Ayn Rand's Right: Vomiting In Its Own Hat

Testimony before The House Un-American
 Activities Committee, 1947

The Republican/Libertarian/Tea-Party/Christian/Patriot conglomerate constantly quotes Ayn Rand, which baffles and sickens me. Rand's novels were grandiose, turgid amorality tales that appealed to me briefly as a college freshman in 1966 and, shortly thereafter, struck me as...sophomoric. Now, they strike me as the polar evil of the Stalinism that Rand escaped.



Rand, so beloved by Libertarians that they name their children for her, was a child of the Russian Revolution and a rebel who immigrated to the United States in 1925. She became a film extra and a junior Hollywood screenwriter, and, eventually a political activist who supported Republican Wendell Wilkie in 1940. Her philosophy grew out of an abhorrence of communism, culminating in 1947 with her testimony as a "friendly witness" for the House Un-American Activities Committee. The HUAC, to give you a feel for that august body, decided against looking into the Ku Klux Klan, because,  "After all, the KKK is an old American institution;" they did, however, produce the Hollywood Blacklist.

HUAC Chief Investigator Robert Stripling
and Richard Nixon examine subpoenaed documents

Rand published a series of novels (We, The Living; The Fountainhead; Atlas Shrugged) that she hoped to have adapted to the screen, but she had a little problem heeding that earthy bit of folk wisdom that cautioned, "don't vomit in your own hat," (later adapted by Saul Bellow to cover inter-organizational affairs, "Don't shit where you eat." We'll get back to that one when we address her personal life below). Having won friends and made enemies in Hollywood, she was largely frustrated in her film ambitions; not even her friends suited her, and she was ever-critical of  the two films that were produced ("Song of Russia" and "The Fountainhead," which she stated she disliked entirely).

"What are your masses but mud to be ground underfoot, fuel to be burned for those who deserve it? What is the people but millions of puny, shrivelled, helpless souls that have no thoughts of their own, no dreams of their own, no will of their own, who eat and sleep and chew helplessly the words others put into their mildewed brains?...I know no worse injustice than justice for all." (Ayn Rand, first edition of the semi-autobiographical novel,  We The Living)

Ayn Rand is a favorite of the Heritage Foundation, a DC think tank and one of the most influential conservative organizations in America, which floats her quotations above many of their media releases. (They do tend to cherry-pick heavily, though and I've never seen the one above cited.) Heritage was seeded in 1973 by money from The Coors Brewing Company, under the persuasion of Paul Weyrich.

Weyrich, a devoted acolyte of Ayn Rand and controversial figurehead of The New Right, was also co-founder, with Jerry Falwell, of the Moral Majority. In addition, he infamously asserted to a gathering of like-minded souls in 1990 that it was a mistake to believe that it was Roe v. Wade that gave birth to the Religious Right, but, rather, it was the IRS's attempt to rescind Bob Jones University's tax exempt status due to racial discrimination.

Christianity "is the best kindergarten of Communism possible."--Ayn Rand

Paul Weyrich is the Father of The Heritage Foundation. Ayn Rand is Heritage's muse; her philosophy of Egoism , which "elevates the self to a status not granted to others," is their foundation. 

Ethical egoism does not, however, require moral agents to harm the interests and well-being of others when making moral deliberation; e.g. what is in an agent's self-interest may be incidentally detrimental, beneficial, or neutral in its effect on others. Individualism allows for others' interest and well-being to be disregarded or not, as long as what is chosen is efficacious in satisfying the self-interest of the agent. (Wikipedia, with my emphasis)

It's such a relief to know that Rand's followers are not required to harm the interests and well-being of others, but that does only leave us to conclude that, when they do so, it is entirely voluntarily and knowing--as was the case in Ayn Rand's personal life and with the cult of followers she created, The Collective. I call it a cult advisedly: Rand commanded such slavish devotion of her disciples that she was able to coerce them to accept long-term behaviors that caused them personal pain in the name of adherence to her philosophy of Egoism and Objectivism. She ignored their well-being, convincing herself that, in serving her own will, she maximized theirs.

"Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong."--Ayn Rand

Barbara Branden

 A few years ago, I rented the movie "The Passion of Ayn Rand" (Helen Mirren, Eric Stoltz, Julie Delpy, Peter Fonda), based on the book of the same name by Barbara Branden, an icon of cognitive dissonance and wife of Nathaniel Branden, personal assistant and most beloved disciple of Rand. The movie has a great cast and, while it is distressing to watch, nobody should be allowed to quote Rand again until they've seen it.

"Evil requires the sanction of the victim"--Ayn Rand

Incidentally, while researching this post, I elbowed one of my heroes nearly off his pedestal: Michael Shermer, author of Skeptic Magazine and critical thinker extraordinaire, usually gratifies me, but he let me down with a big thud when he wrote for HuffPo:

You can no more understand the right without Rand than you can understand it without Buckley, Goldwater, and Reagan. The dismissal of Rand by both the left and the right as mind candy for college kids is fatuous. It may be true that many of us (myself included) were first introduced to Rand in college, but that's when most of us are introduced to most of the philosophical and literary figures in history. So what?

And yes, of course, both biographies (Jennifer Burns' and Anne Heller's) deal with--as they must--Rand's sordid and salacious personal life, which must also carry this disclaimer: Criticism of the founder of a theory does not, by itself, constitute a negation of any part of the theory.

I could not disagree more heartily. Destructive and pathological thought and behavior in the founder of a theory do wholly inform her theory and cast its value into doubt. The Religious Right has long since linked arms with the Heritage Foundation conservatives, and it is the Core Value of this alliance that personal responsibility underlies all economic and political tenets. You'll have to judge for yourself whether Rand's thought and behavior were destructive and, possibly, pathological.

Let's cover Rand's personal life with bullet points. You're big people; you can follow the links you like.

• Despite William F. Buckley's best efforts to co-opt Ayn Rand's philosophy for Christians, Rand was a firm and unrepentant atheist. She met Buckley once at a cocktail party and told him, "You are too intelligent to believe in God."
• Ayn Rand supported abortion rights.
• Ayn Rand carried on a long affair with Nathaniel Branden while she and Branden were both married. She coerced the consent of both spouses. According to Barbara Branden, the affair was "agonizingly painful" to both spouses. Barbara Branden stated in a 1992 interview, "once we decided (the affair between Ayn and Nathaniel) was reasonable and it was something we should accept, then I don't think we quite let ourselves know how desperately we were suffering. I don't know how we would have lived with it otherwise."
• Ayn Rand was addicted to amphetamines and suffered in later years from severe depression and became verbally abusive, aggravated by that addiction. She had begun using them to prevent sleep as she wrote her novels. Later she "fed herself a steady stream" of amphetamines ("speed," the same class of drugs as chrystal meth) to keep up with her youthful followers. In other words, it could well be argued that Ayn Rand suffered from chemically-induced mania, with the euphoria, aggression, irritability, invincibility, and paranoia common to that state.
• In the end, her Collective dissolved in rancor as a result of revelations from the Brandens. Saul Bellow's Auggie March could have told her: Don't shit where you eat.

The self-proclaimed "greatest
creative thinker of all time."

"The man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all those below him, but gets nothing except his material payment, receiving no intellectual bonus from others to add to the value of his time. The man at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in his hopeless ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus of all their brains. --Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

To the folks who send emails with quotations from Ayn Rand: I'm sickened. Do you really think you are, or will ever be, one of the elite Ayn Rand believed herself to be? Do you really want to be? So far, I haven't received a single email from a captain of industry or a corporate CEO; they are all from the insignificant masses, like me. Frankly, I think there's a little Stockholm Syndrome at work, here; a little identification with the aggressor, the abuser, the exploiter. At any rate, don't quote Rand, that sick and sad woman, to me until you prove you've done all your homework.