Publicatie 2014-09 Ayn Rand

Reflections on Ayn Rand James Kennedy I appreciate the opportunity tonight to briefly discuss the work and significance of Ayn Rand with you. It coincides pretty much with the thirtieth anniversary of my first literary acquaintance with Rand, in which a college chum urged me to read The Fountainhead. He was an active member of the campus chapter of Young Americans for Freedom and for him, Rand really was holy writ. As a more or less committed collectivist, I never saw what he saw in The Fountainhead, but I saw the force of its ideas, not only in him, but among other American students I eventually came to teach. Ayn Rand’s popularity in the United States has been attributed to a American vision of life that is substantially different from, among other places, Europe. This understanding of Rand’s essentially American creed recently has been spelled out by Don Watkins of The Guardian. Her work, he says, is in essence a tribute to “the American spirit” which says is “characterized by independence, individualism, political and economic freedom, and productive ambition. It's the sense of life best summed up in the American Revolutionary motto ‘Don't tread on Me.’" As a basic distinction such an interpretation strikes me as plausible. But it is important to remember two things. The first is that Americans are rather poor disciples of Rand – to the extent that they have sympathy with (or knowledge of) the bulk of her ideas to begin with. Rand probably would have agreed with this statement if she were alive today; she thought little of the conservatives or the libertarians she knew (increasingly preferring a small coterie of dedicated followers), and suggested at points that the great unwashed would never rise to the dignity of the fictional tycoons she constructed as archetypes of the self-reliant producer. More important, though, is the fact that most fans of Rand have no intention at all to follow the logic of what she proposes, a relatively small number of true believers notwithstanding. Her atheism, which she saw as central to her thought, is obviously not something that Rand’s many religious supporters embrace. It was this particular aspect of Rand’s convictions that Representative Paul Ryan, who had once claimed that Rand had inspired him to go into politics, used to distance himself from Rand while running for Vice-President, and (later) to show a more obvious interest in Catholic social teaching. (Liberal opponents of Rand like reminding conservatives just how anti-Christian she is.) Similarly, Rand’s hostility to altruism, in which producers waste their time and talent and life energy on people they deem lesser than themselves, does not resonate at all with the pretty strong philanthropic tradition among Americans (not least among American conservatives). Rand’s rather free sexual morality, too, did not find immediate acceptance among her appreciative readership. In contrast, what these readers really like about Rand is heavily concentrated on her hostility to state-sponsored collectivism, and the loss of freedom this inevitably entails, including the right to enjoy the fruits of your own labor. Seen this way, American fans are mostly rather poor Randites – selective, inconsistent, superficial in their apprehension of her ideas. I personally think that Rand fans should feel the dissonance more profoundly between Rand’s ideas and many of their own convictions. But then I remind myself that few people are really consistent in what they hold. Moreover, you could argue that Rand’s most important idea is not about the ethics of a rugged individual who necessarily rejects God and the unworthy but about her political call to combat state-led collectivism. Maybe the point here is that American conservatives don’t need, or don’t want, more insight from Rand than from this one fundamental point. The second and last point is that Rand’s thought – however inconsistently applied and difficult to measure – is probably more powerful in recent years than ever before. This has in part to do with the elevation of Barack Obama to the presidency, and the massive expansion of federal intervention that came with his election – bailouts to the banks and automakers, and of course Obamacare. Sales of Rand’s work swelled dramatically during Obama’s first months are president. If John McCain had sat in the White House, the renewed interest in Rand (or the rise of the Tea Party) may never have happened. It seems plausible to suppose that Obama’s race, too, deepened the conviction of some white Rand fans that his administration would take even more money from the “producing” part of the country and give it to undeserving minorities. Yet I think there are more structural factors involved than just the election of Obama. American conservatism has changed over time. Rand’s ideas hardly found a sympathetic hearing in many parts of the movement – social and moral conservatives found her ideas an abomination – and her work during the 1950s and 1960s was almost countercultural in the context of this broader movement. Slowly, Rand’s ideas became an accepted part of the conservative realm of ideas; Ronald Reagan was an admirer of her work, though was reticent about it publicly. As long as natural predators of Rand’s ideas had a hold on the Republican party – liberal pro-government Republicans, or the Religious Right whose power peaked in the 1980s and 1990s – there was only a limited amount of room for Randian thought. Think, too, of George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” – a not very Randian project. In recent years, though a number of factors have contributed to a more pronounced presence of Randian ideas, even as they remain controversial: a growing frustration of many Americans in the efficacy and benevolence of the federal government, declining confidence or interest in the “collectivist” institutions of society and the rising influence, interestingly, of a morality grounded not in “collectivist” values but in a libertarian sense that individuals should draw up their own codes. Not only the left but the right seems more reticent in prescribing morality to others – until they become a burden to the taxpayer. These are broad shifts whose development is uneven and uncertain, but the increasingly libertarian presence in the Republican Party, exemplified in the popularity of Senator Rand Paul, suggests that Rand’s ideas will continue to be important in the coming years. In particular, the cause of rugged individuals struggling against the collective colossus of the federal government will continue to fire the imagination of many Americans. .

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