Posted on 06/20/2013 12:48:09 PM PDT by nickcarraway
My item on Rand Paul the other day, predictably, went over quite badly in the libertarian community. The Insomniac Libertarian, in an item wonderfully headlined “Obama Quisling Jonathan Chait Smears Rand Paul,” complains that my Paul piece “never discloses that [my] wife is an Obama campaign operative.” A brief annotated response:
1. I question the relevance of the charge, since Rand Paul is not running against Obama.
2. In point of fact, my wife is not an Obama campaign operative and has never worked for Obama’s campaign, or his administration, or volunteered for his campaign, or any campaign, and does not work in politics at all.
3. I question the headline labeling me an “Obama quisling,” a construction that implies that I have betrayed Obama, which seems to be the opposite of the Insomniac Libertarian’s meaning.
4. For reasons implied by points one through three, I urge the Insomniac Libertarian to familiarize himself with some of the science linking sleep deprivation to impaired brain function.
A more substantive, though still puzzling, retort comes from the Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf, a frequent bête noire of mine on subjects relating to Ayn Rand and Ron or Rand Paul. Friedersdorf raises two objections to my piece, which traced Rand Paul’s odd admission that he is “not a firm believer in democracy” to his advocacy of Randian thought. Friedersdorf first charges that the intellectual connection between Paul and Rand is sheer paranoia:
Chait takes the quote and turns it into a conspiracy … As I read this, I couldn't help but think of Chait as a left-leaning analog to the character in Bob Dylan's "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues." Those Objectivists were coming around/They were in the air / They were on the Ground/ They wouldn't give me no peace. For two thousand years, critics of unmediated democracy have warned about the masses abusing individuals and minorities. The American system was built from the very beginning to check democratic excesses.
But if Rand Paul distrusts democracy he must've gotten it from Ayn Rand.
A conspiracy? Am I imagining that Rand Paul has been deeply influenced by Ayn Rand? Paul himself has discussed the deep influence her work had on his own thinking. In college he wrote a series of letters and columns either quoting Rand or knocking off her theories. He used a congressional hearing to describe one of her novels at tedious length. How is this a conspiracy? Friedersdorf proceeds to argue that Rand is not really very militant anyway:
It's also interesting that Chait regards Rand's formulation as "militant." Let's look at it again. "I do not believe that a majority can vote a man's life, or property, or freedom away from him." Does Chait believe that a democratic majority should be able to vote a man's life or freedom away? …
In the political press, it happens again and again: libertarian leaning folks are portrayed as if they're radical, extremist ideologues, even when they're expressing ideas that are widely held by Americans across the political spectrum.
Well, here we come to a deeper disagreement about Ayn Rand. My view of her work is pretty well summarized in a review-essay I wrote in 2009, tying together two new biographies of Rand with some of the Randian strains that were gaining new currency in the GOP. My agenda here is not remotely hidden, but maybe I need to put more cards on the table. I've described her worldview as inverted Marxism — a conception of politics as a fundamental struggle between a producer class and a parasite class.
What I really mean is, I find Rand evil. Friedersdorf’s view is certainly far more nuanced and considerably more positive than mine. He’s a nice, intelligent person and a good writer, but we’re not going to agree on this.
Friedersdorf waves away Rand’s (and Rand Paul’s) distrust of democracy as the same fears everybody has about democracy. Well, no. Lots of us consider democracy imperfect or vulnerable, but most of us are very firm believers in democracy. Rand viewed the average person with undisguised contempt, and her theories pointed clearly in the direction of cruelty in the pursuit of its fanatical analysis. A seminal scene in Atlas Shrugged described the ideological errors of a series of characters leading up to their violent deaths, epitomizing the fanatical class warfare hatred it's embodied and which inspired Whitaker Chambers to observe, “From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: 'To the gas chambers — go!'”
Randism has never been tried as the governing philosophy of a country, so it remains conjecture that her theories would inevitably lead to repression if put into practice at a national level. But we do have a record of the extreme repression with which she ran her own cult, which at its height was a kind of totalitarian ministate. You can read her biographies, or at least my review, to get a sense of the mind-blowing repression, abuse, and corruption with which she terrorized her followers.
But the upshot is that I strongly dispute Friedersdorf’s premise that Rand’s theories are a variant of democracy, any more than Marx’s are. In fact, I find the existence of powerful elected officials who praise her theories every bit as disturbing to contemplate as elected officials who praise Marxism. Even if you take care to note some doctrinal differences with Rand, in my view we are talking about a demented, hateful cult leader and intellectual fraud. People who think she had a lot of really good ideas should not be anywhere near power.
I actually enjoyed her novels.
Read all the way through The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Skimmed Anthem. I've read The Virtue of Selfishness, , and other works. I don't agree with everything Rand has to say, but I do agree with much of it, especially on capitalism and markets.
Hey, it got him Cindy Sheehan, and who wouldn’t want that? (Well, almost everyone, but that’s besides the point)
Think you are the only one here with a few Degrees under your belt? I’ve also read Satre, Keirkegaard, Orwell, etc...
I don’t read Rand for the gripping plots and character development. Objectivism is easy to explain, but sometimes needs a bit of plain illustration to show how the archetypes in her stories fit into reality.
And fit they do. Especially in todays political climate.
I’ve read Hayek, Rothbard (not my favorite), and Mises. My alma mater has Dr. Mises’s library.
Now, run to your search engine and search on “Mises” so you’re up to speed.
I live in Massachusetts. I discovered Ayn Rand in college in the late 1960s, when everybody else was joining SDS.
My ex-girlfriend (before my beloved last one who died in January) was a liberal college professor in Cambridge, MA, and so were all of her friends and relatives to whom I was regularly exposed.
I have been listening to people off the "right-wing-o-sphere" my whole adult life.
You are right that I will learn nothing from you and your very bizarre, utterly ignorant and pointless rantings.
Others look at religious teachings as good teachings. It is bad to lie, steal and murder, so any G-d that tells you to not lie, steal or murder should be on the same side as the moral people.
You might find this interesting. It's by a high school classmate of mine.
http://www.amazon.com/An-Atheist-Defends-Religion-Humanity/dp/1592578543
Brilliant. Thank you.
I tried.
Overwrought characters, cliched dialogue, and over the top melodrama aren't my things.
Maybe it's because English wasn't her native tongue, but that didn't seem to bother Joseph Conrad.
Anyway, I think it's unwise to adopt any one person's philosophy as a whole, but she obviously did have keen insight into the conflict between those who wish to be free and those who wish to control.
It's just my opinion that she did not express those insights in a very artful way.
Many disagree, apparently. ;0)
“Pointless” is the key word.
I was trolling, unsuccessfully for worthy opponents.
Just a stupid and offensive statement. You must be a "progressive."
I’ve pretty much read your list there, plus all her essays.
Ideas aside, it was tortuous.
Thanks for doing the heavy lifting for me.
For information about her racism and eugenics’ sympathies, I directed another Freeper to her unedited letters.
She’s an extremely nasty character in her letters.
I was forced to read Ludwig von in school.
And, yes, that’s a Clockwork Orange/Mises reference.
Too much for you?
The FBI file on the incident is public record. I’ve seen it, with the mug shot and a photograph of the pills in question.
You must be an unthinking Limbot. I know cognitive dissonance is a harsh creature.
Whatev.
Of course not; that mention was made only to clarify my objection: that as fiction novels, her major works just aren't very good.
Life is too short to read stuff you don't like.
You're welcome although I have no particular dog in this fight. It's been shown, through the years, that FReepers can be feisty as well as the smartest people on the whole world wide web and points beyond. ::-)
That's why my posting contained some cautionary notes about the veracity of the quotes attributed to her. If it turns out that Ayn Rand was indeed an abortionist, it doesn't necessarily undo her wisdom on free markets and individual initiative. But, at least for me, I certainly can't hold her character in high regard.
I belive Ayn was a product of her environment. She learned to fight socialism on the same brutal terms that it sought to subjugate her.
I enjoyed “We the Living”. Depressing and sad, but a good quick read.
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