Michael Lind: Bring It On, Ayn Rand Geeks
A new right is being born, following the death of the older conservative movement. Fortunately for the left, the next American right is dominated by libertarians like Ron Paul and Paul Ryan, who worship at the shrine of Ayn Rand.
Why is this great news for progressives? The American conservative movement enjoyed its successes only after William F. Buckley Jr. expelled Rand and her followers from the movement in the late 1950s. Reflecting the vanity of their guru, the Randians have long insisted that "objectivists" are not libertarians. (Pssst: They are!) The non-Randian libertarians split with the mainstream conservative movement in the 1960s, complaining that conservatives were too interventionist in foreign policy and too soft on big government at home. Having lost the libertarian isolationists, the conservatives went on to success after success, dominating the presidency after 1968 and Congress in 1994.
Buckley's "movement conservatism" sought to unite the anti-communist, socially conservative and free-market wings of the right on the basis of an ideology of "fusionism" cooked up by National Review editor Frank Meyer. This did not work, and by the 1980s there were three distinct political-intellectual movements on the right: the neoconservatives (originally pro-Cold War social democrats and liberals), the religious right and the libertarians. The coalition survived the end of the Cold War, but not the presidency of George W. Bush....
It is merciful, perhaps, that Buckley did not live to see the detested Ayn Rand become the central intellectual figure on the right. Until recently the only prominent conservative known to have been influenced at one point by the Evita of the nerds was Alan Greenspan, and he was given a pass for a youthful indiscretion. Now two of the stars of the emergent right, Ron Paul and Paul Ryan, are professed disciples of the Mary Baker Eddy of egotism. "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," Ryan told a convention of Randians in 2005. Ron Paul named his son Rand Paul....
Consider Ryan's "Roadmap for America's Future." As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has pointed out, it would raise taxes on middle-class Americans while dramatically lowering them on the über-rich. Ryan would use a national value-added tax (a good idea) to replace income, capital gains and estate taxes (a terrible idea). He would privatize Social Security and replace Medicare with vouchers, and then allow inflation to eat away at the value of the vouchers. Oh, and despite his claims, his Rand-inspired redistribution of income upward to the virtuously selfish rich would not eliminate the deficit....
Before Buckley and the movement conservatives took the right in another direction in the 1950s, this country had a libertarian, isolationist right, the right of Robert A. Taft and Alf Landon. Thanks to their opposition to the New Deal, U.S. entry in World War II and the Cold War, the libertarian isolationists turned the Republicans into the minority party between 1932 and 1968. The only Republican to be elected in that era, Dwight Eisenhower, ran for the presidency in 1952 to save the GOP from Taftian isolationism and dismissively rejected suggestions that the Republicans try to repeal New Deal programs like Social Security.
Richard Nixon, like Ike, was a modern Republican whose formula for a Republican majority was big government on behalf of the middle class plus a hawkish foreign policy and moderate social traditionalism. The neoconservative writer David Frum has argued that this is the only possible combination that can produce an enduring Republican majority. I agree, and it is therefore with delight that I observe the rise of radical libertarianism in the GOP....
The biggest danger is that Democrats will misinterpret the coming electoral setbacks to mean that they need to move in a libertarian direction. That would repeat the mistake made by Bill Clinton, Al Gore and the other New Democrats during the Reagan era. It was their failure to understand that foreign policy and the culture war, not conservative economic policies, were the basis for Republican victories -- that, and the fact that they did Wall Street's bidding for Wall Street's campaign contributions -- that inspired these neoliberals to move to the right on economics: "The era of big government is over."
Obama's instinct is to appease those who attack him, so there is a danger that he might move (further) to the market fundamentalist right. But Obama is not the Democratic Party, and the party's progressive base is increasingly hostile to Carter-Clinton-Obama neoliberalism.
So bring it on, geeky disciples of Ayn Rand. Gird thy loins and put on thy Spock ears. Demand the abolition of Social Security and Medicare! Call for reducing the U.S. military to the Coast Guard! Insist on tolling every highway and street in America and selling America's infrastructure assets to foreign corporations and foreign sovereign wealth funds! Go Galt!
Bring it on! Even confined to a wheelchair, Franklin Roosevelt can defeat Ayn Rand.