I am having a blast, along with a few other Objectivists, launching a full-scale napalm assault on this pathetic little Rand-hater, Richard Martin:
If another of these neocon bushwads professes his adulation for Ayn Rand again, I’m going to stick a copy of The Fountainhead in their Etherhole:
“[independence Institute head and conservative Colo. pundit Jon]Caldara said he relishes the challenge to protect TABOR,” reports Steven K. Paulson of the Associated Press, in a story in this morning’s Daily Camera. “He says he was converted to fiscal conservatism after reading books by Ayn Rand, the free-market proponent and author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.”
Why this second-rate novelist and third-rate thinker became such a paragon to the Me-First, America-Second crowd is a mystery with a simple fact at its core: Rand, with her mindless anti-Communism (anti-communalism of any sort, really) and her triumph-of-the-will fantasies, gives every soulless shark in a suit the intellectual trappings to disguise the naked materialism and deep amorality of their world-view. If any political philosophy has been as thoroughly discredited in the last 20 years as Marxism, it’s “objectivism”: the huge budget deficits, triumphalist foreign policy and disgraceful health-care system that characterize 21st-century America can all be traced straight back to Ms. Rand’s tiresome grandiloquizing.
I understand – every movement, particularly one as intellectually poverty stricken as neoconservatism, needs its godmother. I just wish they’d come up with something more original.
Here’s my response to his crappy Molotov cocktail:
By Scott Hampton, 11-02-05
Thank you Richard Martin for providing what could be considered a textbook smear-job of Objectivism and Ayn Rand. You may consider social metaphysics to be an esoteric concept, but that doesn’t change the fact that simply stating “most serious scholars dismiss [objectivism]”, does not discredit it. You’ll recall that at one point in time most scholars dismissed the idea that the earth was round. Further, when one considers how many scholars today advocate some form of communalism, not just politically but intellectually as well, it seems very plausible that a good smear job such as yours can spread like a virus.
Ad hominem is just the first of a slew of latin logical fallacies you gleefully toss out, but I have to point out at the very least that suggesting that Rand advocated a “me-first, America second” philosophy is presenting a false dichotomy at best. While Rand did advocate living primarily for one own’s interests, she recognized that self-interest cannot exist without values and she pointed to the US and all it stands for as a supreme value, one worth dying for. Of course if you mean she rejected the idea that anyone with a pulse and a material need has the moral right to demand that those needs be met, without considering the rights or interests of those who fulfill those needs, then you’ve hit the nail on the head.
Your retreat to the position of questioning how Objectivism has helped to lift the poor out of poverty shows just how pathetic your stand against the philosophy is. Nevermind the fact that Objectivism is still in it’s infancy as far as it’s acceptance in society. The relevant point is that Rand’s philosophy recognizes that a system of capitalism and individual rights is consistent with the rational nature of man. It recognizes that all classes of society are served best by recognizing what society is comprised of: individuals. Leaving individuals free to pursue their self-interest is what leads to prosperity for all. Why else would so many individuals from “communalist(?)” societies be braving shark-infested waters on innertubes to get here? Now of course we’ve all heard the argument that the dominance of the US economy is simply due to our superior access to resources and our military-industrial imperialism, but that dodo bird ain’t gonna fly either. Many of the poorest countries in the world lack neither resources, weapons, nor the moral will to use either of the former as they see fit. Imperialism and violence are the tools of societies and individuals who reject the morality of self-reliance and self-interest.
I have to laugh when I consider how you imagined you would get away with such a blatantly unsupported screed in the age of blogs and search-feeds (I’m sure you won’t be offended to know I don’t make a habit of perusing New West Politics). Are your regular readers not able to digest anything more substantial than your leftist pabulum?
Scott Hampton
If anyone here wants to add their $.02.. although it’s almost too easy.