Posted on 11/13/2009 7:51:55 AM PST by cornelis
Objectively, Ayn Rand Was a Nut [Peter Wehner]
According to Politico.com, Ayn Rand — the subject of two new biographies, one of which is titled Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right — is “having a mainstream moment,” including among conservatives. (Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina wrote a piece in Newsweek on Rand, saying, “This is a very good time for a Rand resurgence. She’s more relevant than ever.”).
I hope the moment passes. Ms. Rand may have been a popular novelist, but her philosophy is deeply problematic and morally indefensible.
Ayn Rand was, of course, the founder of Objectivism – whose ethic, she said in a 1964 interview, holds that “man exists for his own sake, that the pursuit of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose, that he must not sacrifice himself to others, nor sacrifice others to himself.” She has argued that “friendship, family life and human relationships are not primary in a man’s life. A man who places others first, above his own creative work, is an emotional parasite; whereas, if he places his work first, there is no conflict between his work and his enjoyment of human relationships.” And about Jesus she said:I do regard the cross as the symbol of the sacrifice of the ideal to the nonideal. Isn’t that what it does mean? Christ, in terms of the Christian philosophy, is the human ideal. He personifies that which men should strive to emulate. Yet, according to the Christian mythology, he died on the cross not for his own sins but for the sins of the nonideal people. In other words, a man of perfect virtue was sacrificed for men who are vicious and who are expected or supposed to accept that sacrifice. If I were a Christian, nothing could make me more indignant than that: the notion of sacrificing the ideal to the nonideal, or virtue to vice. And it is in the name of that symbol that men are asked to sacrifice themselves for their inferiors. That is precisely how the symbolism is used. That is torture.Many conservatives aren’t aware that it was Whittaker Chambers who, in 1957, reviewed Atlas Shrugged in National Review and read her out of the conservative movement. The most striking feature of the book, Chambers said, was its “dictatorial tone . . . Its shrillness is without reprieve. Its dogmatism is without appeal . . . From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: ‘To a gas chamber — go!’”
William F. Buckley Jr. himself wrote about her “desiccated philosophy’s conclusive incompatibility with the conservative’s emphasis on transcendence, intellectual and moral; but also there is the incongruity of tone, that hard, schematic, implacable, unyielding dogmatism that is in itself intrinsically objectionable.”
Yet there are some strands within conservatism that still veer toward Rand and her views of government (“The government should be concerned only with those issues which involve the use of force,” she argued. “This means: the police, the armed services, and the law courts to settle disputes among men. Nothing else.”), and many conservatives identify with her novelistic hero John Galt, who declared, “I swear — by my life and my love of it — that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”
But this attitude has very little to do with authentic conservatism, at least the kind embodied by Edmund Burke, Adam Smith (chair of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow), and James Madison, to name just a few. What Rand was peddling is a brittle, arid, mean, and ultimately hollow philosophy. No society could thrive if its tenets were taken seriously and widely accepted. Ayn Rand may have been an interesting figure and a good (if extremely long-winded) novelist; but her views were pernicious, the antithesis of a humane and proper worldview. And conservatives should say so.
There are lots of examples in Atlas Shrugs of people striving to help their friends. Consider Ragnar Danesgeld.
What Rand's point is, is that these people VOLUNTARILY help those they love, rather than helping because they are made to feel that they "owe" their labor.
Jesus went to the Cross because He CHOSE to give himself, not because anybody browbeat Him into it, saying he had a debt to the sinners which could only be paid by sacrificing Himself. That's much of Rand's point.
Consider her extra-marital affair with Nathaniel Brandon, which was openly conducted on allegedly Objectivist grounds (pity her poor cuckholded husband). Consider her angry denunciation of Nathaniel Brandon when he eventually fell in love and married with somebody else.
Consider her well-documented insistence on unstinting acceptance of her philosophy among her disciples (who called themselves "the Collective"), and her tendency to angrily excommunicate those who had the temerity to disagree.
Consider her support for abortion, in defiance of her proclamation that we should not sacrifice others to ourselves.
There's plenty of odor there, Hank, for those who have a sense of smell.
Why should *I* give to you? Why not *you* give to me? Why should *you* have any claim on *my* resources? If *you* are too shiftless and lazy to get a job, why should you not die and stop wasting air and food? See, the looter/moocher mentality has gone so far now that the virtuous ARE required to die to free up resources for the moochers. It is SICK.
I'll offer you the challenge, then, that our Canadian friend so badly bungled.
Define in measurable terms the objective basis of "happiness," keeping in mind that to be objective, any given basis must infallibly produce "happiness," for all people at all times.
And while you're at it, why not define happiness itself, in objective, measurable terms?
He freaked! I guess that happens—he’d seen it all.
I think Rand would consider Mother Theresa among her heroines. John Galt worked on creating motors, because that is what gave him satisfaction in life. Henry Rearden worked on alloys, because he enjoyed doing that. Mother Theresa helped the poor because that was what she wanted to do with her life, rather than anybody convincing her she owed her life.
There is nothing wrong with choosing to give your life for others. The Randian tragedy is doing what you don't want to do, because somebody has convinced you that you OWE your life to others, if you catch the distinction.
Well, OK, but why does she misinterpret Christianity. I think she positively despises it.
I don’t know what Ayn Rand was like, but somehow I imagine her to be something like Ann Coulter.
“Ms. Rand was exactly right. The biblical story of Christ is one of a perfect or ideal man who voluntarily died to redeem those who were and are not perfect.”
You don’t really believe that, do you? I know you think you do, but exactly where is the redemption? Seems men were exactly the same way after Christ died as before, so evidently the redemption didn’t take.
Right?
Hank
So? If you don’t work you should not eat that simple.
The redemption is obviously not of this life and this world. To believe in it requires faith.
Ms. Rand obviously rejected the whole notion, which is her privilege. A great many people choose to believe that Christ has redeemed the world, in an ultimate sense, from sin and death. At present only in the afterlife, but to be brought to the earth in a literal form in the future.
From a purely secular perspective, even a committed atheist should be able to recognize that the ideas of human equality and human rights grew directly out of the soil of Judeo-Christian morality and theology. In this theology, we are all, in an ultimate sense, equal because we are all equally children of God. As the D. of Independence says, we have inalienable rights granted by the Creator.
It is probably significant that no other society in all of human history came up with anything remotely similar to the idea of human equality and human rights. Regardless of western civilization’s highly imperfect record in implementing these ideas, the invention and spread of them should stand to its credit, and to that of Christianity, the parent of this civilization.
Rand needs to be understood in the context of her time, when socialism was seen by many as an inevitable and desirable final state, before the collapse of the Soviets made it clear how unworkable a system it was. Her philosophy needs to be understood as a counter-point to the socialist meme.
If we went by that standard alone, we must logically conclude that babies should be starved, as should people who are for any reason physically or mentally incapacitated. After all, they can't work ... why should they eat?
That's the problem with bumper-sticker morality. It doesn't leave room for rational thought, much less common sense.
I don’t want to come off like I’m overly harsh on Ayn Rand. She made some enormous contributions with her works.
There is a movie about her which accurately captures her persona. But she is not the type of person you would want to be married.
One interesting thing that Whittaker Chambers pointed out in his review of Ms. Rand’s books and characters: There are never any children in them. Ms. Rand and Frank O’Connor never had any children. I wonder what she had against children.
Then of course Ms. Rand concocted her very own philosophy in which she could rationalize her perfectly outrageous affair with Nathaniel Brandon. Kinda convenient when you don’t have to answer to a Higher Power and you can invent your own philosophy and morality, huh?
Difference between Ann Coulter and Ayn Rand. Coulter believes in God. Rand believed in (super) man.
“... she would occassionally look at other men ...”
“moderately faithful,” will be more than looking. I really do not believe you.
Just how much moderate dishonesty will you tolerate in your banker, by the way.
Hank
Or conversely, it seems the non-religious tend to take Rand’s philosophy beyond the political realm and into being its own secular faith - with all the dogmatism and intransigence of any of the other secular faiths that have plagued the world for the last century - and that turns people off. It’s odd that Rand didn’t seem to like anyone in her lifetime - not Democrats, not Republicans, not Libertarians nor other 3rd partyers, both progressives and traditionalists were attacked with equal vehemence. When you declare war on the whole world, don’t be surprised if you’re left without too many allies and a whole lot of opposition.
I think she dislikes anything that says to her that she has a duty to work for the benefit of people she doesn't like, which many have interpreted as being part of Christianity.
You may be right reagrding the self sorting along religous / non-religous lines.
As to here not having many allies though, should that be the final arbiter of a thought’s legitimacy?
I absolutely disagree with that.
On an individual level, Christianity has turned a lot of people's lives around. It doesn't make them perfect ... but it definitely puts them in a better place than they were. The story of Western Civilization is, in large part, a story of redemption -- on-going, gradual, incomplete -- but redemption nevertheless.
It is quite incorrect to state that "redemption" is not of this life and world.
The very life of Jesus is the breaking-in of God into this world, into this life (and directly so, in the case of His disciples).
In Christian theology, the power of "this-world" redemption is granted to the Holy Spirit, Who works in and through human beings.
The New Jerusalem of Rev. 21 is of course the ideal ... but Christianity holds that God is active and engaged in this world, even now: Redemption is a real-time deal, not just an end-times hope.
It always amazed me that I was captivated by reading The Fountainhead, more engrossed with every page and sorry when it ended, watched the movie maybe a dozen times, but have never been able to get more than 50-75 pages into Atlas Shrugged. Tried at least half a dozen times and in almost every decade of my life. Just can’t get into it.
What a dreary world it portrays.
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