Via a reader, the National Review has started running retrospective articles from their 50-year run (I’m looking forward to their contemporary articles on Martin Luther King and the SCLC). Wading through their archives, a reviewer named Whittaker Chambers took a surprisingly dim view of Ayn Rand:
The news about this book seems to me to be that any ordinarily sensible head could not possibly take it seriously, and that, apparently, a good many do. Somebody has called it: “Excruciatingly awful.” I find it a remarkably silly book. It is certainly a bumptious one. Its story is preposterous.
Worth reading in its own right, especially if you had the same reaction as the reviewer after suffering through Rand’s turgid prose. Rand nurtured a freshman’s political triumphalism – Truth as a force so obvious, so irresistible and so politically one-sided that dissenters must be unserious, malevolent or insane – that freshmen adored. They still do. Check out this passage on the psychopathology of power and certainty:
Out of a lifetime of reading, I can recall no other book in which a tone of overriding arrogance was so implacably sustained. Its shrillness is without reprieve. Its dogmatism is without appeal. In addition, the mind which finds this tone natural to it shares other characteristics of its type. 1) It consistently mistakes raw force for strength, and the rawer the force, the more reverent the posture of the mind before it. 2) It supposes itself to be the bringer of a final revelation. Therefore, resistance to the Message cannot be tolerated because disagreement can never be merely honest, prudent, or just humanly fallible. Dissent from revelation so final (because, the author would say, so reasonable) can only be willfully wicked.
I’ve clocked my hours in the ranks of liberal activism and I can affirm that Rand has her finger on a mentality that creeps in wherever you find self-righteous people working for some Cause. That’s well and good, but liberal activists count for squat right now. It also chillingly reflects the mentality of the friendly folks running the country. Pick any critic of the last five years and think about how the government reacted. You always hear some combination of Liberal Activist (as if that’s somehow worse than, say, partisan rightwinger or rightwing activist), Disgruntled Ex-Employee, Promoting a Book, Mentally Imbalanced or Aiding the Enemy.
Classic example, Richard Clarke. At the end of his book Against All Enemies Clarke commented that Bin Laden might as well be telling Bush what to do for how well the president has served al Qaeda’s interests. The White House responded swiftly:
WILKINSON (3/22/04): Let me also point something. If you look in [Clarke’s] book you find interesting things such as reported in the Washington Post this morning. He’s talking about how he sits back and visualizes chanting by bin Laden and bin Laden has a mystical mind control over U.S. officials. This is sort of X-Files stuff, and this is a man in charge of terrorism, Wolf, who is supposed to be focused on it and he was focused on meetings.
Score one for the Mentally Imbalanced dodge. Later in the same smear campaign we heard Liberal Activist (Clinton guilt-by-association variant), Disgruntled Ex-Employee and Promoting a Book. The only dishonest reply that we didn’t hear, which seems like it would have been a hard sell, is Aiding the Enemy. Full disclosure, I don’t read Powerline so I could be wrong about that. Of course they’re fooling us, or at least trying to, with their boneheaded dodges. But to what degree are they fooling themselves? If Rand has an inside track on the psychopathology of power then maybe they genuinely can’t conceive of an honest critic.
Anyhow, happy five-o, National Review.
Pb
How about this one: Disgruntled Ex Liberal Activist, Mentally Imbalanced, and Promoting a Book?
ppGaz
Getting Ahead in the GOP
I posted this link to another thread earlier, but it’s relevant here.
The “dodge” routines are all part of a package, described in the WaMO piece as “dynamite in the distance.”
It’s also known around these parts as the “Look, a jackalope!” ploy.
Very effective.
HH
Those right-wing Bush apologists over at the Seattle Times found that Clarke had distorted the facts… What will these wingnuts come up with next?
jbird
HH
Thanks for proving the point with your own ‘dynamte in the distance’. Clarke had some facts wrong on a tangetial issue; I would guess he read the original bureaucratic report rather than the trial transcripts but it doesn’t change or refute the essential premise of Clarke’s book.
Which is the conclusion of the article that YOU linked to..
Davebo
Sorry for the off topic comment Tim but this story in the Times Picayune is a must read.
Why they hate us
http://www.nola.com/search/index.ssf?/base/news-0/1140854462306200.xml?nola
Pb
HH,
That looks more like another sad case of he-said, she-said journalism. And since the ‘she’ in question is Condi Rice, she’s one to talk about distorting facts…
Steve
I enjoy the wingnut logic that says if Clarke was wrong about the details of a single incident, his credibility is utterly shredded for all time, but somehow even though Bush and Cheney and Rice and Rumsfeld have been wrong time and time again everyone should still take their word.
On another topic, I find it ironic in the extreme that folks at National Review constantly refer to Robert Byrd as “Sheets Byrd” and the like given that they, of all people, have great incentive to seize upon his narrative of redemption. Here, for example, is a 1957 National Review editorial of the type Tim alluded to:
Shorter version, if you dislike long blockquotes: The South is perfectly entitled to withhold the vote from the black man until the black man learns to cast his vote as intelligently as the white man does.
demimondian
Actually, Pb, the _Seattle Times_ does lean right, and, in this case, had spent quite a few column inches trumpeting the Customs agent, Dean. So the paper did have a bit riding on preserving her status as Hero of the State.
All of which said, I agree with the article’s ultimate reading: Clarke was right about everything which mattered, and, as the reviewer pointed out, errors are normal in memoirs.
Good invocation of a talking point, HH — nicely done.
Pb
demimondian, yeah, I don’t know a thing about the Seattle Times, but I can smell a trumped up story from a mile away… :)
capelza
The Seattle PI is the one HH wishes had written it, but I think that to some, er…, wingnutish types, anything that has Seattle in the title must be a commie rag.
The Other Steve
Interesting. I honestly cannot see how the Republican party can balance between Ayn Rand, and Fundamentalist Christianity. The two seem opposed to one another.
capelza
Forgot to comment on the NR. Congrats. I grew up watching Buckley on tv. Not that I agree with much of what he says, but I remember a time when Conservatives were well read and thinkers.
Love the excerpt above about negroes and voting, though…I’ll use that the next time someone calls Byrd “Sheets”. Oh how short is the memory. I have always wondered why the same folks didn’t call Thurmond and his GOP joining buddies “Sheets”, too?
demimondian
Yup — the PI is the left wing rag; the _Times_ is the more-right-wing rag. That’s doubly ironic because (a) the Times is locally owned, (b) the PI is owned by Hearst, and (c) not only is the Times a far better paper, it’s also the only one that’s actually profitable. (Yes, kids, that’s right: the right-wing paper actually makes money in commie-crazy Seattle. You figure.)
[obdisc — the demi-household takes the Times, not the PI.]
demimondian
Capelza — If you want your blood to boil, you should read what the NR was putting out about women in the early eighties.
zzyzx
Steve, source for that?
Al Maviva
Yeah, you know those conservatives – so quick to label people “a little bit nutty, a little bit slutty.”
FWIW, my outlook is on the conservative side of libertarianism and I’ve been repulsed by Rand’s outlook since my early 20’s. Her ideal man is the Nietschean ubermensch, a fascistic amoral brute who gets what he wants even if it means the destruction of the social fabric that he capitalizes on to make his profits. It always amuses me to deal with “big L” libertarians who are disciples of Rand, or worse yet, of Rothbard. Both have done so much to help the left develop a caricature of the right (which libertarians don’t really inhabit, for the most part) as destructive, selfish pigs. And, to revert to what seems to be asserted is conservative form here, if you look at Rand’s life, she lived pretty much according to her philosophy. As a result it’s an ugly life to look at – she very much damaged a lot of those who were closest to her. Randian philosophy sounds pretty good when you are drinking the bong water, but it’s not a good recipe for societal ground rules. I much prefer the more pragmatic and humanistic Hayek and his Chicago school disciples – but then Hayek’s approach was to try to describe economic and political systems, not to lay out a recipe for a supposedly utopian system.
capelza
Demimondian, my blood has long since boiled away. :(
Fortunately for me, in the eighties, I had a job that involved knives and power tools, and being taller and even stronger than a lot of the men, I was able to vent my feminist spleen in a more physical way than my sisters in the outside world. Plus, I missed a lot of the pundits then. It was a peaceful time, in a raw kind of way.
Oh, and Ayn Rand sucks. Was I the only teeenager who hated her even then?
Steve
I tried to make the same point a couple months ago involving Jesse Helms and a bunch of wingnuts jumped all over me demanding my evidence that Helms was actually racist. Yes, and why don’t you prove that Charles De Gaulle was actually French, while we’re at it.
As for my source on the blockquote above, I’ve seen it a zillion places over the years, but I ripped that specific copy off from Brad DeLong who didn’t supply a link. I don’t think it’s, you know, stored in NRO’s electronic archives or anything.
From what I’ve read the editorial was unsigned but everyone seems to agree it fits Buckley’s writing style at the time.
jbird
to: the other steve
It makes a lot more sense if you think of the straussian approach to governance which says that the elites are destined to rule and they use religion as a structure and process to get the masses to behave.
please remember among noted straussians: worflowitz, perle, greenspan, libby
Pb
Heh. I’m with you, Al. I can’t stand the big-L Libertarians–the ones who actually seem to think that laissez-faire economics is the answer, the economic magic wand. I think about half of them are idealists who are deluded enough to think it would actually work, and the other half just want theirs, and don’t care about anyone or anything else. That is to say, they’re either destructive, selfish pigs, or unwitting enablers of the former. And there are lots of both varieties around, easily found on the internet.
The Other Steve
Which goes back to a Machievellian look at things, or even as Marx said of religion being the opium of the masses.
The elite use religion to sooth the masses, to distract them from reality.
Bilwick
You know what was really bad about Rand–what bothered many conservatives as well as liberals? That if a lot of people took her ideas seriously, why, real freedom could break out!
ppGaz
Exactly. It’s the IOIYAR effect.
Richard Bottoms
Thanks. You saved me the trouble of finding the Buckley editorial again.
As for Rand, well one if thes days I am going to have to get around to reading her books.
Al Maviva
T.O. Steve – that opiate of the masses theory kind of makes sense, except that a good chunk of the elites at least in this country appear to be habitual users of religion themselves – witness the 55 Catholic Dems’ statement this week. Moreover, in most of Europe, religious observance (outside of Islam) is very much on the wane. I think the masses may have used that opiate as a gateway drug and have now moved on to the heavier stuff, like simple old materialism.
SeesThroughIt
I’m still astounded that anybody can take Ayn Rand seriously. It’s philosophical hackery of the worst kind.
Great NR quote, Steve. That’s the kind of stuff that comes in handy when the revisionist right-wingers start to spew their pabulum about how the conservatives have always been the ones fighting for equal rights and liberals were the deplorable racists. You know, the intentional distortion of the Southern Strategy and the Dixiecrat phenomenon to try to revise history to put conservatives on the noble side of race relations in complete defiance of actual history.
ppGaz
My favorite line about Clarke from the Bushmonkeys was Rice’s “He was out of the loop” dig back a couple years ago.
She was referring to the time period during which Clarke was the terrorism guy in their offices, and he was, uh, “out of the loop.”
See, you want to keep your terrorism guy “out of the loop.” He’s so ….. excitable, and everything.
Of all the insane things these lying Bushites have said in the last five years, that one still strikes me as the funniest and the most amazing.
Steve
My friend the Tory shares a story. His mother-in-law is pretty active in a Republican organization, and she was scheduled to have a dinner meeting with some libertarian guy.
“Have fun at dinner,” my friend said. “Don’t forget to ask him if he believes in traffic lights!”
“Hahaha, you’re so funny,” she replied. “He’s not like THAT.”
Several hours later, she came back from dinner, visibly disturbed. She reported: “That @%(*&@ didn’t believe in traffic lights!!”
So next time you’re trying to think of a way to distinguish between the reasonable libertarians and the nutjobs, think of traffic lights.
srv
And yet Atlas Shrugged is always high on the best novels readers lists. Is there just a clique of folks somewhere who vote for it?
Me thinks Objectivism might have a gone a little farther if Ayn had been able to explain it in 800 pages or less.
capelza
She could have left out the whole sex thing, too. Jeez, I know she liked the strong man, but methinks she liked it a little too much.
demimondian
I actually wrote one of my last papers in college arguing that Rand was far closer to Nietzsche than to her (alleged) models, the Enlightenment rationalists. It always puzzled me that her self-evident worship of the übermensche went unnoticed. (Don’t worry, though, Al — you should have seen what I made of the Hayekian alleged allegiance to Hume. It doesn’t stand up to much investigation.)
Krista
“Fortunately for me, in the eighties, I had a job that involved knives and power tools, and being taller and even stronger than a lot of the men, I was able to vent my feminist spleen in a more physical way than my sisters in the outside world.”
capelza, can I just tell you that you are too damned cool?
Nat
You know what was really bad about Rand—what bothered many conservatives as well as liberals? That if a lot of people took her ideas seriously, why, real freedom could break out!
Rand sure went out of her way to make “real freedom” sound as desolate and joyless as possible, and to praise the worst abuses of a capitalist system. Her protagonists are the type of person everyone avoids at a dinner party, the ones you avoid talking to because they’ll dive into an hour-long spittle-flecked rant. I’m sure if Rand were still alive she’d be writing articles praising the bold visionary capitalists of Enron and bashing the regulators who brought them down.
I consider myself a small-l libertarian, but I’d prefer our current welfare state to anything resembling Rand’s ideal system. I loved the Chambers review; I think it captures objections (liberal or conservative) to her book perfectly.
demimondian
You know what? You’re absolutely right.
Do you know what “real freedom” looks like? Think of a Darwinian dystopia, “red in tooth and claw”. That’s true freedom: the strong rule the weak, brute force is the only law. It’s a great world — for the strongest person in the world. One winner, six billion losers — that’s not what any sane person wants.
Pharniel
Hell is totall freedom.
You can do whatever you want. So can everyone else. There’s always someone stronger, better, faster, smarter, etc. than you.
Thus you do what they want you to.
This is totall freedom in the randyan scheeme.
This is why rand sucks ass, and why her followers are inevitably dicks.
I just can’t remember if she spawned or not, if she didn’t then the human race still won anyway.
I also think “Ryandian nutjob” should be grounds for justifiable homocide. Someone who doesn’t belive in rights for others should have thiers taken away at the first oppertunity.
sorry. had to deal with a randian house guest that was also scyhophrenic and had an…episode.
ppGaz
Oh dear. My ex wife wasn’t a sane person?
Welp, ya live and learn.
capelza
Krista, thank you…blushes.
Rand did not spawn…somehow I think if she had, her view of the world would have altered quite a bit. She inhabited, in her head anyway, this glamourous world were the real men were heartless hunks and the real women were their willing if slightly roughed up groupies and children were not only not heard, but not even seen.
Why was it John Galt, and not Dagny Taggart who is the protagonist?
srv
I can’t say I didn’t take anything from being forced to read the Fountainhead, extremism in every direction I say. I know alot of people who hate Rand, but love ZatAoMM, which at points can be just as pedantic. Now, yes, this isn’t studying real philosophy, but it’s a close as the average High Schooler will ever get.
It’s funny that we teach kids about the wonders of our founders, but we never put their values in context with today. I think libertarians have it exactly right about that, and the mainstream left/right is so far gone they have no roots whatsover. That doesn’t mean we need more textualists or originalists, but would it really hurt for kids to understand the philosophy behind those concepts?
demimondian
I always assumed she was his speechwriter.
PamDirac
The view taken by Chambers isn’t all that surprising, really. I hold no brief for Ayn Rand, but she was without doubt an independent thinker even if she had little tolerance for the same quality in her followers, and the overriding reason for NR’s dislike of her work was not her prose style or her sensibility but her unapologetic atheism. I assure you that if the same stuff had been written by a writer of unimpeachable religiosity, Chambers would have had quite a different reaction.
The Other Steve
The impression I get not from her books, but from from reading how she lived here life is that her idea of real freedom didn’t involve something called self-control or responsibility for ones actions.
I don’t mind freedom, I just believe in self-control.
Faux News
h dear. My ex wife wasn’t a sane person?
Welp, ya live and learn.
MattM
I’m surprised this place hasn’t been overrun by rabid Randians yet.
As far as big-L libertarianism goes, my favorite quote about it comes from author Warren Ellis:
“They need a better manifesto than ‘If we eliminate all taxes tomorrow, everyone gets a rocketship!'”
Lee
My wife and I both enjoyed Atlas Shrugged (yes it is a bit long and tedious). Matter of fact our first born is named Dagny :)
Jaybird
Someday, we will complain about how naive Rowling was in her _Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix_. “It’s obviously written with Rowling’s thumb on the scale. The attempts of Rowling to make Umbridge look cruel for attempting to keep students from owning weapons (WEAPONS!) is yet another hamfisted attempt to get children on board with the idea that they know better than their elders and would be better off without structure.”
Stupid Rowlingites. They probably don’t even believe in The War On Drugs. (Children go to town to drink Butterbeer. CHILDREN!!!)
Mona
Whittaker Chambers was not some “mere reviewer.” Sam Tanenhaus — currently in charge of the NYT Review of Books — wrote a superb, widely heralded bio of Chambers about a decade ago.
Chambers had been a Communist, literally a Stalinist, who ran a spy ring fore the Soviet Union in D.C. in the 30s. He became disillusioned during the Stalin purges when people began disappearing and ending up with bullets in the head, and he left the Party, eventually joining the staff of Time magazine, where his talent propelled him to become a Senior Editor there. Just before joining time, he told the FDR administration about his spy ring, but no action was immediately taken
Eventually, a decade later, his story galvanized the nation when he elaborated on his communist cell in testimony before Congress, testimony which eventually led to the conviction of Alger Hiss for perjury, a proxy charge for espionage. Chambers was both widely reviled and widely loved, especially after his momentus autobiograohy, Witness, came out in the early 50s.
The young William Buckley adored Chambers, but could not lure him to the editorial staff of National Review at its founding. While Chambers was ardently anti-Communist – and held the most impeccable credentials to be so – he could not abide Jospeh McCarthy. Because NR was intent on supporting McCarthy, for that and other reasons, Chambers would not join the editorial staff.
But he did agree to write for them occasionally – hence the review of Rand. I’m a libertarian but not a Randroid, and I have agreed with Chambers’ opinion of her ever since I read this review when I was a mere teenager.
Chambers was an extraordinarily gifted writer, and although I do not agree with his dark, Christian-Manichean vision of the world, few could better detect fanaticism that is inhuman than he.
Mona
I assure you that if the same stuff had been written by a writer of unimpeachable religiosity, Chambers would have had quite a different reaction.
That shows how unfamiliar you actually are w/ Chambers’ views. Roman Catholic Joseph McCarthy was strongly supported by many Catholic anti-Communists (like Bill Buckley), but Chambers came to be deeply crticial of McCarthy, of his recklessness and dishonesty. So much so that it was a barrier to his joining the editorial staff of the pro-McCarthy National Review.
PamDirac
I did not intend to say that Chambers would approve of anything and everything a devout person said, did, or wrote. I did intend to say that much of NR’s general opposition to Rand, also expressed elsewhere, sprang from her militant atheism, although this wasn’t always stated forthrightly. Believe me, NR praised many books as bad or worse than Rand’s because they were On the Right (as it were) side.
It should be noted that the arts section in general, however, was not as politicized back then as it is today, and quite a few good writers made in into the magazine who wouldn’t pass the smell test today.
Pb
Jaybird,
I thought it was already decided that Harry Potter is some sort of Pagan cultist book series encouraging children to practice Dark Magicks and human sacrifice, much like Magic:The Gathering, and Dungeons and Dragons, and Puff the Magic Dragon, and Pokemon…
demimondian
I thought it was already decided that Harry Potter is some sort of Pagan cultist book Exactly! The Potter books are meant to seduce children into a cult where they carefully read “between the lines of canon” to infer what “the creator” meant in her “revelation”.
HH
“That looks more like another sad case of he-said, she-said journalism.”
It’s actually he-said, she-and-he-and-she-and-he-and-she-and-he-said… but who’s quibbling?
HH
“Clarke had some facts wrong on a tangetial issue”
Wrong… it went into Clarke’s phony assertions that Clinton was somehow more concerned about terrorism. And of course that was only the most lengthy article in a mainstream publication about his many inaccuracies and misstatements in the book and elsewhere.
HH
“the Seattle Times does lean right”
Like the New York Post leans left…
demimondian
Oh, look! Dynamite in the distance is blowing up jackalopes!
HH, there’s no comparison, and we know it. I’m not playing. Instead of doing violence to the truth, go do violence to something else…and don’t bother me with it. I’m not playing the game.
chefrad
“Her ideal man is the Nietschean ubermensch, a fascistic amoral brute who gets what he wants even if it means the destruction of the social fabric that he capitalizes on to make his profits.”
That’s not the Nietzsche I read. The one with a Z.
Ayn Rand is to Nietzsche what Pat Robertson is to Jesus of Nazareth.
demimondian
Well, to begin with, he was a far better poet than she was. And I think he had a better grasp of reality.
RonB
Why, Al, I do declare you sound just like her Randness. “Brute” was one of her favorites. Think you have her catechism wrong, since her characters were very much concerned with morality and she insisted that a truly moral man would never make an amoral decision. She hated being compared with Nietzsche, who advocated a morality of the strong over the weak and that morality was relative to the strong’s situation. Of course, Im sure another Nietzsche fan here will find someplace where he contradicts exactly what I just said, which is sometimes half the fun and frustration of reading him.
That said, Rand’s prescriptions are an impossible task given we are all more forgiving and terminally flawed in the real world. With this in mind I could never insist on Randianism as an attainable reality so why bother.
RonB
Jesus, Al, can I read someone else’s posts soon? Bullshit, the right has given the its critics all the ammo it needs. I’d rather deal with fucking Randians than “the right” I see today.
Mona
RonB writes: That said, Rand’s prescriptions are an impossible task given we are all more forgiving and terminally flawed in the real world. With this in mind I could never insist on Randianism as an attainable reality so why bother
The reason Chambers wrote (paraphrasing) that shrieking from every page of Rand’s novel is “To a gas chamber – go!” is what he detected and what is inherent in her philosophy. I know from many go rounds w/ Objectivists that they, like Rand their founder, believe that adhering to religious beliefs (and I do not) or deviating from Objectivism in any significant manner, is not just wrong — it is evil. Immoral.
What could you expect to be done to you if Objectivists came to power and they regarded your beliefs as evil?
RonB
Uh, no.
Having been under sway of Rand for a year or so of my life, I will admit to a certain amount of dogmatic thinking, but the reality was I was and still am a tragically flawed human being and Rand might as well have been talking about moon men. Objectivists lack introspection often-who doesn’t?-and I will stop short at blaming the philosopher for the poor quality of its acolytes.
Now, there are two strands of Objectivism, and I think youre all pretty much talking about the Peikoff strand(ARI), and there is the Kelley(TOC) strand, who is far more progressive and sensible while retaining the core of Rand’s morality, which is not unlike those of you who call themselves libertarians. Like any philosophy or theology, Objectivism has its levels of relevance and then there are parts that will make one run screaming from the room.
capelza
RonB..I ran screaming from the room before I ever knew there were different strands of Randians.
I still try to find relevance in her work, honestly, because I have a friend who is a follower and to have a conversation with her, it helps (not very well, though). Can someone point out the positives for me? I can never get past the crappy writing and the silliness of her characters. “Who is John Galt?” God, who cares…
RonB
LOL, Capelza. Rand is basically an allergic reaction to her experiences with collectivism. The basic tenets ain’t all that bad-that’s its ok to act in one’s self interest and that it has a positive ripple on everyone to do so. It’s been an awful long time since I have revisited Rand, so I forget most of it. Go create and don’t let anyone steal your vision-something else I remember. I dunno. I’m really not in a position to cheerlead for her or Objectivism since I don’t even have my library here in Korea to illuminate the debate here.
RonB
Here’s something else I remember, which will cause some distress if you’re big on relativism, and I could see this easily abused, is that she inverted the dictum “judge not lest ye be judged” and instead said, “Judge often, it’s the only way to separate right and wrong.”
skip
Nietzsche had a huge influence on Heidegger, and Exisentialism in general.
His theory of art (the creative tension between Apollo and Dionysus) still has currency.
Nietzsche’s notion of the Death of God is seminal in 20th century religious debate in the West.
Ayn Rand sold some books, mostly to faddists and failed social darwinists. Nietzsche would have called her a “Bildungsphilister” (cultural philistine) who muddied her waters to make them appear deep.
capelza
I do know about her experiences in Russia. So in a snarky nutshell..”don’t let the man keep you down”?
I suppose I am a relativist, simply because there is no one “truth”. I judge just as much as the next person, but my right and wrong is different than another persons. To come to a collective decision (like religion or the rule of the “inferior” majority) about what is right and wrong would seem to be counter to her own world view, so she herself is being that thing she seems to hate, a subjectivist.
There was always a strain that perhaps only I, and not others detected in her…an abhorance of the poor. I can’t put my finger on it, except one little bit I read somewhere years ago (and I can’t find again). She was on a train (in Russia I believe) and a very poor, shoddily dressed man wanted to handle her bags for her and be paid for it. She was appallled and thought him the lowest of the low. And yet, I always thought the man was trying to find a way to make a living. She didn’t think that was right. Her response seemed almost visceral and not very enlightened.
RonB
I’d like to see that thing about the poor guy, Capelza. Yeah, objectivism is troubled by the very subjective things are what they are and that is that, while usually merely asserting that it’s objective reality. But Im a poor apologist for Rand anyway.
Im probably going to get slammed for this by other people who got past philosophy 101, but I find her to be an antecedent of Locke, whereupon the the theory that “I worked on it and therefore its mine now” becomes religion.
demimondian
I’ll certainly defer to skip on philosophy — he’s the real thing, and I surely ain’t. However, I would not want to tar Locke with Rand — the early British Empricists certainly played a huge role in the broader conservative movement, but I have always viewed Rand as essentially romantic, as is shown by her focus on the importance of will and inspiration instead of decision and balance.
RonB
Thank you, Demi, you beat me to saying that and I agree with the rest of what you said.
bud
I was about to pounce on the “reviewer named Whittaker Chambers” bit, but I see that Mona beat me to it.
Either I’m getting old (don’t answer that, you in the back row!) or even people who consider themselves political junkies can miss a beat or two.
There’s a pretty straight line between Whittaker Chambers, Alger Hiss, and Richard Nixon, and people who aren’t aware of it should review the last 50 years of American History.
BTW, Alger Hiss was a poster boy for american “progressives” for years as an example of the excesses of the anti-communist movement; a martyr to the anti-anti-communists, if you will.
With the fall of the USSR, and the release of a lot of old KGB material we find that… hey, he actually was a spy! Same thing with the other martyrs, the Rosenburgs.
MAX HATS
I usually prefer my rape slash fiction to involve the characters of Law and Order but hey, when in a pinch, Rand’s okay.
Seriously, everytime I’m amazed that Rand actually has followers to her “philosophical movement,” I just remember that only a decade ago, a bunch of folks castrated themselves and drank poison so they could fly away on a rocketship tailing a comet. There really is no limit to human gullibility.
ppGaz
Ayn Rand used to appear regularly on the Tonight Show when I was a youngster.
I took her to be nutty as a fruitcake, and a huckster, and a very good one.
RonB
Oooooh!Oooooh! WINGNUT GOLD, comin’ atcha! And almost on topic!
Atlas Shrugs-Can’t tell the difference between pollster John Zogby and anti-Zionist brother James!
Comments have been predictably closed, but she did leave up several good parting shots from alert readers who called her on it.
She also at one point attempted to say she knew they were brothers. You gotta go see. So, its safe to say that Objectivism does not attract the best and brightest!
CaseyL
I read some Rand in my early twenties. AS is a good book if you like yelling at the author and throwing the book across the room frequently. Sometimes I enjoy books that make me do that, since they engage my mind, but her basic premises were so appalling I ran out of energy to keep arguing. A collection of essays also pissed me off mightily, when she went in boots and all after environmentalists for – IIRC – refusing mankind (always mankind, always men; she seemed a women who didn’t identify with her own gender at all) its rightful place as King of the Hill, as if any other considerations were prima facie worthless.
I can see a certain “romance” in her ideas – the romance of Man, The Artificer; the romance of invention and industry – but she’s all hard sharp edges; no room for compassion or empathy. Even her pity is merciless.
RonB
Update on Atlas Shrugs, commenters have been swarming her on her latest post to man up on the Zogby post…
WINGNUT GOLD. Will not admit the mistake.
Steve
Wolcott had her pegged. Way too insane to be funny. I mean, as a Jew, it’s literally humiliating to me to watch her accuse people of anti-Semitism.
RonB
Oh, hells bells, wrong link for the Atlas pile-on. Here’s the right one.
tzs
Speaking of Randites–one lesson I have learned (painfully) through certain boyfriends:
RUN, do not walk, away from any male Randites. They are the most selfish, egotistical bastards around…and then they get mad at you because you won’t put up with them. They remind me of clueless teenagers that have never grown up.
Bernard Yomtov
They remind me of clueless teenagers that have never grown up.
You mean there are Randites who are not teenagers? Amazing.
demimondian
I prefer the term Randroids — vaguely hominiform, but lacking even the most basic of human consciousness.
cmh
From AS, I remember taking away an awareness of the purpose of self esteem and how much that is good in us derives from it. That said, I have no truck with the Objectivists (and yes the males made up the bulk of the college objectivist society…& they all had the same haircut too) That said, I am really taken with the teachings of Jesus but I am not a huge fan of most of his proclaimed followers.
Pb
Why is it that most of Jesus’ ‘followers’ don’t look or act the part, whereas those of us who do look and/or act the part are the most likely not to be a self-proclaimed ‘follower’…
ppGaz
It seems to me that the best measure of a society is its capacity for taking care of its weakest and least able members. The sick, the slow, the aged, the crippled.
A society that takes care of people and things because it can, not because it has to, as opposed to a society that fosters greed, ambition and selfishness, is a better society. The idea that “I’ve got what is mine because I earned it or deserve it” is borderline sociopathic as far as I am concerned. I’ve stood on the shoulders of many others in order to have good fortune. Ancestors, teachers, public servants who saw to it that my generation would have plenty and have opportunity for more … I could never possibly repay all the debts. I don’t even know about most of them, I’ve just benefitted from them.
The Randian approach is so childish and devoid of human merit, it always surprises me when anyone older than 16 espouses it. But then I’m always surprised when anyone would really want to be a Republican these days, too. What will they tell the grandkids?
“Yes, child, we opposed the gay agenda.”
Wow. Who could make something like that up?
TTT
Rand’s books are only popular because everybody is a college freshman at some point in their lives, and likes to think they’re so much smarter than everybody else and that those who oppose them are part of an evil degenerate conspiracy.
Unlike Rand, most people then fall in love and start families and learn there’s more to life than a full belly and an orgasm. And they leave her morally bankrupt sonderkommando “philosophy” behind.
Objectivism is like Spartacism: a phenomenon that exists only in the ivory tower or among those who cling to it for unhealthy periods. In the real world, amongst real people, it is long extinct.
Oh, and if you want a classic demonstration of Maoist socialism, search for Rand’s justification of the genocide of the Native Americans. See, they weren’t using their property to its fullest utility as judged by those who had more power, and so it was right for it to be taken away from them, and if they resisted that, well… “stuff happens”.
Also, I’ve never met an Objectivist who wasn’t an extreme anti-environmentalist. Something about constraining human desires for any reason, blah blah blah.
tzs
Wasn’t there something else about Rand claiming that the philosopher that had influenced her the most was Aristotle and then having to admit she had never read any of his stuff?
Zifnab
Neo-conservativism and Randism and all the rest is a direct response to the “Giveaway” menality of the 60s and 70s, from what I understand.
When income tax was at 70% and government oversight ment the IRS would come and rape you in your living room if they suspected you of fraud, or the EPA would close down your factory and toss a bunch of people on the street where social programs would scope them up, coodle them like infants, and give them just enough to live on, people were very very pissed. Those people have long memories and they remember getting burned by the ivory tower that wanted to ban every religion and social norm – good and bad – that didn’t fit their worldview. When abortion legislation was overturned, when prayer was banned from public schools, when we started hemoraging cash to foreign countries without giving a dime to people in the US that weren’t a special interest… These were bad times for alot of people. Argueably as bad as the Bush era.
So when you see a Bushite waving the Red Elephant and defaming the liberal elite, know that these feelings of hatred and disgust aren’t just coming from thin air. They’re coming from people with general worries, real feelings, and true concerns. Concerns that the Bush administration has played on like a finely-tuned piano. But concerns none-the-less.
ppGaz
Zifnab, good points.
But prayer is not banned from schools. What is proscribed is organized, state-sponsored prayer in public buildings and led by public employees. People can pray 24 hours a fucking day wherever they are, nobody is stopping them.
This is not directed at you, but just at the general myth of “banned prayer.”
It is no more possible to ban prayer than it is to ban thought.
Well, except in Bill O’Reilly’s case. He thinks he can ban thought.
Zifnab
To many it’s six of one and half-a-dozen of the other. Admittedly, yes. Prayer isn’t banned in schools in the sense that you can recite the “Our Father” in your head as many times as you please and there’s no one who can stop you.
Banning prayer at high school football games and at graduation cerimonies and before saying the Pledge of Alliegance is what is truly at stake. Many people feel that’s a raw deal, and not without good reason. When half your high school campus attends the same church and you’re not allowed to lead a rousing “Amen, for the football team!” the line between freedom of religion and seperation of church and state becomes a bit blurred.
The Democrats have done a very poor job of catering to the family that goes to church, loves Jesus, disapproves of abortion, feels a bit uncomfortable around gays, but isn’t a yes-man for the Republican party. These people exist and they’re actually very nice when they haven’t been backed socially backed into a corner or whipped into a frenzy.
ppGaz
“Amen for the football team” is not objectionable to me.
But “All glory to God for that touchdown” is over the line.
Unless it’s the Niners, and then whatever it takes to get the points, fine.
ppGaz
Well, now we might have a problem. I don’t want any political party “catering” to people who “love Jesus.” That’s not appropriate. The Democratic party is objectively pro-choice, too.
And instead of catering to people who are “uncomfortable around gays” I’d cater to people who are uncomfortable around bigotry, and are comfortable with inclusion.
In order to “cater” to people who are “uncomfortable around gays” you either have to be a bigot, or be willing to wink at bigotry for votes. Either way, you have to be a Republican, and that I am not willing to be. I didn’t get all this way just to turn into trailer trash.
CaseyL
How are we supposed to cater to them, except by limiting the autonomy and civil liberties of the groups they’re “uncomfortable” with?
Because that’s what they want. They don’t want someone to say “Well, I don’t agree with all of that, but you’re perfectly free to feel that way.” They want the State to validate their beliefs by enacting legislation that imposes their beliefs on people who don’t share those beliefs.
No one’s forcing them to not pray; no one’s forcing them to have abortions; no one’s forcing them to marry gay people.
They, on the other hand, would like to force schoolkids to pray – or be singled out for not praying. They, on the other hand, would like to force women to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term – even if the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest. They, on the other hand, would like to force gay people back into the closet – with no recourse if one of their fellow bigots fires, evicts, refuses healthcare to, or harrasses gay people.
skip
Ayn Rand is the philosophical equivalent of astral projection. People who don’t want to do the spadework, to work their way through the masters, look for a shortcut and a simple-minded one-size-fits all worldview. Preferably in a book or two that don’t make too much reference to people like Kant or Hegel.
EL
If organized prayer wasn’t banned, then to avoid favoring one religion over another, you’d have to have something completely nonsectarian, perhaps so much so that it would be almost meaningless. OR you’d have to have an organized prayer for each group. In a reasonably diverse school, that could mean adding Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, Wiccan, Shinto, Native American, etc. to Chistian prayers.
Pb
RonB, predictably, scrutator picked up on the Atlas idiocy, more delicious wing-nuttiness.
RonB
The fact that a site like the Scrutator gained such a quick following unfortunately says that void needed to be filled. We have miles to go before we cleanse politics of that type of willful idiocy…
Zifnab
People asked the same questions during the Civil Rights movement of the 50s and 60s. How do we convince a whole bunch of white southerners to give up their bigotry without looking like hammerfisted jackholes? Democrats did it by telling it like it is. They weren’t afraid to paint African-Americans as people rather than a demographic. They unified voters around them by identifying civil rights for black people with civil rights for ALL people.
Homosexuality is just one aspect of bigotry. It’s just one way to get kicked out of the military or fired or evicted or beaten up for no good reason. The Democrats are supposed to have a platform of tolerance, so they need to bring gay rights into that platform and remind every unwed mother, every minority, every immigrant, and every outspoken citizen that they too can be canned for revealing their private lives to the public. Remind every limp-wristed metrosexual that you don’t have to be gay to get beaten up for looking gay. Remind every working woman that once the white christian men are done beating up the “girly men”, the “manly girls” are next on their list. Reveal bigotry for what it truely is – people in our culture who want an excuse to do violence without reprecussion. Remind people that Jesus didn’t tolerate that crap.
I’ve heard so little from the Christian Left. No Leftist Christian radio. No Leftist Christian talkshows and televangelist preachers. No “turn-the-other-check” televion hosts and no “love thy enemy” guest speakers. For that matter we have no rationalists, no one to tell the world that just because you legislate against gay doesn’t mean it goes away. Nothing to remind the people that the closet still exists, and the best you can manage is a crude containment.
Good people – good Christians – will listen to this. And when they’re done being afraid that the big bad Liberal is going to close down their church and take away their god, they really do respond.
Pb
RonB,
Not really–so far it looks like it’s mostly the same few idiots, with the rest of the crowd heckling. It seems that idiocy is now a spectator sport.
ppGaz
Not exactly news! This is the principle behind the popularity of network television since 1950.
Just let me say this, about that:
I Love Lucy
Gilligan’s Island
The Honeymooners
The Beverly Hillbillies
But serially, idiocy is as American as apple pie. How else to explain an illiterate, mediocre movie actor as president of the United States?
demimondian
Seriously, how is that different from other political blogs? I don’t know, I mean, like, say, the rumpus room of the blogosphere?
The Other Steve
Well, I would say there is certainly a failure, but you’ve completely misinterpreted the cause.
The Democrats did not abandoned the churches. The churches abandoned the people. That is, in the 1980s there was a change that took place in the churches where they were taken over by the followers of Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, etc. I know this because I was there.
My family was church going Presbyterians. We went every sunday, had for years. And then things changed. At our church the minister started bringing in videos from James Dobson, his central theme at the time largely being that Dr. Spock was all wrong.
What happened?
It drove my family out of the church. We stopped going, and haven’t gone to church for a good 20 years now.
We’re now Democrats as a result of this.
Yes, there was a failure. But the failure was not that the Democrats don’t pander to these wingnuts.
The failure was that God-fearing Christians such as my family let Jerry Fallwell and James Dobson take over the churches, without putting up a fight.
ppGaz
TOS ….. good story. Good point.
I think it was, literally, the “other Steve” who said a day or two ago that it was about telling people what they wanted to hear.
That would be why nobody put up a fight … these guys had tapped into something visceral, that trumped the traditional values and the facts and replaced it with this new postmodern, or I should say anti-modern, face.
What does it remind you of? Radical Islam, maybe?
There’s a reason why we call those people the American Taliban. The shoe fits.
Phil Smith
Anyone who doesn’t immediately recognize Leonidas and Scrutator as an elaborate DougJ prank just isn’t very bright.
Barry D
Zifnab: “When income tax was at 70% ”
The income tax never was at 70%. Stop making things up.
ppGaz
“Phil Smith?” So, “John Doe” was your second choice?
ppGaz
There you have it, folks. The reason why two thirds of the American People think that things are going badly over there is because there isn’t enough “balance” in the reporting.
Seriously, you cannot make this shit up.
Elaborate Hoax? Phil Smith? THE WHOLE FUCKING GOVERNMENT OF YOUR COUNTRY IS AN ELABORATE HOAX.
See Phil, I can write your material better than you can.
You want to bitch about elaborate hoaxes? Okay, let’s start with WMDs and a shitty little drunk from Texas who couldn’t really run a baseball team, let alone a country.
The Other Steve
How do we know you aren’t DougJ?
ppGaz
General Pace is conducting an elaborate hoax on national television on the premier weekly political talk show … and this guy is barking about DougJ.
Now THAT’S keeping your damned priorities straight.
Phil Smith
I love being told what to be concerned about. It makes me all warm inside.
Look, ppGaz, I ran across Leo when he was trolling other sites. I went to Scrutator as a result, saw you had posted there, thought you might want to know. On occasion, you display a certain amount of intellectual integrity. Not this time, but whatever. If informing you that you’ve been suckered is “barking”, well, believe what you wish.
Phil Smith
Just in case you’re curious, Gooding, Leonidas is now claiming that the post you left under my name came from my IP.
skip
Substitute Arab for Negro and you’ll see National Review is still in the same business. All they’ve done is redirect Manifest Destiny from the Great Plains to Ertez Israel.
ppGaz
Well you know what they say, free advice is worth what you pay for it.
Like I said, your country is in the hands of lunatics, and you are worried about who is spoofing their IP addresses.
I don’t spoof IP’s, and all the opinions you see under this handle are mine … so far. I haven’t seen anyone spoofing me yet, but anything is possible I suppose.
Besides, who cold imitate this obnoxious personality?
Who would want to? That’s the best thing about being unpopular, nobody pretends to be me!
ppGaz
Don’t tempt me.
demi “evil clown” mondian
ppGaz
Phil Smith, are you John Cole?
Phil Smith
I’m only mildly annoyed by the IP spoof. “Phil Smith”, while it is my real name, is (as you’ve noted) so completely common an appelation as to be virtually anonymous.
I sincerely dislike the whole Moby/DougJ thing, however. It’s funny as satire, but only for a while. I guess you have a lot of time on your hands; I’d think that you would want to argue with people who actually hold the beliefs that you’re arguing against. To each his own.
But lemme see if I understand your vitriol, ppGaz. I make one comment on Scrutator. Two different individuals — including yourself — then proceed to spoof my handle. I deny those two posts. Leo claims that the contested posts — including the one that you repeated here under your own handle — came from my IP. That, in and of itself, should be enough to clue you in. You posted it, you didn’t spoof the IP, Leonidas says it came from my IP. Hmm.
Between this site and that one, you and I discuss this occurrence, for a bit. You toss up a couple red herrings, screech at me, accuse me of false pretenses, and then — I love this part, it’s delicious — attempt to claim that you’re the aggrieved party. Hilarious.
As for being John Cole, well, no. I’ll take it as a compliment, though.
ppGaz
Oh no, anyone can clearly see that YOU are the aggrieved party.
But, I missed it … what was your “grievance” again?
That you thought you spotted a DougJ spoof, and nobody gave you a Nobel Prize for it?
Phil Smith
You’re right about your personality.
I take it, then, since you seem to think that using other folks’ handles is perfectly ok, that I have your permission to use your handle to say whatever I see fit, wherever I see fit. Fair enough?
ppGaz
You’re an idiot. First of all, handles are always fair game. Mine is made up of initials and a state abbreviation. There are hundreds of people who could claim the “right” to the same string of letters on that basis alone.
Whether BJ permits the use of the same handle by different posters, I don’t know. I would probably email John and request that you not be allowed to post under my handle here, and I would guess that he would not allow it.
As for scrutator, I also know the blog owner there and could do the same thing.
You seem to think it’s a big deal that I made a single post using your handle (I think, that’s all I remember doing). And I did it just to teach you a lesson, that handles in the anonymous world mean only what we who use them decide that they mean.
We can spend the rest of your posting life talking about this AFAIC. Whatever distracts you from bothering anyone else out there, and keeps your “message” tangled up in nonsense like who DougJ might be today. Fine with me.
Back to you, hotshot.
Phil Smith
That sparkling personality continues to shine!!
No, ppGaz, the whole handle thing is not very important to me, for the reason I’ve already given. I note a defensive tone about the idea from you, however. “If Phil Smith impersonates me on Balloon Juice — an offense that I admit I’ve already committed elsewhere — I’m gonna cry to the blog host!” Don’t worry, it’s of no interest to me to do so.
What’s more illuminating is that Leonidas, who I infer is the proprietor (or at least one of them, I dunno and don’t really care) states that your post came from my IP. That lie tells me a little bit about him. Your apparent lack of concern about that falsehood speaks to your integrity as well. Just a little, but it speaks. You see, the reason I brought it straight to you is that some time ago, you used to get pretty mad at DougJ. I guess you’ve made your peace with him.
At any rate, I will let this drop from this point forward.
ppGaz
No, I don’t think that’s what he is saying. I think he is saying that there are at least 3 IP addresses on posts bearing the name Phil Smith. One of those is mine. One is yours, I think, and the we don’t know who the other one is.
Your personality is so magnetic that everyone wants to be you today. You should be flattered.
ppGaz
Oh, the DougJ thing. Mad at him?
Well, I got hooked on his line more often than just about anyone around here. But that never made me mad. I got a kick out of it. There were a couple times when he and I got into it, but I get into it with everybody sooner or later. I’m an equal opportunity pain in the ass. That’s my job.
Phil Smith
Come again? You reference three IPs in your post. I count one in his. He retracted that claim moments ago, but still. I haven’t been arguing against the post at 7:18, I’ve been arguing against the post at 5:23.
Loose shit, ppg. Loose shit.
ppGaz
Okay, well I only made one bogus post under your name. I mean, under Phil’s name. Whoever he is. That’s Phil Smith of Dirtpile, OK. Sugar beet farmer. Probably not you.
But anyway, if you think that DougJ is doing a spoof (which we all know, he does all the time) why not just ask him? He reads this blog and scrutator every day.
He enjoys the fan mail.
RonB
OK. I am pretty firmly convinced that Scrutator is soooo not for real. When I got to the post about crocheting for the troops, I got all I needed to know.
The Other Steve
If they’re not for real, there’s like some sort of mass spoof going on. If you look at who they’re linking to like that Atlas Shrugged or Charles Krauthammer.
That’s pretty good, if it’s true.
Zifnab
Income Tax from infoplease
Zifnab
See, it’s the lying game kids. If you’re wrong, just lie. If someone calls you on it, say they’re lying. If they bring up evidence to back them up/dispute you, say the evidence is wrong. If asked to back up your opinion, quote a liar or just quote nothing a la Hinderacker.
This actually gets back to the original topic of the “wisdom” of Ayn Rand and her supporters. A classic example of people who chanted “Communism is evil” loud and hard until they’d drowned out their own evils by sheer noise volume. Some people would call it hypocrasy, but I still consider that hypocrasy implies you believe the words passing through your lips. This is just lying. Lying or being incredibly wrong.
Pb
Zifnab,
Yes, but what really matters is the effective tax rate. For example, the effective federal income tax rate for the top 1% of incomes in 1979 was 21.8%. Since then, it peaked at 24.2% in the year 2000. For all quintiles, it peaked at 12% in 1981.
As for the total effective federal tax rate, it was at 37% in 1979 for the top 1%. It was at its lowest in 1986, at 25.5%. For all quintiles, it peaked at 23% in 2000.
RonB
Zif, thats the marginal tax rate theyre talking about, the tax one pays on income above…either 150k or 200k, I think 200k right now. This marginal tax rate has been getting hacked at for the last 50 years…it was up at 98% I think during WW2. I should think that in these pressing times we may want to bring it up again. Our current administration would rather borrow instead.
Bilwick
If you guys want to debate Rand, it would would help if we had more people posting who actually read her books and who could summarize her ideas–even to dispute them–without distorting them or resorting to caricature. It’s also amazing how many people took my “real freedom” comment and projected a world of violence and terror; which confirms my thesis: that many people find freedom scary. If you took them out of the Platonic cave and told them, “Look–you have a right to your own life,” they would immediately turn around and stampede back into the cave, yelling like the knights in the Monty Python Grail “Run away! Run away!” Or rather: “Rule me! Rule me!” (And I’m not even a bona fide Objectivist. I’m surprised one or two haven’t written in to correct the distortions I’ve read it. It wouldn’t even be difficult.)
HH
“Violence to the truth” like, say, Richard Clarke describing the behavior of Donald Rumsfeld at a meeting he never attended?