Posted on 06/20/2013 12:48:09 PM PDT by nickcarraway
My item on Rand Paul the other day, predictably, went over quite badly in the libertarian community. The Insomniac Libertarian, in an item wonderfully headlined “Obama Quisling Jonathan Chait Smears Rand Paul,” complains that my Paul piece “never discloses that [my] wife is an Obama campaign operative.” A brief annotated response:
1. I question the relevance of the charge, since Rand Paul is not running against Obama.
2. In point of fact, my wife is not an Obama campaign operative and has never worked for Obama’s campaign, or his administration, or volunteered for his campaign, or any campaign, and does not work in politics at all.
3. I question the headline labeling me an “Obama quisling,” a construction that implies that I have betrayed Obama, which seems to be the opposite of the Insomniac Libertarian’s meaning.
4. For reasons implied by points one through three, I urge the Insomniac Libertarian to familiarize himself with some of the science linking sleep deprivation to impaired brain function.
A more substantive, though still puzzling, retort comes from the Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf, a frequent bête noire of mine on subjects relating to Ayn Rand and Ron or Rand Paul. Friedersdorf raises two objections to my piece, which traced Rand Paul’s odd admission that he is “not a firm believer in democracy” to his advocacy of Randian thought. Friedersdorf first charges that the intellectual connection between Paul and Rand is sheer paranoia:
Chait takes the quote and turns it into a conspiracy … As I read this, I couldn't help but think of Chait as a left-leaning analog to the character in Bob Dylan's "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues." Those Objectivists were coming around/They were in the air / They were on the Ground/ They wouldn't give me no peace. For two thousand years, critics of unmediated democracy have warned about the masses abusing individuals and minorities. The American system was built from the very beginning to check democratic excesses.
But if Rand Paul distrusts democracy he must've gotten it from Ayn Rand.
A conspiracy? Am I imagining that Rand Paul has been deeply influenced by Ayn Rand? Paul himself has discussed the deep influence her work had on his own thinking. In college he wrote a series of letters and columns either quoting Rand or knocking off her theories. He used a congressional hearing to describe one of her novels at tedious length. How is this a conspiracy? Friedersdorf proceeds to argue that Rand is not really very militant anyway:
It's also interesting that Chait regards Rand's formulation as "militant." Let's look at it again. "I do not believe that a majority can vote a man's life, or property, or freedom away from him." Does Chait believe that a democratic majority should be able to vote a man's life or freedom away? …
In the political press, it happens again and again: libertarian leaning folks are portrayed as if they're radical, extremist ideologues, even when they're expressing ideas that are widely held by Americans across the political spectrum.
Well, here we come to a deeper disagreement about Ayn Rand. My view of her work is pretty well summarized in a review-essay I wrote in 2009, tying together two new biographies of Rand with some of the Randian strains that were gaining new currency in the GOP. My agenda here is not remotely hidden, but maybe I need to put more cards on the table. I've described her worldview as inverted Marxism — a conception of politics as a fundamental struggle between a producer class and a parasite class.
What I really mean is, I find Rand evil. Friedersdorf’s view is certainly far more nuanced and considerably more positive than mine. He’s a nice, intelligent person and a good writer, but we’re not going to agree on this.
Friedersdorf waves away Rand’s (and Rand Paul’s) distrust of democracy as the same fears everybody has about democracy. Well, no. Lots of us consider democracy imperfect or vulnerable, but most of us are very firm believers in democracy. Rand viewed the average person with undisguised contempt, and her theories pointed clearly in the direction of cruelty in the pursuit of its fanatical analysis. A seminal scene in Atlas Shrugged described the ideological errors of a series of characters leading up to their violent deaths, epitomizing the fanatical class warfare hatred it's embodied and which inspired Whitaker Chambers to observe, “From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: 'To the gas chambers — go!'”
Randism has never been tried as the governing philosophy of a country, so it remains conjecture that her theories would inevitably lead to repression if put into practice at a national level. But we do have a record of the extreme repression with which she ran her own cult, which at its height was a kind of totalitarian ministate. You can read her biographies, or at least my review, to get a sense of the mind-blowing repression, abuse, and corruption with which she terrorized her followers.
But the upshot is that I strongly dispute Friedersdorf’s premise that Rand’s theories are a variant of democracy, any more than Marx’s are. In fact, I find the existence of powerful elected officials who praise her theories every bit as disturbing to contemplate as elected officials who praise Marxism. Even if you take care to note some doctrinal differences with Rand, in my view we are talking about a demented, hateful cult leader and intellectual fraud. People who think she had a lot of really good ideas should not be anywhere near power.
Yeah, ugly, huh. Show me some. Otherwise, you're just throwing dirt. Not saying it's not possible, but in 30 years of reading Rand, I've never heard that before your post tonight. I think you're making it up.
Prove me wrong.
He is trolling. He stated it explicitly about 5 times.
Someone who gains energy from the anger of others is really a sick sick person. He claims to have a wife. God help her.
I didn’t find it so.
Agreed.
As fiction, agreed. As philosophy, they have their place.
And the comment. "I've described her worldview as inverted Marxism — a conception of politics as a fundamental struggle between a producer class and a parasite class," is just about exactly right.
I could not get through the turgid and soulless 'Atlas Shrugged' novel, and the movie was better only because it only took 2 hours to get to the finish (by which time I was snoring, along with half of the other 8 people still in the theatre). If Ayn Rand is serious philosophy, then we badly need some serious religion.
You are being a pompous boor; and a boring one at best.
Lakeshark: "I remember getting to the famous "Galt speech", thinking to myself that finally she's going to lay it all out.
And wanting to slit my wrists about one page later.........ten, fifteen pages later he's still talking and somehow people are STILL listening to him on the radio all over the US of A...
I think a sense of humor would have helped her a lot........."
TBP: "Read all the way through The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Skimmed Anthem.
I've read The Virtue of Selfishness, , and other works.
I don't agree with everything Rand has to say, but I do agree with much of it, especially on capitalism and markets."
Dittos, dittos to TBP.
To Lakeshark's desire for more humor -- so what's not funny about Howard Roark laughing? ;-)
Perhaps more to the point: we should realize how much great comic material was available to Ayn Rand, coming from those world centers of international socialism (Soviet Russia, China) and national socialism (Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy).
Especially for somebody of Jewish heritage, the whole world was a barrel of silly monkeys, you could hardly keep from rolling on the floor laughing out loud over it all, right?.
Of course, growing up in Russia, Rand doubtless inherited their darker, more ironic sense of humor, often so dark and ironic some people can't tell the difference between their laughter and crying.
While Ayn Rand was still a beautiful young woman, not millions but tens of millions of innocent civilians and conscripted soldiers died in the most horrible ways imaginable -- because of national and international socialism.
So Rand's humor was always infused with her certain knowledge of where socialism leads.
Finally, why, why, why does nobody ever point out the totally obvious fact that John Galt's speech is Ayn Rand's answer to Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor?
Indeed, I would propose that no young person should be allowed to read Ayn Rand without first reading Dostoevsky.
Then they can begin to appreciate Rand's great sense of humor. ;-)
“That was weak, I’ll admit. If I was on my game, you’d be quivering and hooting like an enraged primate by now.”
I’m sure you’ll feel better when you get over your RDS (Rand Derangement Syndrome) and your LDS (not Latter Day Saints.)
Exactly.
Thanks for the link.
Note the connection between Ayn Rand and Dostoevsky!
As to her sense of humor, all I said is she could have used one, it might have helped.
The observation that her writing is bad is a correct one, she will never be considered a great novelist except by those who are true believers. As previously stated, her observations concerning statists are spot on, her understanding of how they gain and hold power couldn't be better. Philosophically she could point out what was wrong about the totalitarian left better than most. Unfortunately she didn't do quite so well with formulating how we should live and counter that totalitarian impulse, and how we could become full as human beings; her prescription for how to live was kind of stunted.
Hey, I have nothing against the woman, she made some great observations. I just find it difficult to laud her as the second coming of literary and philosophical genius.
So, if you don't care for the message you should consider the physical appearance of thee messenger? No, can't buy it.
I don’t think I made any reference to any message.
There are plenty of us here who choose not to obey laws which had no business being passed in the first place. What right does the regime have to "permit" us our medication- or our firearms?
Apologies if I read something in that wasn't there.
Fine, I get your points, all of them, and am trying not to be too critical... ;-)
But if you wish to deny Rand the status of "second coming of...", then let me challenge you to name an author who did the same thing she did, only better.
I'm saying, if Rand was the best ever at presenting her point of view, why take anything away from that?
I was agreeing with someone that she was not a LITERARY great, not even all that good. Alexander Sohlznetsin might be said to be great literarily (at least very good), and he fought the Marxists just as well as Rand did, if not a bit better.
Like I said, she has my respect for what she did well, I consider her to have had a strong part in educating others about the dangers of socialism, and for that I'm grateful for her work.
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