July 8, 2007
A Stirring Defense of Ayn Rand
Unlikely she needs it around here -- and even less likely that it comes from me, but I was moved by this statement, and have been thinking for a couple of weeks that I should post it.
Ms. Rand gets a lot of coverage in Brian Dougherty's "Radicals for Capitalism", indeed the title is taken from her. Her importance to the liberty movement is noted as are the large numbers that she has influenced. On the other side, personal peccadilloes come under close scrutiny, as do her personal relationships and quickness to feud with those with whom she found herself in disagreement.
At the end of the book, however, Dougherty discusses a book that discounted her, but then offered this poignant response from Nathaniel Branden:
For books like Ellis's, Nathaniel Branden had a response: Rarely do Rand's attackers deign "publicly to name the essential ideas of Atlas Shrugged and attempt to refute them. No one has been willing to declare: 'Ayn Rand holds that man must choose his values and actions exclusively by reason, that man has the right to exist for his own sake, that no one has the right to seek values from others by physical force--and I consider such ideas wrong, evil and socially dangerous.'"Posted by John Kranz at July 8, 2007 12:39 PM
Even though Branden used Rand egregiously, his comment is exactly right. It can be difficult at times to understand how profound her writing is, because most of readers' education discourages proper abstract thinking, and we are so steeped in opposite viewpoints that we can barely interpret her writing correctly, and automatically recoil at what we presume she is saying.
I learned that each time I recoiled at a passage, I should re-read the passage, or withhold judgment to see what happens, and struggle to see it in the broader context she had actually established. It was quite an effort but each time I did, it resulted in a sense of revelation at how right she was, and how wrong and superficial I had been.
Your comment regarding Rand's importance "to the liberty movement" is well worded, as she is not a libertarian and was as vehemently opposed to that movement as to communism. Yet, many of her detractors dismiss her writings as polemics against the latter because she hated her childhood in Russia. Her detractors do not want to make the aforementioned effort of thinking. They grasp at non-essential straws to protect themselves from the intellectual embarrassment they would experience were they to properly face the honesty of her actual ideas.
Posted by: RnBram at July 9, 2007 7:41 AMVery well said, RnBram. Please visit often - I can use the support!
Good post JK. I would say that any book on capitalism that doesn't reference Rand's ideas on the subject (explicitly or otherwise) can only be a lukewarm treatise, at best.
Posted by: johngalt at July 9, 2007 1:17 PMThat was for you. I wrote, perhaps, too much around it, but that one line hit me hard: "'Ayn Rand holds that man must choose his values and actions exclusively by reason, that man has the right to exist for his own sake, that no one has the right to seek values from others by physical force...'"
Posted by: jk at July 9, 2007 4:16 PMI find it astonishing that you would applaud RnBram's sycophantic pandering of Ayn Rand. He claims, "Her detractors do not want to make the aforementioned effort of thinking." Where is the proof of this? How can he ever prove it? Without proof it is merely subjective preference and prejudice, the very things Objectivism purportedly eliminates. I have had my fill of these foaming at the mouth Randroids, shaming the very ideas they pretend to defend.
Genuine objectivity is an ingrained point of view, not a badge you are given after earning enough toady points. I wonder if his "effort of thinking" is less critical analysis than it is deliberate self-hypnosis.
Posted by: Bill Pitman at July 17, 2007 10:44 AM | What do you think? [4]