The Communistic 'New Right'

John Stossel's latest won't completely surprise fellow travelers by pointing out how anti-capitalist many of the new crop of Republicans are, notably including Tucker Carlson and the Vice President. Many know that both, for example, admire aspects of the far-left Elizabeth Warren's economic agenda.

This is to be expected on the grounds that the vast majority of people on the right subscribe to the morality of altruism, which derives from religion, and is inconsistent with freedom, as Ayn Rand once succinctly put it:

America's inner contradiction was the altruist-collectivist ethics. Altruism is incompatible with freedom, with capitalism and with individual rights. One cannot combine the pursuit of happiness with the moral status of a sacrificial animal.

The better part of the right struggles with this contradiction every time capitalism comes under moral attack.

As for the worse and increasingly dominant part of the right, the following deserves wide circulation:

[Writer James] Lindsay even hoaxed a conservative magazine, American Reformer, into publishing part of The Communist Manifesto, merely by substituting Christian nationalist language for words like "proletariat."

When the editors learned that they'd been tricked, they left the article up, saying it was "a reasonable aggregation of some New Right ideas." bold added]

Yikes.

When Objectivists point out the above contradiction, we often get a confused, incredulous, or even hostile reaction.

But here we are: People on the right, who will happily accept the votes and support of people who reject the left, are now openly admitting that they might as well be communists.

-- CAV