gracchusdixit

For the second time in as many years, Paul Ryan is trying to push a budget through Congress that would slash government and privatize our social safety net, all the while lowering taxes on the richest Americans, who are already paying the lowest taxes in generations.  You have to wonder:  Where does such lunacy come from?  One answer is:  Hollywood.

Paul Ryan has more than once attributed his ideas to the inspiration of a woman named Ayn Rand.  Rand was a novelist, screen writer and publicity hound who fancied herself to be a “philosopher” and, thanks in part to the testimonials of people like Paul Ryan, is the subject of a new documentary that was recently released in a smattering of theaters across the country.  She wrote two best-selling novels, which cloaked her ideas in the window-dressing of pulp fiction, making her both famous and rich.  Her life story would be eminently forgettable if those books hadn’t sold so many copies, and her ideas would be ludicrous if they weren’t taken so seriously by people who should know better.

Rand’s devotees include not only Paul Ryan but Alan Greenspan, whose policies as chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank led to the worst financial collapse since the Great Depression.   Although Greenspan is out of government and Ryan’s second crack at a budget seems just as unlikely to pass as his first, the specter of Ayn Rand still haunts the political landscape—in the “tea party,” in the virulence of right-wing politicians, in the belief that “government is the problem” and the free-market ideology that got us into our current economic mess will somehow get us out.

To defeat an enemy, you need to understand him—or in this case, her.  So, let’s consider what Ayn Rand stood for.

Her “philosophical system” goes by the name “objectivism,” which is a fancy way of saying:  “Use your head instead of your heart.”  She believed that reason and logic are the only ways of understanding the world—that emotion, altruism, sympathy, faith, compassion and other “feelings” are destructive delusions.  She asserted that the only basis of morality is “rational self-interest” (a.k.a. “greed”) and that any attempt to impose “collective” obligations on individuals is inherently coercive and therefore wrong.

All of this would be of merely academic interest had Ayn Rand stuck to the movies.  But she decided to meddle in politics, and she turned her “philosophy” into a grand and pretentious theory of public morality that today cloaks the lunacy of the right with a phony patina of intellectual respectability.

The problem is that Rand’s “philosophy” ignores the realities of human nature and the human experience.  Of course, individuals matter.  Who among us would think, or wish, otherwise?  But no individual is born into the world alone.  No human being can live anything approaching a meaningful or satisfying life apart from the community of others.  And no decent human being can turn a blind eye to the suffering of fellow members of the human race.  Indeed, the irrational “feelings” for which Ayn Rand expressed such contempt—compassion, altruism, self-sacrifice—are among the most important and noble qualities that make us human.  Those whose only priority is “rational self-interest” can scarcely be considered human at all.

Worse yet, Rand divided the world into two opposing camps:  parasitic drones and “productive” individuals, personified by the fictional heroes in her best-selling books.  This caricature of the way the world actually works lies at the heart of the callous ideology of people like Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor, and—yes—Mitt Romney.  What they refuse to acknowledge or fail to comprehend is that, without the rest of humanity, even the most talented individuals would themselves be lost and their work would have no meaning.  Howard Roark, the hero of Rand’s novel The Fountainhead, wasn’t a solitary genius thinking great thoughts in the wilderness.  He was an architect who designed buildings—which are nothing more or less than “collective” spaces to be inhabited, used, and enjoyed by others.  Without a “collective” purpose, there would have been no buildings for Howard Roark to build—no purpose to his work at all.

Let it be said that there is much in Rand’s work that is worthy of praise.  She relentlessly opposed all forms of superstition.  She upheld the right of individuals to think and live differently.  She spoke out against totalitarianism in all its forms.  These are beliefs and actions that deserve respect.  But they do not make up for the corrosive legacy of her “philosophy,” nor do they excuse those who continue to use that “philosophy” to undermine the best things in our human nature.

The supreme irony is that Ayn Rand’s life so completely contradicted her words.  Her fictional heroes despised the approval of the crowd, but she craved it.  They worked alone, but she surrounded herself with a “cult” of adoring and subservient followers.  They had nothing but contempt for the limelight, but she gloried in it.  Perhaps those who claim to follow in her footsteps should pay less attention to what she said and more attention to the way she lived. It is Ayn’s Rand’s life that gives the lie to her creed.