Kathleen Kennedy Townsend: Ayn Rand v. America

From 1995 to 2003, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend served as Maryland's first woman lieutenant governor. She now works in finance in Washington.

A few weeks ago, Maureen Fiedler, the producer of the weekly radio show, Interfaith Voices, asked me to participate in a debate with Onkar Ghate, a senior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute. I eagerly accepted. I wanted to hear how a follower of Rand would defend proposals to cut Medicare, Medicaid, and food stamps while exempting the wealthy from paying their fair share.     

In one sense there was agreement. Maureen, a Sister of Loretto, argued that Republican budget proposals turned their back on Christ's admonition to care for "the least among us," the hungry, the sick, the homeless. Ghate did not dispute that. Rand, he said, was an atheist who did not believe in government efforts to help those in need....

What I did find startling was Ghate's insistence that just as there should be a separation of church and state, so there should be a separation of economics and state. That notion really got me thinking....

[Are we] to place economics on the same level as religious freedom seemed to me almost blasphemous. Are we really to believe that the freedom to make money should stand on the same level of religious liberty? Are the words of Milton Friedman equal to the Sermon on the Mount?  I don't think so. But maybe in the eyes of Ayn Rand and Paul Ryan, they are....