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Many have highlighted the Ayn Rand Institute (and other similar groups) taking PPP funds as hypocrisy. Their thought process goes; Rand opposed welfare, they are getting government assistance, thus hypocrisy. This is a shallow and mistaken view of her philosophy and the reasoning behind taking these funds.
-The ARI didn’t secretly apply for PPP loans, hoping no one would notice. They wrote an article back in May proudly announcing the move, “we *will* take any relief money offered us. We will take it unapologetically, because the principle here is: justice.” So how could taking government money be justice?
-Ayn Rand herself explained in a 1966 essay. She explained the recipient in such a case is morally justified “so long as he regards it as restitution and opposes all forms of welfare-statism.” Those who support such handouts, “have no right to them; those who oppose them have. If this sounds like a paradox, the fault lies in the moral contradictions of welfare statism, not in its victims.”
-Rand recognized that the welfare state (the taking of some people’s money by force to give to another) was wrong. To advocate for or support this was also wrong, but what about those who oppose redistribution but are still stuck in the system? “The victims do not have to add self-inflicted martyrdom to the injury done to them by others; they do not have to let the looters profit doubly, by letting them distribute the money exclusively to the parasites who clamored for it. Whenever the welfare-state laws offer them some small restitution, the victims should take it.”
-Similarly, if someone advocates for private roads, but given the current system there’s only government roads, they are not obligated to refuse to use all roads, that would be absurd. To get taxed for the road and not use it out of some sense of principle would make one unnecessarily suffer. And for what? The same holds for programs like Social Security, Medicare and certain government scholarships and grants.
-As for the PPP funds, the government shut down most of the economy, adversely affecting virtually everyone (including ARI and their donors). They then offered money to virtually everyone to ease the pain. But the government has no money of its own, so essentially it is taking from all to give to all. Money that will likely not be paid for through taxation, but through inflation and deficits, which will effectively take from all productive people in the future. To refuse some of this restitution, so that others who might be indifferent or wholeheartedly support government redistribution can solely benefit, is not standing on principle, but enduring yet another sacrifice.
-Rand lists some other factors to consider in accepting money. One must not compromise their values or views and continue to advocate against the welfare state (the ARI was clear in their article that they would continue to fight for laissez-faire and their efforts wouldn’t be affected). And they shouldn’t take part in providing moral or ideological support for such programs, nor help in enforcing immoral laws.
-Rand admits these are often difficult moral questions. “It is a hard problem, and there are many situations so ambiguous and so complex that no one can determine what is the right course of action. That is one of the evils of welfare statism: its fundamental irrationality and immorality forces men into contradictions where no course of action is right.”
-One major drawback to these stimulus programs is it forces almost everyone into these moral quandaries. Essentially, it’s a free-for-all for government money, should you take yours or simply let everyone else benefit at your expense? There’s no purely virtuous move, but the fault of that lies with the stimulus programs themselves.
-She concludes with this caution in accepting government money, “The ultimate danger in all of these issues is psychological: the danger of letting yourself get bribed, the danger of a gradual, imperceptible, subconscious deterioration leading to compromise, evasion, resignation, submission. In today’s circumstances, a man is morally in the clear only so long as he remains intellectual incorruptible. Ultimately, these problems are a test, a hard test, of your own integrity.”

20 Basic Truths You Can't Talk about in America Anymore

1) People who want to change sexes should be treated by a psychologist, not deformed through surgery, given hormone treatments, and falsely told that they can change sexes.

2) Most people who remain poor over the long haul in America stay that way because of their own poor life choices.
3) Most black Americans are good and decent people, but percentage wise there are more black Americans in jail because percentage wise, black Americans commit a lot more crimes than white Americans.
4) As often as not in America, the people claiming to be “victims” are the real bullies and they don’t deserve anyone’s sympathy.
5) The reason most politicians in D.C. are shameless liars with no character is because most Americans will knowingly choose a shameless liar with no character who says what they want to hear over an honest man with morals who tells them the hard truths they’d rather ignore.

6) Illegal aliens are foreigners who knowingly broke the law to come here and Americans owe them even less than we owe other foreigners living in China, Sweden, or El Salvador because at least those people didn’t break our laws.
7) Life begins at conception and having an abortion is no morally different than strangling your baby in the crib.
8) Most liberals aren’t patriotic and they don’t love their country.
9) Our soldiers should make every effort to avoid civilian casualties, but when it comes right down to it, the life of an American soldier should be treated as more important than the life of a foreign civilian.

10) We’d be better off as a society if the people who are ignorant, ill informed, or who really don’t care one way or another, didn’t vote.
11) The only practical way to make peace between the Israelis and Palestinians is for the Israelis to transfer the Palestinians and take their land.
12) This is a Christian nation that has been successful because it adopted Christian principles and the more we move away from that, the worse off we will be as a nation.
13) Men are just generally better at some things than women, just as women are just generally better at some things than men are.
14) “Racism” used to be a big deal in America, but these days the people who cry racism are usually phonies trying to gain a political advantage or deflect from ethical shortcomings or poor performance.
15) Long term, the only way our country can pay its bills is by asking everyone who’s not dirt poor to pay as much in taxes to the government as they’re given in services if they want to continue to receive those services.
16) Nine times out of ten, a mother and father will do a considerably better job of raising a child than a single mother, a single father, two gay parents or their grandparents.
17) The Boy Scouts could never survive gay scoutmasters because no parents with a brain in their head are sending their male, teenage boy out in the woods alone with a gay man who may very well be attracted to him, just as the parents of Girl Scouts wouldn’t want to send their teenage daughter out alone in the woods with a straight adult who might secretly be savoring the opportunity to have her alone.

18) People who are homeless over the long term are overwhelmingly mentally ill or have substance abuse problems and the only thing we can really do to help them is round them up, put them into halfway houses and force them to get treatment in spite of themselves.
19) If you have good character, you should feel ashamed of taking food stamps, taking welfare, or being on a school lunch program.
20) We would be much better off as a nation if most of the immigrants to this country were well educated people from nations in Europe that shared our Western values as opposed to our current policy which brings in mostly less educated people from Third World nations.