The Laughter Of The Bitches

Ayn Rand - Wikipedia entry

Even though she was a big fat nutcase and only three people alive have actually been able to finish Atlas Shrugged, reading this article I couldn't help but be reminded how much I really dug The Fountainhead when I read it back in college, and why I still have a twisted place somewhere in my heart for her abstractly over-the-top shenanigans. Some of my favorite highlights:

"I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline, the sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need? I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body."

Elasto-Rand? Imagine the comic book possibilities. Or look at this one:

"I can say - not as a patriotic bromide, but with full knowledge of the necessary metaphysical, epistemological, ethical, political and aesthetic roots - that the United States of America is the greatest, the noblest and, in its original founding principles, the only moral country in the history of the world."

Now when was the last time you heard a proud American defend the love for their country with words like that? Or get a load of this one:

"Rand viewed herself equally as a novelist and a philosopher, as she said "(I am) both, and for the same reason."

It's like a Zen koan or something. Or how about her all-encompassing hatred of...wait for it... Kant. I mean, how many people in the world absolutely loathe Kant with every fiber in their being? He's kind of hard to get worked up about. But not for Ayn Rand:

"Suppose you met a twisted, tormented young man and... discovered that he was brought up by a man-hating monster who worked systematically to paralyze his mind, destroy his self-confidence, obliterate his capacity for enjoyment and undercut his every attempt to escape... Western civilization is in that young man's position. The monster is Immanuel Kant."

Now see if there's any logic at work in her political beliefs:

"Rand detested many prominent liberal and conservative politicians of her time, including prominent anti-Communists, such as Harry S. Truman, Ronald Reagan, Hubert Humphrey, and Joseph McCarthy.[39] She opposed US involvement in World War I, World War II[40] and the Korean War, although she also strongly denounced pacifism: "When a nation resorts to war, it has some purpose, rightly or wrongly, something to fight for – and the only justifiable purpose is self-defense."[41] She opposed U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, "If you want to see the ultimate, suicidal extreme of altruism, on an international scale, observe the war in Vietnam – a war in which American soldiers are dying for no purpose whatever,"[41] but also felt that unilateral American withdrawal would be a mistake of appeasement that would embolden communists and the Soviet Union.[40]

So basically she sat around and didn't bother to take a meaningful stand on anything. I like it. Then, of course, comes the good stuff:

"Rand's views on gender roles have created some controversy. While her books championed men and women as intellectual equals (for example, Dagny Taggart, the protagonist of Atlas Shrugged was a hands-on railroad executive), she thought that the differences in the physiology of men and women led to fundamental psychological differences that were the source of gender roles. Rand denied endorsing any kind of power difference between men and women, stating that metaphysical dominance in sexual relations refers to the man's role as the prime mover in sex and the necessity of male arousal for sex to occur.[43] According to Rand, "For a woman qua woman, the essence of femininity is hero-worship – the desire to look up to man." (1968)"

Oh you know it. But it gets better:

"In a Playboy magazine interview, Rand stated that women are not psychologically suited to be President and strongly opposed the modern feminist movement, despite supporting some of its goals.[45] Feminist author Susan Brownmiller called Rand "a traitor to her own sex," while others, including Camille Paglia and the contributors to 1999's Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand, have noted Rand's "fiercely independent – and unapologetically sexual" heroines who are unbound by "tradition's chains... [and] who had sex because they wanted to."[34] In Atlas Shrugged, Rand writes that the "band on the wrist of [Dagny's] naked arm gave her the most feminine of all aspects: the look of being chained." (One must note that this description is from the character Lillian Rearden, whose views certainly are not intended to reflect those of Ayn Rand.) This novel, along with Night of January 16th (1968) and The Fountainhead (1943), features sex scenes with stylized erotic combat that borders on rape. Rand herself noted that what The Fountainhead clearly depicted was "rape by engraved invitation." In a review of a biography of Rand, writer Jenny Turner opined,

"the sex in Rand’s novels is extraordinarily violent and fetishistic. In The Fountainhead, the first coupling of the heroes, heralded by whips and rock drills and horseback riding and cracks in marble, is ‘an act of scorn ... not as love, but as defilement’ – in other words, a rape. (‘The act of a master taking shameful, contemptuous possession of her was the kind of rapture she had wanted.’ In Atlas Shrugged, erotic tension is cleverly increased by having one heroine bound into a plot with lots of spectacularly cruel and handsome men.)[17]

Another source of controversy is Rand's view of homosexuality. According to remarks at the Ford Hall forum at Northeastern University in 1971, Rand's personal view was that homosexuality is "immoral" and "disgusting."[46] Specifically, she stated that "there is a psychological immorality at the root of homosexuality" because "it involves psychological flaws, corruptions, errors, or unfortunate premises."[47] A number of noted current and former Objectivists have been highly critical of Rand for her views on homosexuality.[48] Others, such as Kurt Keefner, have argued that "Rand’s views were in line with the views at the time of the general public and the psychiatric community," though he asserts that "she never provided the slightest argument for her position, [...] because she regarded the matter as self-evident, like the woman president issue."[49] In the same appearance, Rand noted, "I do not believe that the government has the right to prohibit [homosexual behavior]. It is the privilege of any individual to use his sex life in whichever way he wants it."[46]

So then maybe it follows that it's the privilege of any individual to rape somebody, because that's what all girls want anyway. Finally, we come to the bitter end:

Rand died of heart failure on March 6, 1982 at her 34th Street home in New York City,[57] years after having successfully battled cancer, and was interred in the Kensico Cemetery, Valhalla, New York. Kipling's poem "If" was read at the graveside by David Kelley.[38] [3] Rand's funeral was attended by some of her prominent followers, including Alan Greenspan. A six-foot floral arrangement in the shape of a dollar sign was placed near her casket.[14]

Warms your heart, doesn't it? Ultimately, her philosophy seems like nonsense, but so does most philosophy, so I really don't care. For example:

"A notable exception to the general lack of attention paid to Rand in philosophy is the essay "On the Randian Argument" by Harvard University philosopher Robert Nozick, which appears in his collection, Socratic Puzzles. Nozick is sympathetic to Rand's political conclusions, but he does not think her arguments justify them. In particular, his essay criticizes her foundational argument in ethics, which claims that one's own life is, for each individual, the only ultimate value because it makes all other values possible. Nozick says that to make this argument sound Rand still needs to explain why someone could not rationally prefer dying and having no values. Thus, he argues, her attempt to defend the morality of selfishness is essentially an instance of begging the question and her solution to David Hume's famous is-ought problem is unsatisfactory."

Ahhh, yes, the famous is-ought problem. I stayed up late a couple of nights ago wrestling with this one. Then there's the question of the merit of her fiction:

"The most famous review of Atlas Shrugged from a conservative author was written by Whittaker Chambers and appeared in National Review in 1957. It was unrelentingly scathing. Chambers call the book "sophomoric"; and "remarkably silly," and said it "can be called a novel only by devaluing the term." The tone of the book was described as "shrillness without reprieve"[84] The Intellectual Activist published a reply, alleging that Chambers did not actually read the book, as he misspells the names of several major characters and never uses quotations from the novel in his critique."

Shrillness without reprieve - that should have gone on the back of the book jacket!

The bottom line is that even though she was bonkers, she was bonkers in her own special way. I find her and her followers essentially harmless, even though there are definitely some misguided elements in her philosophy. My bet is that I would get along better with someone who called themselves an "Objectivist" more than someone who called themselves "Jewish" or "Christian"; we would probably share a certain tendency for the grand gesture and bold idea. I mean, she gave it a good try, you know? The problem is that you have to lead by example, not by idea. If she had just presented Objectivism as a system of thought that happened to work for her personally, then she would have been much better off. Instead she started heading into the territory of trying to establish, in some absolute way, the manner in which all people can be happy. But she was far from the average person, and didn't have a clue what most people were actually like, so her philosophy comes off as the kind of thing that will only work for geniuses. If you happen to be a genius, you'll understand what she was trying to do. But most people just can't relate, so for a lot of people I imagine her books are rather boring and useless and offensive. The reason why The Fountainhead was so good was because it was basically the story of an artist. I could identify with Roark as a guy who wanted to do something different with his art and was looking for the patience and inner strength he needed in order to make his mark in a way that would be more meaningful than most. That was why I connected with it. The rest of the stuff was just Rand's frustration with other people. I can understand that too, but you just have to let it go, not turn it into a virtue. That's why Roark was so cool, because, in his best moments at least, he let that frustration roll off his back. But if you're not an artistically-inclined person, then I don't think the book would mean shit to you. And that's why I got bogged down in Atlas Shrugged, because who gives a shit about railroad barons? Roark was good because you could sense a bit of Rand's own artistic journey in him; like her, he was an outsider. But Atlas Shrugged was just a bunch of weird capitalist people. They seemed like insiders, and I just didn't care. Still, I really dug her unique combination of the highbrow and the lowbrow in her fiction - these complex philosophical ideas mixed in with a pulpy, sleazy quality. She was also a master at generating perfectly WASP-y names as well. Hey, "real" philosophers might laugh, but the truth is she probably reached more people than they ever did, and got more people to think about arrogant shit than they ever did. Bet Kant didn't have a dollar sign on his grave.