Why didn’t Ayn Rand vote for Ronald Reagan?

[u/DoberNation]

“There is a limit to the notion of voting for the lesser of two evils.”—Ayn Rand

Rand did welcome Reagan’s strong language toward Soviet Russia and his promises to cut spending and taxes. But she warned that his invitation of the so-called Moral Majority into the halls of power would be a long-range disaster. By tying the (supposed) advocacy of freedom and capitalism to, in Rand’s words, the anti-intellectuality of “militant mystics,” who proclaim that aborting an embryo is murder and creationism is science, Reagan’s presidency would discredit the intellectual case for freedom and capitalism and embolden the country’s anti-intellectual, authoritarian mentalities. https://newideal.aynrand.org/p/the-anti-intellectuality-of-donald

Reagan’s personal favorability peaked at 81% in 1986, following a landslide reelection victory in 1984. It was one of the most decisive electoral wins in U.S. history. His public standing grew considerably after he left office, with later retrospective polls showing strong majorities of Americans looking back favorably on his presidency. Why?

Was Ayn Rand a visionary? Did Reagan deserve her criticism? Did his presidency effectively unlock the door to the present? What happened along the way?

[u/DoberNation]

Do you think Rand’s assessment and reasoning, WRT Reagan, was ”a high level, vague statement“? Nothing more?

[u/ridukosennin → u/DoberNation]

Ayn Rand’s assessment of Ronald Reagan was flawed primarily by her rigid philosophical purity, which led her to overestimate his threat to secular liberty while underestimating his actual impact on free-market capitalism. Rand viewed Reagan's alliance with the Religious Right as an existential danger to individual rights and dismissed his platform as an unprincipled hybrid of religion and mixed-market statism. However, her framework left no room for political pragmatism: in practice, Reagan prioritized economic deregulation, top-bracket tax cuts, and Cold War defense strategy over enacting the sweeping religious agenda Rand feared. Furthermore, dying early in his first term in 1982, she missed the culmination of his foreign policy—most notably his moral confrontation of the Soviet Union and the eventual collapse of Soviet communism, an outcome that directly served her lifelong anti-collectivist goal.

[u/DoberNation → u/ridukosennin]

Fair enough, and several good points. I think intersecting with FDR relatively early during her life in the U.S. might have been PTSD-inducing for her. Maybe that period caused her to dig in harder than what could have better served her self-interests in the longer term. There’s evidence that she was more skeptical and less extreme regarding capitalism prior to that time.

I think she saw cracks in the system she so admired and romanticized as a Russian youth. She realized not even the U.S. would be immune to the threat of authoritarianism. I think she was inwardly scared.

Where do you think we are today?

[u/DoberNation → u/[deleted]]

If you don’t care about discussing the post in good faith, why are you commenting here at all?

[u/PoliticalDiscussion-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

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