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Ayn Rand Quote: Criminal Minds

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I have been a great fan of the TV show "Criminal Minds" as it is very logically and dramatically handled. Tonight's show was about a religious cult who had taken their members hostage and was going to blow up the place ala Waco.

At the end, a quote is said:

Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be governed by it -- Ayn Rand

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I have been a great fan of the TV show "Criminal Minds" as it is very logically and dramatically handled. Tonight's show was about a religious cult who had taken their members hostage and was going to blow up the place ala Waco.

At the end, a quote is said:

Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be governed by it -- Ayn Rand

I saw it also.

I think the quote was "Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it".

We're starting to get to them... :D

What was the context? Did one of the nut-jobs say it, one of the protagonists, or was it an on-screen quote?

The lady with the black hair (good guy) said it at the end.

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We're starting to get to them... :D

What was the context? Did one of the nut-jobs say it, one of the protagonists, or was it an on-screen quote?

Spoilers below!

A religious cult was brainwashing children and adults to follow the new savior. The savior was taking young girls (14 or younger) as his wives. The mother of one of the children called the police and this branch of the FBI that does criminal profiling was called in. While they were in there, the state raided the place, or tried to, leading to much blood letting and chaos, until the FBI told them to back off. The two FBI agents in the church compound where trying to persuade the church goers and the savior to give up peaceably. The savior started to rig up the place to blow it up. At the last minute, the FBI raided and prevented the place from blowing up by killing two men handling the button (including the savior). His newest wife took umbrage at her husband and savior being killed, and hit the button herself.

The quote was said by one of the FBI agents off-screen as the show ended.

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I found the context of the quote using the Objectivism CD-ROM, and it is quite appropriate. I had it a bit incorrectly remembered. It is from The Journals of Ayn Rand, part 4 - Atlas Shrugged, 11 - The Mind on Strike [speaking of Dagny]:

"Her over-confidence is in thinking that she can do more than an individual actually can; she thinks she can run a railroad (or the world) single-handed, she can make people do what she wants or needs, what is right, by the sheer force of her own talent, not by forcing them, not by enslaving them and giving orders—but by the sheer over-abundance of her own energy; she will show them how, she can teach them and persuade them, she is so able that they'll catch it from her. (This is still faith in their rationality, in the <jrnl_425> omnipotence of reason. The mistake? Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone.)"

So, the parallel in the TV story was accurately having a female FBI agent be like Dagny and making the same mistake, of thinking she could reason with the self-admitted irrational men around her.

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The episode is called "Criminal Minds: The 911 Call" and a clip can be watched here.

You can actually watch the entire episode if you have HD capabilities on your browser. For some reason or other, mine locked up on me, even with DSL.

Enjoy!

Added on edit: Sorry, it is not the entire show, just the first few minutes in HD.

Edited by Thomas M. Miovas Jr.
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Spoilers below!

A religious cult was brainwashing children and adults to follow the new savior. The savior was taking young girls (14 or younger) as his wives. The mother of one of the children called the police and this branch of the FBI that does criminal profiling was called in. While they were in there, the state raided the place, or tried to, leading to much blood letting and chaos, until the FBI told them to back off. The two FBI agents in the church compound where trying to persuade the church goers and the savior to give up peaceably. The savior started to rig up the place to blow it up. At the last minute, the FBI raided and prevented the place from blowing up by killing two men handling the button (including the savior). His newest wife took umbrage at her husband and savior being killed, and hit the button herself.

The quote was said by one of the FBI agents off-screen as the show ended.

The savior was the guy with the wrinkled forehead from the original Beverly Hills 90210 show.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Criminal Minds used to be great, but in the third season the writers really dropped the ball. Or maybe I found out some new things about psychology since I last checked it out, because the last few episodes contained some ridiculous theories.

Anyway, it all culminated with the episode that ended with the Ayn Rand quote. I admit, the quote fit into the theme of the episode, but it was the only good thing about the whole hour: before that they depicted libertarians as a bunch of fringe groups which live isolated from the world, in rural areas, at the end of some dusty road. Of course, like all extremists, they are all highly susceptible to being seduced by a charismatic figure, so they get turned into religious fanatics by this guy who used to be on Beverly Hills 90210.

It actually had one of the members of the elite FBI team asking who these mysterious libertarians are(the third largest political party in the US, if I'm not mistaken, is called the Libertarian Party). How stupid do these writers think their audience is, that they describe a libertarian as "someone who doesn't like to pay taxes" to them?

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Criminal Minds used to be great, but in the third season the writers really dropped the ball. Or maybe I found out some new things about psychology since I last checked it out, because the last few episodes contained some ridiculous theories.

Anyway, it all culminated with the episode that ended with the Ayn Rand quote. I admit, the quote fit into the theme of the episode, but it was the only good thing about the whole hour: before that they depicted libertarians as a bunch of fringe groups which live isolated from the world.

It's a show that I watch because of the interaction of the team and how they find the master mind criminals. As to their psychological theories, I'm sure the writers just take those from current psychological theories, which are not good, for the most part. I actually don't remember the Libertarian comment, but the FBI was NOT investigating them because of their ideology anyhow, but only because the local police had received a 911 call (hence the title) from a little girl claiming she was being abused. I think they were called in also because of the Waco incident and didn't want it to explode into a firefight, which did happen when the State police showed up.

So, I don't see it as anti-libertarian, but more anti-child abuse and anti-armed compound whereby the leader of the compound is judge, jury, and executioner (which is not a means of upholding individual rights).

When Waco was actually going down, I kept up with most of the news because it was fairly close to Dallas, and I just couldn't understand why they didn't storm the compound. This episode helped me to understand why they wanted to take it easy until the children were removed. Of course, Waco and the Davidians where a complete disaster, as they wouldn't come out of the compound when asked to by the authorities.

I wrote extensively on the Waco incident while it was happening, and I thought I had those essays on my website, but I don't.

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  • 1 month later...
There was another Ayn Rand quote in last night's episode of Criminal Minds.

"We are all brothers under the skin - and I, for one, would be willing to skin humanity to prove it."

Unfortunately, that quote is from Elsworth Toohey in The Fountainhead where Ayn Rand is listing the bromides that he uses in his column One Small Voice:

"One Small Voice" never seemed to say anything dangerously revolutionary, and seldom anything political. It merely preached sentiments with which most people felt in agreement: unselfish-ness, brotherhood, equality. "I'd rather be kind than right."

On page 305 in the version used for the Objectivism CD-ROM.

I don't think this quote was as appropriate as the other one. I didn't see the murderer as being an Elsworth Toohey type. And since it was quoting Ayn Rand, it could have been misleading in that it came across as Ayn Rand wanting to skin humanity. Still, Ayn Rand was quoted,though the misleading aspect of it bothered me.

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  • 4 weeks later...
Unfortunately, that quote is from Elsworth Toohey in The Fountainhead where Ayn Rand is listing the bromides that he uses in his column One Small Voice:

I've a rule regarding quotations from fiction: I attribute the quote to the character who said it. Because nearly all authors use antagonists in some way, then hearly all of them make use of ideas they oppose. A vile character like Toohey will have vile lines, and they should be attributed to him, not to the author (or not directly).

Even the words spoken by the protagonists or heroes (not necessarily the same thing) may not be in sync with the authors explicit ideas. For example consider some of what Dominique or Wynand say and do in The Fountainhead, or Leo in We The Living. For a very clear example consider when Hank Rearden tells Dagny early in the novel "We're a couple of blackguards, aren't we?" that may define Rearden's views at that point in the novel, but it's not what or who Rearden is portrayed to be even then.

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