The Day I Met Ayn
Imagine a 15-year-old boy with a pronounced sense of the dramatic and emphatic right-wing political views of a libertarian bent, one who is, furthermore, looking for some comprehensive explanation of the world around him and often wonders why people are such inveterate idiots. He already imagines that the world is divided into two irreconcilable camps: him and his coterie of friends versus what he refers to as “the Marshmallow Conspiracy”—an all-pervasive all-controlling cabal that lives to ensure the complete banality and meaninglessness of everyday existence in modern society, and especially in the public school system, which is run by these martinets for the sole purpose of torturing undiscovered geniuses such as himself.
Add to this already volatile mix the hyper-individualist philosophy known as “Objectivism,” the invention of novelist Ayn Rand, and the result can be—and was—explosive.
After all, the hero of Rand’s 1943 novel, The Fountainhead, is an architect with bright orange hair who blows up his own building–which has been altered in its design and turned into a home for handicapped children–and rapes the female lead.
Not that I was blowing up buildings, or raping anyone, as a result of imbibing The Fountainhead, but let’s just say that my own sense of diplomacy, and basic human interaction, was somewhat retarded as a result. Certainly my conversion to Randianism unleashed a whole lot of explosive youthful energy, in the form of writing. I started publishing in the nascent libertarian underground press—mimeographed journals, and newsletters, by which young libertarians (Rand fans all) kept in touch, argued among ourselves, and generally engaged in building a “movement” that, we thought, would one day triumph. Our slogan was “Freedom in our time!”
The key to understanding Rand’s appeal is not in her philosophy but in her fiction. If you want pure Randian drama at its most stylized, it’s best to put aside Atlas Shrugged—which is in a class all by itself–and look at her early work, particularly We the Living, her first published novel. Set against the backdrop of the early years of the Soviet Union, it’s the story of Kira Argounova, born of a bourgeois family, and born also with the artistocratic gravitas of the archetypal Randian female. Kira is really a younger version of Dagny Taggart, transported to Leningrad sometime in the middle of the 1920s. Instead of running railroads, Kira dreams of building bridges of aluminum over frozen river gorges while studying engineering. She meets Andrei Kovalensky, the son of a White admiral, a real lady-killer who looks like he was “born with a whip in his hands,” and all the snows of Holy Mother Russia aren’t enough to cool their ardor, even in the shadow of the gulag. Rand’s hatred for the Bolsheviks is apparent throughout the text: but that didn’t stop her from making one of her heroes a Communist—and a KGB officer to boot. In 1936, the year the novel was published, Rand’s militant anti-communism was verboten: back when the New York Times was reporting that all was well in the workers paradise, it took courage to tell the truth about Soviet Russia. The book sank like a stone, and Rand had to wait until The Fountainhead to really make her breakthrough.
There is a solemn purity in Rand’s early efforts, including her plays, such as The Night of January 16th, that crystallized in The Fountainhead, the story of Howard Roark, an architect who refuses to compromise his integrity, either personal or artistic, in a world of second-handers. Indeed, the working title of the book had been “Second-hand Lives,” and when I read it, at the age of seventeen, sitting on the steps of our local library one summer day, it changed me, forever–and, in retrospect, for the better. Without the mental discipline imposed by Objectivism, I doubt whether I would have survived my teenage years without winding up either dead, in jail, or both.
Objectivism gave me what conservatism could not, then, provide: a consistent worldview, a sense of boundaries, in short: what Russell Kirk feared most–an ideology.
In short, Objectivism gave ready-made answers to complex questions, and, furthermore, imparted a moral fire the conservative figures of the day that even Barry Goldwater, my personal hero, were lacking. Next to the languid prognostications of a William F. Buckley Jr., the severity and simplicity of the Randian ethos had an inherent appeal, especially to the young. Rand was, you see, first and foremost, a novelist, a dramatist, one who was capable of exerting an almost hypnotic influence on her readers. Her characters are made to order for any adventurous soul with a taste for the dramatic flourish and in search of moral and esthetic guidelines. Their power to teach, and even impose a kind of discipline on the otherwise untamable, remains with me to this day: the predicaments of her heroes and heroines all seemed to mirror life as I perceived it. They were up against what I was up against, in school and out of it: the Marshmallow Conspiracy that worshipped conformity and mediocrity and was determined to stamp out any hint of originality at first sighting. I had found my lodestar.
Being an activist sort, I could not keep this revelation to myself but instead sought to convert my friends and associates to my new-found faith: soon a small but vociferous cabal was birthed at my high school, acolytes of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, the latter a 1000-page-plus tome of remarkable dramatic clumsiness and power that posed the question: what would happen to the world if “the men of the mind” went on strike? We soon had our English Literature teacher completely terrorized, and in response she issued an injunction: no one was allowed to so much as mention Ayn Rand’s name in her classroom.
I was sent to the Principal’s office on more than one occasion on account of transgressing this completely unreasonable edict. I was glad to go.
My proselytizing wasn’t limited to the local high school, however: I was already writing, mostly pieces for the underground libertarian press of the time. One of my earliest published articles was “Objectivism and the Liberty Amendment,” which appeared in the newsletter of the Liberty Amendment National Youth Council.
Now, for all you newcomers out there, the Liberty Amendment was the brainchild of Willis E. Stone, whose organization, the Liberty Amendment Committee, proposed to restore constitutional government in America in one fell swoop by means of amending the Constitution. The Liberty Amendment would have forbidden the expenditure of any funds for any government agency not expressly provided for in the Constitution. In short, it would have abolished most of the federal government.
A hopeless cause, but youth is often attracted to these, and I was rapturous at having been appointed a vice-chairman of the Liberty Amendment National Youth Council. At any rate, my first contribution to the Youth Council’s newsletter was a five-page typewritten explication of why “students of Objectivism” (as we called ourselves, per Miss Rand’s admonition) should support and work for the passage of the Liberty Amendment.
Like any writer enamored of his own words, I was a bit miffed that the editor of the newsletter–David F. Nolan, who was then a key figure in the Libertarian Caucus of Young Americans for Freedom and the chairman of the National Youth Council – had edited my immortal prose down from five pages to one and a half. Yet I was nevertheless thrilled to see my name in print, but the thrill was gone when I opened a letter, received a few weeks later, from Ayn Rand’s lawyer, one Henry Mark Holzer.
In his missive, which I read with growing disbelief and anger, Senor Holzer declared that my explication of Objectivism was so muddled that it amounted to a misrepresentation of Ayn Rand’s philosophy: he furthermore informed me that I was not a “spokesman for Objectivism,” and I had no right–no legal right–to speak in its name. Therefore, unless a retraction was printed, or unless I kowtowed in some inexplicable but satisfactory way, Miss Rand was going to … sue me!
My reaction was swift, and very Randian: I grasped the letter in my teenaged paws and carefully ripped it into increasingly tiny pieces, which I then deposited in an envelope and addressed to Mr. Holzer. I included a note–“This is what I think of you–and your threats!”–and gleefully dropped it in the mailbox. As is often the case with hotheads, I totally forgot the incident after a few hours–after all, what is the threat of a lawsuit to a 16-year-old version of Howard Roark?–and wouldn’t have occasion to be reminded of it until some weeks later …
It was a crisp autumn day, bright sunshine and a cool wind: as we waited for the train in the Harmon station, the four of us were giddy with anticipation. We were going to see Ayn Rand lecture on “Basic Principles of Literature,” and just being in a train station was, for us, all part of the experience. That’s because trains are an integral part of the fictional landscape of Atlas Shrugged: the heroine, Dagny Taggart, is the Vice President in charge of operations of Taggart Transcontinental, and her daily struggle against the depredations of the “looters,” mooches, and “second-handers”—who spent their days trying to obstruct her—are the warp and woof of the novel. As the locomotive appeared in the distance, and sped toward the platform, the four of us were caught up in a gust of excitement: we were going to New York City to see Ayn Rand, and the world, for us, was a bright and promising place. As the train took off, and I looked out the window, I was swept up in the sheer joy of unobstructed motion–just like in a Rand novel.
The Objectivist movement was headquartered, in those days, in the Empire State Building, a gesture in perfect accordance not only with the Randian style, but also with the Objectivist esthetic. Soaring skyscrapers of glass and steel signified the spirit of the Randian heroes and heroines, and of Rand herself, who, when she arrived in New York harbor after escaping from Russia, looked up at the New York City skyline and cried real tears of joy.
It was kind of a disappointment, however, to discover that, upon arriving at the Nathaniel Branden Institute (NBI), their offices were in … the basement.
Ah, but no matter: a trivial detail like that wasn’t going to ruin my pilgrimage to this Temple of Reason. The walls of NBI were painted in what I was led to understand was Rand’s favorite color: an aqueous shade of blue-green, just like the cover of her magazine, The Objectivist. Other movements don’t go much in for color coordination, but the Objectivists took their esthetics quite seriously: indeed, it was an integral part of their ideological outlook and psychology. After all, these people had been recruited on the basis of a work of fiction, and spent much of their time talking about the characters in Rand’s novels as if they were living breathing human beings. Rand herself did constantly this, quoting John Galt–the hero of Atlas Shrugged–as if he were standing there right next to her.
The NBI auditorium was bustling and filled to the rafters as the Objectivist faithful gathered to hear their heroine’s disquisition on the nature and purpose of art, and specifically literature. My readers can see for themselves what she had to say that day: the lecture has been published in her anthology of articles on esthetics, a volume aptly titled The Romantic Manifesto. Her printed lectures, however, don’t begin to give the reader an idea of the kind of power she exerted over her audience.
When she appeared at the blue-green podium, peering intently at us through reading glasses that seemed too big for her face, I thought, for a moment, that there must be some mistake. The woman who stood before us was short, with her dark hair swept impatiently back from her forehead in a page-boy haircut. She was wearing a severe suit that may have been fashionable at some point in the distant past, and looked to be in her late fifties. A wave of disappointment swept over me: where were Dagny Taggart’s “show-girl legs”? And where was Dagny Taggart? The woman standing on the stage resembled a Russian babushka who had somehow been diverted on her way to the Moscow market to pick up a sack of potatoes and instead had wandered, improbably, into the NBI auditorium.
That visual impression, however, lasted only as long as it took her to begin speaking. She began slowly, but without any hesitancy, her voice deep, deliberate, and resonant with certainty. Although thickly accented with the tones of her native Russia, her diction was precise and her meaning unmistakable. And what she was saying was that man was meant to be a god: that fiction focused on neurosis and evil was evil – and that art in celebration of man the hero was fuel for the noble soul. The modern schools of naturalism, symbolism, and the rest were intellectually bankrupt. Romanticism–which, in the Randian sense of the term, depicts the primacy of and struggle for values–was the wave of the future, if there was to be one for literature.
An odd thing happened: as she spoke: standing straight as an old oak, she seemed to physically grow in stature, and, before long, the Russian babushka had taken on the proportions of a Titan. I noticed she was wearing a cape, although the famous tri-cornered hat was nowhere to be seen. Sitting about five rows from the front—we had gotten in quite early, and secured the best possible seats—I could see the flash of her dollar-sign brooch glinting in the spotlight.
There was absolute silence from the audience during the lecture: everyone, including myself, was utterly rapt as Rand explained the basic mechanics of fiction writing, the elements of drama, and the philosophical and psychological significance of one’s artistic choices and preferences.
In the audience sat young, well-dressed, painfully earnest stockbrokers and their dollar-sign brooch-wearing girlfriends, a lot of students, and a few older types but not many: about three-fourths of the packed auditorium were under 30, and they all had this air of expectation about them as they leaned forward in their seats. In this clean-cut crowd we were significantly scruffier and, how shall I put this, more Woodstock Nation than Galt’s Gulch. The four of us—two guys and two girls, the former with the requisite long hair and blue jeans, the latter in mini-skirts and hippie beads—stood out in this crowd of premature yuppies. The ensuing culture clash was all too predictable, although I remember more than a few of the men giving my date—the beauteous Susan Beaudry, definitely the Dominique Francon type—a not-quite-surreptitious glance or two, much to the visible annoyance of their rather plain girlfriends.
The lecture ended, and I went over to the book table to buy a copy of one of Rand’s books: it was autograph time, and my dream of getting close to my idol was about to be fulfilled, albeit not in the way I imagined.
While my friends waited, I got on line with a cheap paperback edition of We the Living clutched in my hot little hands. We were told that we were not to talk to Miss Rand, unless, of course, she spoke to us first. “Write your name in the upper right-hand corner of the page you want signed,” said the NBI usher, “and hand it to her. She’ll look at your name, sign your book, and you’ll get the heck out of there.”
As Rand sat at a table covered in blue-green felt, and smiled tentatively at her worshipful fans, I craned my neck to get a good look at her, but my view was obstructed by her Praetorian Guard–her retinue. This consisted of members of the Inner Circle, what was referred to in Objectivist circles as “the class of ’43,” referring to the year of The Fountainhead’s publication: Nathaniel Branden, deemed her “intellectual heir” on the dedication page of early editions of Atlas, was her principal disciple. And there he was, standing next to her: tall, with wavy swept-back hair and his nose stuck in the air, as if looking out over a great distance at some object visible only to himself. He had a sonorous, singsong way of talking that had just the faintest echo of a Russian accent. I didn’t see Barbara Branden—his wife, estranged by that time, as the Brandens’ autobiographical tell-all memoirs reveal—with her blonde bouffant and Ice Goddress persona, wielding a long cigarette holder as if it were a scepter. She was vice-president of NBI, and, we were told, was an aspiring novelist, whose magnum opus was even then in progress. The rest of the Inner Circle—which they actually called “the Senior Collective,” supposedly as a joke—consisted mostly of the Branden’s relatives but for Alan Greenspan. In any case, she was literally surrounded by concentric circles of sycophants—the Inner and the Outer—a situation that, in retrospect, seems to underscore the nature of her predicament.
As I approached her, she glanced up at me, and the first thing I noticed was her eyes: they were like that portrait by Illona, large, piercing, and luminous. She looked down at my name, looked back up at me, looked at my name again—and seemed taken aback as she said: “I can’t sign this. Wait until I’m through signing books, and I’ll tell you why.”
I was thrilled. Obviously, Rand had decided that I was a genius, and a far more likely candidate for the title of “intellectual heir” than that pompadoured phony standing next to her, who was looking distinctly annoyed. At last, I had been discovered! Of course, there was something slightly ominous about the way she had said it: “I can’t sign this.” Why not?
The line of autograph-seekers took a long time to shrink, and during the interim my friends and I speculated as to the reason for this extra attention being paid to met: as for them, they wanted to know what I had done this time, and what trouble I was in. I blithely assured them that I was about to be inducted into the Inner Circle.
My friends, it turned out, were a lot closer to the truth than I was. When Miss Rand motioned me over, she looked me straight in the eye and asked me about that little missive I had sent to Henry Mark Holzer—who was standing directly behind her, looking thoroughly embarrassed and trying not to realize that he had threatened to sue some goofy teenager.
For my part, I had completely forgotten about the letter from Holzer, and my reaction to it, but it all came back to me in a rush: I felt my collar getting rather hot, and then, composing myself, I said I had written the letter—“but they cut my article, Miss Rand.” I explained to Rand, who was looking at me rather intently—and, I thought, not angrily—that my article, in its original form, had run to five and a half typewritten pages. The editor, however, had cut it down to a mere one and a half pages: the result, of course, was a muddle.
Those eyes, that seem to take in—and judge—everything in sight, seemed to bore into my very soul: in that moment, I knew, she was deciding if I was one of the Good Guys or part of the Marshmallow Conspiracy. Remember that Howard Roark, the architect hero of The Fountainhead, blew up one of his own buildings because the design had been changed. Would she take the editor’s side or mine? Rand was testing me, in that moment—and I was testing her.
When she smiled at me, it was like the sun breaking through clouds: “So,” she said, “you want to be a writer!”
As a nearly visible wave of embarrassment wafted through the ranks of her followers, who were buzzing around us like a cloud of flies, Ayn and I talked about writing for a good fifteen minutes. She regaled me with all sorts of advice, and one bit stayed with me for years. In order to avoid future misunderstandings, she told me, I was to attach a cover letter to all future editorial submissions, instructing the editor that not one word was to be changed, altered, or otherwise messed with, without my written permission.
I followed Rand’s advice for years—no wonder I didn’t sell anything!
She did sign my book but with the admonition to “Do better next time”—and I like to think that I have.
Justin Raimondo is the editorial director of Antiwar.com and is a frequent contributor to Taki’s Magazine.
Comments
Mrs. Rand was herself opposed to the use of Randianism, rather preferring to keep her philosophy objective. I recall her once telling a woman she would not answer her question, because the woman had referred to Ayn as a cult. The woman had said that she and her friends belonged to the Ayn Rand cult, so it wasn’t about disciples, but about truth. I think she departed from truth of several occasions, even in her political philosophy. But then again, I’m more of a palaeo-conservative than I am a libertarian. Eh… well, it seems that Ayn Rand will continue to be a theme for me this week, I have already ran across her four times in my reading and listened to her tell the GOP that it needed to straighten out its moral foundations. I’m beginning to think her spirit has a vendetta out against me.
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I have this recurring nightmare....that I’m in Berlin, attending the wedding of Rand & Trotsky, with Ignatius Loyola presiding...some chants referring to Odessa as Jerusalem...very scary!!
Life ain’t objective...it ain’t subjective...it’s delightfully personal....Joy d’vivre.
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Men as Gods ehhhh? While I am as prone to lionizing people of strong personal vision and conviction as the next “cultist”, it seems a little incongruous for Ayn to be wearing a dollar sign while glorifying Howard Roark for burning down his own commission.
Then again , I’m more than a tad barbudo loco and prefer my movement leaders to be more like , say Pancho Villa. Given a choice between spending time with the Ayn Rand Comintern or Dorothy Parker and the Algonquin Round Table, I’d take Parker any day. Rand’s superhumanity was disturbingly modern, like today’s it has no sense of humor. Hearing the Oracular Somnambulator Greenspan discuss his time in the Inner Circle of Ayn Rand sums it up nicely for me.
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Physicists know that objective knowledge of reality - meaning independent of observer - is unachievable, since every interaction with any part of the universe is ultimately subjective. However, essentially universally true subjective reality is
reachable. I think that’s what Ayn Rand meant by objectivism: universally valid subjectivism.
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To Cognate::How would you classify Godel, Heisenberg & Wittgenstein?Either way, I don’t think “knowledge” is the deal maker. Humans are exclusively concerned with Purpose, despite all other apppearances.
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What is the purpose of life, Jim?
Let’s hear a universally valid subectivist definition :)
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Actually, Cognate, the idea that “every interaction with any part of the universe is ultimately subjective” was cooked up by 20th century social scientists, not physicists. In the “hard” sciences, elements of any phenomenon are observed, tests are conducted and, from those, evidence of formulae to explain the phenomena is discerned. What we call “proof”. A pot of water over a fire boils. It doesn’t matter whether or not we want it to boil, it doesn’t matter how we interpret the boiling or how we react to it. Neither poetry nor politics are involved… Bubbles. Steam.
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To Cognate::: the answer is....the Mystery as divine caritas...Nazarene style, not Augustine style.
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To San Fernando Curt::: Bubbles & Steam are not bubbles & steam...they are Purpose. Science is not a noun...it is a verb. Science deals with the knowable, the measurable(sort of)....man cares about the unknowable...the things he can’t measure, can’t know. Man is not social...man is supranatural.
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One last item...let’s not confuse science..with technology. Imagine science without those little “black” measuring boxes. The people who have given you most of your science did. Science comes from a healthy, sensuous idea of the infinite....not from a grim, implacable regard of the finite. Descartes, thought NOT because he was....but because he wasn’t....Needless to say Descartes was a shitty scientist, thankfully. His math is proving even more absurd with each passing “central bank” injection....Just walk away Rene, finite don’t equal infinite. Finally, I think we all owe Cardinal Bellarmine an apology. The good rose was right and Gallileo couldn’t have been more mistaken...The Cardinal did not believe his “proof” and indeed as we all now clearly understand, the Senori did not have it.
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To San Fernando Curt:::does life come from DNA...or, does DNA come from LIFE?
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Justin, you are a damn good writer. The commentary is great but I would like to see more stories, please.
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Right, jim. …Riiiiight.
Somebody want to holler to the Help and ask them to chase the polka-dot monkeys out of jim’s room again? Oh… and have them freshen up his ice cubes, too.
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San Fernando Curt and Jim,
and who do you suppose designed and built those stoves with boiling pots?
Who reads the dials on those black boxes?
Who interprets the results and thinks up new experiments?
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To Cognate: and who designed the designers? and how is it that they can read the dials?, design the experiments? and what makes you so sure that they are correct or accurate? or that their correctness makes a difference?....as Haldane, one of your guys, said “...life is queerer than we think,...in fact, it is queerer than we can think”.
Since Christ, nothing has intensified the mystery of creation, more than science. Go figure.
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Jim, I don’t know what - if anything - designed the designers of those physics experiments, but I do know who designed the Abrahamic god.
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Well, Hell Cognate...relieve my soul-crushin’ suspense....just who designed that Abrahamic God??
And as I’m certain you’ll knock that one out the park...how’bout this for a chaser....what’s the calculus for irony??
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Justin, I love reading your stuff. That was a nice little read :).
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Too bad that Ayn Rand did not want to be described
as a cult leader, because it betrays her lack of
self-awareness.
There was, and there is a cult of Ayn Rand, and it
had too many of the cult pathologies.
In any case, reading her comments on literature and
art, and how she judged their worth according to
how well they fitted her theory makes her in my book
a right-wing Stalinist. Same insistence that everything
be reduced as to how it related to the Party line.
She bragged that her system was logically consistent
in all respects. That might be true, but as Burke warns us,
in these matters, mathematical precision is not a virtue but
a vice, because it assumes that we know all that there is to
know, and should any new discoveries be made that contradict it,
such discoveries must be belittled, hidden, or made to ignore.
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As Justine hinted, Rand’s most important book for understanding her and her philosophy was WE THE LIVING. Taking place in St. Petersburg/Leningrad where Ayn herself was born, the novel develops all her major themes out of her and her family’s experiences being of upper-middle class business proprietors amidst an anti-capitalist revolution. The novel serves as the closest thing to her autobiography. An Italian movie based on this novel was made decades ago.
Objectivism is nothing less than right-wing Marxism. It accepts Dialectical Materialism; but instead of declaring the proletariat as the end-time beneficiary pace Marx, it states that the heroic super bourgeoisie will be the recipient of the final synthesis. Hegel would understand that she just chose a different side.
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Damn, Justin, that was entertaining. And enlightening. I, somewhat older than you, heh, discovered Ayn with the paperback edition of “Atlas Shrugged”. It struck a chord, made me more contrarian than usual; not sure whether that was good or for ill, but I wouldn’t change any facet of my life.
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“Comments will be published at our discretion, and may be edited for clarity and length.” Hmmmm ... I guess you didn’t read the end of Justin’s story, or perhaps don’t agree with Ayn.
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Ayn Rand advocated an evil economic system and an evil ethical system. It is safe to say that most Americans would never want to live in Rand’s extreme free market hell.
Say yes to a protectionist trade policy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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For chrissake this woman named herself after a gd typewriter… enough said
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There was another thing that Ayn has in common with
Marxists. She believed that God was an evil concept,
and people who believed in HIm needed reeducating.
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I don’t know which is worse,
Justin’s self-serving nonsense
or the many idiotic comments by
the cons & paleolibs here.
Atlas Shrugged is “dramatic clumsiness”
and We The Living is her best work !
In fact, the movie of We The Living,
made in fascist Italy is better than
the book. One couldn’t say that of
The Fountainhead though the movie
was not as bad as the foppish aesthetes
who criticized it. By the way Mussolini
did not censor We The Living contrary to
common misinformation originating with
the unreliable Brandens.
Let’s hope Atlas Shrugged is made into
an exciting tv series a la Dallas instead
of the proposed theatrical movie which
couldn’t begin to do it justice.
Every time Raimondo discusses Rand it is
always a prelude to the real story of the
greater glory of Raimondo.
There is this breathless teenage hero-
worship when I was young old line a la
the late Roy A. Childs,Junior. The
actual exposition of the philosophy is
scarce and mostly as an aside to crowd
pleasing anecdotes that charm the misinformed
without illuminating the essence of her work.
Raimondo previously wrote the incredible contention
that Garett’s The Driver was the motivation for
Atlas Shrugged ! Of course when I read it in late 93
after reading Raimondo’s chapter on Rand in his first
book, I discovered there was no similarity at all.
Everyone from Murray Rothbard to Jerome Tuccille
to many, many lesser lights has used peripheral
symbolisms as a substitute for reasoned argument
and to get cheap laughs from the Kirkean numbskull
anti-ideologues and the libertarian dropouts.
Read Raimondo for laughs, he’s an ongoing comedian
but not for any serious philosophical analysis.
His bio of Rothbard is as cultish as anything he
claims alleged Randian acolytes do.
Ayn would not be proud of your writings on
her, Justin. I’m afraid her demented anti-Arab
racism (her single biggest flaw) would rule out
appreciation of your website by her if she were
still with us.
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My big fantasy is to be a terminator who goes back in time and kills the evil scummy bitch before she could pump out all her pseudo intellectual cult garbage, thus saving the U.S. from the current culture of corruption and greed. What a disgusting human being.
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Back in the 60’s I took a bus 60 miles to San Francisco to attend my first Objectivist lecture given by Ayn Rand. When I got to the Mechanics’ Library I was informed that the lecture would be given by Nathaniel Branden instead. After waiting several hours - I got a great seat! - a small 6” X 9” tape recorder was placed upon the podium, its play button was pushed, and the audience was in rapture for the next 15 minutes until the tape had to be turned over.
Decades later I did hear Mr. Branden speak in person. During the Q&A;session, I asked him about Rand’s sense of humor; his response: “That is not a serious question. Next.”
Now, I think I’d prefer the tape.
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Too bad Rand had/has a giant cult-of-personality around herself. One poster a few days ago accused the ‘Austrian’ school types as being almost cultist, but at least Rothbard did not tell us what kind of music we are supposed to like.
Not to mention, that Randians are some of the most vicious war mongers.
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More on “Objectivism.” Howard Roark, the hero of The Fountainhead, destroyed the project that had been altered from his original design. But, IT WASN’T HIS PROPERTY. He destroyed property belonging to others. Was he but a Super Vandal? How can one be a Capitalist without respecting “private property?” Hubristic, arrogant, dismissive of others - that is the Randian Superman. As Whittaker Chambers wrote in his famous National Review critique of Atlas Shrugged, “Almost from every page, one can hear,’Go, to the gas chamber go!’”
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Ayn Rand was a bolshevik. She took the language used by the reds against the bourgeoisie and wrote a “capitalist manifesto”. When it became obvious American’s were too dense to get the joke the comintern turned it into a long term project to wreck capitalism which came to fruition with the appointment of Alan Greenspan to the chairmanship of the Federal Reserve.
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It WAS Roark’s property. The
design was his intellectual property
and the distorted building was his
stolen taxpaid property. As long as
no person was injured he was right in
destroying the monstrosity.
Chambers, the “ex” Communist and homo,
wrote a pathetic review which was demolished
by every critical letter NR received in
response to it.
People like Rick and jd are typical examples
of no-mind conservatives.
That ARI is run by an Israeli warmonger
in no way invalidates Objectivism as a
philosophy. Nor Rand ever tell anyone
what kind of music they had to like,
she mentioned what SHE liked, a distinction
that goes right over the heads of Maxwell
and Co.
Adams blaming Rand for the collectivist-statist
culture of the West today ? Incredible !
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Michael Hardesty:
The design might have been Roark’s property, but he
did not set fire to blueprints, nor destroy the
idea of it by erasing minds with some laser canot
or other SF instrument. He blew up bricks, cement, and metal which
had been put in place by workmen who could point that the
buildings were the products of their labor. Roark’s ideas
by themselves would not keep the rain off anyone’s head. ONly
whey they were carried out in hard materials by other people’s
labors could they be useful.
That’s what he destroyed - that’s what he did not own, could never own.
As for it being paid by taxes, well, he was not the only one taxed. They
took taxes off every one else - so in that respect he could be said to own
only a portion of it. He was entitle to blow up the portion that corresponded
to his percentage in the total taxation, but not those paid for other
taxpayers who might well be content with the building as it was (or, if they
objected to their money being taken, might preferred to be able to charge
even a nominal rent for their portion of hte building - or even to get back the
materials for resale - and they wanted the materials in good shape for that.
Therefore Roark showed not respect for the property of others.
, and
mortar
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Roark created the design AND thus the
building. What he destroyed was the
deliberation mutilation and thus theft
of his property. Since it was built with
stolen tax funds any taxpayer had the right
to destroy it, Roark is the one who had
the most interest. The whole building
arrangement that he made with Peter Keating
was absolutely CONDITIONAL on NO alterations
being made, the government was thus in violation
of the contract which was the legal and moral
basis for the project.
The workmen were merely there to carry out
instructions, they were in no sense owners
or creators of that or any other building.
And with public property there is no way
to divide up allocated portions or no property
rights to respect and this is a good reason not
to have any public property.
If wasn’t for people with ideas like Roark
or Rearden there would be nothing for labor
to do. We would be living in a primitive
starvation economy.
Adriana, you have totally failed to grasp
anything Rand was saying in any of her works.
The only rights the workmen had were to be
paid and they were. Any equipment on site
was stolen by city taxes and thus no property
rights to be respected.
The buildings were never the product of their
labor but of Roark’s mind, the paid labor
is only the means of carrying out his ideas.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Michael:
because the original idea was his did not make it his
building. Did he bake the bricks? Did he lay cement?
Did he hire or direct the workmen so that they did the
job properly? Did he lay any wire?
Had not all that work be done *by someone else* Roark’s ideas
would have continued to inhabit his brain and nowhere else.
The ground would have continued to sprout weeds and wildlife
would have continued to inhabit it.
We do not live in a High Fantasy world where it is enough that
the magician imagine his castle and call upon a magic gem to
erect it. Between the thought and the deed remains the implementation,
and the implementation process was never Roark’s property.
He had the right to ask that his name be removed from the building,
or to change the name of the architect to “Cordwainer Bird”, but he
could not lay claim to what was not his to destroy.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Michael:
Since it as built with taxpayer’s money no taxpayer had the right
to destroy it without the agreement of the other taxpayers. Not unless he
bought them off.
I take that you do not own any shares of anything, since you fail to grasp
this principle of multiple ownership.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Funny how no conversation about Rand can exist without it eventually devolving into a ‘debate’ centered around Objectivism and/or her books.
Of course, given the incoherence Rand has purposely mixed in with these ideas of individualism, can there be any other outcome?
Divide and conquer is a powerful tool wielded quite masterfully by the elites. Too bad that Ayn was so damned good at it. Otherwise, libertarianism may not have had such a hard time gaining popularity amongst the sheeple.
That and Greenspan might’ve just been another starving artist.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
The idea AND the contract made it his.
All the labor and materials are there
for is to implment his or any creator’s
ideas. You badly need to take basic econ,
start with George Reisman’s 1,000 page
opus, Capitalism, really 2,000 pages in
a normal book because of its Atlas size.
Ludwig Von Mises’s Human Action and Murray
Rothbard’s Man, Economy and State with Power
and Market in the Scholar’s edition. Go to
Amazon and order.
The implementation process is not an act of
nature, it is a contractual process that uses
the division of labor to implement it. In
Roark’s case he didn’t merely dream, he
created the architectural blueprints for
the building and it was to be implemented
according to his agreement with Keating.
Collectivist thugs violated the agreement
and Roark as the victim was not required
to wait for a taxpayer vote to take action.
In those days it was impossible to sue the
government because you had to get its permission
to do so ! Nowadays he probably would just sue
because even the verbal contract with Keating
would be upheld under the circumstances.
Roark could do everything all the workmen
did because of his advanced intelligence but
why should he ? It’s like asking a surgeon
to change the hospital bedpans, you hire folks
of lesser ability to do these jobs. That’s how
90% of us, including you, ever get a job.
This is not analogous to an individual owning
stocks, I can do what I please with my 401K if
I need to get out or the money less agreed upon
penalty.
Roark had every right to destroy his building
and any decent person would be glad he did.
Read Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand,
by Leonard Peikoff. You are sadly deficient in
knowledge of Objectivism, Economics and Rational
Morality.
8? your comments are incoherent.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Justin - always love your stuff, this article was wonderful!
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Roark had the wonderful blueprints.
But blueprints alone do not raise buildings. There was an implementation
‘process which cost money, money that came from a lot of people - willing or
unwilling - which people could lay a claim to ownership “I paid for
so many bricks” “I paid the wages for the plasterer” - Unless Roar
had gone through the costs, all of them, he was not the sole owner
of the building, so it was not his to do as he wished.
Whatever complaints he might have had with the implementers, he
had to respect the property rights of those whose money helped pay
for it.
Those unwilling might have said
“It is my money, and I enjoy being used this way” By blowing it
up you deprived them of the enjoyment the use of their property
might have brought him.
“IT is my money, and I do not like being spent like this, but at
least it is over and do not have to go through it again.” By
blowing it, you will subject them to having to pay it agin.
“It is my money, so maybe I can find a way to move in.”
“It is my money, and maybe there is a way to recoup it.”
“It is my money, and I care that once it is spent, it is in
somehting that will lst.”
All these are equally valid sentiments. All of them will come to
naught because one of the owners blew the building up.
Roark had some ownership of the building, but not all. Maybe
King Solomon could have decided it…
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Murray Rothbard always used reasoned arguments. He used anecdotes, but he did not let them use him. He was not a cultist. Ayn Rand....that’s open for debate.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
I have already refuted the gist of your nonargument
in previous posts. It never was “their” property,
it was Roark’s for the reasons that I have previously
stated. More than once. The state never owned the building,
all of their funds were obtained through taxes, through theft.
The welfare recipients never owned the building, they were
the end recipients of the theft. All the contractors and
workers were paid so it made no difference to them.
Your various points are NOT “equal” arguments.
Well, not always did Murray use reasoned arguments,
see his glowing tribute to Che, his endorsement of
Buchanan, his manic new left phase, his endorsement
of crazed blacks carrying guns on campus in 1969
and much else. Yes, he did have a cult with Resch,
Chils, Tuccille, Raimondo, Rockwell and many others.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
I typoed Roy Childs as “Chils” above. Sorry.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
There is but one objective answer to Jim’s question:
‘How would you classify Godel, Heisenberg & Wittgenstein?”
As being in alphabetical order.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Polyester
Very funny, this reminds me of the old programmer’s
joke
“God is real, unless declared integer”
(You have to know FORTRAN to understand it)
Click to flag this comment as abusive
No, Michael. As long as the materials and workmen
were paid out of taxes - stolen if you will - then anyone who
paid those taxes, until reimbursed had a propietorship’s
claim in the building. Until they got their money back, they
owned a portion of it, be it great and small.
Roark owned his ideas fully, because no money - legitimatelly
earned nor extracted - was spent that wasn’t his. He owned a portion
of the building in proportion to the taxes he paid, plus a larger share
due to his intelelctual authorship.
But he did not own those parts that were paid for by other taxpayers.
Not until they were reimbursed they could be made to relinquish the
claim.
And you are very dismissive of the implementation stage, which you seem
to think that any monkey can do - which means that you probably never
implemented anything in your life, nor had to solve any logistics problems.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Adriana, you are as poor a writer as
you are a thinker. I have already rebutted
the arguments above several times.
Taxation itself is theft qua theft.
As a victim I do not require a vote
of the other victims to take appropriate
retaliatory action. The implentation here
constituted total fraud, normally Roark
would not blow up his own buildings,
that he was forced to do here would indicate
a difference in principle IF you were
capable of thinking in principles.
How would you know what I have or haven’t
done in my life and why would I respect
anything you had to say ?
This debate is closed as far I’m concerned.
To paraphrase Galt, if you want to
pretend that I haven’t written what I have,
should I join you in same ?
Hell no !
Click to flag this comment as abusive
As a victim you do not require the approval of other
victims to retaliate?
You mean that if some robber took your property you would think
it proper to follow him to his hideout and take away all you found,
your property, and whatever else he may have stolen from other people
and keep it all for yourself?
I do not mind your stealing from a thief, but as far as the other victims
are concerned you are just another thief who is now in possession of
the property. Frankly, if I was one of the other victims I would find no
difference between you and the original robber - you both hold on to
stolen property and dispose of it as it if was yours.
You know, if Roark had been more involved in the implementation process
he would have found that there might have been good reasons to modify
the original design. Like “Sorry, Roark, but these amazing roofs you
design have a tendency to leak, so you have to modify them so that they do
the job they are supposed to do”. “sorry Roark, but this design does not
allow for enough room for the wiring, please make room for them” “Sorry,
Roark, but these low door thresholds make it easier for people to bump their
heads into them”. And “Using those materials will put us into cost overruns,
so we may have to change with others.”
Implementation, sir, means sweating out all the little details that if not
attended to will give no end of headaches. And it can be an exacting task that
may require as much, if not more genius, than designing the thing being
implemented.
Ayn should not have made his hero an architect. Architecture as an art is different
from others. If you do not like a painting or a sculpture, you can put it in the
closet and not look at it. If you do not like your house design, you still have
to live there and put up with its impractical features until you can unload it
on someone else. (I heard that Frank Lloyd Wright’s roofs had a tendency to leak -
which is an *extremely* undesirable feature in a building).
I find it troubling that Ayn could not see that basic difference.
One thing that Ayn forgot in making his hero an architect is that ar
Click to flag this comment as abusive
No one owned that property, it
was government property which by
its very nature is ownerless.
No one cares about their one-
trillioneth allocation of any piece
of government property.
Roark cared because their “modification”
destroyed the very concept he had
agreed to create.
The thieves were people who changed
the plans and tried to build a
monstrosity with stolen funds to boot.
Roark properly destroyed it.
As far as the thief goes, how can
he have property rights in stolen property ?
What sane person would equate the
repossession of his stolen property
with the original act of theft.
And, NO, I don’t require the approval
of the other victims to reclaim my
stolen property. That building was
actually Roark’s property and he
properly disposed of it.
Now if people do not care to reclaim
their stolen property, then it
belongs to whomever does reclaim
it from the thief. First come,
first served.
So if it were possible of course the victim
should reclaim plus reasonable damages.
Obviously you never read The Fountainhead
carefully or you would known those
were not minor “modifications” and
you would have known the motivation
of the collectivists who mutilated
Roark’s great design.
Your comments about architects are off
the wall, as you drop context and
seem to be UNABLE to think in principles.
You keep issuing verbose variants of
the same refuted many times over point.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
adriana you lost another one on rand again. give it up as this is getting tiresome to
the rest of us. you’re batting 000 as always.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
al blue:
As soon as I find something better to do, I will
give the old bat a rest. But do not expect me to
have respect for someone whose disciples badmouth
Blessed Theresa of Calcutta as being “anti-life”
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Al, read Christopher Hitchen’s
book on Mother Teresa. Very revisionist
take on her. She was preaching anti-birth
control in Calcutta ! How dumb is that ?
This whole exchange reminds me
of an anecdote Babs Branden told
at an NBI lecture many years ago.
During the Korean War they got
a friend to see why Truman was wrong to
nationalize the steel industry, explained
the broad principles of individual property
rights. The next week the same person came
back asking what was wrong with Truman
nationalizing the iron & coal industries !
Peikoff said that’s it is wrong to spend
too much time on pragmatist anti-intellects
who are unable to think beyond newspaper
headline concretes.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
True Meaning of Life= Acromyn Large Investment in Feeling Excellent.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Good story.
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