• Super Committee: Deal Or No Deal 
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[Rick] Garnett is a smart and thoughtful conservative, but I worry that he, too, has bought into the GOP meme that government spending is the principal threat to long-term fiscal sanity of a kind that he rightly notes would imperil future generations. That meme reflects a different set of values, drawn from Hayek and von Mises and, yes, Ayn Rand, about the how the government and the economy interact from the values at the heart of Catholic social teaching.      View blog reactions

• NH Republican makes his mark 
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[Ovide] Lamontagne’s invocation of “individual freedom of choice” echoes the current libertarian currents within the tea party. But the phrase also echoes the arguments of pro-choice advocates. Indeed, it is a curiosity in today’s political landscape that the extremists on both the left and the right are those who exhibit the most profound libertarian tendencies within each party. Libertarian Republicans invoke Ayn Rand and libertarian Democrats invoke Betty Friedan.      View blog reactions

• Mystic Chords of Memory 
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Individualism  | All week, events have conspired to pluck the mystic chords of memory, and each pluck reminds me of how unreal is the cultural and political sensibility that values only human autonomy, celebrates “self-made men,” and enjoys re-reading Ayn Rand. I use Cardinal Newman’s favorite derogatory expression, “unreal,” because it seems so apt: This hyper-individualism of our day does not bear any resemblance to the actual lives we live.      View blog reactions

• Class Warfare? Bring It 
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Cong. [Paul] Ryan is an expert on class warfare. He and his Ayn Rand-inspired colleagues have been practicing it for some time now.      View blog reactions

• Bishop Blaire’s Powerful Labor Day Statement 
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Bishop Stephen Blaire of Stockton, California, the head of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development [....] sets forth a vision for the nation’s economic and political life that could scarcely be more at odds with the Ayn Rand-inspired Tea Party social Darwinism that has come to dominate so much of public discourse.      View blog reactions

• The USCCB Report on the Budget Deal 
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Capitalism  | The [Christians for a Sustainable Economy] approach evidences a different orthodoxy, an economic orthodoxy rooted in the specifically anti-Christian teachings of the Austrian school of economics and its American cheerleaders like Ayn Rand and Murray Rothbard.      View blog reactions

• • The Nightmare in Norway: A Familiar Face 
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Parts of Breivik’s diary has a distinctly Randian feel to it, in his denunciations of a weak government and the need for a heroic stance by individuals to combat the threat of “cultural Marxism” and “multiculturalism.”      View blog reactions

• Religious leaders meet with Obama 
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The Fountainhead  | [John] Carr also said the USCCB met previously with House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan. I had to bite my lip from asking Carr if he had read "The Fountainhead" in preparation for that meeting.      View blog reactions

• Subsidiarity in Drag 
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The founders were not animated by the personalism that informs Catholic understanding of social relations, relations that the Randian worldview of Cong. Ryan would not acknowledge.      View blog reactions

• • Marvin Olasky Takes on Ayn Rand 
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Marvin Olasky is not exactly a screaming leftie. But, he has a post up today in which he calls on conservatives to disassociate themselves from one of their heroes, Ayn Rand. Interestingly, Olasky says that there is still room for libertarians in the conservative ranks, something I think is not tenable in the long term, but he says there is no room for anti-Christians like Rand.      View blog reactions

• • Review: Angus Sibley’s “The ‘Poisoned Spring’ of Economic Libertarianism 
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Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  | Angus Sibley’s new book “The ‘Poisoned Spring’ of Economic Libertarianism,” recently published by Pax Romana, deals with some of the theoretical issues that have emerged in current debates about America’s long-term fiscal health. [....] Recently, as regular readers know, I have been attacking what I believe are the profoundly un-Christian views of Ayn Rand and her libertarian heirs. Some have objected that this attack is unfair, arguing that part of Rand’s philosophy can be saved, and pointed to Hayek and Mises as better defenders of the libertarian creed. Sibley’s book is the answer to that objection. He does not go so far as the National Review did when it reviewed Rand’s work: “From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: ‘To the gas chambers — go!’” But, he has devastated the Austrians showing that, for all their efforts to condemn the “statism” they hated, they share too many materialist, anti-Christian, monistic characteristics with Marxism to give their attacks on Marxism much credence.      View blog reactions

• • Conservatives Take On Rand 
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Like the manna that came from heaven in answer to the prayers of the Jews, conservatives are stepping up to the plate to take on Ayn Rand and point out that this fight has been going on for some time. Mark Silk, at Spiritual Politics, has a post with some very helpful links to National Review which is carrying on its own best traditions in taking up this fight for the soul of the conservative movement.      View blog reactions

• • Bill Donohue responds 
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Atlas Shrugged  | Bill Donohue, of the Catholic League, has posted a response to my item below. He claims that Father Sirico never suggested John Galt, the hero of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” was a Christ-like figure. Maybe he should re-read Sirico’s article, the whole point of which was to suggest that Rand had some subliminal need to paint Galt in Christ-like terms.      View blog reactions

• • Where is Bill Donohue When You Need Him 
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Atlas Shrugged  | Earlier this morning, I posted about Father Robert Sirico’s essay in which he represents the possibility that John Galt, the hero of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged,” was really a Christ-figure. He considers him as a “God-Man.” He compares Galt’s suffering and death to that of the Savior. He notes that Galt traces a “Sign of the Dollar” over creation. So, how is this different from “Piss Christ,” the infamous work of art by Andres Serrano in which the artist took one of Catholicism’s most sacred symbols, the crucifix, and submerged it in a bottle of urine?      View blog reactions

• • • Father Sirico’s Heresy 
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Atlas Shrugged  |Egoism  | So, Father Robert Sirico has come to the defense of Ayn Rand. I confess that I did not think that anything Fr. Sirico might write could shock me, but his little epistle shocked. Not only does he try and disentangle Rand’s foolishness from what he esteems in her thought, but he holds up her hero, John Galt, as a Christ-figure.      View blog reactions

• • FINALLY: Sanity From the RC Right 
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I am not a conservative Catholic, but I know it is healthy for the country’s politics, and for the Church too, to have well-informed, literate, thoughtful conservative voices. That is why the silence regarding the manner in which Rand is held in esteem by some of the GOP’s darlings has been so horrifying. Kudos to [Joe] Carter for raising the banner of sanity. Welcome to the anti-Randians Mr. Carter. You may not agree with me and mine on anything else, but in the nation’s debates about the social contract, this may be the most important to about which we should agree.      View blog reactions

• • Patriotic Millionaires 
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Altruism  |Capitalism  | Our country has been good to us. There it is: a sense of gratitude and connectedness, two sentiments that are not found beating in the breasts of the protean heroes of Ayn Rand’s books. For them, self-assertion is the path of morality. For the Patriotic Millionaires, they say, “Our country faces a choice – we can pay our debts and build for the future, or we can shirk our financial responsibilities and cripple our nation’s potential.” This sense of inter-generational responsibility comes in part from a sense of altruism, another virtue unknown to John Galt.      View blog reactions

• USCCB Opposes Cuts in Agriculture Programs 
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Capitalism  | Those who are defending the GOP’s Randian economic approach like to float generalities about how their anti-government stance will actually liberate the poor, but they don’t do a very good job explaining how the good achieved by current programs will be replaced and bettered by their own proposals.      View blog reactions

• • • Pushback from the Religious Left 
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Atheism  |Atlas Shrugged  |Egoism  | Ayn Rand stands against everything we were ever taught or believed about God and our faith values. Ayn Rand stand against everything we ever learned in civics class about the common good and the general welfare outlined in our Constitution. Ayn Rand stands against everything we ever learned about basic compassion, human decency, and fair play. Leaders in the House of Representatives have given us a budget inspired by Ayn Rand and now presidential primary contenders and even some faith leaders to our deepest chagrin are coming to town to endorse this. For us Catholics, the ethics of Ayn Rand and the Catholic Faith are completely incompatible.      View blog reactions

• Sirico Against the Bishops 
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Capitalism  |Inaccurate  | In his article at Crisis magazine, Father Sirico does not mention the fact that the position he takes in support of cutting government programs that assist the poor is opposed by the USCCB. [....] No matter what the government does or does not do, there will be some people who do not succeed, people who do not flourish, people whose skills are limited and, consequently, are unable to expl[o]it the opportunities Sirirco’s laissez-faire vision holds out to them. But, those people are still children of God, seized with profound human dignity. Will Sirico at least admit that there will always be a need for programs to help these people? The very people, I might add, whom Ms. Ayn Rand despised but whom the Church is called to treasure.      View blog reactions