Author Ayn Rand passed away in 1982 in her New York City apartment, but
this Russian immigrant's political influence has only grown in the years
since. Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, on February 2, 1905, she
experienced the Russian Revolution first-hand. The experience marked her
for life, for both good and ill. She became a persuasive critic of the
evils of Communism. Unfortunately she went well beyond that, becoming
also a misanthrope and a God-hater. Oddly enough, this militant atheist
is a founding figure of modern right-wing political thought. Though she made
it her life's project to combat religion: "In early 1934 she began a
philosophical journal. . .by the end of her first entry she had decided,
'I want to be known as the greatest champion of reason and the greatest
enemy of religion.'" (Ayn Rand, quoted in Jennifer Burns, 'Goddess of
the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right,' p. 29), nevertheless many
of the 'Religious Right' today parrot her ideas about right and wrong.
President Donald Trump is a fan: "President Trump named Rand his favorite writer and “The Fountainhead” his favorite novel."
(James B. Stewart, July 13, 2017, 'As a Guru, Ayn Rand May Have Limits,'
NYT).
Ayn Rand based her ethics strictly upon self-interest. She was
intentionally hostile to Christianity, alleging that Christian ethics
made life "flat, gray, empty, lacking all beauty, all fire, all
enthusiasm, all meaning, all creative urge." (quoted in Jennifer Burns,
'Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right,' p. 42). She
joined Nietzsche in repudiating Christian ethics as empty and outworn.
Her ground-breaking novel, 'The Fountainhead,' sought to establish
egoism instead as the basis for a new morality. She wrote in her notes,
"The first purpose of the book is a defense of egoism in its real
meaning, egoism as a new faith." (quoted in Jennifer Burns, 'Goddess of
the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right,' p. 41). Nietzsche had
little use for Christian sentimentality; trying to make the point that
Cesare Borgia's crew would have laughed at the sentimental, kind-hearted
Germans of his day, he says: "Strong ages, noble cultures, consider pity,
'neighbor-love,' and the lack of self and self-assurance something
contemptible." (Twilight of the Idols, Friedrich
Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche, edited by Walter Kaufmann, p. 540).
But Cesare Borgia was a monster:
She sought to vindicate her heroic egoist from the suspicion that he
would be a monster of cruelty, trampling others to get what he wants; as
popularly understood, the egoist "puts oneself above all and crushes
everything in one's way to get the best for oneself...Fine!" (quoted in
Jennifer Burns, 'Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American
Right,' p. 42). And after all, a man who tortures others shows that he
at least cares what those others are feeling; he is a man who lives for
others. Her superior men are not like the average person; they do not
even care enough about the feelings of others to torture. They create
their own values: "an egoist is a man who lives for himself." (quoted in
Jennifer Burns, 'Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American
Right,' p. 42).
Ms. Rand assigned a positive value to selfishness.
Christians who unthinkingly follow this ideology sometimes misunderstand; it
s not 'liberal' critics of Ms. Rand's ethics who accuse this ideology of
valuing selfishness, rather the explicitly stated goal of 'Objectivist'
ethics is to celebrate selfishness. 'Liberals' of course do not like this,
but neither should Christians. It might be thought that Ms. Rand is merely
being provocative in labelling the highest virtue of her ethics
'selfishness,' when perhaps she only means what other ethical philosophers
mean by 'enlightened self-interest.' But the reader who delves into her
fiction will find that she really does mean 'selfishness' in the colloquial
sense; her heroes and heroines are indifferent to the well-being of others.
To her mind, most people are just "parasites" anyway, it is the few
high-achievers who do anything worthwhile in this world:
Though one might expect a philosophy which relegates most people to the status of
"mental parasites" to be unpopular, Ms. Rand is a prophet not without honor in her own (adopted) country.
Her thinking has been immensely influential in forming the politics of the 'Religious Right.'
She taught Americans to expect and tolerate a pay differential between high achievers and the
rank and file which has yielded an uneven distribution of wealth now exceeding
even that of the Gilded Age. Since Ms. Rand's ideas have been in vogue, the
bottom 90% of the American people have lost ground:
"From 1950 through 1980, the share of all income in America going to the bottom 90 percent of Americans — effectively, all but the rich — increased from 64 percent to 65 percent, according to an analysis of tax data by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. Because the nation's economy was growing handsomely, that means that the average income of Americans in the bottom 90 percent was growing, too — from $17,719 in 1950 to $30,941 in 1980 — a 75 percent increase in income in constant 2008 dollars.
"Since 1980, it's been a very different story. The economy has continued to grow handsomely, but for the bottom 90 percent of Americans, it's been a time of stagnation and loss. Since 1980, the share of all income in America going to the bottom 90 percent has declined from 65 percent to 52 percent. In actual dollars, the average income of Americans in the bottom 90 percent flat-lined — going from the $30,941 of 1980 to $31,244 in 2008.
"In short, the economic life and prospects for Americans since the Reagan Revolution have grown dim, while the lives of the rich — the super-rich in particular — have never been brighter. The share of income accruing to America's wealthiest 1 percent rose from 9 percent in 1974 to a tidy 23.5 percent in 2007."
(Harold Meyerson, 'When Tea Party wants to go back, where is it to?,' The Washington
Post, October 27, 2010).
Just as there is, it is said, a town in Minnesota in which all of the
children are above average, so one suspects all of Ms. Rand's readers
belong to her happy few who are actual human beings, not to the many who
are worthy only to be trod underfoot. The blessedness of selfishness was not entirely a new idea: "And
whoever proclaims the ego wholesome and holy, and selfishness blessed,
verily, he will also tell what he knows, foretelling: 'Verily, it is at
hand, it is near, the great noon!'" (Thus Spake
Zarathustra, The Portable Nietzsche, edited by Walter Kaufmann, p. 303).
What is Wrong with Communism
Ayn Rand's father, Zinovy Zakharovich Rosenbaum, owned a pharmacy,
confiscated by the Reds. The family fled to the Crimea, where the counter-revolutionary 'Whites'
were making their last stand. White politics ranged along a spectrum
from nostalgia for the Tsar's autocracy to commitment to the elective
democracy derailed by the Bolshevik coup. Ms. Rand, born Alisa
Rosenbaum, hated the Bolsheviks who had dismantled her family's
comfortable life, but likely felt little warmth or sympathy from the
sometimes anti-semitic Whites, who blamed the Jews for Bolshevism. The White
allegation that Bolshevism was a Jewish plot
to destroy Russia rested upon the circumstance that Jews were represented in the
Bolshevik leadership in numbers greater than their proportion of the
Russian population as a whole: "Not many Jews were Bolsheviks, but many
of the leading Bolsheviks were Jews." ('A People's Tragedy, The Russian
Revolution,' by Orlando Figes, p. 676). Ayn Rand's fictional alter-ego, Kira,
is a whole-hearted White:
"'Would you mind if you're compromised by being seen with a
very red Communist?'
"'Not at all—if your reputation won't be tarnished by being seen with a very
white lady.'" (Ayn Rand, We the Living, p. 79).
The fictional character 'Kira' is an ethnic Russian; but like other
Ayn Rand heroes and heroines, she functions as a mouth-piece: "The
specific events of Kira's life were not mine; her ideas, her
convictions, her values were and are." (Ayn Rand, forward to the Signet
reprint of 'We the Living.'). Given White anti-semitism, Alisa Rosenbaum herself cannot have been
so uncritically supportive. But what bourgeois Jews like the Rosenbaums were feeling
from the Bolsheviks wasn't Jewish brotherliness.
Lenin had encouraged the perpetrators of the 'Red Terror,' the
pay-back violence welling up from below, to 'loot the looters.' Unable
to meet any of the workers' material needs, they instead fed them on the
bitter ashes of vengeance: if we cannot give them cake, then let them
eat revenge. The Communist regime did all in its power to humiliate the
former bourgeoisie, and to what rational purpose?: "Thus Red Army
soldiers, bureaucrats and vital workers were rewarded with the
first-class ration (which was meagre but adequate); other workers
received the second-class ration (which was rather less than adequate);
while the burzhoois, at the bottom of the pile, had to make do
with the third-class ration (which, in Zinoviev's memorable phrase, was
'just enough bread so as not to forget the smell of it')." ('A People's
Tragedy, The Russian Revolution,' by Orlando Figes, p. 727). The Rosenbaums cannot have doubted the Bolsheviks hated them, people who are
just as happy to see you starve to death do not love you; but their
White protectors and would-be saviors suspected them of Bolshevism!
Usually people who have lived through a bitter conflict demonize one
side and idealize the other. Universal misanthropy is not the common
response, because it is too balanced for these survivors, with their
intense hatreds and loyalties. But who were the friendless Rosenbaums to
idealize? This experience of abandonment and alienation, of being
without a friend or champion in her own native land, likely fostered Ayn
Rand's misanthropy.
Ayn Rand's ultimate diagnosis of the ills of Communism is a dual
diagnosis: what is wrong with the Communist system?: What it shares with
Christianity. This diagnosis takes our breath away. Christians do not
see any similarity between our beliefs and Marxism-Leninism, a system
promoting class hatred and strife. But Ms. Rand perceived this common
thread: both systems encourage altruism, putting the interests and needs
of others above one's own. Christians must confess, 'guilty as charged:'
"Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister,
and to give his life a ransom for many." (Matthew 20:28).
Preachers decode the meaning of 'JOY' as 'Jesus-others-you;' i.e., ". .
.Christianity means putting others first and self last." (William
Barclay, The Letter to the Romans, p. 191). Again, "God wants us to be like
that — to humble ourselves before others, to love when it hurts,
to give when we get nothing back, to be self-sacrificial." (Eric
Metaxas, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About God, the Jesus
Edition, Kindle location 2504). As a popular
pamphlet expresses it,
"Recently I was in a crowded shopping area when I saw a woman
plowing her way through the crowd. What intrigued me was the message on
her T-shirt, which read in bold capital letters, IT'S
ALL ABOUT ME. . .For followers of Christ, however, that statement
simply is not true. It is not all about us—it's all about
Jesus Christ and others." (Bill Crowder, Our Daily Bread, August 7).
Self-sacrifice is the cardinal sin of Ayn Rand's ethics. And Marxism? Though Karl Marx initially directed his appeal to
enlightened self-interest, promising a workers' paradise, the
spectacular failure of this system to deliver even the basic necessities
of life upon its institution by the Bolsheviks led to a surprising
revision: the workers were cheerfully to toil and slave, not for the
promised but undelivered paradise, but out of selflessness. Bolshevism
developed a strange mimicry of Russian Orthodox Christianity,
self-sacrificing revolutionary heroes substituting for Orthodoxy's
calendars of saints and martyrs.
In truth Marxism had always been collectivist, assigning little value
to individual human life. The materialism upon which it is founded will
allow value to the aggregate, but not to the individual:
"We must put an end once and for all to the papist-Quaker babble
about the sanctity of human life."
(Leon Trotsky, quoted p. 641, 'A People's Tragedy, The Russian
Revolution,' by Orlando Figes)
The early, heroic years of the Russian Revolution saw a creative burst
of planning for a future world resembling more a bee-hive than
previously known human society. These projects sought to erase all human
individuality:
"Alexei Gastev (1882-1941), the Bolshevik engineer and poet,
took these Taylorist principles to their extreme. As the head of the
Central Institute of Labor, established in 1920, he carried out
experiments to train the workers so that they would end up acting
like machines. Hundreds of identically dressed trainees would be
marched in columns to their benches, and orders would be given out
by buzzes from machines. . .Gastev envisaged a brave new world where
'people' would be replaced by 'proletarian units' so devoid of
personality that there would not even be a need to give them names.
. .These automatons would be like machines, 'incapable of individual
thought,' and would simply obey their controllers. A 'mechanized
collectivism' would 'take the place of the individual personality in
the psychology of the proletariat.'" ('A People's Tragedy, The
Russian Revolution,' by Orlando Figes, p. 744.)
Ms. Rand would hardly be alone in recoiling from these inhuman
dystopias. But her proposed ideal society, enshrining selfish egotism as
the highest virtue, is no improvement over the Communist bee-hive:
"'I know what you're going to
say. You're going to say, as so many of our enemies do, that
you admire our ideals, but loathe our methods.'
"'I loathe your ideals.'
"'Why?'
"'For one
reason, mainly, chiefly and eternally, no matter how much
your Party promises to accomplish, no matter what paradise
it plans to bring mankind. Whatever your other claims may
be, there's one you can't avoid, one that will turn your
paradise into the most unspeakable hell: your claim that man
must live for the state.'
"'What better purpose can he
live for?'
"'Don't you know,' her voice trembled suddenly
in a passionate pleas she could not hide, 'don't you know
that there are things, in the best of us, which no outside
hand should dare to touch? Things sacred because, and only
because, one can say: "This is mine"? Don't you know that we
live only for ourselves, the best of us do, those who are
worthy of it? Don't you know that there is something in us
which must not be touched by any state, by any collective,
by any number of millions?'
"He answered: 'No.'
"'Comrade Taganov,' she whispered, 'how much you have
to learn!'
"He looked down at her with his quiet shadow
of a smile and patted her hand like a child's. 'Don't you
know,' he asked, 'that we can't sacrifice millions for the
sake of the few?'
"'Can you sacrifice the few? When those few are the
best? Deny the best its right to the top — and you have no
best left. What are your masses but millions of dull,
shrivelled, stagnant souls that have no thoughts of their
own, no dreams of their own, no will of their own, who eat and
sleep and chew helplessly the words others put into their
brains? And for those you would sacrifice the few who know
life, who are life? I loathe your ideals because I know no
worse injustice than the giving of the undeserved.
Because men are not equal in ability and one can't treat
them as if they were. And because I loathe most of them.'"
(Ayn Rand, 'We The Living,' p. 80, Signet edition.)
The Christian religion revolves around the giving what is
undeserved, namely salvation. By her own admission (the character speaking
is a cut-out for Ms. Rand herself), she loathed "most" people. Christians are not to loathe but to love their neighbor "as
thyself." Ms. Rand's misanthropy is no improvement over what she is condemning. She
was an eye-witness to the Bolshevik Revolution; she was twelve when it
happened, and endured the hard years that came after: the collapse of the
economy, the Civil War, and the ever-expanding intrusiveness of the authorities,
before escaping to America. She is telling of what she has seen when she
traces, in 'We the Living,' the strange saga of a country where people
camp out at the local train station on the off chance that a train might
happen by, some time, and where finding food is the daily mission of
everyone's life. This book would likely be more widely read were its
heroine's character more appealing. Its literary quality is higher than her
more widely-read works, because it is a book about real people, or people
who might be real, in a real world which she herself had experienced, not
rape fantasies about imaginary people from never-never land.
Man as he was did not fit into the Communist system, so he must be cropped
to fit in his Procrustean bed: "To produce a new, 'improved version' of
man — that is the future task of Communism." (Leon Trotsky, quoted p.
734, 'A People's Tragedy, The Russian Revolution,' by Orlando Figes).
The disease is appalling enough, though Ms. Rand's proposed remedy
shocks the reader as well. Her reaction against Bolshevism was so
intense that she threw out the baby with the bath-water; she discarded
not only Communism, but democracy also, believing in a "democracy of
superiors only," (quoted in Jennifer Burns, 'Goddess of the Market: Ayn
Rand and the American Right,' p. 44). Out with the bath-water went even
humanity itself, except for those few exceptional, creative souls in
whom she perceived value. There can be no political disease so dire the
only remedy is misanthropy! The disease is the "New Soviet Man":
"The New Soviet Man, as depicted in the futuristic novels
and utopian tracts which boomed around the time of the revolution,
was a Prometheus of the machine age. He was a rational, disciplined
and collective being who lived only for the interests of the greater
good, like a cell in a living organism. He thought not in terms of
the individual 'I' but in terms of the collective 'we.' In his two
science fiction novels, Red Star (1908) and Engineer Menni
(1913), the Bolshevik philosopher Alexander Bogdanov described a
utopian society located on the planet of Mars sometime in the
twenty-third century. Every vestige of individuality had been
eliminated in this 'Marxian-Martian society': all work was automated
and run by computers; everyone wore the same unisex clothing and
lived in the same identical housing; children were brought up in
special colonies; there were no separate nations and everyone spoke
a sort of Esperanto. At one point in Engineer Menni the
principal hero, a Martian physician, compares the mission of the
bourgeoisie on earth, which had been 'to create a human individual,'
with the task of the proletariat on Mars to 'gather these atoms' of
society and 'fuse them into a single, intelligent human organism.'"
('A People's Tragedy, The Russian Revolution,' by Orlando Figes, p.
734).
Ms. Rand perceived a kinship between Communism and Christianity unseen by
others, alleging that Christianity "is the best kindergarten of communism
possible." (Jennifer Burns, 'Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the
American Right,' p. 43). Both systems do encourage what sociologists call
'altruism,' but for different reasons. One cannot deny there is a historical
thread trailing between heterodox groups like the Munster Communards and
modern Communism, but not because these groups had seized hold of Biblical
truth. Chesterton said, "The modern world if full of the old Christian
virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated
from each other and are wandering alone." (G. K.
Chesterton, Orthodoxy, Kindle location 369). The BIble truth that the
early church had all things common has drifted away from the Bible truth
that God commanded, 'Thou shalt not steal.' Peter stresses to Ananias and
Sapphira that they were free to contribute their property to the common fund
or keep it under their own control. There are elements of Christianity the
Marxists admired, but when they wrested these from the matrix in which they
were embedded, in process of prying them loose, they distorted and broke
them.
Christians, who believe all men are
made in the image of God, do not devalue human individuality. Neither do
they idealize mobs: "Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil..."
(Exodus 23:2). Marxist materialism assigns value to human beings en masse
which it withholds from them individually. Ms. Rand described the common
thread as, "motivation by the value of others versus your own independence."
(Jennifer Burns, 'Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right,'
p. 43). Certainly in heaven Jesus enjoyed "independence"; but He
nevertheless "...made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a
servant, and was made in the likeness of men. . ." (Philippians 2:7). In the
inverted scheme of 'Objectivist' ethics, this counts as immoral. Humility is
a vice to Ms. Rand, not a virtue:
"Discard the protective rags of that vice which you called a virtue:
humility — learn to value yourself, which means: to fight for your
happiness — and when you learn that pride is the sum of all virtues, you
will learn to live like a man." (John Galt's speech, Ayn Rand, p. 970, 'Atlas
Shrugged').
Yet by humility we emulate even God!
In Ayn Rand's critique of Christianity, Christians come across an
unfamiliar phrase: 'the greatest good for the greater number.' What is
that? It's not found in the Bible. Several nineteenth century British philosophers who were
themselves atheists devised a moral system in which that slogan was
advanced as the criterion of right and wrong. These philosophers, though
not themselves Christians, always claimed that their new discovery was
compatible with Christian ethics. Ayn Rand conflates the two into one
super-system; but can its two components, Christianity and utilitarianism,
remain yoked together without drawing apart? At crucial points, such as the
question 'does the end justify the means,' the two systems head off in
opposite directions. Lately Sam Harris, dreaming again of an atheist utopia in
spite of the spectacular failure of all prior atheist utopias, has revived
this system:
To see that what happened to Russia never happens again, the testimony of
eye-witnesses must be kept alive. Ms. Rand's personal testimony as a
survivor of Communism was invaluable. Her diagnosis of the problem was not.
Russia was not destroyed by an outbreak of Christian altruism.
"'Nonsense,' said Kira. 'It is an old and ugly fact that the
masses exist and make their existence felt. This is a time when they make it felt with particular
ugliness. That's all.'"
(Ayn Rand, We The Living, p. 49, Signet edition.)
What is to Be Done?
Ms. Rand's ethical philosophy assigns immense value to some
individuals, little or no value to others: "What are your masses but mud
to be ground underfoot, fuel to be burned for those who deserve it?" ('We
The Living,' (first edition), Ayn Rand, quoted by Ronald E. Merrill, 'The Ideas of Ayn Rand,'
p. 38). Who is worthwhile and who is worthless? Apparently the capitalist free market
assigns these values well enough. Ms. Rand, and her devotees, have little
sympathy for those who are not rich, healthy and successful:
"Poverty is not a mortgage on the labor of others—misfortune is
not a mortgage on achievement—failure is not a mortgage on success—suffering is not a claim
check, and its relief is not the goal of existence—man is not a sacrificial animal on
anyone's altar nor for anyone's cause—life is not one huge hospital."
(Ayn Rand, The Voice of Reason: Essays in
Objectivist Thought, by Ayn Rand, Leonard Peikoff, Peter Schwartz, New American Library,
1989, p. 175.)
Her scale of values is, roughly, the inverse of the Sermon on the
Mount. The attentive reader of Moses' law will realize that poverty
is, in God's eyes, a sort of a mortgage on the fruits of others'
labors; see for instance His ordinance on gleaning:
"And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not
make clean riddance of the corners of thy field when thou reapest,
neither shalt thou gather any gleaning of thy harvest: thou shalt leave
them unto the poor, and to the stranger: I am the LORD your God."
(Leviticus 23:22).
You can agree with God on this or you can agree with Ayn Rand. The
'religious right' has taken the fork in the road that goes her way, toward
the "radiant greed" ('Atlas Shrugged,' p. 876) that Ms. Rand idealized.
Ms. Rand is indignant that the "thieving poor" would venture, through
progressive taxation and similar means, to take anything from the
"productive rich," and so her characters make it their aim to set things
right again:
"Well, I'm the man who robs the poor and gives to the rich —
or, to be exact, the man who robs the thieving poor and gives back
to the productive rich." (Ayn Rand, 'Atlas Shrugged,' p. 532).
Are social welfare schemes, including that enshrined in the Mosaic law, the depredations of
the "thieving poor" as Ms. Rand alleges? Where are God's sympathies along this social divide?:
While it's fair enough to help the deserving poor, the Christian virtue of charity shines
in helping the undeserving: ". . .but charity to the deserving is not
charity at all, but justice. It is the undeserving who require it, and the
ideal either does not exist at all, or exists wholly for them." (G. K.
Chesterton, Heretics, p. 99).
Impact
"But I am a big fan of Ayn Rand. I've read all of her
novels."
(Rand Paul, YouTube video, 1:21.)
During her life-time Ayn Rand attracted a small coterie of disciples.
The intensity of their devotion, and antipathy, is the fodder for
made-for-TV movies. Her books drew a surprisingly wide readership, given
the withering criticism to which the literary establishment subjected
her efforts. One very significant convert was Alan Greenspan, who was to
become the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, and in that capacity bring
to the American economy many of Ms. Rand's ideas. Economics can be
pursued as a rigorous, mathematical discipline, with its theories
carefully verified by amassing and comparing factual data. Or it can be
pursued as Ms. Rand pursued it, impressionistically and emotionally.
Unfortunately the American tax-payers were left on the hook to pay the
cost for some of her crack-pot ideas, such as the postulate that
governmental regulation of financial markets is always an evil to be
avoided. The financial melt-down of 2008 might have been avoided had
prudent regulation of credit default swaps been in place, as might well
have happened under different, less 'Objectivist,' leadership.
She wanted to be famous. Lack of movie-star looks restricted her
Hollywood acting career to service as an extra on, of all things, the
movie 'King of Kings.' After toiling without much recognition as a
screen-writer, she connected with the public with her novel 'The
Fountainhead,' about an architect who is enough of an egotist to excite
Ayn Rand's admiration. Her magnum opus, 'Atlas Shrugged,' took the
struggle of years to produce. After attracting an enthusiastic following
of young people, she became almost a cult leader. Defectors like Murray Rothbard
complained of the pressure toward conformity of this movement
which celebrated individuality: "For the moulding processes of the cult
did succeed in creating a New Randian Man – for so long as the man or
woman remained in the movement. People were invariably transformed by
the moulding process from diverse, often likeable men and women to grim,
tense, hostile poseurs – whose personalities could best be summed up by
the word 'robotic.'" (Murray N. Rothbard, The Sociology of the Ayn Rand
Cult).
Although some readers trace development and change in her writings, she herself felt that she
had been entirely consistent from her earliest childhood, and this perspective seems the most accurate.
Increasingly after her death, her ideas were taken up by the political
right wing, and she is in a real sense an architect of the world we now
live in. What is most astonishing is that many Christians do not
perceive anything 'off' about her vision, and gladly join forces with
those on the right wing who champion her ideals. This woman hated God
and despised everything Christians believe.
Who Created God?
Who created God? No one, God is uncreated.
"Writing to Jasper
Crane, [Rose Wilder] Lane described the scene after hours of
conversation: 'I was giving up, and murmured something about
creativeness being obvious everywhere; and she struck me
down by responding triumphantly, obviously feeling that she
destroyed my whole position in one stroke, with the
childish: "then who created God?" I saw then that I had
wholly misjudged her mental capacity. We parted amiably and
I haven't seen her since.' In Lane's recollection she was
alienated both by Rand's statement and her manner; Rand
spoke 'with the utmost arrogant triumph,' giving Lane a
'"that squelches you" look' as she delivered her final
question."
(Jennifer Burns, 'Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and
the American Right,' pp. 138-139.)
There is an argument in natural theology which runs, 'The things we see
do not exist forever and of themselves, but come into existence and pass
away. These are contingent beings, capable of existing or not existing.
But not all things can depend for their existence upon another in this
way; there must be at least one necessary being, or how did the chain of
becoming and passing away get underway in the first place? There must be
at least one entity which is self-existent, or why is there something
rather than nothing?' Certainly the atheist may respond, 'But there can be
no such entity. You are positing a sort of entity of which no one has any
experience. Infinite regress is no more of a problem than is infinity
itself.' Or, 'There are many such entities, none of them God, such as:
time, space, the universe, matter, the unchanging laws of nature, etc.'
Even conceding a necessarily existent being, atheists are entitled
to complain at the casual ease with which Christians leap the chasm
between the Deity of natural religion and the God who became incarnate
in Jesus Christ: 'How do you know that this necessarily existent Entity, if
there is any such, cares about you?'. Indeed at this point natural theology
closes up shop and retreats in the face of revelation. However, the snappy rejoinder, 'Who created God?'
is no contribution to the discussion, given that the theist
identifies God as the one necessary being. If He were created, He would
not be God! A reasonable abstract of the argument must include, 'God, if He
exists, is not counted among the creatures.'
Ms. Rand it would seem was unaware of any such ongoing discussion. There was
no room for it in her paradigm, for she defined religious faith as
irrational, saying "the alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is
only a short-circuit destroying the mind. . ." (Ayn Rand, 'Atlas
Shrugged,' p. 932). Ms. Rand was an admirer of Aristotle, yet when her
Catholic friends, who shared her enthusiasm for this pagan philosopher, reproduced Aristotle's arguments, she did not recognize
them.
Another author has come to the fore lately who shares Ms. Rand's
philosophical skill set:
"Nevertheless, the declaration of a First Cause still leaves
open the question, 'Who created the creator?' After all, what is the
difference between arguing in favor of an eternally existing creator
versus an eternally existing universe without one?" (Lawrence M. Krauss, A
Universe From Nothing, p. xii.)
What is the difference? Universe = set of contingent things. God = if
He exists, exists necessary and not contingently. This rejoinder, 'Who created God?,' as
childish as it seems, boasts an imposing set of subscribers, from John
Stuart Mill onward: "If everything must have a cause, then God must have a
cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be
the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument. .
.There is no reason why the world could not have come into being without a
cause; nor, on the other hand, is there any reason why it should not have
always existed. There is no reason to suppose that the world had a
beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due
to the poverty of our imagination." (Bertrand Russell, Why I am not a
Christian, Kindle location 58). Russell's "everything must have a cause,"
can be tightened up, 'everything that can be or not be, must have a cause,
external to itself, why it is.' Far from an assumption owing to "the
poverty of our imagination," it is our common experience to
observe things coming to be and passing away; that is the way of the
world, though not of all things in it. Russell alleges that we could
arbitrarily assign 'necessary existence' to anything at all, let us say
'seaweed,' and this would work out just as well. But the fact that entire
epochs have inched their way along down the hallways of time without any
'seaweed' putting in an appearance, makes 'seaweed' a poor candidate for
the first cause. Since there was a time when it was not, it cannot have
brought the universe into being. Why is there something rather than
nothing? That this is an unanswerable, indeed unimaginable, question for
the atheist, but not for the theist, is a manifest advantage for theism:
How did Ms. Rand perceive religious people? Were they sincerely
mistaken? Were the experiences they interpreted as God getting ahold of
them to be otherwise explained? They are phonies who only want
to control people, especially people like Ms. Rand who think for
themselves:
Love Thy Neighbor
That we are to love our neighbor is neither common sense nor the
universal consent of mankind. It is rather a dictate of revealed
religion:
"You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD."
(Leviticus 19:18).
"You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so? Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect."
(Matthew 5:43-48).
Not everybody wants to follow Jesus on this point:
"Commenting one of [Rose Wilder]
Lane's book reviews, Rand criticized Lane's invocation
of 'love thy neighbor as thyself,' and her discussion of
mutual effort. She warned Lane that both could be construed
as supporting collectivism. . .In her reply Rand emphasized
that although human beings might choose to help one another,
they should never be obligated to do so, and certainly they
should never help another person to their own detriment. .
.She told Lane, 'each man's fate is essentially his own.'"
(Jennifer Burns, 'Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and
the American Right,' p. 121.)
As already noted, Ayn Rand situated Christian ethics somewhere on the
slippery slope leading down to Bolshevik collectivism. Rose Wilder Lane
(daughter of the 'Little House on the Prairie' author) errs also in
trying to characterize love of one's neighbor as natural human behavior:
"Lane also rejected Rand's atomistic view of the world,
recalling her frontier childhood to illustrate human
interdependence. She described a typhoid epidemic in her small
prairie town: 'People "helped each other out," that was all. . .It
was just what people did, of course.'" (Jennifer Burns, 'Goddess of
the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right,' p. 122).
But it isn't 'just what people do,' of course, because people do
that and they also do other things. Is it more natural for
people to stand and watch the Vikings pillage their peaceful little
hamlet, the strong preying upon the weak, or for them to work
together to build the decent human communities of the
American midwest? People are born with an inner voice urging them to
the right: ". . .for when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature
do the things in the law, these, although not having the law, are a law to
themselves, who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience
also bearing witness, and between themselves their thoughts accusing or else excusing them.
. ." (Romans 2:14-15). But that inner voice is not so loud nor
insistent that it cannot be squelched. Are people who sit every
Sunday morning hearing exhortations to love their neighbors, as did
Rose Wilder Lane's neighbors, more or less likely to do these things
than devotees of Ayn Rand's philosophy, who are taught that helping
the needy is immoral?
Ayn Rand does not altogether forbid human beings from helping one
another. If you are in love, you may give gifts to your beloved, even
sacrificially; you do this after all for your own sake, because it makes
you smile to see your beloved enjoying your gift: "One gains a profoundly
personal, selfish joy from the mere existence of the person one loves."
(Ayn Rand, 'The Virtue of Selfishness,' p. 51). What is aimed at must always
be selfish:
"Do you ask it it's ever proper to help another man? No—if
he claims it as his right or as a moral duty that you owe him.
Yes—if such is your own desire based on your own selfish pleasure in
the value of his person and his struggle. [...] But to help a man
who has no virtues, to help him on the ground of his suffering as
such, to accept his faults, his need, as a claim—is to accept the
mortgage of a zero on your values. . .Be it only a penny you will not
miss or a kindly smile he has not earned, a tribute to a zero is
treason to life and to all those who struggle to maintain it."
(Speech of John Galt, Ayn Rand, pp. 970-971, 'Atlas Shrugged').
Imagine, you are not even to smile at the unsuccessful, though a smile costs nothing! Ms. Rand is no champion
of what she calls "brother-cannibal love." ('Atlas Shrugged,' p. 891).
In this bleak landscape, a ray of light shines: human sympathy is allowed with friends. What Jesus said even the
tax collectors do, being good to their friends, is permitted: "The practical
implementation of friendship, affection and love consists of
incorporating the welfare. . .of the person involved into one's own
hierarchy of values, then acting accordingly. But this is a reward which
men have to earn by means of their virtues and which one cannot grant to
mere acquaintances or strangers." (Ayn Rand, 'The Virtue of Selfishness,' p. 53). A mother may sacrifice for her
child, but only if she does not do this because she thinks she ought to. But to give to the needy
simply because they are needy is strictly forbidden; this must not be done,
either by the government or by private individuals.
To love as God loves: to lovely the unworthy, the unlovely, counts as a
vice in Ms. Rand's moral code:
Inasmuch as Ms. Rand was not raised as a Christian, I don't know if she was ever chided for failing to love her
neighbor, but she bitterly resents the implication anyway: "But when it
comes to love, the highest of emotions, you permit them to shriek at you
accusingly that you are a moral delinquent if you're incapable of feeling
causeless love." (Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, p. 946.) Just as she did not
love her neighbor, Ms. Rand was quite certain that no one else did either,
they were all just faking it: "Since childhood, you have been hiding the
guilty secret that you feel no desire to be moral. . .The less you felt,
the louder you proclaimed your selfless love and servitude to others, in
dread of ever letting them discover your own self, the self that you
betrayed, the self that you kept in concealment, like a skeleton in the
closet of your own body. . .Existence among you is a giant pretense, an
act you all perform for one another, each feeling that he is the only
guilty freak. . ." (Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, pp. 963-964). It seems that
Rose Wilder Lane might have corrected her misperception that caring for
others is 'just what people do' by studying her friend Ayn Rand, who was
sure it was all a hoax!
Students of ethics delight in hypothetical cases. Ayn Rand dislikes
charity toward the poor, whether the charitable hand is extended from
the government or from a private party. But after all, perhaps poor
people are shiftless and irresponsible; perhaps no one is to blame for
their plight but themselves; it's complicated. So simplify: the
unfortunate person making a claim on our sympathy is a flood victim,
swept away in the raging currents: do we jump in to save him, or not?
Ms. Rand bristles at the question, perhaps because she knows her
answer will strike most people as wrong. Her answer is no:
"The psychological results of altruism may be observed in the fact that a great
many people approach the subject of ethics by asking such
questions as: 'Should one risk one's life to help a man who
is: a) drowning, b) trapped in a fire, c) stepping in front
of a speeding truck, d) hanging by his fingernails over an abyss?'
"Consider the implications of
that approach. If a man accepts the ethics of altruism, he
suffers the following consequences (in proportion to the degree of his acceptance):
"1. Lack of self-esteem — since his first concern in the realm of values is not how
to live his life, but how to sacrifice it;
"2. Lack of respect for others — since he regards
mankind as a herd of doomed beggars crying for someone's
help.
"3. A nightmare view of existence —
since he believes that men are trapped in a 'malevolent
universe' where disasters are the constant and primary
concern of their lives.
"4. And in fact,
a lethargic indifference to ethics, a hopelessly cynical
amorality — since his questions involve situations which
he is not likely ever to encounter, which bear no relation to
the actual problems of his own life and thus leave him to
live without any moral principles whatever."
(Ayn Rand, 'The Virtue of Selfishness,' p. 49.)
Of course hypothetical questions involve situations unlikely to occur
to most people, most of us will never find ourselves seated in a
life-boat. The people who asked her these questions wanted to unmask an
immoral system of ethics, her own, because in her system the
well-dressed, successful business-man standing on the shore is not to
jump into the water to save the drowning child, because he is
worth infinitely more than the ordinary child and it would be a crying shame for
the more valuable person to perish and the less valuable one be
preserved:
"To illustrate this on the altruists' favorite example: the
issue of saving a drowning person. If the person to be saved is a
stranger, it is morally proper to save him only when the danger to one's
own life is minimal; when the danger is great, it would be immoral to
attempt it: only a lack of self-esteem could permit one to value one's
life no higher than that of any random stranger." (Ayn Rand, 'The Virtue
of Selfishness,' p. 52).
Ms. Rand errs in diagnosing the motive to self-sacrifice as low
self-esteem, though her acolyte, one-time boy-toy Nathaniel Branden, would
make a career out of marketing this concept, which became immensely
popular in educational circles:
"In the heady days of the 1960s when the
self-esteem movement really began to take off, a psychologist called
Nathaniel Branden rose to prominence as one of its big-name thinkers. Once
linked with the objectivist philosopher Ayn Rand, and a promoter of her
thinking, Branden is one of the smartest and most articulate contributors
to the self-esteem story of the last half -century (and certainly not a
supporter of simplistic boosterism). In 1969 he published one of the
early-landmark volumes on this theme, The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem." (Harrison, Glynn (2014-01-28). Ego Trip: Rediscovering Grace in a Culture
of Self-Esteem (Kindle Locations 1576-1580). Zondervan.)
Jesus did not leave His home in heaven because He suffered
from low self-esteem, and we who imitate His example share His motives,
not spurious ones:
Jesus gave His life as a ransom for many, but not because He was
thinking, 'Oh, these people are worth so much, and I am worth so
little.' Showing unmerited favor to others allows us, even in our own
small way, to emulate God. What could be grander than the ambition to be
like God?
God's evaluation is the inverse of Ayn Rand's. Jesus died, not for
the valuable, but for the "ungodly:"
"For when we were still
without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous
man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates
His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:6-8).
The people for whom the Lord was willing to die had no merits, no virtue. His self-sacrifice counts as a
vice in Ms. Rand's ethical system.
Like L. Ron Hubbard, Ms. Rand was a novelist before she was a cult
leader; her fiction was not just honey to make the poison go down, though
she did encapsulate her philosophy of life in her work.
Some years ago there was a New Yorker cartoon where the boss tells his troops
gathered for a Christmas party, as best I recall, 'We could never have
achieved what we accomplished this year without you people, or people
much like you.' We can all be replaced. When the NFL football players went
on strike, the owners continued to send teams out onto the field. The players were not as skilled,
but many viewers felt it was still worth watching. Because the first impulse of ownership
is to replace striking workers, in Big Labor's hey-day, the government
took that option off the table. Only then could the labor movement
flourish. However, in Ms. Rand's literary imagination, if her heroic CEO's
ever go on strike, the country is ruined.
Ms. Rand's heroic capitalism is not the capitalism of the lawyers. Not
the share-holders, a crowd of pusillanimous second-handers, occupy center
stage, but the solitary, visionary CEO:
"No" isn't the right answer; she is supposed to be trying to make money
for these contemptible little "small stockholders," who own the enterprise. But Ms. Rand despises
stock-holders, because they are many; her megalomaniac CEO's are her only point of contact with capitalism.
The very people to whom the CEO might be thought answerable represent the enemy herd,
whom he must resist at all costs: "'Then why is it that throughout man's
history the Nat Taggarts, who make the world, have always won — and always lost it to the men of the Board?'"
(Ayn Rand, 'Atlas
Shrugged,' p. 475). The heroic CEO's enemies are the very people the
lawyers think he answers to. Do corporate lawyers not understand
capitalism, or is the problem with Ms. Rand?
In this imagined parallel capitalist universe, it isn't anonymous toilers in the R & D Department who
invent the corporation's new technology, but the CEO himself. Though there never
was a more 'collectivist' enterprise than the modern corporation, which sets in motion armies of humanity to achieve
common goals, Ms. Rand sees only one man, the CEO. Her big corporations are
one-man shops, super-sized. They are run like the pharmacy the Bolsheviks
stole from her father, only bigger. It is distinctly odd to stage a defense
of the big corporation on the grounds of individualism.
Her heroes and heroines: Kira Argounova, Howard Roark, Hank Rearden,— leave the reader
wondering: Are they heroic, or high-functioning autistic? They do not understand
their fellows. They lack the instinctive sympathy that makes the rest of us cry in the darkened movie theater when
the little girl loses her dog; others of their kind are a mystery to them,
as if they had just parachuted in from another planet. But her stories are
not stirring tales of how these outsiders finally connect; rather, the unfeeling
ones are right, and everyone else is wrong. What seems a disability is a
virtue, the only virtue, in Ms. Rand's ethics: these people live for
themselves, not for others.
"He made a step back and said in a strange
tone of dispassionate wonder, 'We're a couple of
blackguards, aren't we?'
"'Why?'
"'We haven't any spiritual goals or
qualities. All we're after is material things. That's all we
care for.'. . .
"The accusation did not trouble her, she
never thought of herself in such terms and she was
completely incapable of experiencing a feeling of
fundamental guilt. But she felt a vague apprehension which
she could not define. . .
"Then, as she watched him, the
apprehension vanished. He was looking at his mills beyond
the window; there was no guilt in his face, no doubt,
nothing but the calm of an inviolate self-confidence.
"'Dagny,' he said, 'whatever we are, it's
we who move the world and we who'll pull it through.''"
(Ayn Rand, 'Atlas Shrugged,' pp. 87-88.)
Ms. Rand embraced Aristotle, because she was indignant at those
philosophers, such as Kant, who make the perceived world a collaborative
project between man's mind and whatever is out there. Aristotle promised
reality. She based her ethics on man's nature, not Nature's God.
Nature, for Aristotle, is what happens always or for the most part. So it is
odd to discover that virtue is possible only for the super-human few, and that most
men have no part nor share in. . .man's nature. How can this be? 'Human nature' cannot be what
none but a scattered few Nietzchean supermen possess. The problems with this
system of ethics only begin with its founding in a 'nature' which it turns
out hardly any one has. It does not help that Ms. Rand fluctuates between
near-total misanthropy and a popular, optimistic self-help approach: 'You,
too, can be a Nietzchean superman.' Her supermen are tragic figures, because
no one understands them; their glory is that they accomplish great things,
but it may be that in the end they accomplish nothing, other than to
dynamite their own buildings or trash their own business empires like Francisco d'Anconia.
So what exactly is their boast: that if the world were different, they could have done great things? Like Marlon Brando
says in 'The Waterfront,' "I could have been a contender"? These world-changers
are hot-house plants demanding special conditions in order to flourish, namely true
laissez-faire capitalism, a state of affairs Ms. Rand herself lamented had
never actually existed in this country. Sometimes Ms. Rand, though she
despises the weak, sounds like she is whining: "There is only one
kind of men who have never been on strike in human history. Every other kind and class
have stopped, when they so wished, and have presented demands to the
world, claiming to be indispensable—except the men who have carried
the world on their shoulders, have kept it alive, have endured torture as
sole payment, but have never walked out on the human race." (Ayn Rand,
'Atlas Shrugged,' p. 677). "Torture as sole payment"? We should feel
guilty that we were not worthy of them, or so it would seem.
Before ethics comes psychology, an understanding of how man's mind and
character function. Ms. Rand eliminates every force or impulse but reason.
Since human nature is rational by definition, motives are what a thinking
subject freely chooses. Of course one could be mistaken: what seems
attractive may be destructive. But it should be
possible to talk people out of alcoholism or any other of the many wrong
choices people make in life. The shipwreck of her love-affair with Nathaniel Branden, a.k.a. Nathan Blumenthal,
which resulted in a highly public falling-out, dramatized for
many observers the incompleteness of this understanding of human nature.
Biblically, sin is not a mistaken opinion but bondage: "Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you,
Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin." (John 8:34). The hold it
has on human beings is not loosened by talking them out of it.
What would actually happen if Ms. Rand's visionary CEO's went on strike,
as is the premise of her magnum opus, 'Atlas Shrugged'? Nothing; no one
would notice. The bench of human talent is much deeper than that, and
expecting the CEO to do everything, as she does: invent the products, manage
the enterprise, self-finance,— shows the advantage of division of labor. You
can hire people to do these things, you know. One great invention of human
ingenuity: leveraging other people's labor to achieve monumental works not
attainable by the lone individual or small band, is an apple into which her 'capitalist'
heroes can never bite. And so these ersatz capitalists end up as small-time
shop-keepers in a small town in Colorado! Perhaps like Ms. Rand, they simply
never grasped how much there is to be gained by harnessing a large number of
people to a common task:
"The doctrine that 'human rights' are superior to 'property rights'
simply means that some human beings have the right to make property out of others; since
the competent have nothing to gain from the incompetent, it means the right of the incompetent
to own their betters and to use them as productive cattle." (Ayn Rand,
'Atlas Shrugged,' John Galt's speech, p. 973).
"The competent have nothing to gain from the incompetent:" Ms. Rand's
heroic CEO's do not need their thousands of workers so they left them on the road to Galt's Gulch, thus showing
them up as useless parasites. But real life capitalism continues to employ them, because corporate capitalism took the opposite road from Galt's Gulch,
a small-scale subsistence economy whose largest enterprise is no
bigger than the pharmacy the Bolsheviks stole from her father. Because there are large numbers of people marching along the corporation's
path to success or failure,— workers, share-holders, customers,— there are competing
constituencies with an interest in the outcome. These people are not
parasites or interlopers but people with a legitimate stake, who have contributed something to the success of the venture, if not as
much as Ms. Rand's megalomaniac CEO's.
Know Thine Enemy
The reader will recall what Ms. Rand's life ambition was: "I want to be known as the greatest champion of reason and the greatest
enemy of religion." Did she understand her enemy? She perceived the central feature of Christianity to be
unmerited favor:
And indeed, the central feature of Christianity is a great, unearned
gift, that Jesus Christ died for us, the strong for the weak, God for man,
the righteous for sinners: "For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,
that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through
his poverty might be rich." (2 Corinthians 8:9). Grace is unmerited favor.
Those who don't want it, as she did not, must consistently with their
principles reject the gospel, as indeed she did.
Her ethic forbade acceptance of a gift: "We, who live by values, not by
loot, are traders, both in matter and in spirit. A trader is a man who
earns what he gets and does not give or take the undeserved. A trader does
not ask to be paid for his failures, nor does he ask to be loved for his
flaws." (Ayn Rand, 'Atlas Shrugged,' p. 935). If you do not want what is
undeserved, you do not want to be saved. As Martin Luther put it, "We are
beggars all."
If someone invites you to a 'Tea Party,' Christian friend, flee in the
other direction, as from a fire, lest your garment get singed and you come
away smelling like smoke.
Antitheses
The Bible and Ms. Rand are on opposite tacks, not on one or two points but on point after point after point.
Some samples:
Did the children of Israel despise unearned wealth?
"I have given you a land for which you did not labor, and cities which you did not build, and you dwell in them; you eat of the vineyards and olive groves which you did not plant."
(Joshua 24:13).
"So it shall be, when the LORD your God brings you into the land of which He swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give you large and beautiful cities which you did not build, houses full of all good things, which you did not fill, hewn-out wells which you did not dig, vineyards and olive trees which you did not plant—when you have eaten and are full—then beware, lest you forget the LORD who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage."
(Deuteronomy 6:10-12).
Our God loved us while we were yet sinners:
"We love Him because He first loved us." (1 John 4:19).
Thus the Bible. Ms. Rand:
Our God is a gift-giver:
"But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one
many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded
unto many." (Romans 5:15).
But some people won't accept a gift, it is a matter of principle with them:
Our Lord came to give His life as a ransom. He is the lamb of God:
"The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world."
(John 1:29).
This grosses some people out:
Christ lives within the believer; for the Christian, to live is Christ:
"I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me."
(Galatians 2:20).
"For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ."
(1 Corinthians 2:16).
"For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain."
(Philippians 1:21).
But in Ms. Rand's ethics, it is forbidden to live for or through another;
it's actually 'vile':
But in Christianity, a pinch-hitter did live our life, hanging for us
on the cross, bearing the penalty we deserved, and we have His mind in us;
and for that matter we accept His assertions as facts. Do you think she is
talking about us?
God commands and His people obey:
"And said, If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the LORD thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians: for I am the LORD that healeth thee."
(Exodus 15:26).
But that's bad, too:
The Bible diagnoses the human condition:
"Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me."
(Psalm 51:5).
Some people not only do not accept the diagnosis, but are indignant to hear it offered:
"For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows."
(1 Timothy 6:10).
Ms. Rand did not misconstrue the saying; she heard it correctly. She is
naming Paul as a looter. As noted before, she considers Christianity to be situated
on the slippery slope leading downward to Bolshevik confiscation. The reason
she identifies these two very different tendencies can hardly be
satisfying to a Christian: both assign the source of values somewhere
other than in the self-interest of the human ego:
Both differ from Ms. Rand's elevation of selfishness, because both
bring in values from outside. But outside the door might be heaven or hell. This is hardly a strong enough link between
Bolshevism and Christianity to justify Ms. Rand's guilt-by-association critique. 'God' is not 'society,'
nor are the two terms in any way commensurate:
"Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance: behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little thing."
(Isaiah 40:15).
Both systems derive the source of morals from somewhere other than private selfishness.
In that they both differ from Ms. Rand's system. However she is assigning
a very large space to herself if it therefore follows that they are
similar to each other merely because they are unlike her system. Ms. Rand
does take the trouble from time to time to trace out common threads
between the mystics of spirit [Christians] and mystics of muscle
[Commies], as for instance,
However, since neither Christians nor Commies express the intent of turning people into zombies, this
'common link' is more satisfying to Ms. Rand and the proponents of her
system than it is to the people she is talking about.
Like the gnostics of old, when Ms. Rand heard the Garden of Eden story,
her sympathies lay with the serpent:
Ms. Rand herself identified her religion as "man-worship:" ". . .I
would identify the sense of life dramatized in 'The Fountainhead' as
man-worship." (quoted p. vii, Introduction, Anthem). In
Anthem, 'Prometheus' says, "I wished to know the meaning of things. I am
the meaning." (Ayn Rand, Anthem, Chapter XI, p. 94.) Man is a fine
creature but a paltry god, however he is the only god she knew, as she expressed in purple prose,
"There is some word, one single word, which is not in the language of men, but which had been. And this is the Unspeakable Word, which no man may speak nor hear.
[...] "And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since man came into being. . .
"This god, this one word: 'I.'" (p. 49 and p. 97, Ayn Rand, Anthem).
Ms. Rand embraced Aristotle, because she was indignant at those
philosophers, such as Kant, who make the perceived world a collaborative
project between man's mind and whatever is out there. Aristotle promised
reality. She based her ethics on man's nature, not Nature's God.
Nature, for Aristotle, is what happens always or for the most part. So it is
odd to discover that virtue is possible only for the super-human few, and that most
men have no part nor share in. . .man's nature. How can this be? 'Human nature' cannot be what
none but a scattered few Nietzchean supermen possess. The problems with this
system of ethics only begin with its founding in a 'nature' which it turns
out hardly any one has. It does not help that Ms. Rand fluctuates between
near-total misanthropy and a popular, optimistic self-help approach: 'You,
too, can be a Nietzchean superman.' Her supermen are tragic figures, because
no one understands them; their glory is that they accomplish great things,
but it may be that in the end they accomplish nothing, other than to
dynamite their own buildings or trash their own business empires like Francisco d'Anconia.
