Ayn Rand — VOICES for REASON

In honor of the 105th anniversary of Ayn Rand’s birth (February 2, 1905), I’d like to recommend Jeff Britting’s short but surprisingly comprehensive biography, Ayn Rand. Lavishly illustrated with items from the Ayn Rand Archives (a special department Britting manages within the Ayn Rand Institute), this biography is especially valuable because it pays close attention to the mental choices and processes by which Ayn Rand shaped her own character and ideology.

Britting’s biography traces Rand’s brilliant successes to the fundamental choices she made—choices about how to manage her own thinking and action. It started in early childhood, Britting observes, with a vigorously questioning attitude “aimed at understanding the things around her.” (p. 4) As she entered her teens, she “began asking why she liked what she did and, as a result, she began integrating her ideas into wider generalizations. She called this approach to integrating ideas ‘thinking in principle.’” (p. 13) Read the rest of this entry »

Amid the economic collapse and backlash against the growth of government, interest in Ayn Rand exploded in 2009. Within six months of 2009, bookstore sales of Atlas Shrugged had doubled the record of 200,000 set in 2008, and they are expected to exceed 400,000. Discussion of Rand and her views was a regular occurrence in the media, with some even dubbing 2009 “the year of Ayn Rand.”

Undoubtedly Ayn Rand’s popularity 27 years after her death was remarkable, and I view it as a positive sign that so many Americans saw on some level the connection between Atlas Shrugged and current events. I’d like to think, however, that the year of Ayn Rand would not be characterized by billion dollar government bailouts, the inauguration of a statist president elected on a platform as vacuous as “hope and change,” and government takeovers of automakers, financial institutions and the health care system.

On the contrary, a truly “Ayn Rand year” would witness the casting off of these and all other government chains. But this would require a much deeper process of intellectual and cultural change than we have yet seen. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s an unpublished letter ARC’s Yaron Brook sent to the Wall Street Journal in response to an op-ed by Heather Wilhelm:

Dear Editor,

After indulging in a truly dazzling series of ad hominem attacks on philosopher Ayn Rand, Heather Wilhelm does manage to raise one important issue: she asserts that Rand, whose books continue to sell in the hundreds of thousands a year, is not an effective salesman for capitalism. Whereas Rand is allegedly “elitist, cold and laser-focused on the supermen and superwomen of the world,” Wilhelm claims that what capitalism truly needs is an explanation of “how everyone, especially society’s neediest” benefit from economic liberty. That claim betrays an appalling ignorance of history.

Capitalism’s defenders have appealed to its beneficent effects since its inception. Accepting the conventional view that service to the needy is the essence of morality, they have downplayed and denied the essence of capitalism: the profit motive and the unrestricted pursuit of rational self-interest. This approach hasn’t worked. So long as even the free market’s defenders feel guilty and embarrassed by capitalism’s selfish nature, any attempt to reverse the anticapitalist trend is hopeless. Who is going to believe that vice is the path to the good?

What Rand offers is a radical alternative—a proper, moral defense of capitalism’s essence.

Rand argued that the proper standard of morality is the objective requirements of human life. She argued that human life requires productive achievement, and that the noblest act of moral virtue is using one’s mind to create life-sustaining values. She argued that profit is moral because it enriches the individual who achieves it—that someone like Bill Gates deserves the highest moral praise, not for giving away his wealth, but for creating it. Thus Rand advocated capitalism precisely because it is the only system that rewards the profit motive and respects the individual’s right to act on his own judgment in the pursuit of his own life and happiness. And yes, that includes not only the most intelligent and successful, but every individual committed to making his life the best life it can be. Capitalism is good, Rand argued, because selfishness, correctly understood, is a virtue.

Wilhelm’s views aside, Rand continues to be the greatest salesman capitalism has ever had. It’s not hard to discern why: whereas the rest of the world looked at capitalism and saw the hollow pursuit of material gain, Rand saw man the hero free to seek his highest values.

Read the rest of this entry »

CNBC just published a blog post by ARC’s Yaron Brook and me on Ayn Rand’s relevance to today. (Last I checked, it topped CNBC’s “most shared” story list.) The short answer:

Atlas Shrugged shows us an all-too-familiar pattern: Washington do-gooders blaming the problems they’ve created on the free market, and using them as a pretext for expanding their power. And more: it provides the fundamental explanation for why the government gets away with continually increasing its control over the economy and our lives.

I encourage anyone interested in learning more about the relevance of Atlas to today’s events to attend The Atlas Shrugged Revolution, coming up in September.

A lot of people are asking that question, which is inspired by Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged. (Ayn Rand didn’t originate the phrase, however. As best I can tell, it was originated by conservative fans of the novel sometime in the last few months. Full disclosure: I don’t particularly care for it.)

To “go Galt,” the way the phrase is being used, is to protest our mounting tax burden by ratcheting down our productivity. We’ll work less, so the government can take less. A sort of partial strike. This is supposed to be in homage to the hero of Atlas Shrugged, John Galt, and the strike he leads against collectivist oppression.

But this notion of “going Galt” misses the point of Galt’s strike, and reveals a sadly superficial understanding of the novel. Galt’s strike was not merely a tax revolt, but something much more radical.

Read the rest of this entry »

You already know about the blog, but are you aware of the other new content recently posted to the ARI and ARC websites? For starters, we’ve got a new introductory video by ARI Executive Director Yaron Brook (scroll down to the bottom of the page). Dr. Brook’s overview covers Ayn Rand’s life and novels, the importance of philosophy and the principal ideas of Objectivism, and the mission and programs of ARI. The video is a good starting point for exploring Ayn Rand’s ideas, and should be of value to anyone interested in ARI’s efforts to promote them.

On the ARC front, our December Lecture Series event is now available for viewing at www.aynrandcenter.org. In this talk, UT Austin philosophy professor Tara Smith, who holds the BB&T Chair for the Study of Objectivism at Austin, discusses the danger and the evils of pragmatism in America. She describes pragmatism as aversion to principle, and argues that it is “the guiding philosophy of our age; implicitly, and increasingly explicitly.” It infects our personal lives, our schools, our books and movies, and especially our politics. It is antithetical to good reasoning, destroying man’s ability to think long-range, and it must be confronted if the right ideas are to win out. For anyone concerned about the state of American culture, give yourself an hour and watch this talk.