Within Reason

I meet people all the time who a) have progressive views about public policy and b) fondly remember reading Ayn Rand’s books. I’ve always thought this tension could be explained by people forming preferences about books before they form preferences about political positions. But there is something interesting going on in the comments to this post over on Matthew Yglesias’ blog at Think Progress.

While Yglesias is a great, bafflingly prolific blogger and Think Progress is a useful site, the comments are kind of the Mos Eisley of the progressive blog world. So I tend to ignore them. But looking at the comments here and subtracting those that believe Rand is actually right, it looks like progressive people who read Rand have two very different reactions to the basic tenets of Rand’s thought:

1) They believe that the individually self-sufficient John Galt is an excellent ideal, but practically unachievable by human beings because of our imperfect human nature. Call this view Unattainable.

2) They believe that the individually self-sufficient John Galt is a bad ideal full stop because human dependency on others is an important and valuable feature of human nature. Call this view Undesirable.

Both reactions lead to progressive policy preferences, but for very different reasons. It’s hard to see that tension not coming home to roost in the long term.