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.
Mom is dead.
She didn’t live to see me complete my FIFTH COLLEGE DEGREE, not that she would have cared. Only the first was “practical,” said she, so the rest were self-indulgences.
I know how she felt.
You’re a Palin supporter, right?
“I don’t need none of that book learnin’ I got common sense!”
The Founders distrusted DEMOCRACY.... what a dolt .... that is why they constructed a CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC
Rand collected Social Security in her old age. The left uses this to club her. Apparently so do some here. The similarity between some freepers and the MSNBC loons is amusing.
Of course they forget that compulsury taxes is extracted from people working age till Social Security collection age.
I hope to never collect social security, mainly becaue of my ideals, but I will probably not because the system will be broke/ collapsed by then anyways...
Pardon me if I don’t share my history with you at this time.
Less than 1% of the cultists...and her writing is godawful. Really really bad. You will learn 10x reading Buckley, and he’s funny.
I recommend Mark Steyn for the Humour!
you are kind
I have read every word....and most of what you say is prattle
Actually, he’s pretty funny, too. More slapstick, less verbal than Buckley.
why do you bother to even post on FR since you feel you are oh sooooo much more gifted and intelligent than use poor little peons
Been using your thesaurus?
Women prattle, Mr. Manliness. I troll.
Trolling is fun for us polysyllabic types.
I save my serious discussions for strangers who DON’T butt into my business to insult me.
It is important to remember that Ayn Rand came to her philosophy by being raised in the Soviet Union at the height of repressive communism and the complete failure of ANY church to stand against it.
2) If Chait voted for Barack Obama who was attending Marxist conferences about the time Rand Paul was reading Ayn Rand, he's already demonstrated that this stuff isn't that important to him. Politicians evolve. Ask the same questions about those you vote for as those you vote against. If Chait was willing to take a chance on Obama in spite of Frank Marshall Davis and all the rest, isn't he being hypocritical not to give Paul the same benefit of the doubt?
3) People take from Rand what they want or need. Even Ronald Reagan called himself an "admirer" of Rand. I don't think he went whole-hog or that Rand Paul does either. She had an admirable side. Not everything she said was horrible or monstrous. Some of it was just good sense. She opposed some things that were worth opposing when not everybody did. Finding somebody who later became a politician quoting Rand saying basically what the Founders or George Orwell would have said isn't very damning.
It is important to remember that Ayn Rand came to her philosophy by being raised in the Soviet Union at the height of repressive communism and the complete failure of ANY church to stand against it.
Quoted for complete and total TRUTH!
LBJ has killed the Churches in this country and Neutered their resolve to stand up against evil.... Only the “Black Robe Regiment” can save the churches now...?
I’ve read three of her novels, and a number of her essays, and I’m not one of her cult. I think you underestimate her influence on conservatism. BTW, I’ve also read Buckley, Milton Friedman, Bill Simon(Sr.), Robert Ringer, and some Hayek.
I think what impresses new readers of Rand is the shock of recognition they get from her antagonists. Each of her bad guys has a counterpart in people running the country today. She understands statists perfectly and she understands where statism leads.
When you read about the car trip to the ruined Wisconsin city that was home to the defunct car plant, my god, she is describing Detroit 50 years in the future.
“Call “lame” all you want. I’ll bet you don’t even know who Rothbard is.”
Lew Rockwell seems to like him a lot.
Let you in on a secret...reading Hayek, for the most part, is better than camomile tea if you’re having trouble settling at midnight.
And Rand was a decent essayist. She was writing for an entirely different audience, then. Much more accessible...and she remembers what paragraphs are for.
There’s a small, hard-core, unthinking cult here on FR that rose around her about 2002-2003 or so. A real bunch of loons, then and now. You’ve been around long enough to remember their rise and ceaseless noise, hm?
Most of her followers are barely literate. I love flushing them out; they’re so easily irritated, but not very clever.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.