America’s New Values Are Perverse

Those who remember Ayn Rand from her mid-Century novels will recall that she popularized, for a short period of time, the idea that altruism was intrinsically evil, claiming it to be incompatible with human rights, freedom, and capitalism.

That thinking all but disappeared from the face of the Earth until a few years ago, when Trumpism rose to prominence, with its racism, hatred of immigrants, and the gross indifference to human suffering that marks our society today.

The notion that democratic nations’ coast guards could watch hundreds of refugees drown in the Mediterranean Sea couldn’t have existed until recently.

Decent people cringe when they hear Fox News acolytes parrot the phrase: United States is crumbling under “wokeism.”  We can only hope this is a short-lived fad, like Rand’s philosophy was 60 years ago.

The only problem with this hope is that it’s based on an environment of well-educated people who are capable of critical thinking, which has all but vanished over the intervening decades.