The only moments when I channel Ayn Rand are those when I'm engaged in fiction. A couple of nights ago, I was playing my new favourite game, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. In the game, you play the role of Carl "C.J." Johnson, who brings about the second coming of the once-feared Grove Street gang.

One important facet of the game is earning the respect of your fellow gang members, and one of the most fun ways to earn that respect is to ruthlessly kill members of rival gangs. I have a mean streak that I try to keep under control in real life, but in the game world of San Andreas (a really large world comprised of three cities and the rural areas in between), I can indulge it all I want.

My housemate Rob watched in amazement as I "softened up" a half-dozen members of a rival gang by running over them with a stolen car and then delivered coups de grace using my submachinegun with a rhythm that would've made Conlon Nancarrow proud.

Another feature of the game is that if you kill someone, you can take their money. As I helped myself to the cash from their scattered corpses, Rob said something along the lines of "Wow, that's cold."

"Hey, it'll trickle down," I reassured him with a smile.


If that was cold, the Ayn Rand Institute published a letter to the editor titled U.S. Should Not Help Tsunami Victims was sub-zero. It's been excised from the site, but lives on in syndication and Google's cache. Written by David "Civil engineer is a contradiction in terms" Holcberg ("You may remember me from such heart-warming letters to the editor as Death of Civilians Should Not Hinder War Effort"), here it is in its entirety:

As the death toll mounts in the areas hit by Sunday's tsunami in southern Asia, private organizations and individuals are scrambling to send out money and goods to help the victims. Such help may be entirely proper, especially considering that most of those affected by this tragedy are suffering through no fault of their own.

The United States government, however, should not give any money to help the tsunami victims. Why? Because the money is not the government's to give.

Every cent the government spends comes from taxation. Every dollar the government hands out as foreign aid has to be extorted from an American taxpayer first. Year after year, for decades, the government has forced American taxpayers to provide foreign aid to every type of natural or man-made disaster on the face of the earth: from the Marshall Plan to reconstruct a war-ravaged Europe to the $15 billion recently promised to fight AIDS in Africa to the countless amounts spent to help the victims of earthquakes, fires and floods--from South America to Asia. Even the enemies of the United States were given money extorted from American taxpayers: from the billions given away by Clinton to help the starving North Koreans to the billions given away by Bush to help the blood-thirsty Palestinians under Arafat's murderous regime.

The question no one asks about our politicians' "generosity" towards the world's needy is: By what right? By what right do they take our hard-earned money and give it away?

The reason politicians can get away with doling out money that they have no right to and that does not belong to them is that they have the morality of altruism on their side. According to altruism--the morality that most Americans accept and that politicians exploit for all it's worth--those who have more have the moral obligation to help those who have less. This is why Americans--the wealthiest people on earth--are expected to sacrifice (voluntarily or by force) the wealth they have earned to provide for the needs of those who did not earn it. It is Americans' acceptance of altruism that renders them morally impotent to protest against the confiscation and distribution of their wealth. It is past time to question--and to reject--such a vicious morality that demands that we sacrifice our values instead of holding on to them.

Next time a politician gives away money taken from you to show what a good, compassionate altruist he is, ask yourself: By what right?

He should've finished it off with "Hey, it'll trickle down."


The Ayn Rand Institute must've caught some serious heat from outraged parties, as they published a press release which contains the ever-so-useful line, "We would like to clarify our position" (which should always set your B.S. detector abuzz). Here's how it begins:

On December 30, 2004, the Ayn Rand Institute released as a letter to the editor and as an op-ed a piece that condemned the U.S. government's use of taxpayers' money to help victims of the recent tsunami ("U.S. Should Not Help Tsunami Victims"). That piece was inappropriate and did not accurately convey the Institute's position. We would like to clarify our position.

Obviously, the tsunami, with the thousands of innocent victims left in its wake, is a horrible disaster. The first concern of survivors and of those trying to help them is to provide basic necessities and then to begin rebuilding. The American public's predictably generous response to assist these efforts is motivated by goodwill toward their fellow man. In the face of the enormous and undeserved suffering, American individuals and corporations have donated millions of dollars in aid; they have done so by and large not out of some sense of altruistic duty but in the name of the potential value that another human being represents. This benevolence, which we share, is not the same thing as altruism.

The emphasis in the paragraph above is mine. Had the line "potential value that another human being represents" been used by almost any other organization, I wouldn't intrepret it as "consumer". And by "consumer", I mean "industrial age aphid who eats consumer goods and craps out cash".

The release is standard PR "clarification fare" -- get the non-apology out of the way, and then direct the conversation elsewhere. Once the piece gets that distasteful business about callousness in the face of mass death out of the way, it spends its remaining half espousing the Randroid party line and defending the right to not give a crap.

Hey, it'll trickle down.