Who Is Ayn Rand?

That's an easier question to answer than "Who is John Galt," and I won't take 900-plus pages to do it.

She's the person who has done the most in the past 100 years to promote the concept of self-interest.  But what no one seems to have noticed, or at least commented upon, is that fact that she took it upon herself to define self-interest as selfishness.

They are not the same thing.  And to muddle the two concepts is to court disaster.

It's in my self-interest to have safe, stable, mobile, well-educated communities, where people don't have to worry about the necessities of life.  It doesn't make it hard to make a living, run a business, or otherwise monetize my efforts.  It makes it easier, by creating a ready market for my efforts.

Selfishness, on the other hand, is little more than appetite divorced from any kind of willingness on the part of society to support it.  Left undisciplined by the needs and concerns of others, it simply consumes everything in its path, without regard to the destruction it leaves behind.  One only has to look at the "red" states to see how this plays out.  Whether by way of overfarming, overmining or overdrilling, the selfish have taken their profits and taken them elsewhere, leaving behind ravaged communities that no longer have the resources they need to fend for themselves in even the most minimal way (and, ironically, more dependent on Federal aid to survive).

Selfishness is not the solution to our problem.  Selfishness is the problem.  And no apologies to Ronald Reagan, who is a co-author of all this misery.

We have allowed the Reagans and the Rands of the world to define self-interest for us.  We have forgotten that we always have the right to define it, and to do so rationally.  We desperately need to do so now, before we become a nation of appetites, devouring each other in the hope of being the last person standing.

And possessing nothing.