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.
I figured this out when I got married. I live for my wife and children.
Its like meeting someone who calls himself a Christian, but then you realize he belongs to some perverted sect.
LOL, good one!!!
National Review hated her because she called out WF Buckley ages ago for what he was - a pragmatist. A Conservative, but a pragmatist who believed in some forms of government power and largesse. So that they run this is no surprise.
Her non fiction spells out clearly what is required for living freely on earth. Nothing more needs to be said.
And the author thinks his case is bolstered by holding this up as an example of how "horrible" Rand is - but it looks like a pretty accurate insight, to me. Not about who Jesus was, but about how the political entity known as the church have used Him over the centuries to make money.
Anyone who has a wife and children, and doesn’t live for them, isn’t much of a man.
I look forward to your help with healthcare. I understand it in the context of Atlas Shrugged, which is the secular idea of doing good verses the biblical doing good. One is the handout that leads to enslavement, the other is the handup that leads to freedom. Secular good to Galt is very different from the idea of Natural Law good.
Many who read Atlas Shrugged misunderstand the term of "good" as used in the storyline.
Funny how so many independent people follow Rand like lemmings.
There is no God, and Ayn Rand is His prophet.
O'contraire, the slavery is the delusion of altruism, that one can do good with no self-benefit. If one is honest about their self-interest in 'doing good' then they don't become a slave to others' manipulation to 'do good for them'.
I think he said he risked his life for value, not for Dagney.
Did Chambers actually read the book? To a gas chamber? That's an insane reading of it!
Nothing in the Galt philosphy prevents a person from acting out of one’s heart for another.
The key is to prevent the government from forcing a collective for the losers of the world.
That pretty much says it all.
With Ayn Rand you have to take the good with the bad. She was a great novelist. She was a staunch defender of individual liberty, limited government, and free market capitalism-—that is all to the good.
On the other hand, she promoted atheism and selfishness and her personal life, values, and morals were perfectly atrocious.
As a teenager, I read Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead and enjoyed them greatly. But more recently I read Whittaker Chambers’ book Witness. I found Chambers to be much more deep. His transition from darkness into the light was quite profound. He understood man’s weaknesses and faults including his own. Miss Rand, on the other hand, was a romanticist who invented cartoon like superhuman characters who were flawless and never made mistakes or errors in judgement. IMHO, Chambers was a realist, Rand was a dreamer.
I don’t know if I’m refuting it, but perhaps I can explain where she goes wrong. Ayn Rand would never admit that she is an inferior in God’s eyes as well, as are we all. He should know, He made us. The fact that she is no longer with us helps to prove that point. After a period of Bible study involving translations and context, I no longer subscribe to the modern traditional Christian point of view. I believe Christ will eventually save all of mankind, as is clearly stated in many Bible verses. So Ms. Rand will eventually be redeemed for her inferiority as well. Since none of this is of her own doing and she was clearly inferior as well, her arrogance was not justified.
The key is to prevent the government from forcing a collective for the losers of the world.
That may be the part you like. The part I dislike is her complete misunderstanding of Christian. Nietzchean.
For example, she named "The pursuit of his ... his own happiness" as one of the "highest moral purpose[s] of his life." It's not rational that a highly subjective mental/physical state should be the highest moral goal of a supposedly rational and objective philosophy.
And then there's her insistence that "Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others." This could only come from the pen of a woman who never had children.
One might be tempted to excuse her for that one on the basis of ignorance, except that she was apparently also strongly in favor of abortion -- which is just about the pinnacle of "sacrificing others to [herself]."
I long ago concluded that Rand's philosophy began with her atheism, and that everything else she wrote can only properly be understood on that basis. She wanted absolutes, but no God to enforce them.... the last 6 Commandments without the inconvenience of the first 4. And thus her insistence that reason and observation were sufficient to lead us to her "objective" philosophy.
If one accepts her premises, I suppose it's possible to reach her conclusions; but then, that's what insane people do, too: they draw painstakingly logical conclusions from initial conditions that have no contact with the real world. Rand's initial premises, while not necessarily "insane," nevertheless suffer from the flaw that they don't match the real world very well.
In many important respects, I think that Ayn Rand was actually a very childish person, who never moved beyond a childish insistence on getting her own way. No wonder she was irrational.
Though I’m not a huge fan of Ayn I do greatly appreciate anyone who holds individual freedoms paramount.
But even if I did not like Ayn - this article is ludicrous. I doubt that author even bothered himself with reading Atlas Shrugged or familiarizing himself with Ayn Rand philosophy.
“To a gas chamber”??! Where the hell this is coming from? It is very telling for a person to mistake a strong argument (which Ayn makes) for a strong armed dictate. Freudian slip on his part, I’d say.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.