Some people are easily duped into believing Rand's nonsense, to the point of cultish adherence, leaving aside all reason and logic of what comes next (despite often considering themselves among the Right's intellectual elite):
Of course, Miss Rand nowhere calls for a dictatorship. I take her to be calling for an aristocracy of talents. We cannot labor here why, in the modern world, the pre-conditions for aristocracy, an organic growth, no longer exist, so that the impulse toward aristocracy always emerges now in the form of dictatorship.
Nor has the author, apparently, brooded on the degree to which, in a wicked world, a materialism of the Right and a materialism of the Left first surprisingly resemble, then, in action, tend to blend each with each, because, while differing at the top in avowed purpose, and possibly in conflict there, at bottom they are much the same thing. The embarrassing similarities between Hitler's National Socialism and Stalin's brand of Communism are familiar. For the world, as seen in materialist view from the Right, scarcely differs from the same world seen in materialist view from the Left. The question becomes chiefly: who is to run that world in whose interests, or perhaps, at best, who can run it more efficiently?
I read a lot, but I've never seen a better description of the yin and yang of socialism and Ayn Rand's style of materialism/collectivism. When our focus and ideals shift from the intangibles of virtue to materialism and we become a nation who lauds banal work for work's sake, we are in a precarious position.
I found the above in an article by Gerry Wills on William F. Buckley (The Atlantic, Daredevil).
The contrasts between William F. Buckley and Ayn Rand's heroes in Atlas Shrugged could not be greater. In the contrasts of the two we also find the source (perhaps) of the anti-intellectualism (almost to the point of being anti-education) among Republicans. It is why we miss Buckley so much and why we loathe Rand.
William F. Buckley was a man of principle, religious and secular, and was quite capable of differentiating his religious beliefs from his political ones, i.e., maintaining the difference between a person who is religious, still understanding that our government is secular. Ayn Rand (besides being, or because she was, a lunatic), somehow came to believe that the goal of an individual life was to make money in a "Captains of Industry" mode. Mr. Buckley, on the other hand, was a man who believed in altruism and morality. From Mr. Wills:
He [Buckley] spent a lot of time thinking of what he could do for friends. When he heard that I needed a passport in a hurry, he pulled strings at the State Department to get it for me. On another occasion, when my new bride and I could not find a cheap sea liner to England for our honeymoon, he found a ship for us leaving from Canada. Bill ingeniously invented a way to institutionalize his love for giving special gifts. Because his family was so prolific, he had 49 of what he called “N and Ns” (nieces and nephews). He took care of the education of many of them. But supplying necessities was not enough for him. He set up a fund he called the Dear Uncle Bill Trust (DUBT, soon pronounced “Doubt”), whose administrators gave surprise treats to N and Ns—a valuable guitar to an aspiring musician, a vacation in a favorite spot—on a rotating basis.
"The love of money is the root of all evil" is an oft misunderstood tenant of Judeo/Christianity, and can make Capitalism an anathema if the "love of" is left off (which is how it is often misunderstood). Loving money and hating it have the same result.
Philosophers (religious or otherwise) from inception have warned against an aristocracy of wealth, rather than of character and virtue, and championed lofty pursuits over those of the flesh/ego.
Certainly we all need money, and the more of it we are able to make to find a balance between work and pleasure an important one to pursue. But one's life shouldn't be about making money, and certainly not loving money for money's sake. That leads to all sorts of unsavory traits: greed and selfishness are just two among many.
The idea that someone, like Ayn Rand, would champion a materialistic society, putting merchants, industrialists, and technocrats as some sort of ideal is wrong, so wrong as to defy belief. What do they offer society and what value do they have when they're not at work? Are they loving fathers and husbands, do they volunteer to help others, do they enjoy music or literature? In simpler terms, would they make an interesting dinner guest? If all they wanted to talk about was their businesses and work, they would not make the list.
Left off are the arts or art patronage, and a pursuit of a passion with little material reward.
In Ayn Rand's ideal world, a measure of a man is the size of his bank account, or his empire, so long as he doesn't desire power. But Rand is confused, because she simultaneously admonishes a desire for power, while creating a fiction in which the Captains of Industry become the new, lauded aristocracy:
That Dollar Sign is not merely provocative, though we sense a sophomoric intent to raise the pious hair on susceptible heads. More importantly, it is meant to seal the fact that mankind is ready to submit abjectly to an elite of technocrats, and their accessories, in a New Order, enlightened and instructed by Miss Rand's ideas that the good life is one which "has resolved personal worth into exchange value," "has left no other nexus between man and man than naked selfinterest, than callous "cash-payment."' The author is explicit, in fact deafening, about these prerequisites. Lest you should be in any doubt after 1,168 pages, she assures you with a final stamp of the foot in a postscript:
And I mean it." But the words quoted above are those of Karl Marx. He, too, admired "naked self-interest" (in its time and place), and for much the same reasons as Miss Rand: because, he believed, it cleared away the cobwebs of religion and led to prodigies of industrial and cognate accomplishment. The overlap is not as incongruous as it looks. Atlas Shrugged can be called a novel only by devaluing the term. It is a massive tract for the times. Its story merely serves Miss Rand to get the customers inside the tent, and as a soapbox for delivering her Message. The Message is the thing. It is, in sum, a forthright philosophic materialism. Upperclassmen might incline to sniff and say that the author has, with vast effort, contrived a simple materialist system, one, intellectually, at about the stage of the oxcart, though without mastering the principle of the wheel. Like any consistent materialism, this one begins by rejecting God, religion, original sin, etc., etc. (This book's aggressive atheism and rather unbuttoned "higher morality," which chiefly outrage some readers, are, in fact, secondary ripples, and result inevitably from its underpinning premises.) Thus, Randian Man, like Marxian Man, is made the center of a godless world.
I am not religious, but I understand Mr. Chambers reference to a "godless world" and can commiserate and relate with those who feel that moral values are important, and seriously lacking in today's society.
However, when I hear the "godless" phrase used as a political agitating point, I am just as exasperated as I am when Rand argues from the other side of the coin.
I received an email from Newt Gingrich (not to me personally, but a generic beg letter). In it, Mr. Gingrich writes:
The effort to change America has been systematically executed by a secularist left-wing machine for the last five decades. That effort has eroded our culture, our Godly heritage, and our very history.
The continued success of our nation depends upon a common understanding of our unique culture, our Godly heritage and our American history.
I understand the audience that Mr. Gingrich is appealing to, but it is cheap shot. I got to that point in the email and I clicked off of it, disgusted. If this is the message that Mr. Gingrich thinks will unite conservatives and moderates and yield victory in 2012/2014, he could not be more off the rails.
There is an element of truth to what Mr. Gingrich says. Religious people (specifically Christians) have had their religion and their way of life challenged by mean-spirited secularists, but it is too broad a brush, and confuses the issue.
We have a Christian heritage in this country, and the majority of Americans may consider themselves Christian (to some degree or another), but we have a secular government. People may be religious and their religion (or lack thereof) is protected from government meddle or support. Confusing the two spells disaster for Republicans.
"No provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority."- Thomas Jefferson, 1809
"The error seems not sufficiently eradicated that the operations of the mind as well as the acts of the body are subject to the coercion of the laws. But our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." -Thomas Jefferson, 1782
Mr. Gingrich should heed Jefferson's advice. Similarly, those on the Left should be put in their place when they attempt to encroach on religious freedom by trying to eradicate it. It may not be supported in the public square, but it cannot be denied either.
"I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their Legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church and State."- Thomas Jefferson, 1802
Now if people like Ayn Rand want to go around declaring that religion is evil, she has every right to do so. Similarly, many of the contributors to SecularRight seem to feel that religion really is the opiate of the (stupid) masses.
If so, so be it. We all get to choose our opiates. Being anti-religion has the same result as believing that religion belongs in the government's purview to enforce. Enforcing or denying are the same thing! Religious people aren't broken, needing some sort of fix to make them more desirable citizens.
This all gets terribly confusing and can make one feel as if they're watching a ping pong ball match, with each side banging the religious ball back and forth.
Where it gets even more difficult is when we discuss morality and principles, as opposed to a specific religion's dogma.
"To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people is a chimerical idea."- James Madison
There was a time in this country when we quibbled over the list of moral laws. Today we seem to be arguing that there are no moral laws, and believing that there are/were as some sort of quaint, outdated concept. This is not a healthy sign and will surely result in misery... and our eventual demise.
"Independence can be trusted nowhere but with the people in mass. They are inherently independent of all but moral law."- Thomas Jefferson, 1819
Battling the Left and the Right on this issue is fatiguing, as it is where their political ideologies intersect and become the same. Virtue and morality are requirements, but a specific religious test is not. The former exists for our government officials as well as ourselves. We can ignore it, and choose not to be moral nor virtuous, but we cannot eradicate them as requirements. Rand desires to eradicate these requirements, Buckley only to rememer them, and Gingrich, lastly, to require a religious test, albeit in another name.
I do not know why that is so difficult for people to understand.
Ping. Pong. Ad infinitum.
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