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.
It’s interesting reading all the pro and anti Rand comments. With most political thinkers people feel free to accept that some of what they said was true, while some errors are mixed up therein. With Rand it seems that people demand all or nothing.
“Funny how so many independent people follow Rand like lemmings.”
Reminds me of independent motorcycle riders -— all dressed in black leather jackets, white shirt, blue jeans, black boots, and a Harley -— a Harley, mind you, not some “other” brand. (Not that Harley’s aren’t nice bikes, as they are, but the lemming issue is clear.)
For the record, I’ve been to Sturgis. (Dressed in black, on a Harley — but with a kippah -— and no, noone ever bothered me, but I did get a lot of photographs taken with me.)
Easier than italicizing it.
At some point you have to ask yourself why so many people did not finishing reading the book. Could it be that the book sucked? She made her point by page 25 and spent the next 1000 pages repeating it. The book was one of the least compelling and most boring reads of my life. Rand fancied herself an intellectual and wrote as if her audience were children. Many of the people I’ve met who claim to have enjoyed the book suffer from obvious inferiority complexes. They think that by bragging of finishing a really big book they will appear to intellectual.
I don’t know what “Christian Nietzchean” is.
“He can’t do good for another because he thinks doing good is slavery”
Not really. When reardon made better steel, it benefitted all. So too w/ Galt’s motor.
Chambers' review of Atlas Shrugged is withering. He lays out in detail what's wrong with the book.
But anyone care to refute here excerpt re Christianity contained right there? And I mean factually, rationally refute. Without the use of “feelings” or “faith”.
No problem. See my #39. Just to give you a taste, you demand "without the use of 'feelings,'" and yet a "feeling" (happiness) is what Rand calls a "highest moral good."
Her philosophy is fundamentally irrational.
A nihilist of faith?
Buckley should have believed in no form of government power?
That's a bit of dramatic language ... but OTOH, speaking as somebody who's read the book several times, Chambers is essentially correct. Rand clearly doesn't care who dies, if they're not among her Select Few. (The fate of Eddie Willers, for example.)
Exactly.
I’m still waiting for a rational refutation of that statement here, but I think I’ll be waiting a while.
This is why I wonder sometimes if -at the core - Christianity is incompatible with freedom.
Umm, straw man, Ann. First, no one is superior. All are children of God. All have sinned. There is no righteous man, not even one.
Second, God does not want sacrifice from us. He did that already, and it was for all of us, forever. Go and learn what this means, Ann : "I desire mercy, not sacrifice."
Third, it should make us indignant that Jesus had to die on the cross. The godly grief and sorrow that grows out of that indignation should humble us and lead us to the repentance that brings life and the kingdom now. How can we sin knowing what God had to endure for us? How can we be worrying or ungrateful when we know the outrageous price He paid for us? How can we be anything but joyful and thankful? How can we lord it over those still in chains once we know we are free?
It never ceases to amaze me how little supposedly literate people know about what the King of the Universe has been trying to tell us for thousands of years.
Funny how so many independent people follow Rand like lemmings.
Rand has her limitations (notably she did not recognize the soul directly) but to suggest people follow her as a cult is mistaken. Rand is the logical conclusion of the enlightenment, if you depart with Adam Smith, Locke, go to Jefferson/Madison and American Constitution, you will arrive at Rand. It took Rand’s talents and unique history to culminate in the Fountain Head and Atlas Shrugged. A Russian emigre fleeing the communist revolution gave her an informed opinion on collectivization. She is the antithesis of collectivization. If you have not read her work, I would recommend that you take the time to do so.
LOL!
Witness was a great book. So was Atlas Shrugged. Both were written by flawed authors, but so what? Chambers picked an unnecessary fight that lives to this day, where he distorted Rand’s message and brought his own judgment into question at least to that extent. Just my opinion.
“a brittle, arid, mean, and ultimately hollow philosophy”
“That pretty much says it all.”
It does indeed, but not the way you think it does. When you can’t argue with something rationally, call it names instead.
That statement is pure cultism
“With Rand it seems that people demand all or nothing.”
Yeah, I notice that too. I think it’s because it shakes the faith of the relgious, so they attaqck disproportionately to convince themselves they haven’t been fed a crock of sh!t all their lives.
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