Ayn Despite the Randians
The 50th anniversary of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged is being celebrated by her partisans, and they are many – myself among them. Rand’s novel of what happens when “the men of the mind” go on strike is the second most widely-read text in the US, just below the Bible. To the dismay of her more enthusiastic admirers, this popularity doesn’t indicate total agreement with her “Objectivist” philosophy so much as it is a tribute to the author’s talent for telling a rip-roaring fasten-your-seatbelts story.
Atlas Shrugged is full of so many plot twists and turns, and some really cinematic scenes, that it’s hard to put down: when I read it, at the age of 15 or so, I took off three days from school to lay prone on my bed poring over a $1 paperback edition – wow, I thought, a whole dollar for a paperback: more than double the usual price! The thing was printed in 6-point Eyestrain. I had put off reading it for months, on the grounds that nothing – nothing! – could surpass The Fountainhead, Rand’s 1943 bestseller that told the story of an architect who wanted to build buildings his way. I had also read her earlier works, We the Living – her first novel, a re-telling of Tosca, with some Randian variations, set against the backdrop of Soviet Russia – and Anthem, a novelette set in a future society where the word “I” has been forgotten (along with modern science).
The Fountainhead is novel of gemlike workmanship: Rand really was a dramatist of the first order. The elements of the plot are so deftly integrated into the theme – the primacy of individualism and the evils of the “second-hander,” who exists merely as a reflection in the eyes of others—that the reader barely notices (consciously) what she’s driving at, until the hero’s stirring courtroom speech. What, in lesser hands, could easily have degenerated into an ideological tirade, instead became one of the classics of American literature.
A Russian immigrant, born Alisa Zinov’yevna Rosenbaum, she had wrangled an invitation out of relatives in Chicago, and was among the last of those allowed to leave the Soviet hellhole: she got out just in time, as it is unlikely she would have survived the Stalinist purges. In Russia, she had dreamed of one day entering the world depicted in Western movies, and wrote outlines for screenplays, short stories, and novels set in the West. The young Rand lived out her dream of freedom and fame from the very first moment she caught sight of the Statue of Liberty: as her ship sailed into New York harbor, she gazed worshipfully at the soaring skyscrapers of the greatest city on earth and vowed, then and there, that someday she would pen a tribute to those spires and the spirit that built them.
The Fountainhead came almost two decades later: in the meantime, the woman whose name was to become synonymous with individualism as a social and ethical philosophy had to fight her way through what later came to be known as the “Red Decade,” as Eugene Lyons put it in his book on the fashionable “radicalism” of the 1930s. As I pointed out in my TTD essay on Lawrence Dennis, this was a time when the issue wasn’t “Capitalism versus Socialism,” but, rather, what form of socialism would displace a decrepit, discredited, and doomed system based on private ownership.
In this atmosphere, Rand – who had gone to Hollywood, written screen treatments for Cecil B. DeMille, married an actor, Frank O’Connor, and published her first novel, We the Living, in 1936—banded together with the very few intellectual advocates of individualism, and free market economics: the movement we know today as the Old Right. Her latter-day followers like to pretend that she sprang forth, unprecedented, like Minerva from the head of Zeus, but in the beginning she considered herself part of a “movement,” and in her letters dealing with political matters, she offhandedly refers to “our cause.”
This was the cause of the Old Right, where she found kindred spirits such as Isabel Paterson, the literary critic and novelist, with whom she shared more than just what were then considered eccentric political views: both of these rather formidable ladies were cantankerous, and quarrelsome, to a fault, and it was inevitable that they would eventually have a falling out.
Rand’s extraordinary touchiness, coupled with a blazing certainty, is exhibited in her letters, which detail her effort to start a mass membership organization opposing the New Deal and advocating laissez-faire capitalism. Her hectoring missives to would-be supporters are brimming over with details, with lectures from her on everything from the precise intellectual arguments to be made by the group’s spokesmen down to the organizational details:
“Here is the outline of the Organization Plan, which we discussed. … You will notice the precautions which I mention to keep the organization from being kidnapped by the wrong element, in particular the absence of general elections. This is most essential – or the whole thing will be snatched right from under our feet as soon as it shows signs of succeeding.”
None of this “democracy” business for her! The Randian version of the Politboro would lay down the Correct Line – a pattern that was resurrected in the cult-like movement she would spawn years later, whose top leadership was dubbed “the Collective” – an in-joke that eventually took on a sinister meaning. But that was years in the future: Rand the artist was yet to morph into Rand the ranting ideologue.
During this whole time, in which she was struggling to gain recognition as a writer, as well as to preserve the liberty of her adopted country against the depredations of the FDR-socialist –commie grand alliance, she was writing The Fountainhead. She took off to write a few plays, one of which, Penthouse Legend, also known as Night of January 16th, was a success. It is another, almost Nietzschean paean to individualism in the form of a courtroom drama, in which the audience decides the verdict. The hero is based on Ivar Krueger, the Swedish “Match King,” whose career was said to be a parable about the evils of capitalism: Rand, creating a character based loosely on Kruegar, made him into a hero. It was her characteristic talent to make the unlikely seem nearly inevitable.
The success of The Fountainhead gave her the financial freedom she had never enjoyed: she bought a house designed by Richard Neutra, which looked as if it had been built by the hero of The Fountainhead, and started planning her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged. A movie version of The Fountainhead was made, directed by King Vidor, with great sets and starring a slightly-over-the-hill Gary Cooper and his then-paramour, Patricia Neal, reappearing on the bestseller list years after its initial publication. (By the way, a movie was also made out of We the Living, during the war, in Fascist Italy: and if you want to see Rand’s dramatic gifts unleashed – they shot the movie, sans a script, directly from the book itself – then get yourself a copy.)
After The Fountainhead was published, in 1943, Rand received a long fan letter from a young admirer, and she replied: the exchange soon turned into a regular correspondence, and eventually Nathaniel Blumenthal, a nineteen-year-old Canadian student, met Rand, and, along with his girlfriend, Barbara, the trio became inseparable. Withdrawing from her contacts on the Old Right, such as Paterson, Leonard Read, California entrepreneur William C. Mullendore, and dropping her political activities, she withdrew into her limited social circle, which consisted largely of the Brandens – the couple had wed, and Nathaniel had changed his name to Branden – and what Rand later called “the class of ’43,” consisting mainly of the Brandens and their relatives. .
Much has been written about the affair between Branden and Rand, which is the main subject of the movie version of Barbara Branden’s The Passion of Ayn Rand – a film that often seems like a Dadaist porno flick, with numerous and quite steamy sex scenes interspersed with “philosophical” mini-speeches and melodrama. Yet the reduction of Rand’s life and fame to this “illicit” liaison – virtually every biographical account over-emphasizes the importance of this incident – is typical of the culture Rand came to despise: that is, typical of American culture, which seems more and more obsessed by sex, the more illicit the better.
Branden, however, was trouble in another sense: he was not only her lover, but also the champion of her new philosophy, which – in a marketing decision of unsurpassed tone-deafness – she called “Objectivism.” The basic precepts of the Randian ethos are encapsulated in a speech by one of the characters in Atlas Shrugged that goes on for some fifty pages. From this, one would perhaps judge the book a failure, a case in which didacticism finally overwhelmed Rand’s sense of the dramatic, and yet it isn’t so: she managed to pull it off. Atlas is full of Rand’s strong suit: a hefty plot-line and colorful characters. While much is made of the alleged “unrealistic” and even “impossible” nature of her heroes and heroines, most of the cast of Atlas is quite believable: Francisco D’Anconia, the playboy industrialist, Dagny Taggart, the leggy head of the Taggart Transcontinental railroad, Hank Rearden, the dutiful husband and brilliant businessman, whose virtues go unappreciated by his family: only John Galt, supposedly the main character, who doesn’t appear until well after halfway through the novel, is not fully realized. Howard Roark, the architect-hero of The Fountainhead, was a bit austere, yet believable: and Dominique Francon is certainly one of the more memorably glamorous females in the fictional pantheon of American literature.
Better yet, however, at least in my estimation, are the villains: Ellsworth Toohey, the archetypal power-mad manipulator-of-men, whose methods and motives seem very neoconnish before the term “neocon” was even invented; James Taggart, brother of Dagny, the sort of businessman who always rises to the top in a quasi-socialist economy, i.e. the sort with big political connections and a “social conscience” – and who can forget Lois Cook, the avant-garde novelist who lived in a house with tiled walls and whose stream-of-consciousness novel, Clouds and Shrouds, was the sort of “poetry” that neither rhymed nor scanned? Lorine Pruette of the New York Times said of The Fountainhead that Rand could write “beautifully, bitterly,” and certainly she is at her bitterest when detailing her villains, instantly recognizable as types yet three-dimensional and uniquely Randian.
Rand’s friendship with the Brandens led to all sorts of trouble, and not just of the romantic variety: for Branden and his wife, Barbara, saw in their mentor not only an intellectual inspiration, but a meal ticket. The organization they set up, initially called Nathaniel Branden Lectures, and then the Nathaniel Branden Institute (NBI), devoted to spreading her philosophy, was fantastically successful. Although the reviewers had not been kind to Atlas Shrugged, the book became an immediate best-seller, and it remains so to this day: while the liberal-left reviewers (and the boys over at National Review) were tearing their hair out over her popularity, Rand’s philosophy of self-interest, reason, and “self-esteem” was enormously popular with precisely the sort of middlebrow Americans who didn’t listen to the gate-keepers in the first place. Soon NBI had lecture courses in every major American city, and started expanding internationally. The Randian leadership “collective” – as the “class of ’43,” expanded beyond its original small numbers, jokingly called itself – was expanding like the Borg, but it was only a matter of time before the whole enterprise blew up ….
The worm at the center of the apple was Branden’s ongoing affair with Rand, and when that came to an end – when the age difference between the two lovers, some 26 years, became too much for Branden to bear – so did the “Objectivist” empire. Rand discovered that her erstwhile lover was being unfaithful – not with his wife (the two had long since officially separated), but with a 20-something woman on the outer rungs of the Randian “collective” – and that was the spark that set off a conflagration that is, incredibly, still burning after all these years.
Rand denounced the Brandens, excommunicated them from the “collective,” shut down NBI, and surrounded herself with the sort of devotees who never question and never contradict: and yet her inner circle of followers kept getting smaller, as purge followed purge, and someone was cast into the outer darkness for their sins (either real, or imagined), even while her readership increased. Eventually, she shut down her magazine, The Objectivist, and began issuing an irregular newsletter The Ayn Rand Letter, which also succumbed to her growing disinterest in the world outside her apartment. The death of her husband added to her depression, and, when she died, of lung cancer, she left her estate to the last of her remaining disciples: Leonard Peikoff, Barbara Branden’s cousin, who started out as the low man on “the collective” totem pole and wound up with everything by managing to be the most servile of her courtiers.
Although Rand fought any attempt to market her philosphy via an official “school,” or lecture course, after the break with the Brandens, Peikoff set up the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) after her death, and created an exceeding weird cult that just gets weirder as time goes on. Peikoff presides over the group as a kind of éminence grise, with an Israeli, Yaron Brook, as the new man in charge. Born and raised in Israel, Brook was an officer in Israeli military intelligence, and came to the U.S. to teach at Santa Clara University, where he started an equity management firm and became involved in the “Objectivist” movement.
Whereas the defense and valorization of Israel had been a preoccupation of the Peikoff regime – an entire page of the group’s web site was devoted to the topic “In Moral Defense of Israel” – Brook took this to new heights … or, perhaps, depths is a more descriptive word. In any case, Brook’s application of the principles of “Objectivism” to the foreign policy and military realms is unique in the annals of individualist thought: that is, uniquely bloodthirsty. According to Brook, America must devote itself to a totalistic war against Islam, and all Islamic countries everywhere. He was way ahead of his time in advocating an attack on Iran, and complains that we are “holding back” in Iraq because we (supposedly) have too much regard for the lives of innocents. According to Brook, there are no Arab or Muslim innocents: they all have to be killed if they get in the way of our total “victory.” The “Objectivists” throw away the old Randian formula of non-coercive relations between human beings, which holds that force may be used “only in self-defense,” and only “against those who initiate its use.” Here is the new “Objectivist” dispensation as enunciated by Senor Brook:
“What specific military actions would have been required post-9/11 to end state support of Islamic Totalitarianism is a question for specialists in military strategy, but even a cursory look at history can tell us one thing for sure: It would have required the willingness to take devastating military action against enemy regimes—to oust their leaders and prominent supporters, to make examples of certain regimes or cities in order to win the surrender of others, and to inflict suffering on complicit civilian populations, who enable terrorist-supporting regimes to remain in power.”
According to the “Objectivists” of today, every citizen of a totalitarian or otherwise un-free enemy state is “complicit” in their own subjugation and the depredations of their rulers because they haven’t overthrown the regime. And even if they had so acted, albeit without success, the “self-interest” of the West would dictate their annihilation. Here is what one such theoretician of mass murder, Onkar Ghate, has to say:
“Morally, the responsibility of the U.S. government is to destroy our aggressors and minimize U.S. casualties. If our military decides that in this war, as in WWII, it needs nuclear weapons, so be it.
“But what of the "innocent" civilians in enemy states that could be killed in the process?
“Many civilians in those states hate us and actively support, materially and spiritually, their tyrannical regimes. They are not innocents. As we drop our bombs, should we worry about the lives of Palestinians who celebrated by dancing in the streets on September 11?”
Hey, wait a minute – we’re bombing Palestinians? How did they come into it? I never heard anyone blame them for the 9/11 terrorist attacks, or impute to them any desire or ability to attack America or Americans – Israel is their enemy, not the U.S.—but, to the fanatically pro-Israel “Objectivists,” all Arabs are the same and the only good one is a dead one, as Senor Ghate makes all to clear:
“Other civilians in enemy states are passive, unthinking followers. Their work and economic production, however meager, supports their terrorist governments and so they are in part responsible for the continued power of our aggressors. They too are not innocent—and their deaths may be unavoidable in order for America to defend itself.”
They are not innocent—because they live, breathe, and work. Therefore, we must kill them all. That isn’t just wrong: it’s crazy, a toxic blend of ideology and psychopathology. The most fanatic Zionist ultra-nationalist could hardly have put it any better than that, and it’s worthy of note that, in spite of the “Objectivist” hostility to all religion, one never hears denunciations of Judaism, but only vicious attacks on Christianity as the main danger to reason and human freedom.
These people do not shy away from spilling blood, indeed they seem to glory in it, and if the following isn’t sheer bloodlust then I don’t know what else to make of it, and I quote Mr. Ghate:
“The civilians in enemy territory who actually oppose their dictatorial regimes are usually the regimes’ first innocent victims. Any such individuals who remain alive and outside of prison camps should try to flee their country or rebel. Destroying innocents qua innocents should not be our goal—and true innocents should welcome American attack on their country. They know that they might be killed in the process, and even that they are legitimate targets insofar as they are forced to support their dictatorial regimes, but they will also know that it is their only chance at freedom.”
Under Brooks, the Institute has taken a line of unconditional and unflinching support for Israel: Brook even compared Israel to the hero of The Fountainhead, and declared that it was fighting to defends its “integrity” — an awfully strange perspective for an avowed atheist, since what Israel is seeking above all to preserve is its integrity as a self-proclaimed Jewish state. Here is one David Holcberg, another ARI blood-luster:
“Israel should declare and wage war not only against the Palestinian leadership but also against the Palestinian people. The inevitable deaths of a few truly innocent Palestinians should not stop Israel from doing whatever it takes to eliminate its enemies.”
While the appeal of “Objectivism” in Israel itself is minuscule, and, as the Jerusalem Post commented, “Those familiar with Rand’s disdain for religion and socialism might find her sympathy for Israel surprising,” Brook unhesitatingly declares:
“We view what happens in Israel as an indicator of what will happen in the rest of the world. To the extent America abandons Israel, it abandons itself. Israel is a beacon of civilization in a barbaric, backward area. Israel represents, despite its flaws, the values of the West: individual rights, free speech, freedom of the press, equality before the law and the rule of law.”
Here we see a truly odd reversal, the mutation of what was originally an ultra-individualistic philosophy based on the primacy of reason into a dark parody of dispensationalist Christianity. Ostensibly, and formally, the two movements could not be more different, but, as Ayn Rand once said, “Don’t bother to examine a folly: ask yourself only what is accomplishes.” What the dispensationalist and the Objectivists have in common is their unconditional support for the state of Israel, and, not only that, but the centrality of Israel in their ideological computations. To the dispensationalists, of course, Israel is indeed the ultimate “indicator of what will happen,” because their theology sees the gathering of the Jews together in the land of Israel as a sign of the Second Coming of Christ.
In ARI, the church of the latter-day “Objectivists,” we have what might be called Bizarro-individualism: that is, an “individualist” philosophy that justifies and advocates mass murder of innocents, and one that, although officially atheistic, is a fanatic supporter of a state that defines itself in explicitly religious terms. And, of course, the same regard for “individualism” is shown in its treatment of internal dissidents:
Through the years, the “Objectivist” movement has gone through so many splits and fissures—almost always over personal rather than ideological issues, although the real reasons are always given an intellectual gloss—and there are now at least two rival groups: ARI and the Institute for Objectivist Studies, which recently changed its name to the Atlas Society. The former is, stylistically, more “hardcore,” while the latter is for the “softer,” more human sorts. However, the differences between them are microscopic and hard for any outsider to understand, mostly having to do with their varying attitudes toward the Brandens—who wrote tell-all books about their experiences with Rand—and, indeed, toward anyone and anything outside the cultic universe of “Objectivism.”
Bizarro-Objectivism—a sad, even pathetic end for the legacy of Ayn Rand—but, then again, Rand’s big problem was always other people (not unusual for an individualist), and in particular her followers, starting but hardly ending with the Brandens. I learned this early on, at the age of 15, when I met Rand after one of her lectures in New York City. I had gone down with a couple of friends to hear Rand speak on “Basic Principles of Literature,” and after her talk there was an autograph line. I hurriedly bought a paperback copy of We the Living—the cheapest one they had —and patiently waited my turn to stand face to face with my favorite author. We were told that we weren’t going to be allowed to say anything to her, and that we had to print our name in the upper right hand corner of the book, so she would know who to inscribe the book to, and that was supposed to be that. Well, I knew that she would just look at me and know that here is a kindred soul, and we would soon be steeped in conversation—and this turned out to be not all that far from the truth. Because, you see, she looked at my name, looked at me, looked back down at my name, and then—seeming somewhat puzzled—announced: “I can’t sign this. Wait over there and I’ll tell you why after I’ve finished here.”
Wow! I was bowled over, delirious with joy: my heroine had acknowledged my inner nobility, looking past the thick glasses and the somewhat pimply adolescent face, and peered into my very soul—and I had not been found wanting! My friends, who had been watching all this from a safe distance, were less assured that this was what was going on, and wanted to know what trouble I had gotten myself into this time. As it turned out, they were a lot closer to the truth.
It seemed like an eternity before the autograph line shrunk appreciably, but finally the moment arrived when she motioned me over, and I went over to her like a little puppy dog wagging its tail but remembering to maintain a properly stern Randian mien as I got closer. Her eyes were the main thing about her face, and they gazed at me like two searchlights turned on full strength, wide and bright, as she asked if I had written an article entitled “Objectivism and the Liberty Amendment.”
I thought I was seeing stars as it all came back to me, and I remembered why she had a bone to pick with me. I had indeed written just such an article, which had been published in the newsletter of the National Youth Council of the Liberty Amendment Committee, then edited by David Nolan, and as Rand looked at me, with those x-ray eyes of hers, I remembered receiving that letter from her lawyer, Henry Mark Holzer, which threatened to sue me for supposedly posing as “a spokesman for Objectivism.” It was all coming back to me in a rush: I had torn the letter up and mailed the fragments back to Mr. Holzer, along with a note telling him what I thought of him and his threats. No wonder she was pissed! Rand said to me: “You know, it wasn’t a very good article.” “Of course it wasn’t,” I said, “that’s because they cut it, Miss Rand!” I explained that I had submitted a five-page piece, which the editor had cut down to one and a half pages.
She was looking at me now quite intensely, but I wasn’t afraid of that merciless spotlight, because I was telling the truth, and, what’s more, I knew she would be sympathetic. After all, hadn’t Howard Roark, the hero of the Fountainhad, blown up a building of his that had been altered in construction? Well, then, surely the author of that book would be sympathetic to my plight, and, of course, she was. She broke into a smile, perhaps at the vehemence with which I lamented the cuts made to my piece, and we started talking: “So,” she exclaimed, “you want to be a writer!”
We talked for a good twenty minutes, about writing, and my ambition to become a novelist: she gave me all kinds of advice. “Don’t let them get away with it!” she declared on the topic of meddling, cut-happy editors. She advised me to attach a cover letter to each editorial submission stating that no cuts may be made without the author’s written permission. I followed this perfectly awful advice well into my twenties, and, while my literary sins may account for most if not all of the years of rejection I faced at that point in my career, certainly these notes didn’t help.
In any case, while we were talking the lawyer, Senor Holzer, was lurking somewhere in the background, and I recall Nathaniel Branden standing around, looking somewhat embarrassed, along with several other of her disciples: doubtless the complete absurdity of threatening to sue a 15-year-old boy dawned on a few of them, and, although no one said anything, perhaps this underscored, in turn, the tragi-comic aspects of their little cult.
This demonstrates, for me, the problem that any writer encounters when he or she acquires “followers,” fans, or what have you. Writing is a solitary pursuit, and this would seem to be self-evident to anyone who holds to any philosophy of individualism, yet Rand allowed herself to become the object of a cult, and it’s telling that she never wrote another novel after that. Atlas Shrugged was published in 1957, and she had two more decades to live, and yet all she did was churn out articles for her newsletters and putz around with her followers. In spite of this turn to didacticism, she never bothered to write her long-promised nonfiction exposition of “Objectivism”: only some short pieces, and a slim monograph on “Objectivist epistemology.” And that’s it. All in all, a very thin reed on which to base a philosophical system, the construction of which was her life’s ambition.
In the end, Rand betrayed her vocation as an author—a novelist, a dramatist, a writer of fiction—to take up the reins of a cult leader. No wonder the wellsprings of her creative genius dried up.
I hear that they’re trying, once again, to make the movie version of Atlas Shrugged: Angelina Jolie is reportedly interested in playing the part of Dagny Taggart. While this project has been in the works for years, and been repeatedly abandoned by various owners of the movie rights—Atlas, after all, would be terribly difficult to translate into a film because of all the lengthy speeches, not to mention the characters’ internal monologues—it isn’t an impossible task, and perhaps the release of such a movie will reawaken interest in Rand the fiction writer, rather than Rand the ideologue. This, after all, is her true legacy: not the distortions promulgated by Peikoff, Brooks & Co., but the unforgettable characters and stories she created, enriching my life and giving the world her unique vision of man as a heroic being.
There are too many people who say that Rand was an aberration of their youth, that they’ve “grown up,” and forgotten their dreams— hopelessly compromising themselves in the process — and they now claim to “know better.” When I was fifteen, I vowed never to become one of these people—whom I often met in bookshops—and I haven’t, and I won’t. Rand, to me, is an inspiration: she imparted to me a certain toughness without which I couldn’t have survived as a writer, or, indeed, as much of anything, and she continues to influence me in my work and my life. The grotesque Bizarro World version of her philosophy pushed by ARI and its imitators has little if anything to do with her or her novels: indeed, as I have pointed out in this essay, they are in many ways the complete opposite of what she preached and practiced.
No, I don’t agree with her on some topics, especially those subjects she knew little about, such as foreign policy, although her own views on World War II— she was an “isolationist” — are overlooked by her alleged followers as they take up their chosen role as the genocidal wing of the War Party. (Chris Sciabarra has done yeomen’s work in uncovering the foreign policy implications of her thought.)
Rand will, I think— I hope— eventually overcome the embarrassment of her “followers.” The true legacy of Ayn Rand, the artist, will live on, even as the “philosophy” she hoped would usher in a second renaissance fades into irrelevance.
Comments
“To the gas chambers-go!”
Whittaker Chambers,"Big Sister is Watching You”
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The main problem with Rand, as with many right-libertarians, is that she was confused about freedom and didn’t understand economics.
The excellent essay “Are you a real libertarian or a Royal libertarian?” explains why, and addresses Rand in particular.
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Oh give it up...it was a sad day when this pathetic bitch washed on our shores…she begat Alan Greenspan---one of the original members of the inner circle in NYC, and of course, we know what Alan Greenspan stands for---plutocracy, government bailouts for the rich, and strip the safety net for the poor and the middle class. Of course, we’ve got the war in Iraq---which we all know is to maintain the petro-dollar as reserve currency, so “freedom loving” Alan Greenspan can export his inflation, and give hedge fund managers and real estate speculators a free ride---on the backs of the middle class.
Ayn Rand? Oh poop…among her fans are Neuter Gingrich and the whole “Republican Revolution” which generated the “deregulation” of the securities markets that created Enron, WorldCom and the rest of the 1990’s “promise to America”….
Another thing. What this crapola about a Rosenbaum becoming a “Rand” and a Blumenthal becoming a “Brandon”… what a freaking joke! Give me a break…the “gifts of the Jews” turned out to be the most miserable horrors of the 2oth Century---Communism, Nationalism, and Laissez Faire Capitalism.
Sadly I shared poor Justin’s early infatuation with Ayn Rand…but unlike poor Justin most of us realized what bunch of crap she was dishing out…and so it’s only a surprise to fools like Justin that the “Objectivism” he’s complaining about is what Rand’s legacy is all about. Look, now of course, we’ve got the “legacy” in the host of Ivory Tower think tanks in DC, CATO and the AHF and the like…ironically all declaring their support for the “War on Terrorism” that Justin Raimondo has dedicated his life to exposing.
Justin you sound like the commies on the Left, who complain that Stalinism was not “real communism”, and “Cult of Individualism” and Alan Greenspan’s plutocracy wasn’t really what Ayn Rand’s goofy ideas and stolen philosophy meant all along. Isn’t it time for you to grow up Justin?
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Virgil Caine, here’s a link to the original Whittaker Chambers article you alluded to, his evisceration of her crackpot sophomoric philosophy. It was in NR in 1957, long before the neocons took it over:
http://www.nationalreview.com/flashback/flashback200501050715.asp
The “Marxism of the Right”, it is indeed.
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Ayn Rand had utter contempt for other humans, except for herself and those of her ilk. She was an extremely insensitive and jingoistic person, Justin. I’m surprised at your attempt to rehabilitate her. Here’s an excerpt from a speech she gave in 1974 where she calls Arabs ‘savages’:
“Further, why are the Arabs against Israel? (This is the main reason I support Israel.) The Arabs are one of the least developed cultures. They are typically nomads. Their culture is primitive, and they resent Israel because it’s the sole beachhead of modern science and civilization on their continent. When you have civilized men fighting savages, you support the civilized men, no matter who they are. Israel is a mixed economy inclined toward socialism. But when it comes to the power of the mind—the development of industry in that wasted desert continent—versus savages who don’t want to use their minds, then if one cares about the future of civilization, don’t wait for the government to do something. Give whatever you can. This is the first time I’ve contributed to a public cause: helping Israel in an emergency.”
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Dooh Nibor.
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‘Justin you sound like the commies on the Left, who complain that Stalinism was not “real communism”, and “Cult of Individualism” and Alan Greenspan’s plutocracy wasn’t really what Ayn Rand’s goofy ideas and stolen philosophy meant all along. Isn’t it time for you to grow up Justin?’
Or like paleocons when they whine that the neocons aren’t real conservatives?
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Even before the neocons, NR was still a magazine largely devoted to militarism.
Long before the neocons, Buckley remarked:
‘we have got to accept Big Government for the duration–for neither an offensive nor a defensive war can be waged...except through the instrumentality of a totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores.’
And one wonders why the neocons feel at home at NR?
If anything, conservatism is the Marxism of the Right.
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Those Objectivists who urge us not to consider “The lives of Palestinians who celebrated by dancing in the streets on September 11,” as having any value would surely sing an alternative tune about the 5 Israelis in New Jersey arrested celebrating the same event while it happened. Don’t be so coy, they are, as are most neocons, racists, pure and simple, Jewish Nazi-like racists.
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good morning justin...heretofore, i have seldom written comments to authors regarding their work...i salute you...your essay on rand is brilliant...ayn rand was the center of conversation 50 years ago in my circle of aspiring artists in hollywood (actors, writers etc., etc.)...you have taken a difficult controversial subject and their body of work and “nailed” the tie to a philosophy of yore...there is a reason for the longevity of interest in ayn rand’s work...and you have identified this interest brilliantly...thanks much, justin raimondo...regards, charles…
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Another overrated Jew(ess).
Just like Peter Ustinov, Alan Greenspan, Sacha Baron Cohen, etc. Gee, what dark force can it be that lauds these faux brilliant characters? Could this undeserved uplifting have something to do with the fact that so many journalists and academics are Jews too? No, it couldn’t, because that would surely be “anti-semitic” to claim that these people feel more for their own kind than for the rest of us.
And the lady supports Israel thanks to Israels civilisational superiority, in contrast to the untermensch Arabs. Her support for Israel of course had nothing to do with herself belonging to the chosen tribe.
Ayn Rand’s philosophy is about greed and egotism. She believes she is superior to “ordinary” and supposedly unthinking folks. Which gives her the right to trample on them and to use them like man uses cattle.
There was a similar movement in Germany once, just as cruel and bloodthirsty as her modern followers. Shame she couldn’t join that movement, because they disliked Jews.
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I don’t know what is happening to me. For two days in a row I like what John Ball has written!! When the barricades go up, finally, there will only be two choices: those who enlist in support of the “rocking cradle of Behtlehem,” and those who militate in the ranks of the “rough beast.” I wonder on which side the Radians will find themselves....
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Great insight.
I always wondered why my fellow libertarian Objectivist friends were so fanatical pro-war. I never read anything about it Rand’s novels. I like Rothbard better, because of his antiwar views.
@RinTinTin
Mrs. Rand was a great, brave novelist and a voice of sanity among statist socialist madness. She turned her personal horrible experiences into something positive, a minarchist movement.
She may have been proven wrong on some or even many things, but she was right on the money for defending the individual against ever more forceful collectives.
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I guess we must all have our guilty pleasures, Mr. Raimondo, (mine is Gloria Trevi), but we should be a bit more realistic about them. When I was in college, I read Atlas Shrugged, expecting to be impressed because everyone told me I would be impressed. Instead I found the book to be a tedious, mean-spirited bore - just like its author.
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Martin sed: “Or like paleocons when they whine that the neocons aren’t real conservatives?”
Actually, neo-cons and libertarians have more in common then they have in differences. They both believe in the unfettered “free market” and “private property”. They both share distain for the social issues like abortion, gay marriage and white working class resentment to racial preferences---the “wedge issues that Republicans capitalize on. They both support open borders and unrestrained immigration that is destroying America’s cultural unity. And frankly, most “libertarians” support the “War on Terror”…And like neo-conservativism, “libertarianism” is largely the intellectual creation of counter-cultural Jewish intellectuals. Communism, Nationalism, and Laissez Faire Capitalism---all the “gifts of the Jews” to the 20th Century.
And as Justin points out, he and his fans are mostly out in “Left field” when it comes to most of CATO/AHF/ATR(Norquist) mainstream “libertarian ideas” on the “War on Islamofascism”…
The real problem with the conservative movement is the nonsense about “fusionism”.
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Rin Tin Tin: Ayn Rand’s philosophy is about greed and egotism. She believes she is superior to “ordinary” and supposedly unthinking folks. Which gives her the right to trample on them and to use them like man uses cattle.
Yup. You described it perfectly!
The problem with Justin and his fans is they actually BELIEVE all this nonsense about “individualial liberty” and the “free market”...like commies believe in “social justice” and “equality of man”....
It’s all utopian nonsense.
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Gee, I’m glad that Rin Tin Tin had the courage and common sense to warn us against the profound civilizational threat posed to Christendom by the perfidious…
... Peter Ustinov.
Yep, his PBS documentaries and Shakespeare performances are an ongoing menace, and just another cog in the Great Conspiracy of the Synagogue of Satan to plant listening devices in all our prostate glands…
so the Talmudic lizards can ...
render our pets impotent and…
forcibly inseminate ...
domestic cattle with alien zygotes..
arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggghhhhhh!!!!!
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Enjoyed the article, Justin.
JohnGalt of your ‘Gannon’ story a few years back.
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My problem with Atlas Shrugged is that it avoids two real world problems.
The looters and moochers are on the other side of a magic invisibility fence so the residents of Galt’s Gulch don’t have to figure out how to defend their homes (the problem of you go to the front line, I’ll enjoy the liberty you purchase for me with your blood).
And even the mythical magical magnetic motor avoids the problem of scarce resources - No land? Powered greenhouses. An infinite perfectly clean energy source goes a long way to removing problems of public goods and externalities.
To a large extent, Galt’s gulch is a world without scarcity not because of economics but because of magic.
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Objectivism is an uniquely American cult of personality which at its heart is a total crock of shit.
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Beautifully written, Mr. Raimondo. No wonder I turn to Anti-War first each morning.
All the best, Sir.
Daniel F. Bonner
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@ John Ball and Dr. Cathey
John, thanks for posting the link. I’m not so good at that. Dr. Cathey, there is, as I’m sure you are aware, a passage from “Witness” that tracks your remarks pretty closely. Chambers cited Kierkegaard, Dante, and Dostoyevsky as the writers that most influenced his break with Communism.
If only that beautiful book had been as much a cultural phenomenon as Ms. Rand’s works, this country might have been saved. God Bless you both and may we all, when it is done “emerge, once more, to see the stars.”
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I can’t see what, other than nostalgia for one’s own vanished teens, could make anyone claim that her prose was even tolerable, or her characters believable. I would give her credit for inventing what Justin now calls “the Bizarro Universe”, though - especially for two scenes, one the torrid sex scene in the tunel, and the other, Galt’s sketching of the Serpent Sign (usually called “the dollar sign” and his pledge to return to the commie blasted wastelands of america some day.
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The comment “the Palestinians were dancing in the streets upon word of whatr happened to America on 9/11 bears some examination. I do remember that early evening/late afternoon on 9/11 there appeared a video clip of Palestinians children (toddlers actually) holding little Palestinian flags abnd appearing happy. I also remember that an Israel man admitted that he got these children to be happy by buying them candy and he taped this and immediately got a feed into the American media. He admitted that he perpetrated this propaganda on the exact principole of enraging America against the Palestinians. I remember this distinctly because the video showed the children in broad daylight and given the 7 or 8 hour time difference between the Territories and New York, it would have been necessary for the Palestinians to have digested events half-way around the world while we, in America, were still try to figure out what happened. Everytime I see this “Palestinians dancing in the streets on 9/11”, I intend to call the hand of whomever is advancing this crappy propaganda.
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I was wondering when you would adress the “Randians” senor Raimondo. Very well done. Finally an expose’ on these lunatics.
I share your admiration for Rand’s writing abilities. Her ideology unfortunately came up short and had no where else to go but the trash heap. No man is an island.
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I for one would like to see “Atlas Shrugged” made into a movie (thogh there are many better choices than Angelina Jolie for the Dagny Taggart role). IMHO two major conditions would have to be met:
1. The film must be modernized. 1957 was an age of typewriters and pay phones. To be relevant, the story must be brought into this age of word processors and cell phones. In fact, a computer entrepreneur could be added to the “strikers” list, with millions of PCs worldwide permanently breaking down as a result.
2. The book is simply too long to fit into a normal movie (2-3 hours). If it isn’t made as a TV miniseries like “Shogun”, then it should be a movie trilogy like “The Lord of the Rings” (the novel was, after all, divided into three main parts).
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More than any other, Ayn Rand helped turn America’s classical liberal tradition into a mess of abstraction. The mainstream media used her to sell atheism and the cult of self-esteem. She was a tool.
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No discussion of Atlas Shrugged is complete without Bob the Angry Flower’s sequel, “Atlas Shrugged 2: One Hour Later”:
http://www.angryflower.com/atlass.gif
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Ayn Rands philosophy differs slightly from ‘Gott Ist Tot’ Nietzschian philosophical drollery.
Bizarro Universe describes well the Orwellian bovine plop these ‘philosophers’ assisted in rearing today. Neo-conism, when decloaked, is enserfment by brotherly plunder. Naomi Klein should perhaps name her latest ‘Cannibal Capitalism’
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@ John Zmirak
That post of yours was plain stupid.
I said that Peter Ustinov was “overrated”, not that he was a lizard.
Anyway, the overdriven hysterical nervousness in your reply indicates I must be on to something.
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So much hatred aimed at Ayn Rand in these comments, and not an honest word about what she did right. It reminds me of the reaction to Ron Paul from the hateful bullies who want to rule: sneering, dismissive contempt with no honest mention of his actual positions. Rand was right about most fundamental issues. Every man IS an island and the coercive collectivists are lying when they say otherwise. They hate a victim who is wise to them. Rand made a lot of people wise up to the evil of authority and the authoritarians hate her for it.
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Several of the above postings are shameful and undignified. I don’t think
Taki meant this forum to become an outlet
for anti-Semetic rants.
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Several of the above postings are shameful and undignified. I don’t think
Taki meant this forum to become an outlet
for anti-Semetic rants -John
I think the deck of religious and ethnic canards needs to be put away for good as it exacerbates the problem of bias.
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Justin is a intelligent and energetic journalist. But the quality of his journalism and commentary he insists on discrediting with this nonsense that Rand was anything more then a evil bitch and a plagiarist and an opportunist. Her books are full of sick expressions of her repressed and twisted sexuality. “Objectivism” is a cult religion, comparable to scientology or maybe Jehovah’s Witnesses. His theory of a libertarian “Old Right” is an outright figment of his fevered imagination…if there was an “Old Right”, it was a philosophy of industrialists like Ford or plutocratic families like the Lindbergs or the Tafts. The anti-imperialist, non-interventionist popular sentiment originated in the populist movement, the People’s Party, and later the Progressive Party, guys like Senator La Follette or labor union organizer Eugene Debs.
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Jet sed: “I think the deck of religious and ethnic canards needs to be put away for good as it exacerbates the problem of bias.”
The fact that the intellectual roots of communism, libertarianism, and neo-conservativism are all Jewish is not expression of anti-semiticism, but a sad fact.
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Rin-tin-tin barked at Zmirak: “I said that Peter Ustinov was “overrated”, not that he was a lizard....Anyway, the overdriven hysterical nervousness in your reply indicates I must be on to something.”
Sir, please take some irony supplements, because you suffer from an irony deficiency. Zmirak was making fun of your hysteria - one of his most hilarious performances, I might add.
@ Zmirak, “render our pets impotent...”
Hm, I was going to have my puppy neutered soon. Maybe “Rin-tin-tin” really IS onto something!
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Mr. Howard states that contrary to what the coercive collectivists would have us believe every man is an island. Can you not see the glaring paradox before you Mr. Howard? Why did the individuals in “Shrugged” form a community? Capitalism fails when everyman is an island. Take away opportunity costs and one mans expertise is lost. We don’t properly become men until we become citizens. The life of a solitary man is nasty brutish and short.
Rand’s philosophy had no where to go. It was doomed from the start. “Shrugged” was a monumental paradox. This doesn’t mean there wasn’t a lesson to be learned. The lesson lies in how man constructs his community. When incompetence is overlooked, or worse, rewarded is the point when the more productive in society begin to withdraw their talent. This marks the downfall of society.
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About Ayn Rand. Any system under which the Blsssed Theresa of Calcutta could be called “perverse” and “anti-life” has somwething very
wrong with it.
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While reading the comments it appears you have some very strange regular readers. Reading your websites and articles it seems obvious that your flatly antiwar, anti- American comments and articles suggest you are making the same errors you are accusing ARI of making.
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@ John Ball
Let that poor animal be.
Neutering your dog is bad for him and against nature. If you think otherwise, try first neutering yourself and see what good will come of it.
If you find yourself enjoying the experience, by all means, then you should let your dog enjoy it too.
Here below is an idea of what it then could be like for you. You could maybe become a falsetto singer and sing the Bohemian Rhapsody, like this guy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xE7esVpDjHE
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The introductory essay she wrote for the 25th anniversary edition of the Fountainhead is one of the most benevolent and moving pieces of non-fiction I have ever read. I challenge anyone who does not already have their mind made up about her to read it and not come away with the impression that this was a woman who cared *deeply* for human beings. That she wrote this while in the midst of the embarrassing events of the late 60’s that signaled her break-down is incredibly puzzling to me.
I find Rand to be a tragic figure. Misunderstood and misrepresented by her enemies, she was (and still is) done the worst damage by those closest to her.
The Ayn Rand Institute is a dishonor to her memory and an embarrassment to her legacy.
Great piece, Justin.
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The problem with Objectivism, like Communism (of which it is merely the flip side of the coin) and all other materialist systems, is that it is soulless, joyless, meaningless, and sterile.
John Galt, Dagny Taggart, et al are sad, pathetic little creatures, incapable of either giving or recieving real love, left alone with their money and power (which can buy pleasure, but no happiness), eternally ready to stab each other in the back, childless, friendless, passionlessThey have no personalities, no quirks, no hobbies, no pleasures, no loves - in short, no lives outside their balance ledgers and their ideologies. they are, in short, the flip side of the “sexless insects” of Maoist communism.
Our materialist world of today has much pleasure, but little happiness. It has much entertainment, but little meaning. It has much sex, but little love. It has much emotion, but little passion. It is the bastard child of the materialist right and the materialist left - notice how Aldous Huxley, the prophet of our times, mixed names taken from the worst of both for his characters (Lenina Crowne, Helmholtz Watson, Bernard Marx).
Rand’s paradise doesn’t sound like anywhere I’d like to live.
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What is it with the censorship on this site? I just read one comment and went out to lunch and found that on my return it had been removed. This isn’t the first time this has happened either.
The site seems to have its own ADL appointed overseers whose main purpose is to make sure that comments they deem inappropriate to them are quickly removed.
I can imagine some of these overseers getting a phone call from the lovable Abe Foxman. Abe says, “Some people at Taki’s Top Drawer are getting a little too rambuctious and don’t know their place. We want you to complain like hell about article that offend our sensitivities and at the same pretend that you are one of them (in true neocon style)in order to deflect any criticism of us or of Israel. These infidels simply simply do not have the right to criticise us because because criticism is a hate crime unless we are the ones doing the criticising.”
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To add to my above comment:
One of the striking things about AS to me was how little any of these rich people actually enjoy their money. Where are the summer homes? Where are the Ferraris? Where are the megayachts teeming with topless Playboy bunnies?
All these people do is make money, and yet they’re so soulless that they can’t even enjoy *that*! Instead, they live a monastic, ideological existance without a shred not only of true happiness, but even of plain old fun.
They’re as humorless, sexless, and ideological as Mao’s Red Guards. And in fact, slightly more stylish suits aside, that’s exactly what they are.
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The comments deleted were removed at the request of the author of the article, who does a yeoman’s job of criticizing the excesses of neocon imperialism and the misuse of false charges of anti-Semitism to silence debate on our nation’s Middle Eastern policies. When genuine bigots chime in, it does nothing but to give credence to those charges--and thus help clear the path for another pointless war. As editorial director of Antiwar.com, he doesn’t want to see that happen, and neither do we.
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Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, meet Jim Taggart.
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The existence of these comments speaks to the larger-than-life figure of an internally driven little Jewish woman and her impact, for better and for worse, on our national psyche. Recalling Rand brings to mind Anthony’s comment on Caesar, “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.” There is much to be admired in Rand who, in the footsteps of her hero, Victor Hugo, gave a literary prelude to Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom”, based partially on her youthful personal experience. Obviously, we must not hold her responsible for the sins of her heirs and followers although ideas do have consequences. In this increasingly collectivized world, each generation that reads Rand’s novels will produce persons who respect individual creativity, dissent, and idiosyncracies. The criticism that Rand displayed an overabundance of the latter obviously survives. Yet in her bones are buried that indestructible gem in which we and our own heirs see reflected the idea of individual liberty, a relatively new idea in the world of social organization. This idea will survive, as it is considerably older than an intense, dark-haired controversial author with intense eyes and often deeply flawed character, to whom I and many others owe so much.
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I gots to hands it to F J Sarto, then, for an editorial job that makes blade runner look like an old country lane.
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Anyone who has ever seen the movie the “Sundowners” knows that the assertion that Peter Ustinov is overrated as an actor is just silly. Also, “Borat” is far and away the funniest film I have ever seen and the people in the theater where I saw it seemed to agree with me wholeheartedly. As for Ayn Rand she got the answer to the fundamental question, are we human beings with an elemental right to life , liberty and the pursuit of happiness who should be living in a society based on voluntary cooperation or are we some kind of insect obligated to fulfill the wants and needs of some often very ill defined collective who should be living in a society based on coercion through force, right. To the extent that Rand’s writings help people understand that the former is true then she was a heroine.
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@Keith
Your disjuntive brgings to mind Burke’s comment on those who could not see any middle term betweeen unbridled despotism and unbridled liberty, and accused any one who offered sensible objections to their theories the accusation of being for absolute monarchy.
There is no society that does not depend, at the end on coertion. Not even with voluntary cooperation. At some point there will be a disagreement, and this will have be adjudciated by someone.
Someone who a) is recognized by both parties and
b) cam enforce his judgement. Coercion is needed there, as it is needed if one of the parties insists on not recognizing any of the adjudicators proposed.
Once you get thar through your head other things will become clear.
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There was a debate going on a while ago at the Mises web site to the effect that in “Atlas” Rand Plagerized Garrettx2’s “People’s Pottage” etc.. I havn’t read the latter yet, but it seems like a likely story. Of course lifting and improving the plots of kindred authors has been fair game since the time of Plutarch, so this is a rather venial addition to Rand’s sins. What is salient in terms of the intellectual history of the Libertarian movement is that the Randian sun blocked out the starlight of many, many fine Old Right writers...a priceless heritage which is only now coming into the crepescular light of recognition.
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The problem with Rand was that she had a bad habit of forming opinions without having done much in-depth reading, and that collection of ass-kissers she attracted didn’t help any. What she needed was someone who could stand up to her and say something like: “Ayn, with all respect, you’re full of sh*t and your clutch is slipping.”
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“There is no society that does not depend, at the end on coertion.”
Correct, and furthermore, as Adriana remarked citing Burke, coercion and despotism are not identical. Let me add to that, that coercion alone never works;
every, and I do mean every, functioning legal system depends on some critical mass of voluntary, common assent. A relatively comprehensive overview of divers (spelled correctly, I don’t mean “diverse") legal systems, INCLUDING those of “tribal” or pre-industrial or non-Western societies, will show you what they all have in common is a foundation of common “consent of the governed.”
A police state is not the same thing. Sorry I don’t have time to cite examples at the moment. I’ve studied some African cases involving the decisions of “tribal” legal councils, and the essence of what they do isn’t far different in spirit from how the English common law works - appeals to custom and community assumptions about “reasonableness” etc
Or more simply, Confucius said the most effective laws are those which are easy for people to follow; those are the kinds of laws which don’t need to rely principally on coercion. Yet the ultimate sanction of coercion remains indispensable.
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Are we human beings with an elemental right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness who should be living in a society based on voluntary cooperation.
If conservatism means anything, then the answer is NO. First, the right to life, liberty and property did not fall out of the sky. It developed out of British constitutionalism and the common law tradition. Second, a society based on voluntary cooperation is doomed by definition. Some power must punish criminals, protect the peace and ensure domestic tranquility.
In addition, the Randians aren’t exactly non-coercive. The Institute has consistently and repeatedly called for the US to send soldiers overseas and physically obliterate Islamic civilization. This genocidal mania is even more extreme than the neocon ideology and is the antithesis of liberty, free choice and objectivity.
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What she needed was someone who could… say something like: “Ayn, with all respect, you’re full of sh*t....”
People did. She would either blow it off, go into a tantrum or plot petty revenge.
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“Her latter-day followers like to pretend that she sprang forth, unprecedented, like Minerva from the head of Zeus...”
Justin Raimondo is mixing his mythologies. The Romans had Jupiter and Minerva, and the Greeks had Zeus and Athena.
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Peter;
Excellent point on coercion. Anarchism of any stripe - right or left - falls apart when you ask the simple question: What do we do with child molesters and car thieves? Every answer I’ve ever gotten from an anarcho-capitalist on this question either evades the issue or is patent nonsense.
The world of Atlas Shrugged is another utopian fantasyland, just like Plato’s Republic, Marx’s Communist un-state, or Hitler’s racially pure thousand-year Reich. And like all utopias, it is utter bulls**t. The world needs another utopian vision like it needs a hole in its head. Nothing has wreaked more death, destruction, hunger, pain, anguish, sorrow, horror, or misery on humanity than the 20th century’s crusades to perfect mankind and create paradise on earth.
As an aside, Christianity rejects utterly the idea of the possibility of creating paradise on earth, seeing it as foolishness at best and heresy at worst. This, and the knowledge that deep down Christianity is right, explain, I believe, the burning hatred that utopians of all stripes feel for Christianity. Marx, Lenin, Hitler, Rand - all held Christianity in the deepest of contempt.
And yet I still have yet to see any of them, or their heirs, create that paradise on earth they go on about.
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P.S. Regarding my point above about how little the characters in Atlas Shrugged seem to enjoy their lives, or even their money; one wonders wether Taki has ever read Atlas Shrugged. If so he must be horrified by the idea of people who have so much money and so little imagination about how to have fun with it.
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Raimondo has written a masterpiece of criticism and informed assay of highly charged ideas. I enjoyed every minute of it. Raimondo probably was born with gifts of literate exposition, but I’m sure it did not hurt that he read Rand’s works early. His luminous style is worthy of la maitresse de mots justes et des idees.
At 70, I still cherish style lessons from masters. From the first day I read Raimondo, I took lessons.
Daniel Bonner
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“The world of Atlas Shrugged is another utopian fantasyland, just like Plato’s Republic, Marx’s Communist un-state, or Hitler’s racially pure thousand-year Reich. And like all utopias, it is utter bulls**t. The world needs another utopian vision like it needs a hole in its head. Nothing has wreaked more death, destruction, hunger, pain, anguish, sorrow, horror, or misery on humanity than the 20th century’s crusades to perfect mankind and create paradise on earth.”
It’s funny that Ayna Rand, in her screenplay for Love Letters, said that People are always ready to bash your brains in with a plan for peace.”
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The question is not whether there will be some forms of coercion in a given society. The question is whether coercion by the state is the first resort in solving any given problem. Right now in 21st century America we are addicted to state coercion and the best thing that could happen in this country is for people to learn to mind their own business. If Ayn Rand’s absolutism causes people to recognize the basic underlying problem then she was a force for good.
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If Ayn Rand’s absolutism causes people to recognize the basic underlying problem then she was a force for good.
OK, even if we set aside her bigoted atheism, what are some real issues? I quote Chilton Williamson: “the expression of rootedness: a sense of place and of history, a sense of self derived from forebears, kin, and culture — [and] an identity that is both collective and personal.” On all of this, Rand gave the wrong answers.
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The fact that the intellectual roots of communism, libertarianism, and neo-conservativism are all Jewish...
Libertarianism is the spoiled child of the Scottish Enlightenment. Roman Catholic eggheads Jacques Maritain and John Courtney Murray were peddling an proto-neocon worldview years before the neocons showed up.
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“He knew that the days ahead would be difficult. There were questions to be faced and a plan of action to be prepared. He knew that he should not think about it.”
This is third-rate pulp writing; not the good stuff.
“Howard Roark laughed.”
Mwahahahahahaha!
Explains why Justin can’t move beyond the right wing, tho’, and is still a libertarian.
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Beyond this, Rand is rife with contradictions and not really all that libertarian.
For example: Is the building that Howard Roark blows up *his* private property? If not, what right does he have to destroy it in an artistic hissy fit? Does not the private property owner have the right to alter his private property any way he likes, and to hire and fire employees - including architects - as he wishes?
If Howard Roark wants to build a building 100% his way, and to blow it up if it’s not perfect, he’s certainly free to do so - on his private property with his money. But if someone else decided to change the plan of a building that is, after all, *his* property over Howard’s objections, well, too bad so sad.
If some railroad engineer had done that to a section of Dagny Taggart’s railroad, she would have gone berserk, and rightly so.
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One of the entertaining things about Rand’s novels is that the characters are charicatures of people you see all around you, and once you’ve seen the charicatures, you never see those people in the same light again. At first I was a little puzzled by the outpouring of naked hostility towards her ideas here, starting with ad hominem and going all the way through to calling atheism a religion, or bigoted(!?), and finally, name-calling. It just occurred to me where this outpouring of hatred came from: these are people who have read the novels, and seen themselves portrayed it them. And they were not the producers, either! So my puzzlement has turned to mirth; now I find it uproariously funny. Oh, how that must have hurt, seeing yourself depicted as a naked charicature. It still stings, doesn’t it? One of her most valuable contributions was about the impotence of evil.
Thanks for making my day.
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TaxSlave;
Yup, I’m not an ubermensch, sorry.
Neither are you, though. And neitherw as Rand.
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Justin:
While castigating the retinue that Rand attracted is largely justified, you might want to examine the comments from these self-certified losers, and think about your own following. Are you proud?
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Roland. Check the comment by F.J. Sarto for your answer.
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Why do people constantly confuse neo-con economic policy mislabled “free trade” for actual free trade? There are rich people and then there are well connected coportate statists. It is classic fascism ala Mussilini. I expect more knowledge of history from all of you on this site.
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@Rich Hill
Obviously 3 quarters of the comments on this
article are hostile by design. There are certain
hangers-on who consistently menace this blog
(and especially Justin’s) with the typical
anti-liberty philosophical baloney that they
think passes for intelligence.
Do not be dismayed!
Just like FOX news, these comments are provided
for your amusement only and are not to be taken
seriously.
Just laugh along with the rest of us.
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The problem with Objectivism is Objectivists. Ayn Rand dealt in *principles*. Reading the comments above, it is clear that, even now, almost no one is capable of thinking in the same high-level way. Rand’s essential principles were that reality is real; that we have both the ability and the right to live in it successfully, for ourselves, as individuals; and that aggression, forced sacrifice and collectivism are all morally (and thus practically) wrong. Since Hiroshima, universal recognition of these principles has become vital for all future human survival and development. That Peikoff may have been an opportunist, or Branden an adulterer, or Brook a zionazi, does not invalidate these principles. Nor is Rand’s wonderful intellectual courage and achievement in delineating and defending them so effectively in any way diminished by her own personal faults, or by the mental and personal faults of her supporters. The fact that some concrete-bound oaf here cannot think deeper than “Objectivism is an uniquely American cult of personality which at its heart is a total crock of shit” does not detract from Rand or her ideas, it only shows up the oaf who cannot comprehend them. We face a future of global fascism or thermonuclear war. It is thus time, people, and past time, for you all to grow up - before your idiot name-calling and squabbling over random inessentials gets you all wiped out. Keep up the good work, Justin.
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Rand’s essential principles were that reality is real; that we have both the ability and the right to live in it successfully, for ourselves, as individuals; and that aggression, forced sacrifice and collectivism are all morally (and thus practically) wrong.
Yes, reality is real, but the rest of that statement is a pack of egalitarian rubbish. Stalin and Trotsky would have no trouble agreeing to it, including the opposition to collectivism, since they considered the Soviet system a necessary evil.
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Good job, Mr. Raimondo. I’d second everything you wrote in this article. The Objectivists, as a movement, have become a cult and a perverse parody of themselves but Rand was a beautiful thinker and an interesting dramatist. Why are they still afraid of the little old Russian lady? You can hear the shrieks of the fear in the shrill tones of the comments of your detractors here. They’re not fooling anyone. After so many years, certain types of people still recognize their shriveled collectivist souls in the mirror Rand held up in her writings, and they hate and fear her for it. It’s funny. At any rate though, you’re right. These sad Rand haters are nowhere near as comical and disgusting as the self-contradicting cultists who worship her.
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She understood the tactics of totalitarianism and their effectiveness so well, she couldn’t resist the temptation to use them herself. We so often become what we fight.
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James;
No, the problem with Objectivism is Objectivism, not this group or that group of Objectivists.
Just like the problem with Communism is Communism, not that Stalin and his circle “hijacked” a movement that would have worked great otherwise. Communism would not have worked better if it had been Trotsky that had inherited the USSR instead of Stalin, or if Lenin had lived to be 100 and oversaw the growth of the Soviet Union himself. No, Communism would have been a disaster no matter who tried it, because fundamentally it was a crock that any reasonably-intelligent tenth grader could have pinted out the gaping holes in.
Similarly, Objectivism wouldn’t work no matter who ran the movement, or if Rand did herself, or if no one did, because it, too, is fundamentally a crock that our tenth grader would have even less trouble with.
The bright and ambitious flock to Objectivism because it seeks to lend a veneer of philosophical respectability to what is, under the hood, nothing more a license to feel good about unrestricted rapine. Such people really are cafones sin culiones - lacking the fortitude to just flip the world the bird and tell it “Yes, I’m a rapacious bastard - get over it”. That, at least, I could respect for its unabashed honesty.
Interesting that so many of the Rand supporters here seem to have Rand’s attitude of: “If you think I’m full of malarkey, it’s just because you’re too stupid to see what a genius I am”. Just keep telling yourself that.
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My point, Nerdol, was that most people seem to be unwilling or unable to think in terms of abstract principles, which causes them to transform good ideas into poisoned concrete errors and nasty personalizations - so that Rand’s first principle, “You shall not initiate violence against others”, becomes utterly perverted by Rand’s supporters into “We have the right and the duty to nuke Iran for Israel and the Fatherland”.
It is a point you seem to have missed, but one you seem intent upon proving anyway.
Let me ignore your logically invalid appeals to authority in the form of imaginary tenth graders, your irrelevant diatribe against “Communism”, and your gratuitous personal insults. Let me make the generous assumption that your obvious hatred is motivated by *some* kind of principle, however concealed, implicit and possibly unconscious. I am still at a loss to know why you are so angry.
Which part of “reality is real; that we have both the ability and the right to live in it successfully, for ourselves, as individuals; and that aggression, forced sacrifice and collectivism are all morally (and thus practically) wrong” do you find so intolerably objectionable, and why?
Care to explain?
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Reality is real...
We agree here.
we have both the ability and the right to live in it successfully
Who is “we?” Ability is a function of heredity seasoned by environment. The right to “live successfully"does not exist.
aggression, forced sacrifice and collectivism are all morally (and thus practically) wrong” do you find so intolerably objectionable, and why?
Aggression can be valid: just war, spanking children, self-defense, hunting for food, etc. Forced sacrifice can be valid: conscription, tithing, fair taxation, childrearing, care for elderly parents, etc. While “collectivism” is a loaded word, group ownership of property can be valid: martial assets, churches, co-ops, employee-owned businesses, national parks, etc. In short, Rand is silly rubbish.
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One more time: “Thou shalt not aggress” is an impossible foundation for the kind of Edenically untainted property rights to which Rand and similar libertarians aspire,
because all, absolutely all, property has either been attained or inherited or otherwise ultimately derived from some kind of aggression. If you didn’t personally commit some kind of aggression, then at least what you started out with as a child did, or it was derived and defined through acts of aggression in the past.
There will be no return to Eden, and no progress toward Utopia. Original sin is a permanent condition of Mankind, and all property will always be tainted by it. God save us from any “revolution” of the right, and from anyone who promises that their revolution will only be transitional.
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Justin,
I think you let the Old Girl off a bit too easily on the Branden affair. After all, she claimed to have worked out a philosophically rigorous theory of sexuality, tightly integrated with the rest of her philosophy (“psychoepistemology” and all that). By her own criteria, her personally disastrous affair does reflect on her intellectual work.
It is fascinating that a quarter century after her death so many people find it impossible to discuss her dispassionately as just another author and intellectual, like say Heinlein or Vonnegut or Faulkner, and who made some valid points and committed some boners. Your essay does actually do that, and I loved your anecdote about your personal encounter.
Of course, the real mystery is the psychoepistemology of the contemporary Objectivists – now if only the Old Girl were still around to take her scalpel to that phenomenon!
All the best,
Dave Miller in Sacramento
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Nergol wrote:
>I’m not an ubermensch, sorry.
>Neither are you, though. And neitherw as Rand.
Absolutely right. Justin and I, however, are true Ubermenschen who hold the world on our shoulders and who are fit to be heroes of a Randian novel. After all, she has already written a novel with a physicist as hero, and I’m a physicist too! If only she were still alive, she could write a brilliant roman a clef in which Justin and I heroically transform the world into a planet fit for heroes. Or at least a planet not ruled by George W. Bush.
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...Some exceptional, lucid and ‘objective’ comments regarding this controversial figure of another Egocentric Jewess cum seemingly exclusive Cult following.
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Ayn Rand was a great philosopher just in terms of her sheer
integration of the best parts of western philosophy. The Greek
advocacy of reason and the supremacy of the senses, the
anti-dualism where she dissected the false dichotomies prevalent
in modern thought, the consistent injunction against the
initiation of force and how a mind can only be changed by reason
and the application of consistent laissez-faire capitalism.
She borrowed from Aristotle, Locke, Spencer, Mises and others
but fashioned a more consistent pattern of thought than existed
before her efforts. The Brandens are irrelevant and have been
rebutted at length by James Valliant in The Passion Of Ayn Rand’s
Critics. 99.99% of the criticism of Rand ever written is wrong.
She was wrong on Israel but being Jewish didn’t matter in the
least to her, it was a Cowboys versus Injuns thing with her as
the book Ayn Rand Answers makes clear. She was not in the least
pro-Jewish but anti-Arab. An unfortunate but quite common racism
in western society. As far as history, economics and political
philosophy goes, Murray Rothbard was her superior.
Ignore ARI, SOLO, RoR and the rest of the neocon pseudo-
Objectivists, they are dysfunctional cult nuts as are the critics
like Randzapper and Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature. A bunch of
nobodies creating nothing at all.
When libertarians are falling over themselves supporting Bircher
Rejects like Ron Paul and outright statists like Buchanan, it’s
good to know Rand’s work exists. Rand knew you could not stay
neutral or compromise on “god” and abortion. We have nothing in
common with medievalist organs like the Chronicles and much of
The American Conservative. This is a longrange battle and you
political junkies need to chill. Read or watch Primary Colors,
join the DLC or the Blue Dogs, vote for Hillary, you’ll do much
less damage that way. Lew Rockwell is a disgrace and his wacko
Catholic, anti-Rand pieces discredit the libertarian anti-war
movement. Raimondo needs to be more fastidious in his choice of
associations. I agree with him on ARI, ad nauseum, but as Ayn
often reminded us the freedom killing conservaturds are the worst.
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It’s too bad Miss Rand bastardized her wonderful philosophy with her Zionism.
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You’d be better off with the bestseller instead, you brain dead monkey.
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I want to respond for the record
to the braindead statist of Peter
Ramus. Conscription is enslavement
and never justified, taxation is theft
per se and can never be made “fair,”
self-defense is exactly the opposite
of initiation of force as is hunting,
spanking is childbeating and morally
wrong, childrearing and tithing are only
justified IF voluntary, “just wars” are
an oxymoron, which is what Ramus is too.
Care for parents can only be voluntary.
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84lyFq U cool ))
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To Nergol:
Most of your comments were justified criticisms. Where you said:
“One of the striking things about AS to me was how little any of these rich people actually enjoy their money. Where are the summer homes? Where are the Ferraris? Where are the megayachts teeming with topless Playboy bunnies?”
The reason why they never used their money is because objects themselves were not what made them happy, but their production. I remember when Dagny visits the hidden mountain scape and notices that ownership was by selection and not by mindless and arbitrary acquisition.
Even though Dagny has odd rape sex with people the overall principle I think that was supposed to have come through was that the physical bond was something earned and not cheaply given away to anyone.
“They’re as humorless, sexless, and ideological as Mao’s Red Guards. And in fact, slightly more stylish suits aside, that’s exactly what they are.”
Humor was never something that was needed since the characters never acted like they should make light of a situation, only act upon it. I think during times of less stress the characters would be quite capable of humor, but they take themselves so seriously that they don’t allow it. Seriousness is also one of their strengths. You never have the bumbling underdog who is hard on his ‘luck’. You have a capable person whose will is a strong natural force. Which is why I enjoy AS so much.
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