Original source: The Independent Mail

There has been a rebirth of interest lately in the eccentric but influential novelist, screenwriter and philosopher Ayn Rand. (Her first name rhymes with “mine.”) Rand’s best-known books are “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged,” which paid tribute to capitalism and principled but uncompromising business people. They stridently warned about the evils of intrusive government.

No less a literary critic than South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford has penned a two-page tribute to Rand in the “Books” section of the Nov. 2 issue of Newsweek. It is titled “Atlas Hugged.” The hook for Sanford’s story is a new biography of Rand by Anne Heller, “Ayn Rand and the World She Made.” Sanford mentions another book, “Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right” by Jennifer Burns. For the most part, the article is the governor’s musings on Rand’s philosophy, capitalism, government run amok and, interestingly, the major issue where he parts company with Rand: the ability of man to obtain perfection.

Rand, who was born in pre-revolutionary Russia and immigrated to the U.S. as a young woman, was an atheist. Sanford said his initial reaction to her work (“I was blown away”) has been tempered because her outlook “doesn’t include the human needs we have for grace, love, faith, or any form of social compact.”

But Sanford and like-minded conservatives (think Rush Limbaugh) love her philosophy that “an individual can achieve great things without governmental benevolence.” Boiled down, Rand’s “essential truth,” Sanford says, is that “government doesn’t know best.” Rather, the “prosperity and opportunity we enjoy comes ultimately from the creative energies of the country’s businessmen, entrepreneurs, investors, marketers and inventors.”

That’s all well and good as far as it goes, and it’s true that the growing role of the federal government in industries ranging from banking to auto manufacturing has made the hair of folks such as Sanford stand on end. However, nowhere in Sanford’s article does he admit that the reason all this intervention has occurred — at the express invitation of the country’s businessmen, entrepreneurs, investors, marketers and inventors, we might add — is because Ayn Rand disciples such as Alan Greenspan let the pendulum of deregulation swing too far in the other direction. (Greenspan met Rand in the 1950s and was an ardent member of her New York City salon for some 20 years.) Perhaps Sanford is admitting as much when he describes the great flaw in Rand’s thinking. “The idea that man is perfectible has been disproved by 10,000 years of history,” he writes. Instead, he prefers to believe that human beings are “fallen” and for this reason there is a role for limited government to keep these imperfect souls from taking advantage of each other.

Sanford’s own fall from grace is still the topic of much ribald humor, and we have to admit it was a bit of a relief to see his name on the cover of Newsweek for philosophy rather than philandering. But just in case we’ve forgotten, the last page of the magazine contains quotations from five women wronged by their prominent husbands as a tutorial for Mrs. David Letterman. The last quote came from Jenny Sanford.

Still, we give the governor credit for admitting there is a role for government in protecting citizens when capitalism runs amok.