Posted on 08/08/2002 4:20:37 PM PDT by RJCogburn
On March 6, 1982 writer and philosopher Ayn Rand died. Her novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and non-fiction works like Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal were major influences on the development of the libertarian movement, and in the two decades since her death the accuracy of her insights has been demonstrated time and again.
Rand was born in 1905 in czarist Russia. Before she left in 1926 she witnessed the rise of that most evil empire, a communist regime that would take the lives, liberty and property of millions of people. She understood first-hand the horrid consequences of evil philosophies and the importance of defending the right ideas for the right reasons.
Many great supporters of liberty such as economists F.A. Hayek and Milton Friedman justified the capitalist system because it produces more material goods and services than planned or socialist systems and, to the extent that governments try to control economies, those economies will stagnate or collapse.
But Rand maintained that capitalism must be defended first and foremost on moral grounds. Unlike plants or lower animals, human beings have a unique rational capacity that each of us must choose to exercise if we’re to survive and prosper. We need to discover how to produce food, how to cure diseases, how to construct shelters and how to build skyscrapers. This means that we each must be free to act on the judgments of our own minds.
So what do these facts tell us about society? Rand observed that individuals can deal with each other in one of two ways: though mutual consent or by initiating force. Capitalism is the social system based on mutual consent and respect for the rights and dignity of each individual. By contrast, when governments try to run economies, by definition they use force to take the property of individuals and restrict their freedom, at the point of a gun.
Critics argue that free markets mean a world of individuals pursuing their own selfish interests rather than looking out for the good for society. Many market defenders deny this fact or apologize for it. Worse, many entrepreneurs feel guilty not for their vices but for their virtues, that is, their ability to create wealth rather than steal it from others. Rand called this the “sanction of the victim.” If you accept your enemies’ evaluation of you, you accept undeserved blame, and thus give them the power to destroy you.
To the producers in society, Rand said “Stop apologizing.” She understood that everyone benefits from a society of trade, and that the most productive people create the most benefits for all of us-not only in art and science but also in business. Creators of wealth deserve the same honor, and the same freedom, as creators of beauty or knowledge.
So why, with the fall of Soviet bloc communism and the manifest failures of welfare states, do leftists who claim to want to help the poor still oppose the free market? Rand understood that many of these critics are motivated first and foremost by envy and resentment of the productive people who flourish in the market. Their failings are not intellectual; they’re moral.
Rand understood that when leftists could no longer justify their anti-capitalist bigotry based on facts and reason, they would simply abandon facts and reason. And sure enough, many offer empty emotional outbursts: “We’re victims! It’s the duty of you selfish exploiters to care for us!” Academic nihilists and post-modernists assault the minds of their students by maintaining that facts and reason are simply prejudices perpetuated by the evil ruling class.
Rand offers a much-needed antidote to today’s attacks on liberty. She understood that reality is objective, that we discover the truth by using our minds, not our adrenal glands, and that only when we defend liberty based on the right of each individual to his or her own life can we ensure a truly human society.
Copyright, The Objectivist Center. For more information, please visit www.ObjectivistCenter.org.
Of lung cancer. She had had her first lung removed about ten years earlier. Too foolish, stupid, or stubborn to figure the obvious out, she smoked like a damp mattress on fire. She despised people who did not smoke and said so often. She despised most things wholesome.
She butted into her sycophants' private lives, trying to force some to marry merely on her whim and say so--pressuring others to divorce. She was a sort of atheist Reverend Moon, sucking her simpering admirers for money, cadging them for smokes, always on the lookout for an opportunity to pontificate on the preposterous moral-blind conceit that holds that good and evil is a mere function of consent or lack thereof.
She wasn't a novelist. She was a modestly gifted caster of potboilers. Although she despised religious conservatives, her overwrought scribblings were more preachy and self-righteous than anything Bill Sunday ever pitched from the pulpit.
And those were her good points.
This is incorrect. Rand didnt agree with Religion, not Conservatives. Now, I realize that many conservatives believe that they own the concept of morality through Religious teachings, but one doesnt have to be Religious to be moral.
Rand wasnt preachy either, she was matter-of-fact. Most people are uncomfortable with expressed certainty, liking to leave room for reconsideration.(hedging)
She was an awful writer true, but her ideas were sound and influential. Were it not for Rand's works, this country would be even further along in its race to Socialism.
Well when it comes to critics of Ayn Rand... I say, "Get your life's philosophy... what you believe the central core of your justification for being on this planet and how you deal with your life... put it into a couple of pages and add characters that are "interesting" so that others can relate... sound easy... many have tried... guess what ... she still hits a nerve with pedantic plotlines, one dimensional characters and heavy prose... Who is John Gault?.....
Them's fightin' words pardner. . .
Rent "The Passion of Ayn Rand" on video or DVD to see a wonderful movie about Rand's personal life, focused on her affair with Nathaniel Brandon. Peter Fonda does an amazing job as her husband Frank O'Connor. Great flick for those Randophiles.
Grey is but a mixture of black and white. Morality is discovering and separating them.
The moocher loves confusion.
Hank
Please give us an example of someone you believe is a "good" writer.
Hank
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