Disability Policy and the Election: A Wrap-Up

Still trying to decide who to vote for? Want to easily share a summary of the top issues to people with disabilities? Review this blog's most popular posts this election season:

Easter Seals on Campaign Issues: Exclusive Interview. The head government relations official at Easter Seals on the record of the Obama Administration, health care reform, special education, and key differences between the candidates' positions.

Thank You, Ann Coulter! A response to Coulter's offensive use of the "r-word."

Ayn Rand and Disabilities: Part 1 and Part 2. Why author Ayn Rand is relevant to this year's election, and her shocking disdain for people with disabilities.

Advocates Agree: Health Care Law is Good for People With Disabilities

Will Romney Cut Funds for Autism Program He Supported in Massachusetts?

Ryan Budget: "Dangerous to People with Disabilities"

Romney's Voucher Plan: "Disaster for Special Education Students" and Vouchers: What Would They Mean for Special Education?

Ayn Rand and Disabilities: Part 2

[Read Ayn Rand and Disabilities: Part 1.]

In this compelling piece, Mike Lux writes, "Ayn Rand Thinks He's a Parasite, but My Brother Kevin Contributes Greatly to Our Society."

About his brother, who has muscular dystrophy and several other disabilities, Lux says, "Kevin is one of those people whom followers of Ayn Rand's philosophy would call a leech on society. Rand believed that people with disabilities were leeches and parasites on society, and that the 'parasites should perish'....

"Kevin has shaped my values and philosophy of life, and given me a perspective on policy issues. Conservatives are obsessed with the idea that somewhere, somehow there are lazy 'undeserving' welfare recipients, but more than 90 percent of government support dollars go to the elderly, people working hard but still below the poverty line because of low-wage jobs, and very disabled people like Kevin – those whose middle-class families like mine would be plunged into poverty if we had to pay for all their medical costs on our own....

"A society that does not value my brother Kevin at least as much as it does the Wall Street titans who grow rich as they speculate with other people's money...is a sick society.

"A government that would cut support to middle-class families trying to support their disabled children, so the wealthy can get more tax breaks -- a government that actually decides to help the wealthy and powerful more than the poor and disabled -- would be a government with no decency. That is what Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, and the Republicans are proposing for us. Their hero Ayn Rand would be proud."

Thank you for sharing your personal perspective, Mike.

Ayn Rand and Disabilities: Part 1

Vice Presidential Candidate Paul Ryan has said that Ayn Rand's writings are the reason he got involved in public service. While he's tried to distance himself from Rand's atheism, his policies very much follow her views on individualism and capitalism.

Craig Seligman sheds some light on Rand's perspectives in a Business Week commentary titled "Ryan's Hero Ayn Rand Sneered at Disabled Children." Specifically, Seligman points to Rand's novel "The Fountainhead," in which an architect's building is remodeled into the "The Hopton Stoddard Home for Subnormal Children,” whose administrators are described as “zealous ladies who were full of kindness” (a word that Seligman says "Rand almost always invokes with contempt") who admit “only the hopeless cases”:

“There was a 15-year-old boy who had never learned to speak; a grinning child who could not be taught to read or write; a girl born without a nose, whose father was also her grandfather; a person called ‘Jackie’ of whose age or sex nobody could be certain. They marched into their new home, their eyes staring vacantly.”

Seligman writes, "Even if you agree with those conservative Republicans who think a helping hand will only encourage the poor in their lack of initiative ... disabled children?"

Seligman concludes: "It’s easy enough to see how an artist besotted with ideals of perfection might want to reject the ordinary in her work. But politicians ply their trade in the only world we have -- the one that, presumably, they want to improve. When a novelist who despises the world and the people in it becomes their guiding star, we sneer at our own risk."

Ryan on Rand

2005:
“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 the fight we are in here, make no mistake about it, is a fight of individualism versus collectivism.” 
Source: Ryan Lizza, "Fussbudget: How Paul Ryan Captured the GOP," The New Yorker, Aug. 6, 2012

2008:
“What’s unique about what’s happening today in government, in the world, in America, is that it’s as if we’re living in an Ayn Rand novel right now. I think Ayn Rand did the best job of anybody to build a moral case of capitalism, and that morality of capitalism is under assault.”
Source: Jane Mayer, "Ayn Rand Joins the Ticket," The New Yorker, Aug. 11, 2012

Read Ayn Rand and Disabilities: Part 2.