Perhaps, but Rand didn’t merely advocate selfish behavior. She didn’t just object to big government or nonprofit do-goodery, she also objected to failure, of any sort. This would include lots of people with real jobs. Working for those awesome producers, of course, would be a vast army of losers: warehouse guys who didn’t graduate from high school, women with pictures of cats on their desks, aging frat boys leaving to play golf early every Friday afternoon, and a whole lot of 4 pm cupcake parties. Rand loved capitalism, but seemed to have no interest in the sheer mindless drudgery of many, many parts of it. Is the person who answers the phone in an office a second-hander? Of course; but she’s still necessary.
Despite often being mediocre or incompetent, actual politicians and economists understand this. Even Greenspan admitted this. Rand quoted him in a 1963 piece she wrote for Cosmopolitan (really). While there was a big difference between those who produced money, and those who don’t create anything and merely redistributed it, using “social maneuvering” from other people to himself, Greenspan said that real producers probably constituted about 5 percent of Wall Street and perhaps 15 percent of industry.
The hedge fund pay model may be “conspicuously Randian,” but the actual U.S. financial system doesn’t operate as some version of American Psycho writ large. It wasn’t Ayn Rand who destroyed the economy.
Rand held altruistic acts in contempt. But compassion, like greed, is a human behavior. Can anyone demonstrate that greed has increased, without allowing that charity and nonprofit do-gooder altruism has also increased? Is one more prominent than another? Is Rand really winning? Is this competition even about Rand, or is it really just about human nature?
“We need to choose,” Weiss commands—“our heritage or Ayn Rand.” He presents his book as a story about the struggle for “America’s soul,” as if the representatives of good sense and responsible governance are being torn from the halls of government by crazy protestors wondering aloud about the identity of John Galt. But in sum Weiss doesn’t really present much of a picture of that. There are a lot of people who say they love Rand’s works, but they seem to be fairly normal people, albeit solidly Republican. And one gets the sense that, if Rand had never written a word, they’d still harbor more or less the same beliefs.
And that’s because Weiss’s call to arms is histrionic; Ayn Rand is our heritage, if only a small, fringe part. Actual citizens include the ignorant, the misfits, and the radicals. They’re Americans too; get used to it.
Correction: This piece originally implied that Gary Weiss had been employed by Forbes, which is incorrect. Though Weiss has written for Forbes, he has only done so sporadically, and on a freelance basis. The relevant sentence has been corrected. CJR regrets the error.
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The guiding abstract principle of Objectivism is atheism.
The guiding practical principle of Objectivism, as with libertarianism and all anti-Christian ideologies, is individualism.
Objectivism is the flip side of Communism; the former worships the individual; the latter worships the state.
Both hate God.
#1 Posted by Newspaperman, CJR on Mon 2 Apr 2012 at 04:13 PM
"misanthropic"
You're a liar, Luzer.
"My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute." -Ayn Rand
That is the opposite of misanthropy. You're a liar.
#2 Posted by Deco, CJR on Mon 2 Apr 2012 at 04:39 PM
@Deco. No, it isn't. Misanthropy is generalized dislike, distrust, disgust, contempt or hatred of the human species or human nature. A philosophy celebrating an idealized conception of man is not the same thing as liking actual people.
#3 Posted by del2124, CJR on Mon 2 Apr 2012 at 06:43 PM
I know the definition. It still doesn't apply to Rand.
#4 Posted by Deco, CJR on Tue 3 Apr 2012 at 03:56 AM
Ayn Rand is pop-Hayek for the masses and young. People won't read all the economic textbooks put out by the Austrians and Monetarists like Milt Friedman, they won't subscribe to back issues of Buckley's NRO, but they will get the same flavor of world view from the saucy crap Ayn Rand wrote.
Which is why conservatives subsidize Ayn Rand reading in classrooms.
Gotta break this post up for the links :(
#5 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Tue 3 Apr 2012 at 12:35 PM
The problem is the world does not conform to the Ayn Rand model and the people that absorb that model end up becoming monsters.
Why is that?
#6 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Tue 3 Apr 2012 at 12:45 PM
Largely because her philosophy was modeled based on a monster.
When segments of society starts living according to the rules of this dementia, you get an American Psycho society.
We should all be a little scared of that.
#7 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Tue 3 Apr 2012 at 12:56 PM
To understand Rand et al, let me recommend a book that, in my opinion, did not receive the attention it deserved.
Dr. Albert Ellis'"Is Objectivism a Religion?" was the result of a contentions debate between Dr. Albert Ellis and Rand follower Nathaniel Branden. Both were clinical psychologists.
Dr. Ellis was critical of dogmatic religions. He contended they were harmful to people. He read Rands writings and concluded her "philosophy" was a religion in the dogmatic sense, authoritarian, ridgity,irrationality, etc.
You may agree or disagree with his analysis, but whatever your perspective listed to his argument, judge his evidence, and see what you think.
#8 Posted by David Reno, CJR on Tue 3 Apr 2012 at 02:32 PM