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Ayn Rand<\/p><\/div>Rand stood against the cultural leveling of statism, particularly the loss of character and mediocrity it fosters. That is the appeal of her philosophy. There is little difference between, say, Soviet materialism and the state-sponsored corporatism of the modern welfare state (Europe in particular but increasingly so in the United States). However, the final refutation of this debilitating journey into what Friederich Hayek<\/a> warned is a new “serfdom” is actually moral renewal. Rand was not able to penetrate the moral dimension of statism because of her passionate atheism. The best she could offer was an anti-statist libertarianism that inevitably results in an authoritarianism of a different sort (and fostered a personal life that is best described as morally chaotic<\/a>).<\/p>\n

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Whittaker Chambers<\/p><\/div>I’ve included two items that shed more light on Rand and her influence on American intellectual history. The first is the critique of Atlas Shrugged<\/em> by Whittaker Chambers, the ex-Communist turned Catholic who’s book “Witness<\/a> $\"\"$ ” is perhaps the clearest testament of moral clarity of his age. The second is an interview with William F. Buckley, who fills in some of the cultural history of the era. Buckley described Atlas Shrugged<\/em> as “ideological fabulism<\/a>.” (Chambers worked for Buckley at National Review in the 1950s.) <\/p>\n

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Whittaker Chambers: Big Sister is Watching You<\/a><\/p>\n
William Buckley on Ayn Rand & Atlas Shrugged:<\/p>\n
<\/iframe><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: 0;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/divider-2.png\" \/><\/div>\nSource: <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.acton.org\/archives\/22654-atlas-shrugged-%E2%80%93-see-the-movie-skip-the-book.html\">Acton Institute<\/a> | Bruce Edward Walker<\/p>\n<h2>Atlas Shrugged \u2013 See the Movie, Skip the Book<\/h2>\n<div style=\"text-align: center; margin: 1em 0 1em 0;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" width=\"525\" height=\"325\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/6W07bFa4TzM?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\nIs it conceivable to endorse the cinematic adaptation of Ayn Rand\u2019s libertarian manifesto Atlas Shrugged<\/em> \u2013 as I <a href=\"http:\/\/detnews.com\/article\/20110410\/MIVIEW\/104100330\/Movie-review---Atlas--Shines\">do<\/a> \u2013 while rejecting the flawed ideology which inspired it?<\/p>\nI would argue, yes. On the one hand, I place the Beatles at the pinnacle of 1960s pop music while concluding that their song \u201cMr. Moonlight\u201d is wince-inducing to the point of being unlistenable. Likewise, I admire 99.9 percent of G.K. Chesterton’s body of work yet disagree with him on his assertion only men should vote. On the other hand, I disagree for the most part with Camille Paglia\u2019s worldview yet admire her writing style and intellectual honesty.<\/p>\nSo it goes with Ayn Rand. Her free-market views were a welcome antidote to New Deal policies and the malignant growth of government programs and crony capitalism. And for the same reasons I warmly welcome the first installment of the planned cinematic trilogy of Rand\u2019s Atlas Shrugged<\/em> \u2013 timed to coincide with the traditional Tax Day this coming Friday \u2013 which renders her themes in such a fashion they appear ripped from the headlines of today\u2019s Wall Street Journal<\/em>. <\/p>\nAtlas Shrugged-Part I<\/em> captures the malaise of our times in its depiction of a United States of the near future when businessmen look to government to throttle competition by any means necessary (e.g. legislation and regulation) rather than innovating and investing to succeed. Part I<\/em> ignores Rand\u2019s anti-collectivism, rampant individualism, atheism and, for the most part, libertarian libertinism, to focus on her depictions of government looters and corporate rent seekers. <\/p>\nAll this recommends the movie to lovers of liberty properly understood, to borrow a phrase from Russell Kirk. In fact, I\u2019ll go so far as to encourage readers to see the film and skip the book. <\/p>\nMy problems with Rand and Objectivism, the ideology of \u201cenlightened self-interest\u201d she founded, go beyond the oft-quoted admonition of Whittaker Chambers in which he expressed her autocratic intransigence led him to read Rand\u2019s command to all detractors real and perceived \u201cto the gas chambers go!\u201d on every page. There is some truth to Chamber\u2019s critique, to be sure, in that any worldview that rejects faith and community eventually succumbs to obduracy leading to what Russell Kirk labeled the \u201cchirping sect\u201d of libertarianism (a phrase he borrowed from T.S. Eliot). <\/p>\nBy chirping sect, Kirk intentionally references Edmund Burke\u2019s \u201cinsects of the hour\u201d — those libertarians who splinter into ever smaller groups and thereby sacrifice both the personal and common good on the altar of their own narcissism masked as \u201cindividualism.\u201d One need only read about the internecine strife within the Objectivist\u2019s ivory tower to note the wisdom of Burke and Kirk. The CliffsNotes version: Arguing with Rand meant immediate exile to intellectual Siberia. <\/p>\nContrary to Rand\u2019s individualism, the United States since its beginning has congregated in townships and parishes where true democracy flourishes under the express influence of religious faith. Nineteenth-century writers Alexis de Tocqueville and Orestes Brownson both noted these communal incubators and conservators of liberty \u2013 small collectives that reflect their respective faiths to advocate for the good of all within their sphere. <\/p>\nAs Tocqueville wrote in his seminal Democracy in America<\/em>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n\nIn the United States the influence of religion is not confined to the manners, but it extends to the intelligence of the people. Amongst the Anglo-Americans, there are some who profess the doctrines of Christianity from a sincere belief in them, and others who do the same because they are afraid to be suspected of unbelief. Christianity, therefore, reigns without any obstacle, by universal consent; the consequence is, as I have before observed, that every principle of the moral world is fixed and determinate, although the political world is abandoned to the debates and the experiments of men. Thus the human mind is never left to wander across a boundless field; and, whatever may be its pretensions, it is checked from time to time by barriers which it cannot surmount. Before it can perpetrate innovation, certain primal and immutable principles are laid down, and the boldest conceptions of human device are subjected to certain forms which retard and stop their completion.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nAmong his many salient points against libertarianism enumerated in the essay, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mmisi.org\/ma\/25_04\/kirk.pdf\">\u201cLibertarians: the Chirping Sectaries,\u201d<\/a> Kirk said: <\/p>\n<blockquote>\nWhat binds society together? The libertarians reply that the cement of society (so far as they will endure any binding at all) is self-interest, closely joined to the nexus of cash payment. But the conservatives declare that society is a community of souls, joining the dead, the living, and those yet unborn; and that it coheres through what Aristotle called friendship and Christians call love of neighbor.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nElsewhere in his essay, Kirk delineates the differences between individualism as expressed by Rand and her like and the community spirit so intrinsic to our national character by invoking Eric Voegelin, whom, Kirk states:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n[R]eminds us \u2013 is not between totalitarians on the one hand and liberals (or libertarians) on the other; rather, it lies between all those who believe in some sort of transcendent moral order, on one side, and on the other side all those who take this ephemeral existence of ours for the be-all and end-all-to be devoted chiefly to producing and consuming. In this discrimination between the sheep and the goats, the libertarians must be classified with the goats \u2013 that is, as utilitarians admitting no transcendent sanctions for conduct. In effect, they are converts to Marx\u2019s dialectical materialism; so conservatives draw back from them on the first principle of all.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nIn short, capitalism and the toxic individualism of Rand and others for the instantaneous benefits supposedly granted leads to liberty misunderstood in the forms of materialism and licentious behavior \u2013 both antithetical to liberty properly understood as the fully realized temporal life in community and faith. <\/p>\nSo I\u2019m thankful Atlas Shrugged-Part I<\/em> avoids the toxic elements of Rand\u2019s so-called \u201cphilosophy\u201d and am hopeful the subsequent installments of the film trilogy steer clear of the same pitfalls. By all means, see the film and avoid the book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I received permission to reprint this blog post by Acton Institute blogger Bruce Edward Walker. Walker, correctly in my view, draws out the authoritarian impulse in Rand’s philosophy of “Objectivism” that can be distilled down to this: The libertarianism (man’s moral agency is self-referencing) that describes Rand’s Objectivism stands against the classical liberalism (what we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9736,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1784],"tags":[1607,1609,11,1610,13,1608,1606,84],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9735"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9735"}],"version-history":[{"count":30,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9735\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9809,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9735\/revisions\/9809"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}