Ayn Rand: The Good and the Bad

Ayn Rand remains one of the most significant figures in the ant-Statism movements of the past century.  Her books produced much thought-provoking discussions such as the purpose of man and the reasons for living.  In politics, she helped to articulate the non-aggression principle but her philosophies dealt with much more than the political realm.  She was probably one of the first atheists to create a moral system entirely independent of religion and the State, a challenging feat to say the least.

But her moral philosophy was often rejected by constitutional conservatives and mainstream conservatives, despite their agreements with much of her political philosophy.  This is because Rand emphasized selfishness, which has a thoroughly negative connotation in our culture.  Ayn Rand, however, recognized something that I think many of us forget: that selfishness is neither a virtue or a vice any more so than self-sacrifice is a virtue or a vice.  She held up selfishness as a virtue herself, but the reality is that man must act in both ways at certain times.

What most moralist fail to realize is that while Ayn Rand said that man must “exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself” they forget that she also rejected the notion of man making others sacrifice for them.  In other words, while we were free to act as we saw fit, it was immoral to make others sacrifice for you.  She never had high regard for hedonism and felt that man must strive to be the best he could be.

However, her moral worldview was largely flawed when it came to its origins and who would be the judge of moral infractions.  In her first interview with Johnny Carson, she was asked where her moral worldview came from and she mentioned that it would come from the “philosophers”, some enigmatic group of people who have been raised to highest position of power in order to direct the actions of man.  In admitting this, she highlighted a few flaws in her own logic.

Firstly, if man is flawed and morality is needed, then a group of men working to discern or judge the correct course of action could also be flawed.  Indeed, this is exactly what happened when Ayn Rand started to expel various members of her group for moral infractions, such as Nathaniel Brandon.  But what happens when all of them are corrupt?  What happens when everyone who is supposed to uphold justice instead show partiality to favored groups.  A large part of the problem with the government today is that we’ve taken the biggest blowhard assholes among us and raised them up to positions of power.  These men and women, who occupy both political and bureaucratic positions, represent the worst our society has to offer.

Secondly, her philosophy hinges on the belief that man is naturally rational, as do many of the anti-Statist Utopians.  Unfortunately, man is by no means naturally rational and instead operates on impulse by default.  The whole point of rational actions is that we have achieved an ability to behave separate from the animals.

I think her atheism clouded her philosophy a bit, but I do not hold that against her.  Many Christians have gotten so much wrong in their own way, the greatest evidence of which in moderns times is the lack of men attending church while women do just about everything there.

While I find Objectivism fascinating, at the same time, I cannot whole-heartedly agree with every aspect of it.  The whole notion that man can exist as an individual, while a noble ideal, is at the end of the day merely an ideal.  There is no practical reason to believe that everyone wants to be an individual and go his own way because so many people are perfectly willing to outsource their beliefs and choices to the authority of others.  Milgram’s experiment proved that people are perfectly willing to do horrible things so long as there is a higher authority who will take the blame.

I have no solutions and I applaud people like Ayn Rand for at least attempting to provide some.  And while I believe that these solutions are flawed, there is something to them if they have not been tried.  Communism, for example, has been show to be a failed theory in practice, with the large body count wrought by applying its principles.  Socialism has clearly failed in that we are finally seeing the end of the welfare state.  Corporatism is proving to be a failure as well with the various banking collapses and bailouts.

Perhaps in this century, we can try limited government with the free market addressing the vast majority of issues that face us.  Maybe it will be Objectivism, maybe not, but I think it is high time that we at least consider and debate some of these ideas because clearly, whatever we are doing now is not working.

Of course, given that either Willard Romney or Barack Soetoro will be President of the United States in 2013, I have no high hopes of these considerations being taken seriously any time soon.

Conservatives, Libertarians, and Objectivists: The Unrealized Alliance

I was watching an Ayn Rand biographer on Reason.tv discuss how she regarded conservatives and libertarians.  Conservatives alienated her when they said they wanted nothing to do with her atheistic views and her elevation on selfishness.  Likewise, Rand alienated libertarians because she regarded them as anarchists with no direction.
The problem is that all three of these groups need to work together.  All three have a common enemy that is currently defeating all of us and leading us down a road to tyranny.  That enemy is the Statists, who have thus far perverted the United States Constitution and bent the rules to suit their own needs.  To them, our lives, liberty, and property are quaint little attributes to be taken at their whim.
The trouble with such an alliance is that all three sides have very different views on several key things and none are willing to work with the other in order to achieve them.
The libertarians, for example, tend to hold a lot of seemingly socially liberal stances on issues like gay marriage, drugs, prostitution, and abortion.  Now, not all libertarians agree uniformly on these issues, but that really doesn’t matter in the long run.  These kinds of things drive conservatives nuts, because for many of them, they would rather be run by some tyrannical oligarchy that has outlawed abortion rather then suffer under freedom with the option of abortion.  Likewise, drugs are considered to be some social ill that must be vanquished, forgetting that drug cartels are largely caused by anti-drug laws.
When it comes to Objectists, they tend to have a very rigid system of morality that counters the conventional morality that conservatives have and dismisses the lack of morality the libertarians tend to have.  As such, they have alienated their potential allies because they would rather see people ruled by selfishness and reason than what they regard as superstition.  Unfortunately, they are their own worst enemy in my opinion because to love and embrace freedom means that some people will continue to worship whatever god they desire.
The conservatives, by far the largest group of the three, tend to also have a very rigid moral system that is rooted in Judeo-Christian ethics.  They often try to push for policies that enforce these morals and thus tend to alienate those who would normally ally with them to defeat the efforts of the Statists.  I’m not saying that they shouldn’t take these moral stances or abandon their moral code (the same goes for the Objectivists), but that they need to re-prioritize their goals.
In essence, if an alliance were forged between all these groups, I think the cause for limited government would grow much stronger than it is now.  If we could focus on cutting down the size and scope of the Federal government in the United States (not just tax cuts, but real spending cuts and the elimination of several useless Federal programs), then I think we would see a reversal of tyranny.
Instead we see the conservatives being constantly tricked into voting for a Statist because he or she is pro-life, the libertarians either voting for the Libertarian or Constitution Party, and the Objectivists not really making much of a political impact at all these days.
I am not saying that your moral stances aren’t important.  Just that the fight for free markets, for capitalism, and for smaller government is much more important.  Who cares about morality when it is about to imposed on us by an oligarchy based in DC?
Sadly, I am not the one to pull off such an alliance nor do I see any side willing to come to the table and call a cease fire to all hostilities.  Instead I see lots of bickering and squabbling over social issues and morality while the Statists continue to run over our rights with a steamroller.
This will probably continue on as it has for the past six decades or so because none the respective sides can really seem to get past that.  And that is why the principles of freedom are losing in the United States.  No one can really seem to unit to oppose tyranny.  Our house is divided and so we will fall.
When history books are published a thousand years from now, I wonder if they will look at us and wonder why we didn’t bother ally ourselves for the common cause of defeating Statism.  Of course, they may be doctored by the tyrants who will inevitably rule the future, given the way things are going now.