Declaration of Independence, has the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” then in fact Ayn Rand is one of the most profoundly American thinkers ever.

Consider:

  • Man’s Rights by Ayn Rand. In this essay, Miss Rand explains what individual rights are and why the founding of America was a revolutionary moral achievement.
  • Atlas Shrugged: America’s Second Declaration of Independence by Onkar Ghate. In this must-read essay, Dr. Ghate asks why, despite the tremendous achievement of the Founding Fathers, has America spiraled away from freedom? He also then argues that Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged presents America’s second Declaration of Independence—one that upholds an individual’s moral right to exist and his moral right to independence. (Video lecture version here.)
  • “Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged: A Paean to American Liberty” by Don Watkins. This is an illuminating short piece on why Ayn Rand’s magnum opus resonates so powerfully with Americans.

Hence, it is no surprise that the Tea Party protesters—the thousands of Americans rallying in the same spirit as the Boston Tea Party of 1773—find common ground with Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged. (Note: ARC has a Tea Party resource page.)

Ayn Rand often referred to herself as “American by choice and conviction” because the United States was the only country “based on [her] moral premises.” By reading the above links, you can get more of a sense of why this is.


Paul Ryan, Ayn Rand and U.S. Foreign Policy (essay)

On the eve of the presidential debate on foreign policy, ARI’s Elan Journo has released a new essay, “Paul Ryan, Ayn Rand and U.S. Foreign Policy.”

Vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan has credited philosopher Ayn Rand with inspiring him to enter politics—and made her 1,000-plus-page magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, required reading for his staff. “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,” he said in 2005 at a gathering of Rand fans. “The fight we are in here, make no mistake about it, is a fight of individualism versus collectivism.” It is a theme that pervades Rand’s corpus. While Ryan has distanced himself from Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism, he continues to express admiration for Atlas Shrugged.

The addition of the Wisconsin congressman to the GOP ticket naturally unleashed a flash-mob of analysts parsing his speeches, articles, and signature proposals for evidence of her influence. On domestic policy, the impact of Rand’s ideas on Ryan’s outlook is marked, though uneven and sometimes overstated. Religion, in particular, has driven a wedge between Ryan, who would enact Catholic dogma into law , and Rand, an atheist, who championed the separation of church and state. But what has received far less attention is Ryan’s outlook on foreign policy—and whether it bears the mark of Rand’s thought. [...]

Read the entire essay [PDF].


Brook & Watkins in USA Today on private equity

Our colleagues Yaron Brook and Don Watkins have an incisive opinion piece in USA Today responding to recent attacks on Bain Capital and private equity in general. Must reading. [See also Don's related post  at the Laissez-Faire blog.]