Paul Ryan and Ayn Rand
by Bob Schwartz
A postage stamp honoring Ayn Rand was issued in 1999; that’s the image used in the National Review cover above. It was issued in the usual way, following a roughly three-year process of being proposed, recommended by the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee, and then approved by the Postmaster General.
The most famous controversy over any stamp concerned the Elvis Presley commemorative. There was disagreement about which Elvis to depict, the younger leaner one or the older heavier one, and disagreement about whether Elvis should have a stamp at all. In the end, the stamp was issued, and went on to become the bestselling in U.S. postal history. There is no record that there was disagreement about Ayn Rand, though there might well have been.
Paul Ryan honored Ayn Rand too, at least until recently. He stated that her books were the most pivotal in shaping his public life. He gave them to interns as gifts. He spoke frequently about how the decline in America looked increasingly like something out of an Ayn Rand novel.
He is not alone among public servants in his admiration for Ayn Rand. Politico reported last April on 7 Politicians Who Praised Ayn Rand. Among these are Sen. Rand Paul (coincidentally named), Rep. Ron Paul (who should know about Rand Paul’s name), President Ronald Reagan, Sen. Ron Johnson, Gov. Gary Johnson, Sen. Mark Sanford and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Justice Thomas has his new law clerks watch a screening of The Fountainhead (1949), starring Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal, an adaptation of Rand’s second most famous novel. Maybe the most famous acolyte of Ayn Rand is former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, who in the 1950s was part of her inner circle and a close confidant.
Rand’s novels are overlong, didactic, questionably artful embodiments of her very particular philosophy. It is a philosophy fed by her early experience as a child in Soviet Russia, a member of an intellectual and professional Jewish family that was reduced to dire circumstances by the forces of collectivism, Communism and totalitarianism.
She came to America and created her own ism. The Atlas Society, one of the intellectual keepers of the Rand canon, summarizes:
Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism was set forth in such works as her epic novel Atlas Shrugged, and in her brilliant non-fiction essays. Objectivism is designed as a guide to life, and celebrates the remarkable potential and power of you, the individual. Objectivism also challenges the doctrines of irrationalism, self-sacrifice, brute force, and collectivism that have brought centuries of chaos and misery into the lives of millions of individuals. It provides fascinating insights into the world of politics, art, education, foreign policy, science, and more, rewarding you with a rich understanding of how ideas shape your world. Those who discover Objectivism often describe the experience as life-changing and liberating.
One problem with Objectivism, as with the isms Rand left behind and hated, is that pure systems work well on paper and in the mind, as long as you don’t have to wrestle with the complexities and consequences of the actual world. This is probably why Ayn Rand has always had an appeal to younger people, particularly teenage boys and young men, who are empowered by the idea of their individual greatness waiting to explode, ungoverned by the limitations that the world tries to place on them. The world is filled with people who want something from us, who are jealous of us, who don’t understand our specialness, and who will do anything to hold us back and keep us down.
This phenomenon was wryly captured by Michael Sean Winters in the National Catholic Reporter:
As one wag once said: “There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.”
Winters was writing in the context of the Ryan Budget. Paul Ryan is devoted to the Catholic Church, which is founded on the sort of collectivism, anti-individualism, self-sacrifice and charity that Rand abhorred and rejected as immoral. This led in May 2011 to questions about how the Ryan Budget, with reductions in government help for the poor and others in need, squared with the teachings of the Church. Archbishop Timothy Dolan, who had previously been Bishop in Wisconsin, made clear in a letter to Ryan that the budget was completely in line with the Church’s mission. Winters wrote:
Ryan’s budget certainly reflects Rand’s weltanschauung more than it reflects the vision Pope Benedict XVI put forth in Caritas in Veritate. That is why I think it was a mistake for Archbishop Dolan to write a letter that, however unintentionally, gave political cover to policies that are antithetical to Catholic social teaching. And, whatever frustrations Ryan – or anyone else – has with the modern, social welfare state, I think it can be said that the social welfare state is to social justice what democracy is to government: The worst form of administration except every other form.
Ryan can assert that his budget is built upon Catholic concerns about human dignity, but there is no dignity in Rand’s crimped vision of humanity. There really is no need to wrestle with these so-called ideas.
Paul Ryan’s distancing from Ayn Rand began last spring when he said that his supposed embrace of the author and her philosophy was “urban legend.” (If so, it is the most high-minded and intellectual urban legend of all time, since those stories are usually sordid and lowlife, as in the flushing of baby alligators into the New York sewers.) Then just yesterday he explained that while he enjoyed the novels for a long time, it was only later that he became aware of her philosophy.
As mentioned earlier, Ayn Rand’s novels are not works of art that have to be savored and investigated so that their meaning can be coaxed out. They are pages and pages of speeches and ideas, with some plot and characters hung on them like ornaments on a tree. There are only two explanations for Ryan’s assertion: he is either dull-witted, which he isn’t, or he is…being disingenuous.
Why all this effort to run away from Ayn Rand anyway? Most people, meaning voters, have never read those novels, and all this fuss is not about to move them to throw away weeks of their lives trying to plow through them.
Here’s why.
First, Ayn Rand was an atheist. In her philosophy there is no higher power than man, no life other than the objective life in front of our faces, no morality other than the morality of rational self-interest. There are plenty of atheists who embrace the moral and ethical concepts at the heart of religious beliefs, such as the Golden Rule. Ayn Rand was not one of those. This is more than inconvenient for anyone, especially politicians, who base their lives and careers on their religious foundations.
But there is something deeper and more significant going on. In 2010 the National Review, America’s most respected conservative journal, published a cover story on Ayn Rand. In it, Jason Lee Steorts writes about going back to reread Ayn Rand, given her renewed popularity following the election of Barack Obama:
Our president seems to have inspired — which is not quite the word — half the country to read Miss Rand, and I wanted to remind myself what she was teaching them. He finds that he can’t get through the books, because he sees the author for who she was and, therefore, what she espoused.
Steorts relates a scene from Atlas Shrugged. The prime movers, those who are literally the brains behind the success of the country, have gone on strike. This leaves the inferior, parasitic people to fend for themselves. In this scene, a train is stopped before an eight-mile unventilated tunnel. There are no diesel engines, no one to properly operate the train. But facing a demand to make it move, the station officials, writes Rand, “call in a coal engine, procure a drunken engineer, and condemn every passenger on the train to death by asphyxiation.”
The passengers comprise an array of losers, including a professor “who taught that individual ability is of no consequence” and a mother “whose husband held a government job enforcing directives.” They are, in essence, riding a train into a gas chamber. “But that isn’t why I stopped reading,” Steorts writes. “I stopped because Rand thinks they deserve it.”
That is at the heart of this running away from Rand. Rand’s world is not one where unbridled individualism can co-exist with a diversity of other moralities and abilities. It is either/or. There are producers, there are freeloaders, and the immoral role of government is to stifle the producers and reward the freeloaders with stolen spoils. As soon as government is gone, the producers will be free to shape the world in their image, and the others will learn how that world works or they will, ultimately, perish as their punishment.
If that sounds harsh and heartless, it is. If that sounds like an extreme version of some of the rhetoric we may have been hearing lately, it is. But even the softer version, tempered by compassion, still makes us uncomfortable. That is why, hopefully, Ryan and others will distance themselves from Ayn Rand—not just for political show, but for real. That is why, when Sheorts in the National Review looked to find out why Obama-haters were reading Ayn Rand, he recoiled at what he found. He discovered a bloodless train, and he couldn’t bear to see where it was heading.
This reminds me that sometime during the last couple of years I saw some neo-Cons on C-Span celebrating Rand’s work and philosophy. After reading this, I’m glad I haven’t wasted my time reading her novels.
I.C.
This should have been an interesting article, but your poisoned liberal bias shows through. Pity. it would be nice to get a reasoned critical analysis of objectivism in American public life.
i wrote a blog involving Rand just last week, when I finished The Grapes of Wrath. Both The Grapes of Wrath and Atlas Shrugged stirred me equally, despite being completely opposite. I loved The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged made sense to me when I read it earlier this year, but you’re right, she had a serious problem in dealing with reality. What happens when these heroes get out of control to the point where they drive labor costs down so far that the workers literally can’t feed their families and are forced to give up everything they have to travel across the country to a job that doesn’t exist? I personally agree with some form of objectivism, but with consideration for reality. If I choose to take what I earn and help other people, I’m not immoral. If I have sympathy for someone who is in a much worse spot than I am due to the economy or some other circumstance besides just being lazy, I’m not immoral. There is a vast gray area between collectivism and objectivism, and she seemed to have forgotten that. Take care of those who have taken care of you (ie, your employees who helped you build multi-million dollar corporations), and never forget where it is that you came from.
Well written ,but this November election will prove that Paul Ryan ,loves America and he is patriot.,no matter what every one else says.Cheers.
Great, incisive article. I’ve been reading up on Rand – even before that spook Paul Ryan hit the headlines (“know thine enemy” – recommend: Goddess of the Market). Catholicism and Objectivism are not sympatico, and anyone who thinks they’re individually successful is fooling themselves. They’re living in a hall of mirrors.
Excellent !! When I was 19 or 20, I tried to read “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged” . . . I shrugged and closed both without finishing either one. Thanks for the great piece.
I have never read her novels nor do I want to after reading more about her philosophy. Her ideas and “cult of individualism” seem to be the perfect match for neoliberal capitalism, labeled by some as “predatory capitalism” among other names, which exalts the self over community and profit above ethics, and consumerism as culture.
Very interesting. I read once that even Rand’s editor told her that her social philosophy was repugnant. I suspect that most conservatives who claim they adore her work have never actually turned past the second page.
‘…the Catholic Church, which is founded on the sort of collectivism, anti-individualism, self-sacrifice and charity that Rand abhorred and rejected as immoral’
Excellent – although I can’t say I’ve noticed the two elements of ‘self-sacrifice and charity’ in Catholics.
Nice Article !!
I would have to say that this is one the most intellectually written counters on Ayn Rand’s philosophy or written Works of Art that I have ever read. Most of the time I hear name-calling and accusations from anyone who “hates” Ayn Rand’s ideals or her written Works of Art. I believe that these books are amazing. The level of intellect needed to compose these novels are on a level on which most people choose not to pursue. The pursuit of the knowledge needed to produce these stories is difficult as well as diverse. The understanding of the different types of personalities that we have in life is something that many people believe to be irrelevant and of no consequence. However,I believe that Ayn Rand’s ability to bring so much of reality to life in these books (the Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged) was a great gift to this world. I also agree that “wrestling with the complexities and consequences of the actual world” can make any theory difficult to enact into society!
Congrats on being Freshly Pressed! Since shortly after high school, I found Ayn Rand’s works to be a startling breath of air to my understanding of this world. She is bleak, individualistic, and cynical of herself and others… but sometimes that’s what we need, isn’t it?
Keep up the good work.
Ayn Rand is not a good author. When I heard her protagonist in fountainhead – spoiler – rapes someone and that someone actually likes it (as she tries to ‘justify’ that behaviour) – spoiler end – I had alarm bells in my brain — not only does she trivialize a heinous act whose repercussions make men and women suffer both physically and mentally she is also not intelligent enough; her views are mostly biased. I think the only reason people like her is that she is a notorious champion of modern day hedonism without actually looking beyond its consequences as both a hierarchic structure and a plaguing anarchic construct. Well, we can think more logically and rationally for ourselves.
Ayn Rand is not a good author. When I heard her protagonist in fountainhead – spoiler – rapes someone and that someone actually likes it (as she tries to \’justify\’ that behaviour) – spoiler end – I had alarm bells in my brain — not only does she trivialize a heinous act whose repercussions make men and women suffer both physically and mentally she is also not intelligent enough; her views are mostly biased. I think the only reason people like her is that she is a notorious champion of modern day hedonism without actually looking beyond its consequences as both a hierarchic structure and a plaguing anarchic construct. Well, we can think more logically and rationally for ourselves.
Interesting
Ayn Rand remains one of the more forceful writers. Her success lies in turning her novels, which are works of fiction, into such a tour-de-force of philosophy. Indeed the popularity of objectivism or any idea is that most people are romantics who like the idea of an idea! They often come across its most forceful champions and do often end up destroying – as with most religions including Marxism – their very objects of admiration. The immediate attraction presents them with a choice that they deserve since everyone deserves the widest possible choice of everything. The only condition and which remains a pragmatic one is that they allow those conditions to foster that allows each a maximum choice over anything and everything! It also requires the courage to accept someone’s else’s choice: your spouse or your lover’s choice to leave you while you continue being in love or in need of that person/company requires courage. Being easily judgmental about others and attempting to impose one’s own choices over others usually brings about the destruction of most things constructive in society. It is an old saying that one may have an opinion and have the courage to have one’s opinion rejected by someone else. The notion of pragmatic discussions/informed choice over such acceptances and/or rejections mark modernity and also human development as does the expectation that such opinion themselves are well-informed. The wisdom of certain truisms need not be borne out by tedious data. It usually does not need to and holds an appeal by itself. One doubts if Ayn Rand could be called limited by her own hatred going by some of her works. I do not know which aspect you are referring to here. However, the notion of a certain rejection bordering upon apparent hatred can come about when someone seeks to push forth their choices over you while lacking both the locus standi (and thus legitimacy) as well as better views or even correct assumptions. Imagine the hatred of those that seek to do so – while imagining an Ayn Rand to be angelic god-like! The romantic dilettante of ideas that often rush in can sometimes appear as a parasite of such epic hatred within that the effort to whack them off and their trains of ugliness may appear as hatred. There are a very many who do live and make their businesses over such pathologies of imposition. The pathology of imposition has hatred as its bedrock – if seen carefully (though different than a concerned parent taking care of their infant in an imperfect world that has ready dangers for the infant in it and around the infant!). Could the notion of self-defence from those individuals and their pathologies be seen over the years as hatred or smack of hatred in one’s pourings – even if literary? Very possible though I continue viewing Ayn Rand as a forceful novelist. I also am aware of the dangers of the intellectual dilettante and the dangers they have presented historically! While one recognizes that people do seek answers and that not everyone can find it within themselves – they may also need to comprehend that the other person who they look up at – is just a human being and who is he/she really deserves that would be the first to loathe such a role & responsibility!
Reblogged this on One Tenth Blog.
This is brilliantly written and I can’t thank you enough for sharing it. I am, perhaps, like one of those young boys you mentioned, easily impressed with stories of a grand self emerging. I read Atlas Shrugged and loved it, was fascinated by it, couldn’t put it down for a second. I dutifully pored over all its 1000+ pages and while I was never able to agree with her philosophy as a whole, there were certain elements of it that had a strong appeal – the element of knowledge, hard work, honest belief in yourself, pushing your abilities to the maximum – those.
Your post has made me think of the book in an entirely new way, along with reinforcing some thoughts I had about it earlier. I can’t wait to go back to the novel with this new perspective, and see it through a different lens.
Wonderful post!
Beautifully done.
From Dostoevsky’s Demons (Peaver translation), pg. 405:
Shigalyov speaking: “…everything expounded in my books is irreplaceable, and there is not other way out; no one can invent anything. And so I hasten, without wasting time, to invite the whole society, having heard my book in the course of ten evenings, to state its opinion.”
“Mr. Shigalyov is all too seriously devoted to his task… I know his book. he suggests, as a final solution of the question, the division of mankind into two unequal parts, One tenth is granted freedom of person and unlimited rights over the remaining nine tenths… and in unlimited obedience, through a series of regenerations, attain to primeval innocence, something like the primeval paradise…”
“Mr. Shigalyov perhaps resolves the matter even far more soberly than they do. I assure you that after reading his book, it is almost impossible to disagree with some things. He is perhaps least distant of all from realism, and his earthly paradise is almost the real one, the very one mankind sighs for the loss of, if indeed it ever existed.”
Lyamshin speaking: “Instead of paradise,” Lyamshin shouted, “I’d take these nine tenths of mankind, since there’s really nothing to do about them, and blow them sky-high, and leave just a bunch of learned people who would then start living happily in an educated way.”
Yes, her “shigalyovism” is quite despicable, but these systems will always be too appealing for the “producers” to resist.
Mr. Schwartz, Thank you for assembling this piece on Paul Ryan. It represents my perspective on Ryan – particularly the conflict between his faith and his political-economic ideology, and as such, I have shared with others.
Reblogged this on thesociologystudentblog and commented:
This was beautifully written and exposes the present political plot to overthrow the government just to reclaim it for the rich. I love Ayn Rand as a fictional writer her books are entertaining but as you pointed out its not a philosophy that works or should be considered workable in the real world. Life is not patterned with only the elite in mind. If we lived in a world where only the Bourgeois lived soon enough there will be proletariats because humans are like crabs in a basket always trying to stay on top.
This was beautifully written and exposes the present political plot to overthrow the government just to reclaim it for the rich. I love Ayn Rand as a fictional writer her books are entertaining but as you pointed out its not a philosophy that works or should be considered workable in the real world. Life is not patterned with only the elite in mind. If we lived in a world where only the Bourgeois lived soon enough there will be proletariats because humans are like crabs in a basket always trying to stay on top.
Too bad more voters aren’t able to or refuse to think through the layers of rhetoric presented in the media. Because we could all wind up on that bloodless train and not know what the hell happened…
Nicely done, thanks for gathering the thoughts and laying them out so clearly. If we’re lucky, the Catholic responses may change some Republican minds, but I won’t hold my breath. I don’t waste my time on bad writing — even as a teenager, I read widely and well but not indiscriminately — so never got far with Rand and have never understood her appeal.Congratulations on being Freshly Pressed!
Atlas Shrugged has long been on my list of movies to watch (I’m too impatient to read the book); therefore this is simpy my opinionated hunch: With the producers in the USA quickly shrinking in numbers, people are simply waking up to the dangers of government-enabled slacktivity. The people on Ayn’s train are not targets of her hate but sad products of socially engineered ignorance. Paul Ryan is imperfect as all of us are. Please cut the guy some slack. Haven’t we all been inspired by books, people, etc. without fanatically agreeing with the entire premise? Paul Ryan will clean our fiscal house and restore government accountability to its free citizens. Our current president has a long, well-known list of communist friends, family and mentors. He is either cozy with, or oblivious to, the dangers of muslim extremists and beheader drug gangs walking around in our midst. He is certainly not oblivious to–he insists upon–doctors who don’t cringe at stabbing full-term babies in the neck. This is what keeps millions of Americans awake at night–praying, blogging, tweeting, and reading. Yep, wakeful Americans. Thank you Ayn Rand, Paul Ryan, Ronald Reagan, etc.
Atlas Shrugged has long been on my list of movies to watch (I’m too impatient to read the book); therefore this is simply my opinionated hunch: With the producers in the USA quickly shrinking in numbers, people are simply waking up to the dangers of government-enabled slacktivity. The people on Ayn’s train are not targets of her hate but sad products of socially engineered ignorance. Paul Ryan is imperfect as all of us are. Please cut the guy some slack. Haven’t we all been inspired by books, people, etc. without fanatically agreeing with the entire premise? Paul Ryan will clean our fiscal house and restore government accountability to its free citizens. Our current president has a long, well-known list of communist friends, family and mentors. He is either cozy with, or oblivious to, the dangers of Muslim extremists and beheader drug gangs walking around in our midst. He is certainly not oblivious to–he insists upon–doctors who don’t cringe at stabbing full-term babies in the neck. This is what keeps millions of Americans awake at night–praying, blogging, tweeting, and reading. Yep, wakeful Americans. Thank you Ayn Rand, Paul Ryan, Ronald Reagan, etc.
Ayn Rand was pro-abortion. Ayn Rand thought religion interferes with logical thought. Why are you thanking her?
An interesting and engaging article. Thanks.
There was such an obvious contradiction to me in Paul Ryan’s assertion that he was inspired BOTH by Rand’s novels and Catholicism, which is impossible as they are in fundamental opposition, I ended up believing that Ryan’s ‘legend” is all hype. He’s not a heavyweight thinker. He just talks like one. And if you don’t examine things deeply, you can easily accept and support contradictory philosophies by cherry-picking the ideas within them that appeal to you.
Moving toward political extremes harms the most people. An uptick in government social welfare engineering, moves people to reexamine the opposite. So Rand gets dug up very often. Overall I think moderation benefits the most people.
Ayn Rand writes in an allegorical manner. Her characters are less real and more personifications of ideas. Her writing is repetitious to the extreme. She is always pounding home her ideas to the detriment of style. The real blood in her writing can be found in society least we forget the path extremism takes us. Both her ultraconservative viewpoint and political ultraliberal viewpoints derail us. She remains relevant as a ballast. We should read her.
agreed
Bob,
Congratulations on getting Freshly Pressed. My daughter told me about the Ryan/Rand connection, but I had not read about it until I saw your post. I once worked at an ad agency where I was surrounded by people who told me their favorite book was ATLAS SHRUGGED. I had never been able to get beyond 20 pages of the doorstopper, but realized it was probably the most poorly written book I’d ever tried to read. Later, I made the mistake of hiring someone who listed ATLAS SHRUGGED on her resume as her favorite book. (Alas, she was not a team player!).
The overall feeling of your post made me think sections I’d read in FREEDOM and DESTINY by Rollo May (particularly in the Chapter “The Paradoxes of Freedom”). May writes: “The confusion with regard to freedom in our day is that we have conceived of freedom as a bow with no string to hold it in tension or a lyre with no frame to give it tautness and hence produce music. We were created free, the American Declaration of Independence tells us, and hence we assume there are no limits. Freedom thus has lost its viability; it has vanished like the flame going out in our fireplace just when we need it most.”
Thank you for a fine essay!
Best wishes,
Melanie
Silver Birch Press
This was a well thought out piece. Thank you for writing this. I have honestly never read Ayn Rand but I am familiar with the political mentality you are referring to.
In some odd way, I almost want to read her book now, to realize how horrible it is for myself (or form my own views).
By all means, read her writing for yourself. Many people commenting here obviously have not done that and are just repeating ideas they’ve heard from others. Personally, I suggest reading her essays like in “The Virtue of Selfishness”, “Philosophy Who Needs It” or “Capitalism the Unknown Ideal.” She’s a brilliant thinker and writer, who I should point out did not speak English when she came to this country but quickly became a best-selling writer in a second language.
There are many people in the political, business and philosophical worlds who claim to be living by her philosophy, but once you understand her, you’ll realize they are not–they are often the exact opposite. They’ve completely bastardized her philosophy to suit their own purposes.
“The most famous disagreement for any stamp concerned the Elvis Presley commemorative, which the Committee recommended, but the Postmaster General disapproved of. The Committee overrode the Postmaster General, and the stamp went on to become the bestselling in U.S. postal history.”
Sorry, but that’s just not the case. PMG Anthony M. Frank was an enthusiastic supporter of the Elvis stamp, and told me so personally in an interview circa 1991.
Thanks for the correction. The history of the Elvis stamp is a fascinating one that deserves its own post, article, or book. It was used here by way of introducing the Ayn Rand stamp and it went wrong. The post has been edited to reflect this correction.
Good article! Okay – good but scary! I hope anyone still on the fence about the election finds their way here before then. Favorite things, like books, do provide a picture of us. Maybe that’s why Ryan is trying to deny his well-documented obsession with Rand. Congratulations! Well done!
But Ayn Rand was so much smarter than you. And Paul Ryan, too. She had a much bigger impact on the world than Paul Ryan ever will, and would not have thought much of him given his faith-based view of the world which he trots out, like most conservatives, when he needs votes.
Couldn’t have been that smart – she ended upon welfare. Surely clever people don’t need that?
That’s total BS. Ayn Rand was not on welfare. She’s still a best-selling author thirty years after she died.
What Rand failed to understand was that most large companies run perfectly well day to day without the Board doing anything. If every board in the world were kidnapped by aliens tomorrow, the people at the bottom wouldn’t notice. The goods still get delivered to supermarkets, the people who negotiate these don’t do it on a day to day basis, and they don’t sit a board level anyway – similarly for the companies they buy from.
Yes, if no one took on the Board level roles long term it would have an effect. The problem is that Rand apparently feels anyone who isn’t at the top doesn’t think. Well they do all the time – in fact companies love bottom up solutions – the people who do the work saying “why don’t we.”
Additionally these Glorious few don’t do the job alone. They rely on a team of people around them, who know how to do the job.
Then of course there is the hated government. Do you know why there were so many troops at the 2012 Olympic games? It wasn’t some scary Orwellian state. 3 weeks before the games the private company who had the security contract said “We can’t do it – we’ve only managed to recruit 3500 not 10000 (despite potential recruits desperately trying to find out if they had a job). The goverment went “OK, these regiments, leave cancelled.”
Superb post. I invite you to see my recent post reviewing Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” in light of Ryan’s sudden prominence.
Thank you for a very interesting piece on Ayn Rand. I will not pretend to understand all because I have not read her philosophical books but I have read her ATLAS SHRUGGED, FOUNTAINHEAD and WE THE LIVING. I found the books interesting because if we start with WE THE LIVING, we can see the reasons she fled from her native country where it seems that she saw how petty power corrupted as much as actual power. FOUNTAINHEAD and ATLAS SHRUGGED to me showed that it doesn’t really matter whether you have a communist system of government or a democratic system petty power in the hands of an idiot is just as dangerous as real power in the hands of fools. Mediocre ideas, people or actions just lead to an empty world where everyone is harmed. Maybe we do not need to go the extreme of individualism but neither do we need to go to the other extreme either as a society. We need the movers and shakers as we need the workers and executers of the ideas the movers and shakers think of but beside this we all have to take responsibility for our own actions as individuals. We have to take care of each other and work together as individuals. This, I think Ayn Rand aspired to and addressed in frustration. I think that she hoped that there was something more in American society than she possibly saw in Russian society but in the end she saw that there wasn’t. People are people no matter where you find them. Yes, they do things differently in this or that area but in the final analysis TRUTH with a capital letter is the same no matter where in the world one may live. We, as a species, are as great as we are terrible. And that is just the way it is!!!!
This is overly simplistic and leading.
Ayn Rand uses blunt force trauma to hammer home a point that is not often made subtly. Is there any subtlety in political commercials or church sermons? Metaphor and drama that inspire or make clear a difficult concept to a variety of education and socioeconomic levels have been employed since the dawn of man.
Further, setting the bar so high that America’s Federal budget meet the approval of an international church is ridiculous. Separation of church and state is not intended to fluctuate based on convenience or ideology.
There’s such a glaring contradiction in this article that I have to mention it. You correctly state that people like Sen. Rand Paul, Rep. Ron Paul, President Ronald Reagan, Sen. Ron Johnson, Gov. Gary Johnson, Sen. Mark Sanford, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and Alan Greenspan are admirers of Rand. These are all high-functioning, successful men who are all have a big impact on this country and in some cases the world.
Later you admiringly quote Michael Sean Winters who says of “Atlas Shrugged” it “is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world.”
How can this be true? All the men on the list of Rand Admirers are the exact opposite of emotionally stunted, socially crippled adults, unable to deal with the real world. They function exceedingly well in the real world. The same can be said for Paul Ryan even if you don’t agree with him.
Perhaps this simple fact really scares you.
The secret here is that readers of Rand don’t have to dogmatically agree with all she stood for to appreciate degrees of her observations. It’s a logical fallacy that “admiring” Rand equals condoning her entire set of philosophies. I enjoyed The Fountainhead; I abhorred nearly every character in it. However, it was fascinating to see “selfishness” through a completely different perspective. Is having a sense of self essential, as Rand says? I think yes. Is a sense of self the ultimate sacred thing that should dominate all other things? I think no.Though I can’t speak for Mr. Ryan, my assumption is that he agrees with only some principles that Ms. Rand espouses. However, our society can’t handle the nuance of this. So what does he do? He pretends he was misquoted or was taken out of context.
Excellent piece, and one I agree with. Objectivism is a brutal form of Social Darwinism that would leave the majority of humanity as a downdtrodden mass. All of the people flocking to pick up Rand’s writings seem to believe that they would fit into that creative elite of “producers” who deserve to reap all of the befefits of their genius. But the fact is, Rand had a disdain for democracy and the masses. If she were alive today, she’d likely look upon the Tea Party as the sort of “freeloaders” she spent her lifetime demonizing.
I recently wrote a post here on WordPress regarding my objections to Objectivism, if you are so inclined to read it to see my further thoughts on Rand’s twisted, dangerous philosophies.
@In My Not So Humble Opinion:
Rand did not believe in Social Darwinism, the idea that certain people were genetically superior to others, and were thereby destined to be more successful. Her philosophy came down to demanding that each individual do the work of understanding what reality is, and then understanding how to work with it for their own benefit via. trade, offering something of value in exchange for something they value. She didn’t just put this in the context of modern society. She also put it into the context of surviving in the wild before modern civilization existed, which many people in colonial America, and the Indians, were able to do just fine in many cases. It’s the reason many of us are alive now as we are.
Her story doesn’t just talk about people who are at the pinnacle of “the creative elite.” Almost all the people who disappear because of John Galt are underlings (relative to the elite) who feel like their talents are being wasted in a society that does not appreciate their hard work. One of her characters is a mechanic, as I recall, who complains about the unions, who live off of the wealth that he’s able to produce and get generous benefits, but leave crumbs for people like him who have chosen not to join them.
Her point was not that only the elite should thrive and everyone else should be at their mercy. It was that each person had a responsibility to understand reality, and to learn and practice virtue in their dealings with others. It’s summed up in the phrase, “Do not take what you have not earned.”
I agree that in a moral society this cannot work as an absolute. There are people who are unable to do this, who are mentally or physically disabled, but in reality they are small in number, and are not that big of a burden in the context of society as a whole. We can afford to be generous with them. What we have now is far more than that, with many able-bodied people who refuse to understand reality, to exercise virtue, and to live solely off of what they can contribute of their talents, and earn from them. She railed against how they cheat their way through life, taking from those who are more virtuous and responsible in their actions, and offering nothing in return. These are the people she complained about, and whom she condemned.
Bravo! Finally somebody on here who actually understands Rand and correctly conveys her philosophy. How did ideas like seeking to understand reality become so controversial? Why is the idea that individuals own their own lives and should be able to seek their own happiness while respecting the right of others to do the same so widely condemned?
Excellent and thoughtful post. You did leave out the part about how Rand couldn’t write her way out of a paper bag, and her books are moronic at best and about as much fun to read as a root canal with no gas.