Jennifer Burns, the author of the best-selling late 2009 book on Ayn Rand’s remarkably contentious history with the American right stopped by the vast Silicon Graffiti production facilities last week to discuss her book and the research that went into it. We’ll explore Rand’s resurgence last year with the members of the Tea Party, who can pick and choose which elements of Rand’s Objectivist philosophy they agree with in a way that Rand would have found anathema while she was still living. We’ll also discuss Rand’s tempestuous relationship with both the right and the left during the 1940s through the early 1970s, including her look at what she described as JFK’s “Fascist New Frontier” in 1962. Plus some thoughts on what the Fountainhead had to say about Rand’s take on modernist aesthetics, and the socialistic milieu in which they originally emerged, along with clips of the 1949 movie starring Garry Cooper.
And finally, Burns will discuss what Rand would have thought of 2010, a year which pits, on the left, arguably the most collectivist president since FDR, and on the right, the growing Tea Party movement, and their calls for a return to free-market capitalism, the unknown ideal (to coin a phrase.)
Approx. 12-minutes long:
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Please, don’t bother poor Ayn with Obama. She’s still heartbroken at being repudiated by her protege, Alan Greenspan.
Joseph,
How can Greenspan repudiate concepts which haven’t been in practice for over a century?
Ed
Jonah Goldberg got a lot of attention with his book, “Liberal Fascism”, but it is clear that Rand identified the essentially fascist nature of liberalism way back in 1962. In “The Fascist New Frontier” she demonstrates that Kennedy’s agenda (as well as the Democratic Party platform) could have been lifted almost word for word from the platform of the National Socialist Worker’s Party of Germany, otherwise known as the Nazis.
Good interview. Ms. Burns sounds very knowledgeable. I’m a third of the way into Atlas Shrugged and want to know more and more about Ayn Rand. She is such an intriguing and curious individual. Thanks for the video and the link to Jenifer’s blog.
Good stuff, I’m always interested in new views of Ms. Rand.
Ed, they haven’t been tried because they can’t be tried. “Free markets” are as chimerical as “communism,” they don’t exist in the real world. All we have seen in the last century is lightly regulated markets that inevitably crash, and no nation-state that is answerable to its citizens is willing to decimate its national economy in pursuit of a sci-fi writer’s vision of an elitist utopia. National security concerns would intervene first.
I have a hard time recognizing Rand as being someone Conservatives should look to very strongly. True, her ideas about freedom and the market make some sense, but her humanism essentially undermines all that. I can’t help but find it ironic that the one thing Rand and the Communist agreed upon was that religion had no place in their ideals.
Greenspan disassociated himself from Objectivism long ago. He worked at the Fed, an institution Ayn Rand certainly didn’t think well of. It’s been years since he’s had anything to do with the philosophy.
emergeent: She was consistent in her philosophy. If A is A, she couldn’t conceive of an instance of A being non-A, which the supernatural is (i.e., outside of nature). The fact that conservatives are religious is what undermines their attempts to defend capitalism. Rights exist as part of man’s nature qua man, not as a gift from some unknowable, unquantifiable, unbig, unsmall, unhere, unthere supposed existent.
As the Burns and Heller biographies reveal, Rand was a drug addict, sado-masochistic pervert and a stunning hypocrite: she “mooched” off her Jewish relatives when she arrived in NYC and never paid them back. Her “philosophy” appeals only to sophmoric intellects that have never read, or understand, the true importance of community and a calling greater than their own selfish desires. Conservatives in the 50s and 60s were right to denounce her an an enemy of any decent society.
Read it and weep:
http://www.slate.com/id/2233966
Thank you, Paul for that smear job. Until and unless you embrace the importance of the individual, you cannot defend capitalism. As long as you keep hold of that “higher power” nonsense, you will always live a contradiction. And providing a link to _yet another smear_ proves nothing. Everything in these kinds of articles run completely counter to everything I’ve heard about her from (wait for it) people who actually knew her.
“Conservatives” should be honest. Because of their deep devotion to religion, they are by nature altruists and should serve others above themselves. They should embrace socialism if that is their deepest philosophical belief.
Because of my “deep devotion to religion”I know that by nature I am selfish,greedy and only care about my own. The altruistic acts are only made by my realization of how much I’ve been freely given. Charity is wonderful. Charity at the point of a gun is socialism. Btw what gives you the right to belittle my ” Higher power ” as nonsense ?
Thats very similar to the response my dog gives me when I try to explain the internet to him. perhaps you are not as wise as you think
I have “Atlas Shrugged” in my reading queue but have not got to it yet.
My impression is that she comes off as something of a purist.
Is that correct or along the correct path?
Sapwolf,
I think that’s a reasonable assumption, yes.
There is evidence that the internet exists. Not so for your belief.
Realcapitalist, you obviously cannot face reality; nor can you bear to read the recent biographies of Rand, for they are full of testimony from the people who knew her! Her secretary, her ex-friends, her disgraced and exiled lover (Nathan Branden), her diaries, and psychotic amphetamine addiction all reveal a thorough social fascist. She was a complete social tryant and a sick swinger:
http://www.robertfulford.com/Randians.html
Go ahead, READ the bountiful evidence of how she attempted to enforce ideological rigidity within her cultish circle, then attempt the argument, for as it is, you are clearly uninformed and hiding from reality. State your premises and martial your facts.
Atlas Shrugged is second on to the bible as the most read book. It is a wonderful book and should be read by all Americans. Yes, liberals, the American title does not apply to you as you have shown so proudly that you do not want that label.
Instead of the rumors, just read the book for yourself and make your own judgement.
It makes sense to actually understand what someone said before credibly disagreeing with it. Some 95% of Ayn Rand’s critics (including Whittaker Chambers and Anthony Daniels) don’t even meet this test.
And yet, Paul Realto can’t even manage to operate at that level; he recycles other people’s made-up BS instead.
I guess that’s easier than actually having to think about ideas.
Btw what gives you the right to belittle my ” Higher power ” as nonsense ?
1. It’s arbitrary. You have not established, via any evidence, that it *should* be respected. Onus of evidence is on the positive.
2. History. Whether the higher power is God or society, its ascendance has never boded well for individual rights.
I’ve taken classes by many professors and one professor in particular who think(s) he or SHE knows everything about Ayn Rand’s philosophy, and he or SHE absolutely does not. I don’t mind the ubiquitous history of Ayn Rand in bibliography format, but I tell you, these people know nothing of objectivism whatsoever. But I’m not saying any more, I really need to get A’s, not the B+ I get when I call certain professors out on their hypocrisy and their brown bag understanding of things they absolutely despise. This professor…I mean…THESE professors are far left (very, very far) and aren’t out to tell the truth about Ayn Rand, Thomas Sowell or whomever they are “comprehensively” researching.
I agree with Ayn Rand’s views concerning individualism and free markets. I don’t agree with RealCapitalist’s arguments that you can’t believe in a higher power and still be an individualist. I believe in a God who not only is what you could consider the ultimate individualist, but also enables us to be more so in reality. Me, being a Mormon, am at odds with the fact that you can’t believe in God and be individual. Au Contraire. My God died to ensure such!
And if Ayn Rand would’ve despised religion, then I would be at odds with her on that point… but not with others.
That’s just one man’s honest opinion.