Ayn Rand keeps popping up in cultural, political and ideological debate, and these days even more so, thanks to a weird sort of Rand following that has cropped up among tea partiers. Rand was an author and cult-figure who championed unbridled capitalism, celebrated the supremacy of individualism and was an arch enemy of anything resembling socialism.
Rand's most recent biographer was interviewed on Wisconsin Public Radio's "To The Best Of Our Knowledge" on this the second day of 2011, which got me to thinking about her yet again and what I consider the hypocrisies and contradictions of her dogma.
Although she promoted herself as a champion of individual liberties, which today's self-labeled conservatives have liberally adopted as their mantra, and which she made the theme of her writings, she was, in reality, a fraud and the imperial queen of hypocrites.
She held Saturday night indoctrinating salons with her acolytes, which included the future Fed chairman Alan Greenspan, that she ran like the gulags she otherwise demonized and held in contempt. She exercised total control over her adherents down to approving what books they could read, movies they could see and who they could marry. During their Saturday night meetings, they had to raise their hands and wait to be recognized when they wanted to speak. She was, according to her biographer Anne Heller, tyrannical.
Her cult blew up and disintegrated when her longtime lover and ardent supporter, a man 25 years her junior, took another lover and repudiated Rand's repression and flawed ideology.
Like so many religions, Rand's dual ideologies of individualism and objectivism don't hold up to objective scrutiny. The premises and characters she uses in her books to very liberally promote her isms, in fact, actually contradict her overarching gospel.
Rand's most well-known and best-selling books are The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Here is an analysis I did of one of her shorter books, Anthem, a novella about one of the masses who breaks free from the collective where, instead of being able to pursue his own interests and talents, was forced to work as a street sweeper.
While Rand has an interesting premise, I found it fatally flawed in several respects. First, the protagonist, Prometheus, is exalting in the individual, the "I", the Ego (which he makes a sacred word). Yet he decides everything for not only his mate -- including choosing a name for her (Gaea) -- but everyone who chooses to join him.
Prometheus returns to the City to bring those he perceives to be unhappy back with him to the land he found beyond the mountains so they can live in his idea of utopia, which is exactly what the leaders of the City have done to people who live there City.
At least Gaea found her way into the Uncharted Forest by herself and made the decision to go there of her own free will. But those whom Prometheus wants to bring there had the very same opportunity since, as Gaea says, everyone in the City was talking about Prometheus running away and going into the Uncharted Forest, but they did not choose to do so themselves.
Further, those people he brings to live in his utopia will be expected to be self sufficient, the "we" word will be outlawed, ergo, relying on each other and helping each other is out, right? So what happens if (A) the Sad One remains sad, but when no one is makes him work or do anything, he elects to do nothing. Does Prometheus just let him do nothing to help/support himself which, of course, means he will die? Will Prometheus feel no responsibility to try to help the Sad One since he brought him there in the first place? Or (B) what if one of those he brings from the City becomes ill and can't do for himself? Will there be no social conscience or collective effort to provide for him?
Or (C) what if the Gaea’s unborn baby is a girl and, further, what if every child she bears is female That means Prometheus will never father any of the sons he talks about having to help him make his vision a reality. And isn't his idea of enlisting his sons’ help a form of community/socialism? Or (D) what if his sons, were he to have any, don't want to pitch in and help build his wonderful society? What would he do? Force them? Cast them out where they will most likely die?
Contrary to Rand's ideology of individualism and self-sufficiency, far from being self-sufficient and building a house for themselves, Prometheus and Gaea appropriate for themselves an abandoned house they find in their new land, which they assume was built and occupied by someone from the "Unmentionable Times." They also claim for themselves all the furnishings, clothes, jewels, and other riches they find inside. So just because he happens upon this wonderful house and all the riches within, he assumes that entitles him to lay claim to it for himself and not have to share any of it with the people he brings out from the City to live in his new world.
How does that differ from today's rich who are either born or marry into their fortunes, or who think they've succeeded on their own when someone/something has built and finances the infrastructure -- as in the federal government developing the nation's transportation and energy grid -- and created laws and a favorable corporate tax structure that not only benefits their company, but enables CEOs to claim their income as capital gains, thus benefitting from the 15 percent capital gains tax instead of having to pay the 36 percent tax bracket of the top income earners?
Prometheus exalts in "my hands, my spirit, my sky, my forest, this earth of mine." So why is it HIS sky, HIS forest, HIS earth? Is he saying the earth, sky and forest are all his and that no one else is entitled to them or to claim them for themselves?
He says he will neither surrender nor share his treasures and that he owes nothing to his brothers. He talks about his vision for his new world and how everyone he brings out of the City will help make it a reality. That certainly sounds like collectivism to me. Or rather, like the sort of today's corptocracy a la the Koch brothers and the post-Civil War Reconstruction form of sharecropping in which many freed slaves were forced into in order to survive, only to have the landowners either cheat them out of their share or enlist the Ku Klux Klan to attack and chase them away without being able to save or take anything with them.
To me Rand contradicts her own philosophy. The only way her protagonist in Anthem can realize his goals is with the help of others, which is exactly what he supposedly is going to prohibit others from doing for themselves. I would say that from the introduction through the appendices, the book itself is incongruent with the thesis of Rand's purported philosophy and political vision.
Coming forward to today's so-called Libertarians and TPers who decry government and taxes, just like the rest of us these people benefit from the government 24-7, thanks to regulations and services that provide breathable air, potable water, safe food and relatively hazard-free consumer products, as well as government-provided and maintained infrastructure and many, many other things that make life livable and enjoyable without having to pay individually for each and every benefit from our own pockets directly to a private contractor -- even if we had the means to be able to do so.
No, just like Rand, those who tout her precepts call for government cuts that will negatively affect others, not themselves, their economic well being or their privilege and entitlement. It’s a ME, ME, ME philosophy that is antithetical to democracy and the religious teachings so many of the TPers claim to be their faith.
Rand's most recent biographer was interviewed on Wisconsin Public Radio's "To The Best Of Our Knowledge" on this the second day of 2011, which got me to thinking about her yet again and what I consider the hypocrisies and contradictions of her dogma.
Although she promoted herself as a champion of individual liberties, which today's self-labeled conservatives have liberally adopted as their mantra, and which she made the theme of her writings, she was, in reality, a fraud and the imperial queen of hypocrites.
She held Saturday night indoctrinating salons with her acolytes, which included the future Fed chairman Alan Greenspan, that she ran like the gulags she otherwise demonized and held in contempt. She exercised total control over her adherents down to approving what books they could read, movies they could see and who they could marry. During their Saturday night meetings, they had to raise their hands and wait to be recognized when they wanted to speak. She was, according to her biographer Anne Heller, tyrannical.
Her cult blew up and disintegrated when her longtime lover and ardent supporter, a man 25 years her junior, took another lover and repudiated Rand's repression and flawed ideology.
Like so many religions, Rand's dual ideologies of individualism and objectivism don't hold up to objective scrutiny. The premises and characters she uses in her books to very liberally promote her isms, in fact, actually contradict her overarching gospel.
Rand's most well-known and best-selling books are The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Here is an analysis I did of one of her shorter books, Anthem, a novella about one of the masses who breaks free from the collective where, instead of being able to pursue his own interests and talents, was forced to work as a street sweeper.
While Rand has an interesting premise, I found it fatally flawed in several respects. First, the protagonist, Prometheus, is exalting in the individual, the "I", the Ego (which he makes a sacred word). Yet he decides everything for not only his mate -- including choosing a name for her (Gaea) -- but everyone who chooses to join him.
Prometheus returns to the City to bring those he perceives to be unhappy back with him to the land he found beyond the mountains so they can live in his idea of utopia, which is exactly what the leaders of the City have done to people who live there City.
At least Gaea found her way into the Uncharted Forest by herself and made the decision to go there of her own free will. But those whom Prometheus wants to bring there had the very same opportunity since, as Gaea says, everyone in the City was talking about Prometheus running away and going into the Uncharted Forest, but they did not choose to do so themselves.
Further, those people he brings to live in his utopia will be expected to be self sufficient, the "we" word will be outlawed, ergo, relying on each other and helping each other is out, right? So what happens if (A) the Sad One remains sad, but when no one is makes him work or do anything, he elects to do nothing. Does Prometheus just let him do nothing to help/support himself which, of course, means he will die? Will Prometheus feel no responsibility to try to help the Sad One since he brought him there in the first place? Or (B) what if one of those he brings from the City becomes ill and can't do for himself? Will there be no social conscience or collective effort to provide for him?
Or (C) what if the Gaea’s unborn baby is a girl and, further, what if every child she bears is female That means Prometheus will never father any of the sons he talks about having to help him make his vision a reality. And isn't his idea of enlisting his sons’ help a form of community/socialism? Or (D) what if his sons, were he to have any, don't want to pitch in and help build his wonderful society? What would he do? Force them? Cast them out where they will most likely die?
Contrary to Rand's ideology of individualism and self-sufficiency, far from being self-sufficient and building a house for themselves, Prometheus and Gaea appropriate for themselves an abandoned house they find in their new land, which they assume was built and occupied by someone from the "Unmentionable Times." They also claim for themselves all the furnishings, clothes, jewels, and other riches they find inside. So just because he happens upon this wonderful house and all the riches within, he assumes that entitles him to lay claim to it for himself and not have to share any of it with the people he brings out from the City to live in his new world.
How does that differ from today's rich who are either born or marry into their fortunes, or who think they've succeeded on their own when someone/something has built and finances the infrastructure -- as in the federal government developing the nation's transportation and energy grid -- and created laws and a favorable corporate tax structure that not only benefits their company, but enables CEOs to claim their income as capital gains, thus benefitting from the 15 percent capital gains tax instead of having to pay the 36 percent tax bracket of the top income earners?
Prometheus exalts in "my hands, my spirit, my sky, my forest, this earth of mine." So why is it HIS sky, HIS forest, HIS earth? Is he saying the earth, sky and forest are all his and that no one else is entitled to them or to claim them for themselves?
He says he will neither surrender nor share his treasures and that he owes nothing to his brothers. He talks about his vision for his new world and how everyone he brings out of the City will help make it a reality. That certainly sounds like collectivism to me. Or rather, like the sort of today's corptocracy a la the Koch brothers and the post-Civil War Reconstruction form of sharecropping in which many freed slaves were forced into in order to survive, only to have the landowners either cheat them out of their share or enlist the Ku Klux Klan to attack and chase them away without being able to save or take anything with them.
To me Rand contradicts her own philosophy. The only way her protagonist in Anthem can realize his goals is with the help of others, which is exactly what he supposedly is going to prohibit others from doing for themselves. I would say that from the introduction through the appendices, the book itself is incongruent with the thesis of Rand's purported philosophy and political vision.
Coming forward to today's so-called Libertarians and TPers who decry government and taxes, just like the rest of us these people benefit from the government 24-7, thanks to regulations and services that provide breathable air, potable water, safe food and relatively hazard-free consumer products, as well as government-provided and maintained infrastructure and many, many other things that make life livable and enjoyable without having to pay individually for each and every benefit from our own pockets directly to a private contractor -- even if we had the means to be able to do so.
No, just like Rand, those who tout her precepts call for government cuts that will negatively affect others, not themselves, their economic well being or their privilege and entitlement. It’s a ME, ME, ME philosophy that is antithetical to democracy and the religious teachings so many of the TPers claim to be their faith.
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