Hi csl,
I agree it is an impressionist post based on extrapolations.
But you surely have noticed that I see Republican politics as brutalist. And thus that those who subscribe to it must lack a compassion bone. Or they must believe something which inoculates them from the normal responses to suffering which others feel, and believe government should play a part in relieving.
That is surely a charge that someone who adheres to Ayn Rand would want to defend. I understand that.
But then you'd have to deal with the awful reality that when the 2008 meltdown occurred, charitable giving went down with it. Private largesse varies with the economy. And by comparison with the need, private giving is a pin prick in the hide of an elephant.
The idea that selfishness yields various social and economic benefits (such as the trickle down theory) is also imaginary. When tax rates are low on high income earners, wealth trickles up. The benefits of greater productivity accrue to the very rich and almost no one else. We see this in the inequality statistics once the progressive tax system was flattened under Reagan.
So does the Republican belief system lack compassion? It's in the facts that they scrupulously avoid checking. It's only in Ayn-Rand Theoryland that everything works the way Republicans wish they did.
Romney believes what he does because he inhabits his citadel and he has never descended from it to breathe the air of normal life. If he had once been poor, he might just connect. But he uses his dad's experience to conceal his own inexperience. That alone tells you that he doesn't know. To know, you have to experience.
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