The New Intellectuals must assume the task of building a new culture on a new moral foundation - Ayn Rand

Month: October 2021

The Corruption of Ayn Rand’s Legacy

I want to preface my comments by saying that I haven’t listened to this podcast, and I’m not planning to. I’m sharing and evaluating it based strictly on the writeup, which carries intellectual bankruptcy and useful idiocy to a whole new level.

Take a look at the outline, and ask yourself how this can be reconciled with Ayn Rand’s philosophy. Ask yourself how — in a world where today’s totalitarian left is literally implementing fascism all around us — that an institute allegedly based on her ideas can aim its fire at the few parties left in our (primarily state) governments that are trying to stop it.

To anyone who may be confused about ARI’s slander against Republican governors and legislatures trying to defend their citizens from these federal government driven attacks on freedom of speech and bodily autonomy, check your premises.

Ask yourself whether it would be reasonable to support so-called “private” companies censoring news or instituting workplace practices to demand unchosen medical treatments — in Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy. Then ask yourself the same question about allegedly “private” companies, with names, say, like “Associated Steel,” who eagerly “chose” to impose such mandates from “The State Science Institute.”

Ask yourself why SCOTUS has ruled that when allegedly “private” companies conduct government censorship for it, they have become state actors and are still violating the first amendment. Ask yourself whether the principle behind this ruling has any broader implications for the state of so-called “capitalism” today. And ask yourself why Donald Trump, who ARI slandered relentlessly over the past several years, understands this well enough to have included it in his suit against “big tech,” but the alleged heirs to Ayn Rand’s legacy, don’t.

Finally, ask yourself what this means for a political system clearly transitioning from a mixed economy into fascism. Ask yourself whether institutions increasingly embracing “public/private partnerships” run by lackeys with government ties actually constitute a free economy of private companies in any meaningful sense of those words. And ask yourself whether the principles of an actually free society apply to them, in the same way, in that context — and if not, what principles do.

In other words, start thinking outside the box of what has become an unthinking “objectivist” orthodoxy — one that insults the depth of Ayn Rand’s ideas by applying them as shallow bromides appropriate to a freer past, instead of asking the philosophically challenging questions that today’s world actually requires.

What I think that this disgracefully superficial article demonstrates is that The Ayn Rand Institute has lost its way. Its principals have lost the capacity for serious and independent thought required to understand and apply the philosophy in historical context. They have betrayed everything that their namesake ever wrote and stood for, and have forfeited the moral right to use Ayn Rand’s name.

Radicals for Capitalism

Every so often I feel the need to state this for the record. I am not a conservative. To quote Ayn Rand, I’m a radical for capitalism.

And by that I don’t mean the crony fascism that has been increasingly taking over today’s world. That is and has always been a manifestation not of the independence and individualism of capitalism, but of the authoritarianism and groupthink of collectivism in all its forms.

The conservation of traditional values from the past will not be enough to save the world. Like the founders before us, only a new generation of radically independent thinkers will be able to do that.