Was Ayn Rand Wrong on Reagan?
By Edward Hudgins
February 06, 2017

Hardcore anti-Communist Ayn Rand was, to the surprise of many who did not live through those days, not a fan of hardcore anti-Communist Ronald Reagan. But Rand died in 1982, only a year into Reagan’s presidency. So on the occasion of his birthday, let’s ask why Rand didn’t like Reagan and whether, if she had lived, she would have reevaluated her opinion of the Gipper.

Fear of the Religious Right

Rand found strong fault principally with Reagan’s alliance with the emerging Religious Right. She said that “the appalling disgrace of his administration was his connection with the so-called ‘Moral Majority’ and sundry other TV religionists, who are struggling, apparently with his approval, to take us back to the Middle Ages via the unconstitutional union of religion and politics.” Most notably, Rand rejected Reagan’s opposition to legal abortion.

But what really happened to all those campaign promises?  In retrospect, Reagan mostly offered rhetoric and did little to make the Religious Right agenda his political priority. His energies went into two goals. First, he wanted to roll back the Soviet bloc, and thus the threat of nuclear war, rather than resigning himself, as his predecessors had, to containing its expansion. And second, he wanted to roll back the power and scope of the federal government.

The Evil Empire

Rand would certainly have approved of his labeling the Soviet Union as an “Evil Empire.” He saw the Cold War not simply in geopolitical terms but, rather, in moral terms. In 1987, Reagan famously stood before the barrier in Berlin meant to keep the people from Communist East Germany from escaping to West Germany, and demanded of the Soviet leader, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”  But remember, this was five years after Rand died.  She didn’t have this context when she made her evaluations of Reagan.

His pronouncements and those of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher defined the conflict in moral terms. The words of those leaders gave courage to those in Russia and other countries under the boot of Communism from the knowledge that they had allies who understood the essence of the conflict, who would not acquiesce in evil, and who supported their aspirations for liberty.

Preventing nuclear war

Reagan also saw as his highest goal the protection of the United States from a nuclear attack… (Continue reading here.)