Despite Jon Stewart’s typically excellent job of deftly standing up to inanity, I muted the TV in disgust last night and read the paper while Andrew Napolitano spouted his extreme ideological nonsense on The Daily Show. Later, I watched it online.
Napolitano repeats the Ayn Rand assertion that selfishness is a virtue. Well, that depends on the definition of selfishness. Wall Street executives and brokers were absolutely acting in their own self-interest in their quest for fat bonuses, which led to reckless and risky financial speculation. Their selfishness, often fueled by drugs, was limited solely to their individual, immediate financial gain, and look at the outcome.
Napolitano says he agrees with the Occupy Wall Street protesters that the government shouldn’t have bailed out the big banks. What he fails to acknowledge is that it was the lack of government regulation that allowed the banking crisis to happen. The successful repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, a dream of Napolitano’s fellow libertarian Alan Greenspan, was a monumental mistake that must be undone.
Napolitano also says that public schools “stink” because they have no competition. Of course there’s competition, and I don’t mean private schools. Towns compete with one other, and some towns have better schools than others. By the very definition of competitive behavior there will always be losers, so the correct argument for a libertarian like Napolitano is that of course some of the public schools are better than others. That’s the way it is, and the losers just have to keep trying. Or maybe the students who are losers should just give up on school and turn to dealing drugs to stock brokers.
