How To Be Cruel

By Les Leopold

It’s not easy to be cruel to someone who is down and out. After all, most of us feel ashamed when walking by a homeless person or watching kids crammed into over-crowded classrooms. It requires several psychological twists and turns to make life even harder for low-income Americans.

         — You have to blame low-income parents for their own economic problems. Even if the unemployment rate is sky-high, it must be the poor person’s fault.

         — You need to feel superior — that somehow you got to where you are today not by an accident of birth, but rather by your own hard labors. Anyone not as successful as you, by definition, is inferior.

         — You have to believe that meanness really is tough love — that by taking benefits away from the poor you are actually helping them on the road to self-sufficiency.

         — It’s helpful to have access to the broader Randian/libertarian philosophy that argues all forms of collective government action are an attack on freedom. In this view, altruism is seen as a curse that justifies collective government programs that essentially steal money from the makers and to waste on the takers. All collective caring by the state, therefore, is evil, so that all support for the poor via government is evil as well.

         — It’s psychologically crucial to have your prejudices confirmed by charismatic alchemists like Ayn Rand, Rand Paul and Paul Ryan who peddle selfishness as the highest form of morality (although only Ayn Rand had the guts to say it so bluntly).