It’s always amazed me how people tend to fall back to religion when they face confounding times.
So it is with conservatives and free-marketers who have become unscrewed by the free-falling economy, the failure of laissez faire theories and the profound sense of apprehension and bewilderment as Barack Obama, an entirely unknown entity, gropes for solutions.
It’s back to basics time and for many of this genre that means back to Big Sister. Ayn Rand is the secret St. Christopher’s medal for many who have lost their intellectual bearings. Want reassurance that the market is always right? Want to be patted on the head that government is always the enemy? Want to be told soothingly that “greed is good” and the ego is OK? Join the “Back to Rand” movement.
Rand has had a lot of followers, including former Fed Chief Alan Greenspan, former SEC head Christopher Cox and Ronald Reagan. In Reagan’s case it was unrequited love. Rand despised him. Whatever. In Virginia, too, lots of members of the crazy, mixed-up Republican Party are turning Back to Rand for a reaffirmation of their ideas. It could be that in this regard, Rand is an even more potent elixir than the familiar Thomas Jefferson, even though Jefferson, like the Bible, is widely misinterpreted and his reality was far different from what is presumed.
Rand was a victim of her times. As a Jewish girl in newly Bolshevik Russia, she came to loath the Communists since they shut down her father’s drug business in St. Petersburg. She jinked to the states on a temporary visitor’s visa and ended up writing screenplays in Hollywood. She despised all that was statist and regulatory seeing them as a form of theft. Individual freedom and responsibility are key. Altruism is nonsense. The ego is what matters. People serve themselves and society much better by adopting a selfish self-interest. Only free market capitalism can unlock true creativity and efficient production.
In leftie Hollywood, Rand took being a reactionary to a new level and made it an art form. She fought against soft-headed actors, producers and screenwriters being sops for Jolly Joe Stalin and other Commies. Indeed, she was a rare “friendly” witness during the House UnAmerican Activities Committee which pursed its Red Baiting witch hunts in the late 1940s and 1950s. When called the testify, Miss Rand did so gladly. Afterwards, a snarky reporter asked her if she had any regrets about testifying. Her answer: “Yes, they didn’t give me enough time.”
Her two best books are the “Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged.” Both make heroes out of average guys who beat government regulation and other snake nests of evil. (I confess that I have never read the latter. I found the 1,100 pages too daunting).
In her personal life, Rand had some interesting quirks. Though conservative, she was liberal on race and love. In fact, she often would try to re-mate members of her little salons with other people, concluding that their marriages had been mistakes. She, of course, knew better than the men and women involved.
She embraced philosophy that she called “Objectivism” although many mainstream philosophers never quite saw it as distinct enough to be regarded as a separate school of thinking.
After she died in the 1980s, her followers created shrines to her, including an institute near Los Angeles. Its advertising material shows lots of 1930s style skyscrapers like Rockefeller Center. The grandeur of capitalism, I suppose.
Anyway, read any op-ed page. Ayn Rand is hot now and it is a sign of the times.
Peter Galuszka
