How Hillary Clinton Is Like Ayn Rand: There’s a clue in her statement about people from wealthy areas voting for her – By Ethan Epstein (weeklystandard.com) / March 13 2018
The Hillary Unplugged tour made it to India this week, where the former presidential candidate modified her theory as to why she lost the 2016 election. This time, it wasn’t James Comey, or even “the Russians” that did her in. In fact, it was the Americans. Here is what she said:
Forget the untoward spectacle of Clinton casting all of her opponents as people opposing “black people getting rights.” (There is a staff editorial about that on this website.) What I find particularly interesting is the bizarre strand of Ayn Rand-ism in Clinton’s sentiments.
She boasts, after all, that the areas she won represent “two thirds of America’s gross domestic product.” That’s true: The Democrats have in many respects become the party of America’s economic winners. But what’s odd is that Clinton’s economic analysis quickly becomes a moral judgment. Those Americans stuck in the parts of the country with flagging GDP (those “forgotten Americans,” as Donald Trump called them) aren’t just economically struggling. They are “backwards,” and opposed to civil and women’s rights.
In other words, Clinton’s remarks represent nothing so much as a bizarre strand of Ayn Randism. Clinton, like Rand, seems to be suggesting that “high GDP” people—a.k.a. America’s “producers”—people don’t just have more money than the rest of us. She’s saying they’re better people, too. And as for the Trumpian masses out in low GDP America? What a bunch of “takers!”
http://www.weeklystandard.com/how-hillary-clinton-is-like-ayn-rand/article/2011912
