The remaining souls (oops, protoplasmic rationalizers) who continue to worship at the shrine of the infallible voice of objective truth must, by now, realize that Ms. Rand erred most grievously in her assertion that “big business” was “America’s persecuted minority.” If decades of bilking the taxpayers out of hundreds of billions of dollars in the name of “national defense spending” or “NASA research” projects didn’t raise any doubts, then more recent programs to have the state shell out trillions of dollars to its corporate partners in such industries as banking, airlines, insurance, auto manufacturing, et. al. must have generated some twinge of uncertainty about Rand’s infallibility. But now, the capper: insurance and pharmaceutical companies using the power of the state to compel — with threats of fines and imprisonment — to have ordinary people become a conscripted clientele. For years, car drivers have been legally compelled to purchase auto insurance, while those who do not choose to opt for the recently passed government health-care plan will, apparently, be required — again under threats of fine and/or imprisonment — to purchase health care insurance. Meanwhile, the pharmaceutical companies continue their efforts to vaccinate the entire population for such diseases as the flu, and to mandate cervical cancer vaccines for young girls.
I wonder whether such grievous examples of the incestuous relationship that has always existed between the state and the business system would cause Rand to modify her classic view of business as a victim of persecution. I don’t think she could have changed her position, for to do so would have been an admission that she did not have a pipeline to “objective” truth; that she, like the rest of us, is a collection of subjective impressions about that world and, (gasp!) that none of us is omnisciently infallible. Better to condemn those who reveal the sordid reality of corporate/state relations as “anti-capitalistic whim worshippers” and go about the business of bamboozling those desirous of seeking a new religion in a secular age.
