Paul Ryan believes that altruism does not exist or is impossible

• "I just want to speak to you a little bit about Ayn Rand and what she meant to me in my life and [in] the fight we’re engaged here in Congress. I grew up on Ayn Rand, that’s what I tell people."
• "I grew up reading Ayn Rand and it taught me quite a bit about who I am and what my value systems are, and what my beliefs are."
• "It’s inspired me so much that it’s required reading in my office for all my interns and my staff. We start with Atlas Shrugged. People tell me I need to start with The Fountainhead then go toAtlas Shrugged [laughter]. There’s a big debate about that. We go to Fountainhead, but then we move on, and we require Mises and Hayek as well."
• "But the reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand."
• "And when you look at the twentieth-century experiment with collectivism—that Ayn Rand, more than anybody else, did such a good job of articulating the pitfalls of statism and collectivism—you can’t find another thinker or writer who did a better job of describing and laying out the moral case for capitalism than Ayn Rand."
• "It’s so important that we go back to our roots to look at Ayn Rand’s vision, her writings, to see what our girding, under-grounding [sic] principles are."

"Because there is no better place to find the moral case for capitalism and individualism than through Ayn Rand’s writings and works." 

people are not moral so we should not be moral

Of course, all that doesn’t actually say anything about her “philosophy”; it just makes the case that she’s a jerk and a hack. That said, her theory – and summarily, its corollaries – are belied by the abject sketchiness of their most basic premise: rational egoism. Far smarter, more articulate people than me have pointed this out, but what needs to be emphasized is that Rand conflates descriptive psychological egoism (people act in their self-interest) with normative ethical egoism (acting in self-interest is the right thing to do). Part of this “ought-from-an-is”-type assumption is that altruism does not exist – very much the backbone of her belief system. 

West Valley College’s Sandra LaFave does a great job following this line of thought and pointing out why it doesn’t work. The basic claim of egoists, LaFave notes, is that people “always and invariably act in their self-interest”. However, most moral codes call for altruism, which, in egoists’ account, is “demanding the impossible”. Moral codes, so egoists’ thinking goes, should not demand “the impossible”, so we should take up a “more realistic” system such as – ta-da! – ethical egoism.

To accept this conclusion, you have to accept the premise that psychological egoism is a given fact in the first place. To date, neither Rand nor anyone else has been able to prove definitively that the proverbial soldier who dives on a grenade acts selfishly, not altruistically.

i personally can't believe that we do business with this government. Can't go near Cuba but China which has more money is fair game. Disgusting.

China Rejects US Call to Release Tiananmen Prisoners

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Candlelight vigil commemorates pro-democracy activists who died in Beijing's Tiananmen Square uprising, Victoria Park, Hong Kong, June 4, 2012.

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VOA News

June 04, 2012

Tens of thousands of people in Hong Kong have marked the 23rd anniversary of China's Tiananmen Square protests and the deadly government crackdown that followed.

Demonstrators held a candlelight vigil Monday, shouting "long live democracy" and "never forget June 4."

Hundreds of demonstrators also gathered in Taiwan's capital, Taipei.

The demonstrations in Hong Kong and Taiwan stood in contrast to mainland China where the anniversary has never been publicly marked. Instead, China's Internet censors blocked searches about the anniversary. They also blocked the term "Shanghai stock market" after the index fell 64.89 points and Chinese microblogs buzzed with conspiracy theories. In an apparent coincidence, the stock index numbers match calendar numbers for the June 4, 1989 crackdown.

Earlier Monday, China's foreign ministry expressed "strong dissatisfaction" with a U.S. call for Beijing to free all those still imprisoned for the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations.

Responding to a question from the VOA Mandarin service, foreign ministry spokesman Liu Weimin told reporters that the U.S. State Department call was a gross intervention in China's internal affairs and a groundless accusation against the Chinese government.

“I knew you would ask this question for sure," said Liu. "There has been a clear conclusion by the Chinese government and party over that incident. Over the past more than 20 years, China has witnessed continuous economic development, democracy and rule of law and prosperous cultural programs. All this is reflecting the common aspiration of the Chinese people. The statement you mentioned is released by the U.S. side year after year in disrespect of facts. It is a gross intervention in China's internal affairs and groundless accusation of the Chinese government. China expresses its strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to that."

On June 4, 1989, Chinese troops, backed by tanks, moved in to crush a student-led demonstration centered in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. The crackdown triggered worldwide condemnation, with estimates of those killed ranging from several hundred to several thousand people.

China still considers the incident a "counter-revolutionary rebellion" and has never admitted any wrongdoing in its handling of the uprising. The topic is banned from state media and, although the subject is taboo in China, some activists have gathered to mark the anniversary.

Shanghai stock market closes with a spooky echo of Tiananmen Square

June 4, 2012 |  7:36 am

 

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BEIJING -- The stock market played a strange trick on the Chinese Communist Party on Monday.

Whether a cosmic joke or coincidence -- or as some wags suggested, an act of God -- the Shanghai stock market index fell 64.89 points on Monday, which happened to be June 4, the 23rd anniversary of the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators at Tiananmen Square.

This darkest moment in recent Chinese history is customarily referred to as 6/4, the unembellished number conveying the same stark tragedy as 9/11 for Americans.

In the numerology of censorship, nothing is more sensitive. There is a ritualized cat-and-mouse game every year on this date between the censors and those who want to commemorate the death of hundreds, perhaps thousands. On the 20th anniversary in 1989, an advertisement managed to slip into a newspaper showing two groups of people -- six on one side and four on the other -- gazing philosophically toward the sky.

Nowadays, the game is largely played out on the Internet. The number 6/4 is banned by censors –- as is 5/35, an attempt to get around the bans by referring to the date as the 35th of May. Other words that were scrubbed on Monday were “candle,” “commemorate,” “massacre,” “tank” and “never forget.”

After its bizarre closing Monday, censors added “Shanghai Stock Market” and “index” to the banned list.

The 64.89 point drop wasn’t the only strange omen. The Shanghai Composite Index opened at 2364.98, which with a little creativity could be seen as a reference to June 4, 1989, 23rd anniversary.

Even people who don’t follow the markets were delighted. “I want to thank all the stock traders!” wrote one microbloggers. “Maybe God does exist? God’s will cannot be altered,’’ wrote another. Others wondered if the entire Shanghai Stock Exchange might be shut down.

The Chinese Communist Party is famously resistant to reflecting on its shortcomings. Only recently has it been possible to discuss openly the Cultural Revolution, Mao Tse-tung’s campaign of terror between 1966 and 1976, and many were shocked when Premier Wen Jiabao referred to it during a public news conference in March.

But Tiananmen Square remains verboten -- because of the brutality of the crackdown, of course, but also because of the rifts it opened in the Communist Party that remain unhealed to this day. General Secretary Zhao Ziyang was purged for refusing to support military action and lived under house arrest until his death in 2005. Many student activists from the period are in exile, unable to return to China.

Last week in Hong Kong, former Beijing Mayor Chen Xitong, now 81 and suffering from cancer, released a book of interviews in which he claimed he was pressured by the party to support the crackdown. He called it "a tragedy that could have been avoided and should have been avoided."

The book has been banned in the mainland.