The Political Surf on why Ayn Rand’s surging today

Standard.Net - The Political Surf ^ | 5-1-2009 | Doug Gibson

[Red Badger]

The number are in, and paleo-capitalist Ayn Rand’s hot again. “Atlas Shrugged” is selling at a pace not seen since the novel was published in 1957. Sales of her other major novel, “The Fountainhead,” are up as well. It’s clear that the recession and a very liberal political leadership have caused the renewed interest.

Economist Stephen Moore recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal that the Obama strategy mirrors the plot of “Atlas Shrugged. “The more incompetent you are in business, the more handouts the politicians will bestow on you,” Moore said.

I recently re-read “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.” Both, particularly “Atlas Shrugged,” are maddeningly compelling polemics in novel forms. “Atlas” is about the world’s talented withdrawing from a dystopian society and the chaos that results. “Fountainhead” is about an architect hated because he won’t embrace a mediocre norm. In “Atlas” Rand articulated a belief, “objectivism,” which depicts personal happiness as man’s sole moral pursuit and reason as the only acceptable absolute. Pure capitalism, “objectivism” teaches, is the sole moral economic system. Anything else is a leech on society full of “second-handers.”

Rand’s novels — in 1991 “Atlas Shrugged” was judged the second-most influential novel in America — are very seductive and demagogic. Her ideas appeal to so many because the characters she creates are polar opposites. They are either perfect examples of reason and competence or corrupt, shallow, even homicidal parasites. As a writer, Rand deserves no censure for creating powerful polemics, but real life is more complex.

I am amused by the Rand adoration from many social — read religious — conservatives. Rand, and “objectivism,” detests religion and its call for individual sacrifice. In “Fountainhead,” the reader is urged to run away from any organization that urges sacrifice for others. When it comes to faith, Rand is more Bill Maher or Christopher Hitchens than Mitt Romney.

I have a great deal of respect for Ayn Rand, but it’s for her literary and polemical skills, not the rigidity of her economic beliefs. Who else can write a novel where a character, John Galt, speaks for 60 pages and you can’t stop reading. And I admire her life, where she escaped communism, lived life on her own terms and created an economic ideal.

But objectivism is not a practical ideology. Still doubt me? Read the late Whittaker Chambers’ devastating but on-target critique of Ayn Rand, published in the Dec. 28, 1957 edition of National Review. It’s at:

http://www.nationalreview.com/flashback

[Red Badger]

Too bad he ain’t around to eat his words................

[ReformationFan]

“You are correct. She spent some time explaining how a man might appear to be sacrificing for his family but his love for his family makes it no sacrifice at all. She opposed all types of guilt, pressure, coercion and other manipulations to force behavior against a person’s free will.
A person who truly loves His God might act in ways that appears to be sacrificing but in reality there is no sacrifice at all.

Most conservative Christians would agree with Rand that too many churches manipulate behavior rather than fomenting a relationship with God that ends up changing the person.

Rand’s professed atheism was certainly not something I admired about her. But her insight into human nature (base and noble) and the need for moral absolutes stand in stark contrast to today’s pablum that everything is relative and there is no objective right or wrong.”

Agreed. I’m a very conservative, Bible believing Christian but I adore reading Miss Rand’s work and listening to her interviews while rejecting her atheism. I really wish she had come to Christ during her lifetime because she would’ve been a brilliant apologist for the faith. Her love for intellectual integrity, rational thought and objective truth contrast sharply with the post-modern, hypersubjectivity, emotionalism and irrationalism that we’re drowning in today.

[Nosterrex]

I bought Atlas Shrugged as an audio book and listened to it in my car while traveling on a long trip. I found the characters realistic. I have worked with people just like them. It is good to know that stupidity was not invented in my generation. I had to endure listening to the nauseating romantic parts, but her economic principles are valid and substantial.
It is true that there is no room for God in Rand's epistemology or ethics, but there is no such thing as Christian economics. In this case, it is better to be a practical atheist, not a philosophical atheist. Well meaning people have done more to hurt the poor than those that understand the principles of economics. Feel good economics will kill you every time.

[Red Badger]

Why do people make such a big thing of her atheism? It has nothing to do with her economic principles. Would they discredit her if she were a Hindu or a Muslim or a Taoist? If she were a Christian, they’d be even harder on her as a “right wing extremist”................