In This House We Believe
The News is Corrupt
The Government is Too Big
Politicians Lie
Socialism is the Gospel of Envy
Fiat Currency is Fraud
And Ayn Rand was Right.
Ayn Rand was Right
Ayn Rand was right on several fronts. Specifically, her philosophy of Objectivism, her conception of the ideal man in The Fountainhead, and the idea that if too much is demanded of producers, they will opt out of contributing detailed in Atlas Shrugged, all ring as true today as they did when she originally wrote of them.
For the purpose of this plaque, Rand was right with respect to Atlas Shrugged. She was a believer in capitalism. She viewed capitalism as empowering individuals to produce and create for their personal benefit. Capitalism is built around private property rights. When one sees that they will enjoy the fruits of their labors, they lean in to life. Capitalism breeds investment of individual effort and resources. Effort is embraced.
A central theme of Atlas Shrugged is about what happens when others come for what you’ve created. We have, largely, three choices. These choices are the same ones we have when faced with any threat. That is, we can flee (flight), freeze, or fight. Put another way, we can run, hide, or fight.
The mediocre milk those with merit. Government’s goal is to take from the productive and redistribute to the destitute (or, more often, their friends, themselves, and those that lobby). This only works where it is difficult for the productive to leave. If people can flee, they will. This is the perspective of Ayn Rand as well as evidenced in Atlas Shrugged by the question: Who is John Galt? Thomas Moore offered, “If the lion knew his own strength, hard were it for any man to rule him.” Lions are the leaders of life that Ayn Rand considers the Ideal Man.
Fleeing or running involves leaving. It’s about moving somewhere else to get away from those that seek to extract your efforts. This is what John Galt has done in Atlas Shrugged. He convinces many other high achievers and producers to follow along.
To freeze or hide is to seek to fly under the radar of those coming to take. It can also mean to try to get along to go along. This is what Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden start with as their approach in Atlas Shrugged. They seek not to rock the boat but to work within the existing system. They slowly but surely come to realize this is doing nothing other than emboldening the extractors and encouraging them to expand their asks.
Ayn Rand develops a separate theme in Atlas Shrugged seeking to promote “selfishness” as a virtue. She saw self-interest as a good thing.
Rand seeks to detail the dichotomy between those that are independent and those that are dependent. She sees it as a distinction between good and evil. A distinction between celebrating humans as the highest form of life and denigrating it.
Rand suggests there’s little difference between a beggar, a thief, and a government employee. Each of these depend on someone else for their subsistence. Their existence depends on extracting from others. They are unable to provide for themselves. Independence is incompatible with being a beggar, thief, or government employee. It’s like James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg describe it writing in The Sovereign Individual, “Individuals and groups can either produce and thus create wealth or seize the wealth created by others.” This echoes Ayn Rand’s distinction between makers and takers or creators and second-handers. Two groups of people: producers v. pilferers or the responsible v. the reliant where the government rules as referee transferring from the responsible to the reliant and taking a cut along the way. This distinction lies at the heart of capitalism v. socialism.
The “common good” is a misnomer. It’s an excuse or justification for acts of tyranny. The common good is one person or group’s claim to impose their will upon others. Rand recoils from this idea. The need of others, in this view, imposes a duty on another. This Rand refers to as “the second-hander’s credo.” Because x needs y, you must do z. She believes this is flawed thinking.
Hail the individual. There is no us, just multiple “I’s.” Our core characteristic is our individual ability to think. Everything we are and everything we’ve done and everything we’ll become is the result of our ability to believe it, conceive it, then achieve it. Thinking is the holy grail of humanity. The French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre offered, “Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.” Rand echoed Sartre writing, “Man survives, not by adjusting himself to his physical environment in the manner of an animal, but by transforming his environment through productive work.”
The distinguishing characteristic of humans from other animals is our consciousness or ability to make choices. As Descartes offered, “I think, therefore I am.” Thinking isn’t what other animals do. Humans process the world around them by thinking. Choosing to think or not is a choice between living and dying. “Nothing is given to man on earth except a potential and the material on which to actualize it.” We must earn our survival. We must earn everything. Life’s a problem, you’re the solution. We must hunt food or grow food. Nothing is given to us. We must use our ability to think to determine what to do. We must do something productive in that our efforts will result in survival. If we strive to survive by taking from others, we’re no different than lower animals. Rand and Objectivism consider the life of everyone to be their highest purpose.
Rand wrote in The Fountainhead, “Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon. Animals obtain food by force. Man has no claws, no fangs, no horns, no great strength of muscle. He must plant his food or hunt it. To plant, he needs a process of thought. To hunt, he needs weapons, and to make weapons—a process of thought. From this simplest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and everything we have comes from a single attribute of man—the function of his reasoning mind. But the mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a collective brain. There is no such thing as a collective thought.”
Through Roark she offers, “Now observe the results of a society built on the principle of individualism. This, our country. The noblest country in the history of men. The country of greatest achievement, greatest prosperity, greatest freedom. This country was not based on selfless service, sacrifice, renunciation or any precept of altruism. It was based on a man’s right to the pursuit of happiness. His own happiness. Not anyone else’s. A private, personal, selfish motive. Look at the results. Look into your own conscience. ‘It is an ancient conflict. Men have come close to the truth, but it was destroyed each time and one civilization fell after another. Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage’s whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.’”
Rand’s Roark offers in his trial, “the degree of a man’s independence, initiative and personal love for his work determines his talent as a worker and his worth as a man. Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value.” He goes on, “There is no standard of personal dignity except independence.”
Rand sees authenticity as the only place to be. Life consists of seeking to be oneself. A man living in accordance with his own code is content and calm because he is clear as to what is important. He’s living by his own self-determined standards and is at peace with himself. Ayn Rand was right indeed.
