The general public is much more receptive to Ayn Rand’s ideas than the so-called “intellectuals”.
Why is it so?
Why do the intellectuals have such deep hatred for her ideas, hatred which I don’t think would be accorded even to Lenin and perhaps Hitler.
The general public is much more receptive to Ayn Rand’s ideas than the so-called “intellectuals”.
Why is it so?
Why do the intellectuals have such deep hatred for her ideas, hatred which I don’t think would be accorded even to Lenin and perhaps Hitler.
Simply because the intellectuals share the ideas and premises of Lenin and Hitler.
National and Soviet Socialism are nearly identical as we all know.
The general public is much more receptive to Ayn Rand’s ideas than the so-called “intellectuals”.
Why is it so?
Why do the intellectuals have such deep hatred for her ideas, hatred which I don’t think would be accorded even to Lenin and perhaps Hitler.
They realize that Objectivism is the enemy, they cannot fight it (having abandoned reason), and they are going to lose.
They realize that Objectivism is the enemy, they cannot fight it (having abandoned reason), and they are going to lose.
But what do they have to gain out of opposing it?
Consider Marx. What did he gain out of creating and supporting an evil system?
Nothing. Same with people like Mother Teresa.
I think I am encountering the same problem as Dagny Taggart.
How can a human being act against his/her own self-interest? Even animals don’t do that.
I think I am encountering the same problem as Dagny Taggart.
How can a human being act against his/her own self-interest? Even animals don’t do that.
Animals CAN’T.
People can because purposeful rationality takes effort and they are too lazy to care about their self-interest. Their battle cry is “Don’t bother me! Don’t bother me! Don’t bother me!” addressed to reality in general and to anyone, like Ayn Rand, who threatens their mental passivity.
Why do the intellectuals have such deep hatred for her ideas, hatred which I don’t think would be accorded even to Lenin and perhaps Hitler.
I have encountered this hatred, and I believe Rand identified its cause.
Today’s intellectuals are predominantly products of the modern education system, which has bombarded them with the tenets of skepticism and pragmatism: knowledge is impossible, no one can know anything for certain, there is no independent reality, all ethics are arbitrary, etc.
To the degree that people swallow these notions – and the worst of today’s intellectuals have swallowed them completely – they surrender their mind, which they know, at least intuitively, is their only tool of survival. Such surrender is humiliating. By giving up their tool of survival, they make themselves unworthy of survival. They become a creature that cannot live and does not deserve to. Worse, the surrender is voluntary and done for the most cowardly motive of all: the approval of the pack.
Humility and hostility are two sides of the same intellectual coin. That is why so many of today’s intellectuals bristle with venom at the slightest challenge. Their self-imposed humiliation generates a self-directed hostility, a rage they must constantly evade by directing it outward toward anyone that dares to challenge their positions.
Somewhere Ms. Rand wrote that all evil philosophies are systems of rationalization. The behavior of today’s intellectuals is proof. Skepticism is the ultimate tool of evasion – it permits anyone to deny anything.
Objectivism is the ultimate threat to these people – and they know it. Objectivism cannot be tolerated, it cannot be a part of any intellectual discourse – because it blasts away all of their torturous equivocations and evasions and exposes them for what they are: empty shells that once had a chance to be human.
But what do they have to gain out of opposing it?
Consider Marx. What did he gain out of creating and supporting an evil system?
Nothing. Same with people like Mother Teresa.
I think I am encountering the same problem as Dagny Taggart.
How can a human being act against his/her own self-interest? Even animals don’t do that.
Put simply: If you are looking for a reason for irrationality, don’t, there isn’t.
Anything the “public” finds appealing all on its own can’t be of any intellectual merit because if it were the “intellectuals” would have discovered it first and then force fed to us. That way we then get to thank them profusely, remain indebted to them. and bestow on them all sorts of crowns. lauels, titles, honors, and other distinctions befitting such persons of low self-esteem that require them. :yarr:
The general public is much more receptive to Ayn Rand’s ideas than the so-called “intellectuals”.
Why is it so?
Why do the intellectuals have such deep hatred for her ideas, hatred which I don’t think would be accorded even to Lenin and perhaps Hitler.
This morning I watched BookNotes on C-Span as Daniel J. Flynn discussed his book Intellectual Morons.
Daniel Flynn - Intellectual Morons
He said he has an entire chapter describing the cult of Ayn Rand. He basically describes Objectivism as a “right” idealogy and he seemed to describe Objectivists as dogmatic. It would be interesting to learn more about his interactions with Objectivists.
The way I understand Objectivism, it is not necessary to attempt to conform or rationalize in order to become a student of Objectivism and evolve as an individual. But I have heard others repeat the same … don’t know the right word for it … fear ? of Objectivism.
-Elizabeth
Once I was talking to this girl and the talk was about intellectuals and she said “americans are the most anti-intellectual people on earth”
Do you think this is true? Or is this just some elites view of americans?
This morning I watched BookNotes on C-Span as Daniel J. Flynn discussed his book Intellectual Morons.
Daniel Flynn - Intellectual Morons
He said he has an entire chapter describing the cult of Ayn Rand.
There isn’t a cult of Ayn Rand.
I have seen interview with this guy on Frontpage Magazine and he did pique my interest but I think I’ll pass having read about his ad hominem attack.
Once I was talking to this girl and the talk was about intellectuals and she said “americans are the most anti-intellectual people on earth”
Do you think this is true? Or is this just some elites view of americans?
It’s a really stupid thing to say. But I suppose you might get that idea if you thought that the only people on earth are Americans, Canadians, and Western Europeans. Given that “intellectuals” are Kantian, socialist, collectivist and altruist, then Americans are less that, compared to Euro-Canadians. You have to remember that “intellectuals” does not refer to people who use their minds, it refers to something much more restricted, and something that people ought to be ashamed to admit being.
He said he has an entire chapter describing the cult of Ayn Rand. He basically describes Objectivism as a “right” idealogy and he seemed to describe Objectivists as dogmatic. It would be interesting to learn more about his interactions with Objectivists.
I found a blurb by him on Ayn Rand:
Novelist Ayn Rand hated Nazism and Communism, but this didn’t stop her from imitating many of the unattractive aspects of those ideologies in both her fiction and in her real life. The high priestess of Objectivism established a cult of personality, held show trials against followers, denied reality (such as the success of Sputnik) when it didn’t conform to her theories, and demanded the submission of individual judgment to her own. In Rand’s books, she fantasized about the destruction of the portion of humanity standing in the way of her ideals. Examples of this include the holocaust that concludes Atlas Shrugged and the words of We the Living’s heroine: “What are your masses but mud to be ground underfoot, fuel to be burned for those who deserve it?” The damage done by Objectivism, thankfully, rarely went beyond the movement’s ranks.
I thought I’d refute several of the false and misleading claims in this single paragraph. In one paragraph he gets a lot wrong.
Ayn Rand never demanded the “submission of individual judgement” to her mind. Quite the contrary. Her entire philosophy promoted the reverse. What attracted me to her philosophy is not only that it squares with reality, but it’s also a marvel of integration which demands independence of thought.
The idea that she had “show trials” is ludicrous. She turned against certain people because of their ideas, which is anyones right. To equate this to show trials is pure lunacy.
She did more than “fantasize” about the destruction of statists, she logically validated the position. We do want to be rid of the portion of humanity that stands in the way of our lives and liberties. They, afterall, are the ones who are violating our rights. Is he promoting our enslavement? Talk about turning justice on its head! If someone punches you, you punch back. He wants us to stand there and take it.
Ayn Rand’s philosophy promotes the idea that each individual is sovereign over his life, and each individual should be free to pursue his life and happiness. She also believed that each person should guide himself by reason. This is quite contrary to being “mud to be ground underfoot.”
I know of no holocaust that concludes AS. What’s he talking about, the collapse of society due to the producers being on strike? Here he is juxtaposing an emotionally charged term to smear. The only think I can conclude is that he read the review of AS by Whittaker Chambers in Buckley’s magazine. Chambers refers to the holocaust, so he figures he would too.
In his book he goes after so called “ideologues”. This is the tired old leftist rant that ideologies as such are untenable. This is not so. There are lots of wrong ideas out there, but this doesn’t change the fact that there are also right ideas. The world is a certain way, with a certain nature. It has identifiable and definable characteristics which can be isolated by principles. If you discover the right principles, then you will have an effective tool for survival. If you come up with the wrong principles, you will be misguided. People who claim that because they have found lots of bad principles that ideologies are wrong as such, have simply given up thinking.
An Objectivist’s ultimate guides are reason and reality. The question Ayn Rand always asked was “What facts or reality give rise to this concept?”. This is how you keep your ideas anchored in reality.
The damage done by Objectivism, thankfully, rarely went beyond the movement’s ranks.
I hate to break it to Flynn, but one of the biggest conservatives out there, Rush Limbaugh, frequently promotes The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. There is much more damage to come. 
Flynn is strikingly shallow.
Btw, he has a blog…
… He basically describes Objectivism as a “right” idealogy and he seemed to describe Objectivists as dogmatic…
Yes… I’ve heard quite a few people who are hostile to Objectivism describe Objectivists as being dogmatic. I’ve thought about why this accusation might be so frequently made, and also asked a few of the people who made the accusation what they meant by it.
Being dogmatic means accepting things on the basis of somebody else’s authority. Since Objectivism does not advocate this, but instead advocates thinking for yourself and following reason, why the charges of dogmatism?
I think the reason is that people are equating being dogmatic with claiming certainty.
To a subjectivist, there can be no objective truth. There is only skepticism - the idea that nobody can know anything with certainty, versus dogmatism - the idea that truth is what some authority says it is - just because he says it is.
So, when such a person hears an Objectivist claiming to unambiguously know that something is true (or claiming to be sure that something is good or bad), it sounds like dogma to him.
Claiming certainty is something that is not done among subjectivists, which means that today it is not done by intellectuals. Modern intellectuals have quite a lot invested in the idea that nobody can be sure of anything, so they undoubtedly feel quite threatened when somebody comes along and claims that he can be sure.
If, as Objectivism claims, it’s possible to rationally validate knowledge so that certainty is possible, the subjectivist has lived his life believing a lie. He has used the mistaken notion that “nobody can be sure” as an excuse for waffling on every important question he’s ever faced.
Dogmatism is also a charge I hear made against Objectivists by people who used to be Objectivists (or who never quite were) - such as by tolerationists of various types. Their argument is something to the effect of: you’re being dogmatic if you accept something Ayn Rand (or maybe Leonard Peikoff or some other prominent Objectivst) said as being true. But why would they assume this? I think that their problem is that they never grasped what it means to be objective. Such a person, like modern intellectuals, would think that one either just accepts ideas on authority, or else that no ideas must ever be accepted as certainly true, and consequently all ideas must be accepted as possibly true, and thus “tolerated”.
Actually, I think that the idea that one can never be certain runs very deep in modern culture. Other examples:
being afraid to take oneself seriously and even sometimes use humor self-deprecatingly. Perhaps this is the source of the charge that Objectivists are somehow “humorless”. In a culture where it’s considered somehow good to laugh at yourself or your ideas, an Objectivist would indeed stand out as not doing this.
distorting what one is and believes, in order to please others. After all, if everybody’s ideas are to be taken with equal weight, since nobody can know anything for sure, then it wouldn’t be nice to assert that one is right and somebody else is wrong. It’s as if it’s impolite to assert certainty.
In a world filled with pragmatic wafflers, Objectivism’s proud assertion of the truth stands out. It offends many people, particularly intellectual snobs. It makes clear that Objectivism stands opposed to what they’ve mistakenly lived their lives by. But - notice that this proud assertion of the truth and the refusal to mix the truth with even “just a little” of its opposite, is what can attract a good person - a potential Objectivist - to the philosophy in the first place.
One of Ayn Rand’s great strengths is that she absolutely refused to water her philosophy down in what would have been a mistaken attempt to avoid offending people and thus make Objectivism somehow more popular. (And one reason her fiction is so appealing is that she also did not dilute her character’s virtues in an attempt to “humanize” them.[1])
[1] For example, see The Romantic Manifesto, p90-91, for an example this alternative in the characterization of Howard Roark.
Hey Jay P,
You wrote: “Being dogmatic means accepting things on the basis of somebody else’s authority.”
Actually, that’s not an accurate definition. Dogma being defined as “something held as an established opinion; esp. : a definite authoratative tenet”, I don’t have a problem with Objectivism being seen as dogmatic. It is, nor do I think we need shy away from that fact, but should be unafraid of pronouncing what we believe—else why believe it? If something is true, why should I be afraid of saying so?
I don’t have a problem with Objectivism being seen as dogmatic. It is, nor do I think we need shy away from that fact, but should be unafraid of pronouncing what we believe—else why believe it? If something is true, why should I be afraid of saying so?
Objectivism is not dogmatic. A dogmatist is someone who accepts ideas on faith and Objectivism does not. :rolleyes: (This isn’t as cool as the ‘yarr’ emoticon but it’s still good.)
The essence of dogma, as I understand it, is that it is something held certain with no more grounds than the authority of the source which uttered (or wrote) it. Someone who uses an “appeal to authority” in an attempt to make their case is a dogmatist. Thus, the association with religion.
It is not surprising that some Objectivists (particularly those new to it) can be taken as dogmatic, constantly appealing to Rand’s works. I’ve certainly been guilty of this myself. But Miss Rand’s eloquence does not make her the last authority on reality. We don’t need an authority on reality. We all have access to it directly, through sense and reason. Thus the burden of comprehending it lies with each person individually. This is the essence of intellectual egoism.
The most depraved sentence you can now utter is to ask: Whose reason? The answers is: Yours. No matter how vast your knowledge or how modest, it is your own mind that has to acquire it. It is only with your own knowledge that you can deal. It is only your own knowledge that you can claim to possess or ask others to consider. Your mind is your only judge of truth—and if others dissent from your verdict, reality is the court of final appeal. Nothing but a man’s mind can perform that complex, delicate, crucial process of identification which is thinking. Nothing can direct the process but his own judgment. Nothing can direct his judgment but his moral integrity.
(There I go, being dogmatic again. :rolleyes: )
Clearly, this is the opposite of dogmatism. Yes, it is certain, but certainty is not dogmatism, though it is often taken as such.