Theirs is a human self-interest story
The morning lecture on “Ayn Rand: An Illustrated life,” has just ended, and the line for free coffee here at the Ayn Rand Centenary celebration in Costa Mesa is remarkably orderly. No pushing. No shoving. Most significant of all, no cutting in. For a three-day event that began with a lecture on “The Virtue of Selfishness,” score one for altruism.
They have gathered, these mostly middle-aged men and women, to talk of revolution, of upending an American culture that values altruism and disparages self-interest. In a nation whose founding document begins with “We, the people,” not “We, the individuals,” the revolution won’t happen soon, they agree. Nor will it be violent. Rather, it will come through the slow spread of the word -- Rand’s novels, which lay out her philosophy of objectivism.
This revolution will be proselytized.
“I’m trying to do my part, to plant a seed,” says objectivist Maryann Grau, 62, of Pasadena, sipping coffee from a cup-and-saucer set as fellow Rand enthusiasts browse tables selling books, tapes and T-shirts. “If you build a rational society, everyone doesn’t have to understand it, because if it exists, they will prosper, and people will be happy. It doesn’t require mass acceptance of a political philosophy.”
Rand’s 100th birthday passed Wednesday with scattered celebrations around the country, reflecting the author-philosopher’s unusual legacy and the outsider status of her followers, known disciple-like as Randians. There was a seminar at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and an objectivist dinner party in New York City. The most ambitious of the celebrations was this gathering at a Westin hotel, sponsored by the Irvine-based Ayn Rand Institute, whose mission, according to executive director Yaron Brook, is to “bring her ideas to every part of the culture, until we can claim victory.”
Brook, a former finance professor, believes the tide is beginning to turn their way. Sales of Rand’s books are stronger than ever, objectivist academics are landing college jobs, and lectures like this sometimes draw upward of 500 people.
On the political front, objectivists dismiss President Bush and the current regime of conservatives as too compassionate but approve of Bush’s “ownership society” concept -- though they believe Social Security should be dismantled, not just reformed. And the proposed 2006 budget Bush sends to Congress today calls for billions of dollars in cuts from the kinds of government programs objectivists find immoral -- farm subsidies, food stamps, housing and Medicaid.
But respect? Well, you can’t have everything.
“They call it a cult, they call it silly,” Bill Stoops, a 54-year-old aerospace program manager from Solana Beach, says of the movement’s critics. “But I think it’s reason-based. You either know things, or you don’t.”
Views of a philosophy
Rand once described her philosophy as the “concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life.” Followers say they are drawn to a clear worldview based on logic, observation and the primacy of the individual.
But when mainstream philosophers begin peeling away objectivism’s arguments, they find little more than a constructed defense of narcissism. They view it as an adolescent philosophy -- like a teenager trying to figure out his or her place in the world, an inquiry that begins and ends with self.
“It’s not taken very seriously -- it’s considered to be sort of a flat-earth type of thing,” says John McCumber, a UCLA philosopher and professor of Germanic languages. “My own personal problem is that selfish interest is taken to be the only moral consideration.”
Objectivism -- the polar opposite of socialism -- would unravel civilizations built on a premise of communal good. Government’s only purpose would be the physical protection of its citizens, and it would not have the authority to “coerce” taxes, depending, like Tennessee Williams’ Blanche DuBois, “on the kindness of strangers.”
“It’s a philosophy of social gridlock,” McCumber believes. “It’s ultimately begging too many questions for philosophers to take seriously.... It’s not a recipe for a happy and satisfying life, being out for yourself, above all.”
But followers aren’t necessarily looking for Rand to answer the same questions philosophers pose. Stoops says Rand’s insistence on reason as the foundation for a worldview matches his desire to understand the knowable.
“I don’t mind saying I don’t know something -- I don’t need a belief system” like religion, Stoops says, taking a break during the 90-minute opening-night lecture. “My dad introduced me to Ayn Rand books in high school. We didn’t talk about it in any kind of academic way. Just ... ‘This makes sense.’ ”
Rand herself was a curious character. Born to a well-to-do Russian family financially ruined in the Bolshevik Revolution, Rand moved to the U.S. in 1926. She worked in Hollywood as a movie extra, script reader and screenwriter, then moved to New York in 1934 to write books. Her first novel, “We the Living,” was published in 1936, “The Fountainhead” in 1943, “Anthem” in 1946 and her epic, “Atlas Shrugged,” in 1957.
Rand attracted a circle of acolytes -- a young Alan Greenspan was among them -- and was famously intolerant of those who disagreed with her, despite her insistence that individuals lead lives of total freedom.
She and Nathaniel Branden, her heir-apparent as objectivism’s standard-bearer, carried on a years-long “rational” love affair even though both were married. When he broke off the sexual relationship in 1968 -- he later cited their 25-year age difference -- she banned him from the movement. He’s now a Los Angeles psychotherapist and longtime advocate of the “psychology of self-esteem.”
Giving books to educators
Although Rand, who died in 1982, carries light regard among philosophers and literary critics, 500,000 copies of her books are sold each year. And the institute is trying to build cadres of objectivists by giving away her works -- 140,000 books so far -- to educators who will teach Rand in their classes; sponsoring student essay contests; supporting scholarship of Rand and objectivism; and trying to place objectivists in academia.
“History, time, ultimately is on our side, because we are not just sitting passively waiting for it to happen,” Brook tells followers during a presentation Saturday morning. “Let’s celebrate the fact that we’re going to win, so that the bicentenary celebrations will include an address by the [objectivist U.S.] president and fireworks over Manhattan and the nation’s capital.”
Yet the absolutism of Rand and her strict followers might be a tough sell for a society most of whose members believe in a god, and in a political framework that relies on compromise.
“If you compromise, what do you get? The compromise, not what you wanted,” Brook says. “We want real freedom and we don’t want compromise.”
That rigidity can seem cold. After the Indian Ocean tsunami, the institute criticized U.S. government relief efforts as a misuse of tax dollars. “In a fully free, fully capitalist society,” which the institute urges, “the government would not have the power to tax citizens and redistribute their wealth for the purpose of charity, domestic or foreign,” it said in an unsigned press release.
Brook has also drawn criticism for comments that land in pre-colonial North America was empty and here for the Europeans’ taking, and that European colonial empires improved the lot of the conquered, sidestepping such details as slavery and cultural eradication. Late last year, Brook argued that the military should value U.S. soldiers’ lives over those of Iraqis and target civilian populations where terrorists operated. The exchange on Fox News achieved the improbable -- making conservative interviewer Bill O’Reilly seem like a bleeding heart.
“I am suggesting we start bringing this war to the civilians ... who are harboring and helping and supporting the insurgents in Fallouja,” Brook said. “I would like to see the United States turn Fallouja into dust.”
“You can’t kill civilians,” O’Reilly responded, shaking his head. “You can’t burn their homes. You can’t do that.”
At the Westin this weekend, the tone was more genteel. Friday night, more than 300 people spilled out of a ballroom for a free lecture by institute Chairman Peter Schwartz on “The Virtue of Selfishness,” which was also the title of one of Rand’s philosophical works. Attendance at Saturday’s paid sessions -- it cost $510 to attend all of the institute’s centenary celebrations -- was less than half that.
Mark Wyckoff went to the free talk. An Upland bookstore clerk, Wyckoff, 26, said his girlfriend introduced him to Rand’s work more than a year ago, and he’s found some elements that make sense to him.
“I can’t say I agree with it all, and that’s a tough statement to make given the totality of objectivism -- there’s no gray area,” Wyckoff says. “I like to apply her emphasis on logic and reason in everyday life.... But how do you oppose multiculturalism and environmentalism?”
In fact, many Rand followers seem to view objectivism not as an overall political philosophy, but as a system for personal empowerment.
Grau, for example, recently retired early from advertising sales in part to follow in the footsteps of “The Fountainhead” protagonist Howard Roark, who pursued his art -- architecture -- with the heroic doggedness that comes with absolute faith in creative vision.
“My goal in life was always to write, so I quit [work] to learn to write short stories,” Grau says. “I may never get published, but I don’t care.”
