Especially in the internet age, when it is so easy to get content online, it is easy to find writings that contain no useful information, and must be read solely as a revelation of the dishonesty and missing critical thinking skills of the author.
Here is an example: this post on Huffingpost.com by Michael Ford, from December 5, 2010, supposedly dealing with hypocrisy, entitled 'Ayn Rand and the VIP-DIPers' —
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-ford/ayn-rand-and-the-vip-dipe_b_792184.html
It is especially absurdly comical when a writer massively exhibits the qualities he is pretending to expose and criticize.
If you are going to attempt to criticize someone for a particular position, it is helpful if you first find out what their exact position is, since if you fail to do this, not only are you demonstrating your own dishonesty in the misrepresentation, you are wasting everyone else's time with a false characterization, not to mention the damage done to the individual from the myths you help to create about them.
Michael Ford's post is a short criticism of Ayn Rand for supposed hypocrisy, but his post should have been much shorter, since, beyond making the accusation, he wrote nothing to properly defend it. Ford's premise is that Ayn Rand is a hypocrite, because she accepted payments from Social Security and Medicare, after having denounced those government programs as legalized robbery. Here are the most substantial quotes from Ford's post --
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-ford/ayn-rand-and-the-vip-dipe_b_792184.html
https://archive.is/TSkLP
...
Miss Rand, famously a believer in rugged individualism and personal responsibility, was a strong defender of self-interest. She was a staunch opponent of government programs from the New Deal and Social Security to the Great Society and Medicare.
...
An interview with Evva Pryror, a social worker and consultant to Miss Rand's law firm of Ernst, Cane, Gitlin and Winick verified that on Miss Rand's behalf she secured Rand's Social Security and Medicare payments which Ayn received under the name of Ann O'Connor (husband Frank O'Connor).
As Pryor said, "Doctors cost a lot more money than books earn and she could be totally wiped out" without the aid of these two government programs. Ayn took the bail out even though Ayn "despised government interference and felt that people should and could live independently... She didn't feel that an individual should take help."
But alas she did and said it was wrong for everyone else to do so. Apart from the strong implication that those who take the help are morally weak, it is also a philosophic point that such help dulls the will to work, to save and government assistance is said to dull the entrepreneurial spirit.
In the end, Miss Rand was a hypocrite but she could never be faulted for failing to act in her own self-interest.
Of course, Ford does not accurately describe Ayn Rand's position, conveniently leaving out her reasons for being opposed to those plans, and why she would accept the payments — which is very telling, since it is easy to find out why she opposed Social Security and Medicare — see the chapter 'Collectivized Ethics' in her book 'The Virtue of Selfishness', for example —
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OvL1_89QDs
But notice this Ayn Rand quote from the June 1966 Issue of 'The Objectivist', where she clearly states that opponents of government welfare plans should never hesitate to accept benefit payments from those plans, in direct contradiction to Ford's claim above that Rand stated 'it was wrong for everyone else to do so' —
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/government_grants_and_scholarships.html
https://books.google.com/books?id=OsCSArJxIRwC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false (from Chapter 7)
...
Since there is no such thing as the right of some men to vote away the rights of others, and no such thing as the right of the government to seize the property of some men for the unearned benefit of others—the advocates and supporters of the welfare state are morally guilty of robbing their opponents, and the fact that the robbery is legalized makes it morally worse, not better. 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 . . . .
The same moral principles and considerations apply to the issue of accepting social security, unemployment insurance or other payments of that kind. It is obvious, in such cases, that a man receives his own money which was taken from him by force, directly and specifically, without his consent, against his own choice. Those who advocated such laws are morally guilty, since they assumed the “right” to force employers and unwilling co-workers. But the victims, who opposed such laws, have a clear right to any refund of their own money—and they would not advance the cause of freedom if they left their money, unclaimed, for the benefit of the welfare-state administration.
...
Of course, as Rand stated so clearly in the quote above, it makes no sense to refuse benefits from some plan that you were forced to participate in — and especially for those who denounce the immorality of such plans, since their refusal would only aid the proponents (i.e. the cause) of the immoral use of force (the Michael Fords of the world).
Why would you double the injury by refusing money being returned to you, that was taken from you by force — especially given that your refusal would only serve to benefit those that sought to violate your rights to begin with?
And note that in accepting the payments, Ayn Rand did exactly what she recommended to others.
Ford's piece is comical, in that he writes as if he did some sort of investigative reporting by finding a source who stated that Ayn Rand took Social Security, when Rand publicly stated her view that opponents of such laws should never refuse payments from any forced government welfare plan. If Ford had done just a little honest reporting he would have known this.
And never mind the missing attempt by Michael Ford to criticize Ayn Rand's actual position — he writes about the issue as if each of us were given the choice to participate. But this is absurd on its face, given that every working person is forced to pay into government welfare plans. Ford makes the blatantly absurd statement that Ayn Rand 'took the bail out', as if she were being given a gift, and had not been forced to pay into the plan.
Refusing payments from forced government welfare plans, because you had denounced them as immoral, would be the same as refusing to accept the return of your stolen car from the police, because you had denounced the thief as morally reprehensible, or the police as corrupt — i.e. it would be ludicrous.
It was also instructive to read the comments in response to Ford's post — the majority of readers accepted his statements uncritically, ignoring his avoidance of the glaringly obvious point that Rand, just like everyone else, was forced to pay into Social Security and Medicare, and would have only injured herself further by refusing payments from those plans.
If Micheal Ford is so concerned about integrity (not likely), he might start by examining its lack in him, and his willingness to spread falsehoods about others — not to mention his absurd position, that if we further injure ourselves in response to our rights having been violated, after having denounced the violation, that we are somehow demonstrating integrity.
Michael Ford, and the many others like him, may find Ayn Rand's integrity questionable, but that means little given their obvious displays of hypocrisy, and their complete inability to accurately describe what she advocated.
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