By Jonny Lupsha, News Writer

According to Reuters, a federally funded loan program designed to aid small businesses saw at least one surprising recipient. The institute promoting the laissez-faire capitalism of writer Ayn Rand [] was approved for a Paycheck Protection Plan (PPP) loan of up to $1 million, the article said.

The Ayn Rand Institute: The Center for the Advancement of Objectivism in Santa Ana, California, sought to preserve 35 jobs with the PPP funding. The institute referred Reuters to a May 15 article, in which board member Harry Binswanger and senior fellow Onkar Ghate wrote that the organization would take any relief money offered by the CARES Act.

Ayn Rands philosophy in fiction and nonfiction was to promote individualism and unfettered capitalism, denouncing government involvement in virtually every aspect of life.

Ayn Rands beliefs aligned with libertarianism.

Libertarians come in two major clanseconomists and philosophers, said Dr. Lawrence Cahoone, Professor of Philosophy at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA. Economist libertarians typically argue for maximum individual liberty and minimal government interference through a utilitarian economic argumentin other words, that free markets bring the greatest utility or benefit to society.

Philosophical libertarians have prominently been ethical, natural rights theorists, claiming that capitalism is morally required independent of its consequences.

Similarly, Ayn Rands philosophywhich is called objectivismis rooted in humanitys need to survive, which she said is rooted in self-dependence. Dr. Cahoone said that there is an objective standard of value, an objective ethics, in her beliefs, and that rights are how those ethics are applied in society.

Note that rights are primarily not to own things, he said. They are a right to ones own self and own life, which yields rights to pursue interests and purposes. But on that basis, property rightswhich are the rights to use, enjoy, or dispose of somethingare essential.

With Rands emphasis on self-reliance, its no surprise that she was no fan of charity.

Rand hates altruism, Dr. Cahoone said. That is, she hates the tendency to first take as the ultimate moral standard the effects or benefits of my acts on other people. And second, she hates the belief that the highest moral act is self-sacrifice.

Rand believed that if people are precious, their egoistic purposes and freedoms were precious, and therefore selfishness is a virtue. This belief is called rational selfishness, which Dr. Cahoone said is a belief in which selfishness is a moral duty.

So capitalism, for her, is the only moral and rational socioeconomic system in human history. She endorses laissez-faire; no government activity whose aim is more than to protect individuals and their property is just. She wanted a voluntary system of taxation, among mere provision of military and police.

The Ayn Rand Institute said it was accepting the million-dollar PPP loan unapologetically, because the principle here is justice.

This article was proofread and copyedited by Angela Shoemaker, Proofreader and Copy Editor for The Great Courses Daily.

Dr. Lawrence Cahoone contributed to this article. Dr. Cahoone is Professor of Philosophy at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA, where he has taught since 2000. He holds a PhD in Philosophy from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON, BYLINE: This is PLANET MONEY from NPR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

ROBERT SMITH, HOST:

I remember the last normal day I had - March 12, 2020. And I remember it so vividly because I spent most of it in a studio recording this lighthearted episode with Sarah Gonzalez about the strange new coronavirus and how everyone was dealing with it. We never played the episode, but here's just a taste from four months ago.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

SARAH GONZALEZ, HOST:

Like, not touching your face - turns out it's impossible to do.

SMITH: Or finding sanitizer or just going to work with your colleagues or public transportation.

GONZALEZ: Or even cleaning your hands properly. Most of us have been doing it wrong.

SMITH: You have never heard this episode because, by the time we finished recording it - by the end of the day even - it seemed like everything had changed. Cities shut down. The stock market plunged. Tom Hanks announced that he had the virus. The episode felt out of date by the time we left the studio, and we just put it on a shelf and forgot about it. But I think about that episode a lot because, at the very end, Sarah and I were talking about hand sanitizer, and I did something that I haven't done since.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

SMITH: Maybe for the last time in my life, I feel confident to do a high-five (laughter).

GONZALEZ: Oh. No...

SMITH: All right, the last high-five.

GONZALEZ: I don't know. I don't know. All right, let's do it.

SMITH: We're finally sterilized.

GONZALEZ: (Laughter).

(SOUNDBITE OF SMACK)

SMITH: The last high-five. It was also the last day I rode the subway, the last day in the office, the last day recording in a studio with another human being. In the four months since that, so much has happened - so many deaths, the worst economic collapse of our lifetimes. And we're still in the middle of it. But we wanted to stop for a moment, as a show, and take a look at what we've been through and how much of our lives have changed in such a short period of time.

(SOUNDBITE OF LE FAT CLUB'S "IBIZA POOL PARTY")

SMITH: Hello, and welcome to PLANET MONEY. I'm Robert Smith. Usually, we wait until the end of the year to do a special episode we call The Rest of the Story, where we check in on the people we met that year and find out how they're doing. We're going to do that show a little early this year because so much has happened so fast. Today on the show, we're going to go back over the episodes that we did about COVID and report the rest of the story. We'll track where the money went, who got it and who didn't, and we'll check in on some of the people we profiled over the last few months - the unemployed, the business owners, the nurses and the man who manufactured a tiny piston to save lives.

(SOUNDBITE OF LE FAT CLUB'S "IBIZA POOL PARTY")

SMITH: Some of the economic changes in the last four months have been staggering - tens of millions of people unemployed, bankruptcies skyrocketing. But just as extraordinary has been the response to this challenge.

Congress moved faster than anyone thought possible to provide $3 trillion in relief, money that went to states and hospitals and businesses but also to individuals - checks for $1,200, a $600 a week boost for unemployment checks across the country. So much money, in fact, that when you look at the charts, the total personal income in the United States went up. Income was higher than it was before the crisis, even with so many people not working. Those benefits are expiring in a week, and Congress is debating what to do next. A lot is on the line. So we wanted to take this moment to follow up with the people we profiled over the last four months and to see how they're doing.

First up, small businesses. Part of that $3 trillion package went straight to businesses with fewer than 500 employees. It was called the Paycheck Protection Program.

NICK FOUNTAIN, BYLINE: PPP.

SMITH: The PPE. That is Nick Fountain who's with me now.

FOUNTAIN: It's true.

SMITH: Nick and I interviewed a bunch of business owners who were applying for these loans from the federal government. They would eventually be turned into grants if they kept their employees. And we traveled out to Queens to meet one person in particular.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

AUDRA FORDIN: My name is Audra Fordin. I am the fourth generation and first female to take ownership of my family's auto repair shop here in Flushing, Queens, N.Y. It's called Great Bear.

FOUNTAIN: Yeah. And, Robert, just to remind people about Audra, we talked to her during the middle of New York's shutdown. And her business was pretty much devastated. She does car repair, but nobody was driving. So the amount of money her business was bringing in had gone down 75%. And she'd been talking with her employees about how she might have to lay them off or furlough them. She didn't really know what. But as a last-ditch effort, she applied for this PPP loan. And she asked for $25,000. And last we heard from her, she had been approved for the loan, but she hadn't gotten it yet.

SMITH: And there was a little bit of drama at the end of the episode because the rollout of this PPP plan by the federal government, it was an absolute mess. The computers were crashing. Nobody knew the rules. It was first-come, first-served, so there was a limited amount of money, and everyone was desperately, like, refreshing the site, refreshing the site, trying to get through to get these loans.

FOUNTAIN: And after we published the episode, things got a little smoother the computer system was worked out. Congress put more money into the program. But this other problem arose, which was that it turned out that people who had, you know, banking relationships, people who knew their banker and had them on speed dial, were the most likely to get those early loans. And some people without those relationships kind of just gave up. And so now when we look at the data - we actually have a lot of the data now - we can see that richer neighborhoods got more of these loans per capita than poor neighborhoods and Black and brown neighborhoods.

SMITH: Absolutely. And if you've followed Twitter any amount over the last few months, you know there's also been this backlash against businesses who took the loans.

FOUNTAIN: People have strong feelings on the Internet about who got PPP money. That is an understatement.

SMITH: Well, there was this whole, like, you shouldn't have taken the money; I deserved the money. And then other people would be like, no, you shouldn't take the money. And the thing that really typified this was the Ayn Rand Institute, named after, of course, the famous author and philosopher Ayn Rand, who talked about the power of the individual and who railed against government handouts. Well, the organization named after her asked for a government handout.

FOUNTAIN: And, Robert, you and I have been sort of sending these articles back-and-forth - like, ah, ha-ha, Ayn Rand Institute got it. But all these articles really missed the point of the program, which was to get as much money into business owners' hands as quickly as possible so that they could keep people on the payroll. And at least for Audra, when I talked to her this week, that seems to have happened.

SMITH: Yes. You called Audra back. Tell me everything.

FOUNTAIN: Well, we FaceTimed. And quick side note - she was wearing one of those masks - have you seen these? People send in a photo of them smiling, and it's printed...

SMITH: No.

FOUNTAIN: ...On the mask.

SMITH: No.

FOUNTAIN: And so it's just very weird.

Hey, Audra.

FORDIN: Hi there, Nick.

FOUNTAIN: You at the shop?

FORDIN: Yes.

FOUNTAIN: How you been?

FORDIN: We're doing OK. You know, as far as - I guess you're asking with the PPE...

FOUNTAIN: Not the PPE, but the PPP.

FORDIN: PPP.

FOUNTAIN: I see that you're set with the PPE. You've got the mask. You've got the gloves. How about the PPP?

FORDIN: The PPP came through great. I got the money. It was timely.

SMITH: She got the money.

FOUNTAIN: Yeah. She asked for $25,000. She got all of it. And she says that it's been a huge help because business isn't actually at full strength yet, and despite that, she's been able to keep her whole team together.

FORDIN: There's a community that happened, and I can't make that up - the relationships.

FOUNTAIN: Yeah. It seems like you have such an awesome team, and it would've been such - so heartbreaking to lose any of those guys. And you didn't have to.

FORDIN: Well, not that I didn't have to. I chose not to.

SMITH: This is one example of a team that was able to stay together, which is good, which is exactly what this program was meant for.

FOUNTAIN: Yes, totally.

Are people working in the - on the floor right now? You want to...

FORDIN: You want to say hi to Cedric?

FOUNTAIN: Sure.

Robert, you remember Cedric Kang (ph), her lead mechanic, the guy who showed us all those drills?

SMITH: Yeah. (Imitating drill) - yeah. We recorded drills for 10 minutes, yeah.

FOUNTAIN: So many drills.

FORDIN: I'm sure he'll be happy to hear from you, too.

FOUNTAIN: Anyways, I got to talk to him for a second.

CEDRIC KANG: Hi, Nick. How are you?

FOUNTAIN: Hey, Cedric. What's going on?

KANG: All right. Not much. I have very good news for - you know, with my wife. We got a quarantine baby.

FOUNTAIN: You're having a baby?

KANG: Yeah, yeah.

FORDIN: Yeah.

FOUNTAIN: That's awesome.

SMITH: Such a happy ending. Thanks, Nick.

FOUNTAIN: You bet.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAWRENCE WONG'S "EYES ON YOU")

SMITH: The last four months were obviously hard for businesses that shut down. But in some ways, it was worse for the employees of the businesses that had to stay open. Those workers were essential. They weren't going to get fired, so no unemployment checks. And they had to show up for work in the middle of a pandemic. Sarah Gonzalez profiled some of those workers. Hey, Sarah.

GONZALEZ: Hey, Robert.

SMITH: Sarah, you visited a grocery store because you had to 'cause you were doing a story about grocery workers.

GONZALEZ: Yeah, essential workers.

SMITH: Tell us what the story was.

GONZALEZ: So about three months ago, I spent a morning at a grocery store in North Carolina with essential workers. And just to, like, remind listeners, this was a grocery store where everyone was a person of color, and mostly the people working there were women. I don't know if you guys remember this.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

FATIMA PAVON: Oh, no white people work here. No. We do have, you know, a little bit of everything except white people, yeah.

GONZALEZ: That was Fatima Pavon (ph). She works at Compare Foods supermarket. And when we spoke in April, she was trying to bring herself to ask for a raise because her job had gotten a lot riskier than she signed up for with the virus.

SMITH: And that was one of those interesting things about this story, is normally when a job is riskier, you get paid more for it. But in this case, no one had gotten a raise yet.

GONZALEZ: Yeah, no hazard pay. And Fatima made $9.20 an hour, which came out to about $300 a week.

SMITH: Which, we should say, is a lot less than she would've made if she had been fired and put on unemployment. Sarah, you called her back. What did she say?

GONZALEZ: Yeah, we checked in this week.

Hey, Fatima.

PAVON: Hey. How are you?

GONZALEZ: Hey. I'm good. How are you?

PAVON: Good.

GONZALEZ: So I was just curious what's going on with you.

PAVON: Nothing. I'm still at the - at my job. Only thing new is - so I got a raise.

GONZALEZ: You got a raise?

PAVON: Yeah. Yeah.

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Rest of the Story, Pandemic Edition : Planet Money - NPR

And what, incidentally, do you think integrity is? The ability not to pick a watch out of your neighbors pocket? Asks Ayn Rand in the classic Fountainhead and goes on to answer, No, its not as easy as that. If that were all, Id say ninety-five percent of humanity were honest, upright men. Only, as you can see, they arent. Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea. That presupposes the ability to think. Thinking is something one doesnt borrow or pawn.

The on-going catharsis in the Court No 1 of the Supreme Court has all the components for a competing episode in the theatre of Indian Judiciary. The histrionic screenplay unfolds in the backdrop of the gruesome and gory murder of 8 men in khaki, in a typical Maoist style operation just that it was not played out in the forests of Dandakaranya by a history sheeter roaming free with more than 60 criminal cases pending various stages of trial in different courts. The celebration in social media that followed the killing of Vikas Dubey and his men in police encounter was a sharp slap on the knuckles of our judiciary. What was being mocked at, if not questioned, was the integrity of the Indian judiciary.

The ensuing PIL drama in the Supreme Court is nothing but a cruel attack on the 8 policemen who were butchered on duty, by elements who do not believe in the concept of rule of law. This enactment is beginning to remind one of the Nirbhaya case the one who should not be named wherein the self-appointed conscience keepers of the legal cottage industry in Delhi took it upon themselves to dictate to the judiciary as to how their perverted idea of deliverance should substitute the idea of dispensation of justice.

I have dealt cases with Justice B S Chauhan. I too would have suggested his name, observed the CJI when the Solicitor General, representing the UP Government, submitted a draft notification for appointment of a three member inquiry commission. Instant verdict was delivered by this coterie and the farce did not even break for an adequate recess. Bang came the next petition, orchestrated with significant precision, attacking the retired bureaucrat in the Commission, that it appeared as if the CJI pleaded for the endorsement of this legal cabal while stating we will not allow you to cast aspersions on someones integrity on this. How can you call a man corrupt by a statement that simply says rule of law has to be followed?. In a court wherein public interest has got substituted by competing vested interests of criss-crossing factions those that want to selectively shed a cinematic tear only for blood-thirsty murderers as defined in the left-leaning human rights encyclopaedia an endless stream of frivolous petitions is becoming the new norm. What we are witnessing in Court no 1 is the precise death of obiter dicta one cut every day under the mindful watch of our robed luminaries.

Who is the director behind this clan which probably subscribes to no ideology other than the rule of expediency and wants to remote control the Supreme Court of India? Why should the Apex Court watch this political circus that aims to convert the highest seat of justice into a Lutyens panchayat exhibiting a tendency of judicial masochism? Who is behind these petitioners, lawyers, journalists, media platforms that earnestly want to dish out integrity certificates to serving and retired judges and bureaucrats? Should wine tasting sessions or kitty parties in swanky south Delhi living rooms decide what defines constitutional morality for the collective conscience of this country?

The joke, many would argue, is not on the judiciary but on us, the common people, who still believe in the institutional integrity of the courts. This joke gets amplified when you will learn that even after the Supreme Court dismissed the plethora of petitions asking the Commission to begin the enquiry, a fresh set of public interest litigations on the same issue have been filed, this time on the basis of a news report that appeared in a digital platform whos only point of existence is to expend certificates of virtue to every institution this country holds dear. One question that begs reply in this ongoing saga, even before the Commission has commenced an enquiry when will the tirade of these petitions stop?

The lofty acumen of the three member committee becomes evident when one has a sneak-peak into the 150 collective years in public service they have registered in service to this nation. Should the verdict of a failed journalist ruling on their integrity in a struggling left-leaning media platform be the only reason for the top court to open their doors for this unrelenting caucus in their endless fight to bring down the judicial values we cherish?

By questioning the single-member Commission and restructuring it on the plea of this professional legal clique, did the chief justice unwittingly play into their hands? Where will the line be drawn in the process of establishing justice? Or will that also be outsourced to the disastrous tone of these eminent activist lawyers? When the Supreme Court very often invokes the extraordinary jurisdiction in the name of public interest, should it not invoke the same authority to stop this brutally vicious tyranny that is being perpetually unleashed in the name of crony human rights?

If the killing of Vikas Dubey has evinced cheer from an otherwise peace-loving and law abiding public chamber, it is a moment to pause and reflect for the highest court of our land. What will be put on trial before the Chief Justice next week is not just the criminal justice system of our nation but the institutional integrity of the Supreme Court of India. Whether the Court No 1 wants to stand by their notion of integrity the ability to stand by their idea of justice or outsource this for the certification of the career activists, is a conscious choice that the bench will make. The Chief Justice with more than 40 years of significantly successful legal experience is carrying on his shoulders not just the combined wisdom of his predecessors but the unbearable heaviness of the aspirations of young India. Will he set a precedent by ending this stinking menace of judicial harassment by invoking Article 142 and cause a CBI enquiry? The nation is watching.

The Author is a Senior Journalist

The rest is here:

Law of Integrity the Joke's on Us - India Legal

During her Friday press briefing, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany touched again on the subject of cancel culture, and lamented that the Nickelodeon show PAW Patrol had been canceled. Calling the program a a cartoon show about cops she grouped it among other cop shows like, Cops and Live PD, which have actually been canceled. Unfortunately for the nations parents, McEnany was (and I know this is shocking) inaccurate. Sadly, PAW Patrol, in all of its saccharine, vivid, extremely grating, Canadian glory remains on the air.

But why would McEnany claim that PAW Patrol was canceled in the first place? Most likely because in the wake of ongoing police violence toward Black people, parents are casting a dubious eye towards PAW Patrols leading pup, Chase. The plucky German Shepherd is, well, problematic. He is a cop-dog and part of a seemingly privatized police force. He apparently operates with impunity, free of warrants, or public mandate. He has a goddamn surveillance drone. Which, you know, feels like the show is grooming a generation to accept the benevolent oversight of a police state.

Thats only a guess, though. Its also possible that Trump simply wasnt able to find his favorite show and assumed the worst.

The thing is that plenty of parents would welcome the cancelation of PAW Patrol. It would be a sweet release. Because for anyone over the age of 8, the show is basically unwatchable. The voices are pitched way too high and unnaturally optimistic. The plots are so simplistic and yet confounding that its likely even the target audience of Kindergartners feels that they are being patronized. And the characters? What is even going on there.

Do you plan on sending your kids back to school this fall?

Yes. I trust that our schools are taking precautions.

No. We don't feel that proper precautions are in place.

I'm not sure yet. It depends on how things progress.

Thanks for the feedback!

Leaving aside Chases fascist tendencies, theres the PAW Patrols owner, Ryder. Hes the child Ayn Rand never had, living out some kind of John Gault objectivist fantasy. Hes the child genius/iconoclast who has somehow managed to privatize the social infrastructure of Adventure Bay by replacing it with specialized dogs. Hes put the clumsiest one in charge of fire response, by the way, so sleep tight Adventure Bay! Even on the merits of his dog ownership, hes terrible. He basically neglects Zuma the water dog, giving most of his attention to his favorites. What kind of role model is that?

The merits of PAW Patrol are few and dim the second you count past It keeps my kid slack-jawed for a half-hour. Believe me, if the show were canceled there would be much parental rejoicing.

Is that cancel culture? Not in the way McEnany and the White House understands it. But lets be honest. Some things deserve to be canceled, simply because they are objectively terrible. PAW Patrol is one of those things and McEnany should be ashamed for getting our hopes up.

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No. PAW Patrol Wasn't Canceled. But We Wish It Had Been - Fatherly

Every day there is more data to prove the dangers of the coronavirus. Yet, bizarrely, the more proof we have of the damage of the pandemic; the more vicious and hysterical its deniers.It is hard not to be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of uninformed, deluded ideas covidiots spew on a daily basis. We mourn not just the lives lost and the bodies damaged, but the collective intelligence of our nation.With international news consistently depicting the United States as the dumbest nation in the developed world, it is as if news of the covidiocy is almost as depressing as news of the virus's spread itself.

The trend to what is described as America's move from freedom to"freedumb"has sadly been a long time in the making. The pandemic only painfully reveals a process that was well-documented by Charles Pierce's 2010 book "Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free."

Pierce opens with a story of Americans descending on the Creation Museum in Kentucky, where homeschooled children on field trips can behold a dinosaur wearing a saddle. With stories like these it is not hard to understand how this country lost its grip on even the most basic scientific concepts. It is not a big leap from dinosaurs in saddles to believing thatface masks make us sick.

Shortly before the 2016 election we started to hear that part of the problem with America's stupidity was the fact that social media allows us to exist in information silos or echo chambers where our ideas aren't challenged and where we get a daily dose of confirmation for our brand of personal wackiness. Surely, information silos are a problem, but as the pandemic deniers have shown, there is actually a fairly diverse array of covidiocy types.

In fact, when we lump all pandemic deniers together into the same pile, we miss the fact that what plagues America on acognitive levelis a far more serious disease, one that has neither one symptomnor one easy cure. Here are five main types of covidiots to look out for:

The eye rollers think that all of the news over the pandemic is exaggerated hype. This is the line of reasoning that suggests thatif we didn't test for the virus so well, our numbers would be more in line with other developed nations.The eye rollers think that the coronavirus is just like the flu and that its mortality rates are of no real significance.

You'd think all you'd need to do with an eye roller is show them the inside of an ICU or have them hear stories from those who have been gravely sickened by the virus. But the key to the eye roller is that they aren't going to believe a single piece of evidence because, from their view, all proof of the dangers of the pandemic is manufactured to produce hysteria.

The eye roller is disturbing for the fact that they have a long history of not taking a single critical issue in this nation seriously. So, coupled with their eye rolling over what they perceive as coronavirus hype, they are also likely to believe that we have no racism, no sexism, in fact, no significant problems whatsoever.For them, liberals manufacture issues that aren't real so that they can create social anxiety and elevate their policy platform. These are the people who disparage the Black Lives Matter movement as reverse racism and mock #MeToo as a problem of thin skin.

The shoulder shruggers are your Ayn Rand-style covidiots. These folks get the numbers and the science. They have a full sense of the dead bodies and damaged lungs, but they simply don't care. They epitomize the "profit over people" worldview.

This is the line of reasoningwe saw on displayby Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick who suggested that grandparents should be willing to die in order to save the economy for their grandkids:"My message: let's get back to work, let's get back to living, let's be smart about it, and those of us who are 70-plus, we'll take care of ourselves." According to him, there is no reason to "sacrifice the country" in order to save a few old people.

Like the eye rollers, the shoulder shruggers have a far more pernicious mindset that shapes their views on a wider set of concerns than the virus. These are the folks who see in the virus neoliberal opportunities to capitalize rather than empathize.

The hedonists simply don't want to be inconvenienced by the virus. They want their manicures, haircuts and happy hours. Their own selfishness dominates their behavior and clouds their ability to consider the wellbeing of others.They see the entire world from the vantage point of their pleasure-driven egos and they outright refuse to be inconvenienced for the benefit of others.

The narcissistic hedonists talk about how they have a right not to wear a mask and how those who worry over the pandemic should just stay home."You're infringing on my rights,"they screamany time they are told they can't enter a store without a mask. "This is a free country, and I'm here to shop."

The narcissistic hedonists have no commitment to a social project nor do they care a wit about the common good. They have weighed the costs and risks of their behavior and they think that their own desires are more valuable than their grandparents' lives.

This strain of covidiot also has a long history in this nation. Unlike the eye roller who thinks everything in the nation is already great or the shoulder shrugger who cares more about the economy than society, the narcissistic hedonist places their desires at the center of everything. And, even worse, they think that their own destructive ego-driven behavior is their "right" as Americans.

The self-proclaimed scientists are a unique strain of covidiot that derives from this nation's long resistance to expertise. The self-proclaimed scientist will tell you that you should not listen to Dr. Anthony Fauci.Instead you should listen to them, since they have done "research" and they know more about the virus than world-leading scientists.

Fauci,the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases,recently warned of the dangerous consequences of our national anti-science bias:"One of the problems we face in the United States is that unfortunately, there is a combination of an anti-science bias that people are for reasons that sometimes are, you know, inconceivable and not understandable they just don't believe science and they don't believe authority."

Yet, as Pierce documents in the book I cited earlier, the American tendency to eschew expertise and disparage science has extremely deep roots in our collective history. It is tied not just to religious extremism, but also to the history of anti-intellectualism in the U.S. The urge to put down teachers and professors alongside scientists is part of the American habit of distrusting smart people and it is tied to the idea that some folks would prefer a president theywant to have a beer withover an intellectual or even highly educated president.

The anti-expertise sickness that plagues the United States is sadly to blame for much of the failed U.S. response to the pandemic, but its negative impact on the functioning of our nation goes well beyond flaws in our healthcare system and public health policy. As long as we continue to be skeptical of knowledge and attracted to BS, we can expect our nation to continue to lookless and less like a developed nation.

One of the special features of conspiracy theorists is that they are found on both the left and the right, unlike a lot of the other strains of covidiots. They converge in the bizarre alternate reality of anti-vaxxers. But, regarding the coronavirus, the conspiracy theories are largely skewed to the right.

The range of conspiracy theories about the pandemic is simply too broad to cover in this piece.It spans from theories that the virus was deliberately started by China or by Bill Gates to theories that the virus simply isn't real at all.Naturereportedin March that "the website Biohackinfo.com falsely claimed that Gates planned to use a coronavirus vaccine as a ploy to monitor people through an injected microchip or quantum-dot spy software."

Healthline reported in Junethat 25 percent of people believe unproven theories about COVID-19. This is all to show that there is a strange urge in this country to attach to fantasy theories rather than facts.

The danger to the conspiracy theorist is not just their refusal to accept evidence that challenges their views, but rather their paranoid worries that any evidence is actually propaganda designed to dupe them and cause harm.The conspiracy theorist is so worried thinking that information is manipulation that they lose any sight of what the truth actually is.And as coverage of a Palm Beach County Commission meeting that went viral for the outlandish arguments presented by residents against a mask ordinance (which the Florida county did pass) shows, covidiots tend to mix up their reasons for refusing to wear masks and take the pandemic seriously. Trying to follow thesearguments against wearing masks will hurt your brain.

What's worse is that having to "debate" matters of science and evidence-based medicinetends to leave us fighting each other rather than the virus.Even more disturbing, there is no vaccine for covidiocy: It promises to linger well after the virus has been contained, wreaking havoc on our society, taking up resources and frustrating progress.It's a condition that has plagued our country for decades and it won't be cured until and unless we make a collective effort to prevent its spread.

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A field guide to the pandemic deniers - Salon

Two Minutes to Late Night continues to deliver some pretty cool quarantine covers, this time delivering perhaps their biggest star power to date, with members of Tool, Mastodon, Coheed and Cambria, Primus and Mutoid Man signing on to rock out Rush's 1975 song "Anthem."

The lineup includes Coheed's Claudio Sanchez on vocals, Mastodon's Bill Kelliher and Mutoid Man's Stephen Brodsky on guitars, Primus' Les Claypool on bass and Tool's Danny Carey behind the kit.

Each of the musicians bring their own unique look to the song, whether it be Kelliher's light goggles, Claypool's gas mask or Brodsky's continually changing backgrounds. But it all makes for a video that not only captures the eye, but delivers a raucous cover that more than lives up to the original.

"Uhhh... Holy Moley. It's Claudio Sanchez, Bill Kelliher, Les Claypool, Danny Carey, and Steve Brodsky covering a Rush song. We're just as surprised as you are," gushed Hall, later adding that in lieu of taking money for the cover, the participants decided to donate their fees to the Cancer Research Institute. Kelliher composed the cover that the collective performed.

"Anthem" was the lead off song on Rush's 1975 album Fly By Night. Neil Peart would name the song after Ayn Rand's novella of the same name, taking inspiration from the piece while working on the lyrics.

Rush served a big influence to a number of musicians, with Primus even plotting a tribute tour to Rush's A Farewell to Kings that has been moved from this summer to 2021.

Claudio Sanchez, Bill Kelliher, Les Claypool, Danny Carey, Stephen Brodsky + Gwarsenio Hall Cover Rush's "Anthem"

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Mastodon, Tool, Coheed + Cambria, Primus Members Team on Cover of Rush's 'Anthem' - Loudwire