The Political Right's Grand Hypocrisy

I get a chuckle out of the fact that the big intellectual leaders of the fanatical right in the US fought tooth-and-nail to remove social programs for the disadvantaged, but secretly availed themselves of the goodies despite the conflict of their acts with their professions of faith.

Here is an excellent post by Yves Smith in her Naked Capitalist blog that outs the two big shots Friedrich von Hayek and Ayn Rand:

• Hayek was hired by Charles Koch, an infamous right wing ideologue billionaire, who funded the Cato Institute and brought Hayek to the US to be a scholar at one of his right wing think tanks. Hayek was reluctant because he had medical problems and insurance in the US would have been prohibitive. Koch uncovered the fact that during a previous stay in the US Hayek qualified for Social Security. With the promise of US taxpayer supported medical care, Hayek came to the US and took up the role that Koch gave him: to propound arguments why social entitlement programs in the US must be destroyed to bring back "liberty" to the American people.


• Ayn Rand took taxpayer paid for Social Security and Medicare payments while espousing her anti-government, destroy the entitlements to bring back real "liberty" to Americans theme.

It is stunningly hypocritical that these "big thinkers" both pushed a message for others which they refused to follow for themselves. Disgusting.