This is a difficult....and complicated....and long post....and I don't blame you if you choose to ignore it. Have you read my post of a few days ago that begins with the word....Puff? Assuming that you may have....Foxnews.com in their news and articles this morning....chose to....'Puff".....Ayn Rand...to make her appear as a wise prophetess. That's why I am bringing two old posts back....from 2011!
Who Is Ayn Rand....April 25, 2011
I had not read Atlas Shrugged in the early 1970s....(my early 20s)....because I was too busy reading Charles Reich's The Greening of America in between sips of beer at the Wooden Keg on Pitt's Oakland campus. If I had, I might have been a millionaire today, a Gordon Gekko! Thank goodness for cheap drafts, Charles Reich, Carlos Castaneda, Van Morrison, and Carole King. I still have not read completely through any of Ayn Rand's four novels but did....many decades ago...see the film The Fountainhead starring Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal, the final scene of which still haunts me today where the two stars stare heavenward as they rise in the construction elevator of Cooper's budding skyscraper. (My memory was a little off....as Patricia Neal looks up as she ascends the construction elevator of the world's tallest building....as Gary Cooper....Christlike....awaits the rapturous arrival of his wife.)
Who is Ayn Rand? She was born in Russia in 1905 and experienced, first hand, the Bolshevik takeover of human life and property. She came to America and was enamored by the silver screen ( I can relate to that) and wound up in Hollywood as a screenwriter and then author turned philosopher whose philosophy of Objectivism drew devotees including Alan Greenspan and has remained popular to this day. She died in 1982. They tried to make a movie of Atlas Shrugged for decades, finally accomplishing it recently in what could not be a more apropos time. I saw the film (first of a trilogy) this past week on a rainy day in Myrtle Beach. The small crowd (most families were filling the other theaters) applauded at its conclusion. If you do not see imminent catastrophe for America, or the world for that matter, or even the possibility thereof, you will probably find the film boring. If you do see dark tornado clouds moving fast over our heritage you will get your money's worth. It was well made and acted and it was good seeing a film that did not have the usual movie stars who hop from project to project.
A 2009 cover story from Hank Hanegraaf's Christian Research Journal, which can be Googled easily....(Was Ayn Rand Right, Jay W. Richards)....captured the allure of Ayn Rand....along with the reason for criticism. Rand....as Richards relates....called greed a virtue. He wrote "Rand was a staunch defender of capitalism, but also an anti-Christian atheist who argued that capitalism was based on greed." Richards contends that "she missed the subtleties of capitalism." He brings Adam Smith into the equation and his 1776 classic work on economics The Wealth Of Nations and points out in detail how Smith admitted that "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." Richards points out that "every time you wash your hands or look both ways before you cross a street, you're pursuing your self-interest-but neither activity is selfish."
Richards' second point concerning Smith is that "in a free market, each of us can pursue ends within our narrow sphere of competence and concern....our self interest....and yet an order will emerge that vastly exceeds anyone's deliberations." His third point from Adam Smith is that even if capitalism channels greed and...."even if the butcher is selfish....he can't make you buy his meat. He has to offer you meat at a price you'll willingly buy." So "capitalism doesn't need greed" and Richards would say that it doesn't need Ayn Rand either. The author continues with, and I would agree, that Rand's appeal is because she "mercilessly skewered every leftist cliche." That is what the American public is calling for, why the film is a success and why the audience applauded at the end.
It's Rand's defense of capitalism, and not definition of capitalism that allures. Richards mentions a survey that I had heard of before where he writes "In a poll conducted by the Library of Congress and the Book Of The Month Club in the 1990s, Atlas Shrugged came in second behind the Bible as the most influential book." Richards' conclusion is that "her hatred of Marxism and collectivism led her to defend a caricature of capitalism more grotesque than anything Marx imagined." It was Ayn Rand's accurate critique of leftist economic philosophy that woke the author up many years previous. This critique by Ayn Rand's is her only contribution, but a contribution nonetheless. My only disagreement with Jay W. Richards' article is where he writes "Competition between entrepreneurs in a free economy thus becomes an altruistic competition, not because the entrepreneurs have warm and fuzzies in their hearts, or are unconcerned with personal wealth, but because they seek to meet the desires of others more than their competitors do." I agree with this statement but it stops short of seeing how a nation can in the beginning see desires and wants as....food, raiment and a home....and then evolve where those desires and wants become....65" television screens, risk derivatives, Facebook and various other narcissistic pursuits, etc., etc.. Wall Street is as capable of distorting capitalism into a grotesque caricature as Ayn Rand. Her contribution is best acknowledged and then put aside for the number one influential book in that survey.
Atlas Shrugged....May 19, 2011
There are quite a number of Christian books that have been published, and films made, on the topic of the Antichrist. I submit to you that Ayn Rand's character of John Galt is a contender in principle. A few blogs ago I wrote of seeing Atlas Shrugged on a rainy day in Myrtle Beach. I went in knowing little about the novel of which the term cult-like following is inadequate. I came home and picked up the book and began where the film (the first of a trilogy) left off.
Ayn Rand provides a savior for us in Atlas Shrugged and it is John Galt. Two thirds of the novel looks ahead for the answer to the question "Who is John Galt?," which is a running theme of the book, as roughly two thirds of the Bible looks ahead to the coming of the Messiah. Described accurately as a dystopian United States, the setting of the novel has this Christ-like figure in John Galt who calls certain chosen disciples to himself to go into seclusion and watch the world collapse without them. Confronted with his wisdom, these chosen disciples drop everything to follow him. He promises a paradise, or more accurately, the instruction of building one and freedom to do so.
John Galt's oath, repeated a number of times after his appearance on the scene, is...."I swear by my life and love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man nor ask another man to live for the sake of me." These disciples learn from him and fear for him as he exposes his person to the pharisees to confront their enslavement of truth. He is tortured...but lives....and his kingdom eventually comes to earth (this nation anyway.) Rand did indeed have the playbook of the leftist and the totalitarian, her avowed enemies, in writing Atlas Shrugged, for one can see their dangerous ineptitude and propaganda in today's newspapers, even in what will be the headlines of tomorrow's....but her utopian vision also comes from that same leftist playbook!
John Galt replaced original sin with original righteousness and received the love of man and woman because of it. The self-adulation of man has often been a temptation throughout history and in the hands of Ayn Rand's pen it is most formidable. She may not have thought too highly of libertarians but they apparently think the world of her. There is high tension today between some conservatives and some libertarians who are so close...yet so far away. The news media, in their infinite befuddlement, covers this early skirmishing among Republicans as if the election were next month while drooling on polls that are of very little use, if not useless, at this time. It is my contention that the eventual Republican nominee is not even in the mix as of yet. (Romney announced shortly after this post)
There are extreme dangers in the Middle East and the world's economy, and malicious intentions of the world's elites that may not even be completely formulated as of now, any of which can alter the best laid schemes of mice and men. Ayn Rand's philosophy which exalts the potential of the mind of man to the exclusion of God is not the answer to our problems but rather a steroid. A consensus is needed between all conservatives and all libertarians but it cannot be at the expense of the One who indued our intellects with the very potential to prosper and who will, and has, withdraw it when we exalt ourselves.
