The American Spectator

martin j smith| 1.27.10 @ 3:41PM

I think in the context of todays politics Democrat Left Folks LIE. That is the whole ball of wax. Once you get that everything makes sense.

martin j smith| 1.27.10 @ 3:41PM

I think in the context of todays politics Democrat Left Folks LIE. That is the whole ball of wax. Once you get that everything makes sense.

George Thomas| 1.27.10 @ 3:42PM

Nice link Quin. Pete Wehner does nice work, and this is really good stuff.

Derek Leaberry| 1.27.10 @ 5:05PM

Despite Wehner's triumpalism it must be said that Obama's decline is more due to the public's dislike of high liberalism and not due to any acceptance of a conservative program. A large-scale conservative program of budget cuts, including the desperately needed cuts in entitlements, would make the Republicans more despised than the Democrats are today. Americans are either confused or puerile. You can't have big government and low taxes and be fiscally prudent at the same time. American schizophrenia is not viable in the long term.

Alan Brooks| 1.27.10 @ 9:01PM

Derek Leaberry gets it right everytime. But we need a Defense tax so the burden is placed on everyone, and so that everybody knows where the funds are going.

But naturally you will disagree. you'll say "Alan is a leftist" even though social progressivism is on its deathbed and I want it sent to the morgue. But, remember, AGAIN, scientific and economic progress continue.

Barbara| 1.27.10 @ 6:46PM

Sends shivers up your spine, don't it? Chait was describing dullard Obama!

Alan Brooks| 1.27.10 @ 8:55PM

Don't gloat so soon, libertopians; here is the good (& great) Mr. Wehner's autopsy on Randianism:

"According to Politico.com, Ayn Rand — the subject of two new biographies, one of which is titled Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right — is “having a mainstream moment,” including among conservatives. (Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina wrote a piece in Newsweek on Rand, saying, “This is a very good time for a Rand resurgence. She’s more relevant than ever.”).

I hope the moment passes. Ms. Rand may have been a popular novelist, but her philosophy is deeply problematic and morally indefensible.

Ayn Rand was, of course, the founder of Objectivism – whose ethic, she said in a 1964 interview, holds that “man exists for his own sake, that the pursuit of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose, that he must not sacrifice himself to others, nor sacrifice others to himself.” She has argued that “friendship, family life and human relationships are not primary in a man’s life. A man who places others first, above his own creative work, is an emotional parasite; whereas, if he places his work first, there is no conflict between his work and his enjoyment of human relationships.” And about Jesus she said:

I do regard the cross as the symbol of the sacrifice of the ideal to the nonideal. Isn’t that what it does mean? Christ, in terms of the Christian philosophy, is the human ideal. He personifies that which men should strive to emulate. Yet, according to the Christian mythology, he died on the cross not for his own sins but for the sins of the nonideal people. In other words, a man of perfect virtue was sacrificed for men who are vicious and who are expected or supposed to accept that sacrifice. If I were a Christian, nothing could make me more indignant than that: the notion of sacrificing the ideal to the nonideal, or virtue to vice. And it is in the name of that symbol that men are asked to sacrifice themselves for their inferiors. That is precisely how the symbolism is used. That is torture.

Many conservatives aren’t aware that it was Whittaker Chambers who, in 1957, reviewed Atlas Shrugged in National Review and read her out of the conservative movement. The most striking feature of the book, Chambers said, was its “dictatorial tone . . . Its shrillness is without reprieve. Its dogmatism is without appeal . . . From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: ‘To a gas chamber — go!’”

William F. Buckley Jr. himself wrote about her “desiccated philosophy’s conclusive incompatibility with the conservative’s emphasis on transcendence, intellectual and moral; but also there is the incongruity of tone, that hard, schematic, implacable, unyielding dogmatism that is in itself intrinsically objectionable.”

Yet there are some strands within conservatism that still veer toward Rand and her views of government (“The government should be concerned only with those issues which involve the use of force,” she argued. “This means: the police, the armed services, and the law courts to settle disputes among men. Nothing else.”), and many conservatives identify with her novelistic hero John Galt, who declared, “I swear — by my life and my love of it — that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”

But this attitude has very little to do with authentic conservatism, at least the kind embodied by Edmund Burke, Adam Smith (chair of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow), and James Madison, to name just a few. What Rand was peddling is a brittle, arid, mean, and ultimately hollow philosophy. No society could thrive if its tenets were taken seriously and widely accepted. Ayn Rand may have been an interesting figure and a good (if extremely long-winded) novelist; but her views were pernicious, the antithesis of a humane and proper worldview. And conservatives should say so."

Roger Zimmerman| 1.28.10 @ 9:52AM

Aside from your unsubstantiated evaluations in the final paragraph, this is a refreshingly fair presentation of some of Ayn Rand's thought for a short blog comment. Your quotations are accurate, even if their full context is not included (as, I admit, would not be possible in this forum).

It _should_ be clear to readers of this blog that Objectivism and Conservatism are at fundamental odds: Conservatives do accept faith (i.e. religion) over reason and altruism over egoism. That Rand is able to draw a direct line from reason and egoism to political freedom - and that Conservatives cannot do the same starting at faith and altruism - is left as an exercise to all open-minded readers.

John W. Bales| 1.27.10 @ 11:26PM

Hopefully more than a few conservatives will follow Ayn Rand's lead and abandon conservatism for a more rational and humane philosophy--Objectivism.

Margie| 1.30.10 @ 3:43PM

Rand the Atheist? Yeah now there's a philosophy to admire. Reject God and get with the program, eh?

Joseph McHugh| 1.28.10 @ 9:06AM

Ayn Rand is extremely important because she provides the only rational defense of Capitalism ever. Religion and subjectivism easily are felled when trotted out to defend liberty.

Oldefarte| 1.28.10 @ 11:50AM

I strongly suspect that Americans [and yes, even some terrorist-liberals also] NOW profoundly wish [and pray] that this country had Bush for its president, instead of what they are stuck with presently!!!!

Harry Binswanger| 1.28.10 @ 12:40PM

Ayn Rand pointed out that the attempt to defend freedom (capitalism) on the basis of religious faith is to imply that reason is on the side of the enemies of freedom. Conservatives, please take note.

Margie| 1.30.10 @ 3:47PM

Idiots take note: Atheists reject God. They therefore view everything from their God rejected debased minds and should not be listened to.