Once upon a time, Democrats and Republicans lived in a political Eden, blithely unaware that the forbidden fruit was ready to be plucked from the Tree of Life and turned into apple sauce. Were the first shots of a Libertarian Armageddon ironically fired by a trio of women from diverse backgrounds?
The women could not be more different. They went on to inspire the Libertarian Party, conservatives, and thinkers like William F. Buckley, Jr., Ronald Reagan, and every conservative talking radio head in the country . It all began with three books, one by each author, all published in the same year – 1943. That year Ayn Rand’s “classic” The Fountainhead, Isabel Paterson’s The God of the Machine, and Rose Wilder Lane’s The Discovery of Freedom began to turn the political world inside out.
ISABEL PATERSON
Isabel Paterson and Ayn Rand were correspondents until they had a falling out because Paterson, a Christian, could no longer deal with the self-serving Rand’s extreme anti-Christian views. Rand did not approve of Paterson’s linkage of capitalism with religion, a philosophy which would lone day greatly influence a young William F. Buckley, Jr. and Russell Kirk. Both men would go on to found the National Review.
AYN RAND
Ayn Rand is famous for Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. The great Christian psychologist, M. Scott Peck, considered Rand something of a narcissistic psychopath. In Peck’s devastating People of the Lie, he likens people who have the same characteristics as Rand as “pure evil”. Noam Chomsky declared Rand to be one of the most evil intellectual figures in modern history and Buckley himself eventually rejected her philosophy. She detested Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, and eventually, Ronald Reagan.
Her philosophy today appears to be more like hedonistic self-serving than a viable political philosophy. According to Ayn Rand, "greed is good," the ends justify the means, you step over people to get your way. You do what you must to survive and to prosper. Perhaps it is appropriate that two of her followers today include Bob Barr and Ron Paul.
ROSE WILDER LANE
Rose Wilder Lane was the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder. In all probability Lane acquired her staunch up-by-the-boot-straps philosophy of life from her parents, who experienced one hardship after another while their only surviving child was growing into a very successful journalist.
Article comments
1 - Diana Hsieh
I'm sorry to report that you don't understand Ayn Rand's philosophy well enough to comment on it. Nothing about your summary was accurate.
(1) Ayn Rand wasn't a hedonist. She was a rational egoist. She held that life -- not pleasure -- is the ultimate good.
(2) She didn't think that "the ends justify the means," but rather regarded certain virtues -- like rationality, productiveness, honesty, and integrity -- as essential to the life proper to man.
(3) She didn't advocate that "you step over people to get your way." She advocated individual rights as the basic principle of her political philosophy -- and held that, in ethics, a person should not sacrifice himself to others or others to himself.
(4) She despised libertarians like Ron Paul and Bob Barr.
Perhaps you need to re-read Atlas Shrugged?
2 - Starchild
I have to wonder whether the author of this piece ever actually read Ayn Rand. Whether through ignorance or otherwise, SJ Reidhead badly mischaracterizes Rand's philosophy. Rand would never say that "the ends justify the means."
As a champion of non-aggression and not taking anything that you have not earned or paid for, Rand would also strongly opposed trying to prosper "by any means necessary" or "stepping over people to get your way." (I'm assuming here that Reidhead means "stepping on" people -- it's not quite clear what "stepping over" people is supposed to mean.) Although Rand believed in ethical egoism, I don't believe she ever said "greed is good." That slogan came from the 1980s Hollywood movie "Wall Street." Certainly Rand would have defended the right of people to acquire lots of material possessions, but "greed" is not merely the desire for plenty, it's the desire for what is unearned, and Rand would have wanted no part of that.
Also rather sloppy is terming Bob Barr and Ron Paul as "followers" of Ayn Rand. Once upon a time that label could have been justifiably applied to Alan Greenspan, but to my knowledge Barr and Paul were never "followers" of the author of Atlas Shrugged, merely admirers of her writing and philosophy. Both are Christian, so obviously they would not agree 100% with the atheistic Rand any more than Paterson would. Both Ron Paul and Bob Barr have been leaders in speaking out against big government greed and policies that hurt the poor, especially Paul's call to end the "war on drugs" and rein in out-of-control government that is destroying the earning power of their wages via inflation, etc., so the not very subtle attempt to brand them as defenders of "might makes right" falls flat.
Quoting Noam Chomsky as calling Rand evil, and implying that M. Scott Peck would have done the same, without bothering to say what is evil about a philosophy based on ethical self-interest and non-aggression, is intellectually lazy.
3 - Jeannie Danna
SJ, (It is quite rare to find the Far Left crunching and munching on Democrats. It happens, but not often.)
I love this sentence and I can almost "hear the bones" Now I myself am not a Democrat(I don't really belong to any party, at least I have never received talking points from one) But you have left out one political party in this paragraph, the "Conservadems"
I hope you jump in your comment thread this time SJ or I am sorry to say "I will have to stop giving you any of my energy." :)