In the November 28 issue of the National Post, an article about Ayn Rand by Algis Valiunas was published. This article was originally published in the September 2005 issue of Commentary magazine and discussed the passing of Rand’s centenary the fact that it has gone relatively uncelebrated. Much of the article is a summary of Rand’s fiction and an overall fair summary of the themes and message contained in the novels.
In the last section of the article, Algis Valiunas ventures beyond journalistic summarizing and passes a verdict on the unmarked passing of Ayn Rand’s centenary. Typical of many of Ayn Rand’s critics, the focus of the critique is not specifically on the nature of her ideas, but a blend of misrepresentation and a one-sided exaggeration concerning personal aspects of her life.
As an advocate and adherent of ideas espoused by Ayn Rand such as reason, objectivity, and the sanctity of truth, I have decided to take on the task of challenging some of the prevailing myths espoused by the likes of Algis Valiunas. Instead of resorting to ad hominum and misrepresentation, I will present a response to the last section Valiunas’ article, paragraph by paragraph, with reference to what Ayn Rand actually wrote or said.
Valiunas’ opinion begins with the following paragraph:
Freedom, individuality, achievement, reason: Rand takes these and other fine ideas and pursues them to the limits of sanity. Rightly understanding Soviet Communism (and German National Socialism, which she considered its mad collectivist kin) as epitomizing the worst in ethical and political thought, she plunges to the conclusion that in its polar opposite will be found nothing less than perfection. And so, she embraces a utopian fantasy of her own: Only mingy compromise with collectivism stands in the way of the society without flaw, in which heroic individuals, loosed from Judeo-Christian tyranny with its insufferable God and foul altruism, will create the capitalist paradise.
Here, Valiunas identifies Rand’s accuracy in her understanding of the roots and the nature of the collectivist tyrannies that were Naziism and Communism; specifically their ethical and political basis being rooted in altruism and collectivism. Rand’s conclusion that the antipodes of collectivism and altruism – those of individualism and egoism – must be upheld consistently is derided as “utopian fantasy”. Instead, it can only be presumed that compromise between opposite and irreconcilable ideas should be strived for according to Valiunas.
Valiunas begins the series of context dropping beginning with the accusation that upholding a consistent system of ideas – which in Rand’s case is the inalienable right of the individual to be free from the initiation of physical force – is morally equivalent to the utopian fantasies of Stalin and Hitler. The fact that Naziism and Communism (and all variants of collectivist statism) were predicated on the necessity of the initiation of physical force against disarmed victims, whereas Rand advocated the rights of the individual to be free from the initiation of force, was not mentioned.
Let’s begin with what Rand actually said about compromise:
“A compromise is an adjustment of conflicting claims by mutual concessions. This means that both parties to a compromise have some valid claim and some value to offer each other. And this means that both parties agree upon some fundamental principle which serves as a base for their deal.” [VOS p. 68].
“There can be no compromise on basic principles. There can be no compromise on moral issues. There can be no compromise on matters of knowledge, of truth, of rational conviction.” [CUI p. 182].
“In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. In that transfusion of blood which drains the good to feed the evil, the compromiser is the transmitting rubber tube.” [GS, FNI p. 173]
In summary, there is no compromise between freedom and slavery. There is no compromise between food and poison. There is no compromise between life and death.
If a husband and wife disagree on how to spend an evening or businessmen disagree on what constitutes a fair deal, obviously a reasonable compromise can be made. The spouses agree to do what he wants tonight, and what she wants to do another night. The businessmen agree on a trade based on, say, market factors and their respective shareholders.
If a suicide bomber wants to blow up a cafeteria full of innocent people, there is no compromise on the moral status of the murderer, and those of the innocents. There is no compromise on the non-initiation of physical force as the axiom upon which a free society is based.
Valiunas evidently embraces the notion of a Judeao-Christian God and the ethical doctrine of altruism. Or, is there some sort of “compromise” between altruism and egoism? Is there, then, a compromise between a belief and non-belief ? Nothing was mentioned because there is no answer. For Valiunas to assert a belief, to make a positive statement of conviction, would require consistency. Consistency in upholding fundamental convictions is incompatible with the mind of a cowardly compromiser.
Valiunas continues with the following exercise in context-dropping and outright misrepresentation:
In her passion to reshape the world in accordance with her idea, Rand begins to sound like the tyrants she hates. Her capitalist revolutionaries speak of their opponents as “subhuman creatures,” “looting lice.” Galt’s radio address to the nation — he has commandeered the airwaves by some electronic magic — is positively Castro-like in its mad zealotry, running to over 50 pages and unfolding every half-truth and alluring lunacy Rand ever entertained.
Again, the political system and the underlying ideas that Rand advocates rest on fundamentally opposite ideas than those of Castro and his ilk. Without a literary context for the terms “subhuman creatures” and “looting lice”, it does not follow that the use of these terms in Rand’s fiction constitutes sounding like a tyrant. Even with a literary context, including an exciting plot line with almost larger than life villians and heroes (such as in Atlas Shrugged), “looting lice” and “subhuman creatures” are hardly vicious and unwarranted terms for various thugs and evil doers. Lastly, Valiunas neglects to mention that within the context of the story, the radio was being used by the story’s antagonists for the Castro-like purpose of spreading the propaganda.
Next, Valiunas highlights the depth of his ignorance on Ayn Rand and further discredits himself in providing an objective and accurate account of her ideas:
Everything in Rand’s thought depends on her faith in reason, her conviction that any question has a clear and definitive answer. This unlimited faith in reason damages her as a novelist — there are no mysteries in her world, including no mysteries of human character — and also severely limited her as a moralist and undid her as a woman.
Lets visit some of those “half-truths” and that “alluring lunacy” from Galt’s radio address to the nation:
“Do not say that you’re afraid to trust your mind because you know so little. Are you safer in surrendering to mystics and discarding the little that you know? Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life. Redeem your mind from the hockshops of authority. Accept the fact that you are not omniscient, but playing a zombie with not give you omniscience – that your mind is fallible, but becoming mindless will not make you infallible – that an error made on your own is safer than ten truths accepted on faith, because the first leaves you the means to correct it, but the second destroys your capacity to distinguish truth from error.” [GS, FNI p 178]. [Emphasis added].
Rand’s definition of reason was:
“Reason is the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses.” [VOS p 20].
The American Heritage Dictionary (4th edition, 2000) has two definitions of faith:
1. Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.
2. Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.
Based on the first definition of faith: to say Rand had a strong belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of reason, is a true proposition but is hardly an indictment because the concept of reason subsumes the concepts “truth”, “value”, and “trustworthiness”. Valiunas is essentially condemning Rand for having too much reason to uphold reason. What is this mysterious middle ground between reason and non-reason that Valiunus upholds? It is not mentioned because it does not exist.
Based on the second definition of faith, to say one has “faith in reason” is an utter contradiction because reason is logic, proof, and material evidence. How can one uphold the supremacy of logic, proof, and material evidence in the absence of logic, proof, and material evidence? Of course, this is impossible.
Finally, what evidence does Valiunas offer to suggest that Rand’s “faith in reason severely limited her as a moralist and undid her as a woman”? Nothing provided.
Since it is evident that Valiunas is incapable of refuting Rand’s ideas and providing any viable answers of his own, he finds it necessary to denigrate her character.
In Rand’s psychology, reason unfailingly determines emotion, never the other way around. But in her own erotic life, Rand was at the mercy of a turbulent unreason that pulled her under even as she burbled on about her unimpeachable rationality. As she could only love an extraordinary man, she endowed the man she married, Frank O’Connor, with all the qualities of a hero, even of a god. In fact, in almost everyone’s eyes but hers, O’Connor, a failure as a movie actor, was a raging mediocrity.
Let’s begin with what Ayn Rand actually said about emotions:
“Just as the pleasure-pain mechanism of man’s body is an automatic indicator of his body’s welfare or injury, the barometer of its basic alternative, life or death – so the emotional mechanism of man’s consciousness is geared to perform the same function, as a barometer that registers the same alternative by means of two basic emotions: joy or suffering. Emotions are the automatic results of man’s value judgements integrated by his subconscious; emotions are estimates of that which furthers man’s values or threatens them, that which is for him or against him – lightening calculators giving him the sum of his profit or loss.
But while the standard of value operating the physical pleasure-pain mechanism of man’s body is automatic and innate, determined by the nature of his body – the standard of value operating his emotional mechanism, is not. Since man has no automatic knowledge, he can have no automatic values; since he has no innate ideas, he can have no innate value judgements.
…[Man's] values, like all his premises, are the product either of his thinking or of his evasions: man chooses his values by a conscious process of thought – or accepts them by default, by subconcious associations, on faith, on someone’s authority, by some form of social osmosis or blind imitation. Emotions are produced by man’s premises, held consciously or subconsciously, explicitly or implicitly.” [Emphasis added] [VOS p 23]
Barring the presence of psychiatric disorder, in which case emotions can be strongly determined by neuro-chemical imbalances, it is an inescapable fact that emotions are a conseqence, not a cause. Even in the presence of psychiatric disorder, such as in the case of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), the use of medication is only a fraction of the therapy used. The role of cognitive-behavioural therapy in the treatment of pschiatric disorders rests firmly on the premise that your emotions are a consequence of your thoughts. Specifically in the case of disorders such as depression and OCD, your depressive, obsessive, and compulsive emotions are a product of improper and/or irrational thoughts. The goal of the therapy is to correct these thoughts and thereby correct the emotions.
From www.cognitivetherapy.com:
“Cognitive therapy teaches you how certain thinking patterns are causing your symptoms — by giving you a distorted picture of what’s going on in your life, and making you feel anxious, depressed or angry for no good reason, or provoking you into ill-chosen actions.”
Is Valiunas implying humans are mindless animals controlled by their emotions which are produced arbitrarily by the squirting of our glands? Again, he finds it easy to smash other people’s ideas, even if they are consistent with current therapy in psychiatry, without offering a positive answer of his own.
With regard to Valiunas’ assertions about Frank O’Connor and how Rand “burbled on about her unimpeachable rationality”, there is no evidence offered for either of these, so they are received as arbitrary and should be rejected out of hand. What evidence is offered to suggest Frank O’Connor was not an extrodinary man in the context of Rand’s life?
From the introduction to the Fountainhead p vi :
“I did not feel discouragement very often, and when I did, it did not last longer than overnight. But there was one evening during the writing of The Fountainhead, when I felt so profound an indignation at the state of ‘things as they are’ that it seemed as if I would never regain the energy to move one step farther toward ‘things as they ought to be.’ Frank talked to me for hours, that night. He convinced me of why one cannot give up the world to which those one despises. By the time he finished, my discouragement was gone: it never came back in so intense a form.” [Emphasis added].
You see, the heroism of Frank O’Connor to Ayn Rand was not intrinsic. Sure, Frank was not a superior artist nor did he hold some intrinsic heroic quality. His heroism was not subjective either. Rand did not impose, by the arbitrary creation of her mind, the status of a hero on Frank. Instead, his heroism was objective: it was bound by the context of his life and hers, and according to the values of Ayn Rand which are determined by her life as the standard of her values.
Typical of Ayn Rand’s detractors, the obsession with her affair with Nathaniel Branden provides a continued opportunity to point out her supposed lack of purity. I call it the “Jerry Springer Complex”. It stems from the same mentality that creates the huge market for sleazy day-time television shows and popularity of “reality tv” in which people make fools of themselves while observers revel in the depravity of others.
At the age of 49, Rand fell for yet another god, Nathaniel Branden, the husband of her biographer and himself a disciple younger than she by 25 years. She expounded the perfect reasonableness of their adultery to each of the injured spouses, whom she expected reasonably to accept their twice-weekly scheduled trysts in the bedroom she shared with her husband. After years of this, the Brandens’ marriage collapsed and Rand’s husband swirled down the alcoholic drain.
When Rand was 61 and Branden 36, the sexual fire went out for him and he found a younger lover. Rand nearly went insane in her jealousy. Maintaining that she was entirely reasonable and right, and Branden purely evil, she destroyed his professional reputation and banished him from the Randian kingdom.
Did Ayn Rand make a mistake in being involved romantically with Branden? No doubt. Was she wrong in thinking that she could pursue romantic relationships with two men, even if it was done in an honest fashion with all parties aware of the situation? I think so. What does that demonstrate then? It demonstrates that she was not Jesus, she was not God.
Followers of Ayn Rand do not uphold her as some type of other-worldly saint or goddess. She was capable of errors, and perhaps lived in contradiction with her own ideas from time to time.
For in-depth and a more comprehensive take on the Branden-Rand affair, refer to the book by James Valliant called “The Passion of Ayn Rand’s Critics”.
Lastly on this issue, Valiunas neglects to mention anything about Branden’s role in the affair and the demise of his association with Rand. Not being an expert (or even caring that much about the personal aspects of Rand’s life), I am at least aware with certainty that Branden was involved in serious dishonesty in his personal and professional life leading to his so called “banishment from the Randian kingdom”. Yet, Rand’s opponents continue their smear campaign while never mentioning any of the faults of Nathaniel Branden. Also, a good selection of Branden’s writings are considered core Objectivist literature and should continue to be regarded as such because of the superb application of ideas.
Interstingly, whenever liberals engage in smearing of their conservative opponents, they love to point to flaws and say, “see, look, Rush Limbaugh thinks he’s so great, yet he was addicted to pain killers! George Bush was a draft dodger! The Catholic Church? They’re just a bunch of child molesters.” In response, conservatives jump to the defence of the aforementioned people and institutions and plead that these flaws are ultimately irrelevant. Yet, when conservatives criticize Rand, it seems the primary thing of importance was the mistakes made in romantic endeavors. The hypocricy is stunning.
Taking one last jab at Ayn Rand’s ideas while continuing to offer scant basis for his assertions, Valiunas states:
Imagining herself one up on Heraclitus, Rand the thinker holds that a man’s mind is his character is his fate. She appears never to have given a thought to how one actually comes by one’s particular mind and character. She has no sense of human beings as creatures, each endowed with his own particular gifts, whether by chance or design, lacking other qualities he may wish he had, and subject to all the pains of individual and human nature. It is arguable that only from this awareness of incompleteness and contingency does there stem compassion for others, a quality rooted in rational human nature that has achieved its fullest expression in democratic society. But compassion disgusts Rand; John Galt scorns it as love of the unworthy, a triumph of sloppy feeling over lucid reason.
This is no doubt why, for all her continued popularity, Rand is anything but a commanding figure these days. Very few conservatives want any part of her, for she is the conservative bogeyman that liberals invoke to terrify their children. Though she will no doubt continue to sell — there are certain effects she brings off as well as anyone, and they have their undeniable appeal — it is hardly a matter for regret that her centenary has gone largely unmarked.
If man’s mind is not his character, then what is? Of course we are not all endowed with the abilities of geniuses. Of course we are not all endowed with the physical capacity of olympians. The point is that everyone should act and be the best according to their abilities, that is what matters.
Not content with biological determinism in the realm of emotions, Valiunas seems to be offering environmental determinism in the shaping of one’s character. Certainly, a person living in an affluent suburb of North America is exposed to many factors that influence his character differently than someone born into poverty in a small villiage in sub-Saharan Africa. So what? This does not dispute the volitional nature of man’s consciousness. This does not dispute the fact that all individuals require self-sustaining action in order to survive.
Regarding compassion, let’s see what Ayn Rand actually had to say:
“I regard compassion as proper only toward those who are innocent victims, but not toward those who are morally guilty. If one feels compassion for the victims of a concentration camp, one cannot feel it for the torturers. If one does feel compassion for the torturers, it is an act of moral treason toward the victims.” [Playboy interview, pamphlet 10].
Does Valiunas believe Bin Laden, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Che Guevera, and Saddam Hussein deserve compassion equal to that of their victims? Does compassion stem from understanding their flaws? Just what does Valiunas believe with regard to anything?
What is with the constant pleading for compassion from people like Valiunas. Ayn Rand never advocated complete disregard for others, to never offer genuine help to those in genuine need. What she opposed was the altruistic doctrine that said other people’s flaws, their faults, and their outright irresponsiblity for their own lives gives them a claim on the lives of others. She properly identified that this morality is the cannibal morality. This doctrine says that those who are able, must be sacrificed and/or subjected to any form of slavery because they are able. She properly identified that this morality turns everyone into either a victim or an oppressor and the benevolent nature of man is corrupted and ultimately dessimated. A slave is not showing benevolence to his slavemaster by producing for him under the threat of whips and guns, no matter if the slave is a black man on a cotton field, a concentration camp victim, or a successful business owner when his company confiscated during a socialist revolution.
Through all the twists and contortions and evasion of making a statement of conviction, Algis Valiunas reveals – albeit hesitantly- exactly what his premises are. On the nature of man: determinism. Man’s character is determined by his emotions and his environment. His emotions are inexplicable and constitute an irreducible primary. On ethics: altruism and the primacy of flaws. It is the flaws that carry all the weight, not people’s virtues. When critiquing an individual, their flaws must be highlighted above all their virtues. Compassion is a primary virtue because it rests on the “awareness of incompleteness and contingency” of others.
Contrary to this view, Ayn Rand wanted to demonstrate the efficacy of man’s mind, and the moral rights of the individual, not focus on flaws and faults. This means a commitment to rationality and recognition that you own your life and that you are responsible for your life. I believe that this is a far greater challenge than any other thinker has offered. It is so much easier to say “we’re all sinful by nature, I can’t help it. It’s original sin. As long as I beg for forgiveness, all is good.” It is also easier to say, “I don’t want to take responsiblity for my life, as long as the government is there to take care of me, everything is ok.”
It is rather ironic that so many of Ayn Rand’s harshest critics are conservatives. Algis Valiunas’ article was published in Commentary magazine and the National Post, two prominent conservative publications. Generally negative views on Rand can be found in the National Review and frequently voiced by Canadian conservative commentator Michael Coren . It is a paradox because these people are considered the supporters of capitalism and individual rights – issues which Ayn Rand offered a groundbreaking moral defense of.
Therefore, regarding conservatives, I will let Ayn Rand have the last word:
“What is the moral stature of those who are afraid to proclaim that they are champions of freedom? What is the integrity of those who outdo their enemies in smearing, misrepresenting, spitting at, and apologizing for their own ideal? What is the rationality of those who expect to trick people into freedom, cheat them into justice, fool them into progress, con them into preserving their rights, and, while indoctrinating them with statism, put one over on them and let them wake up in a perfect capitalist society some morning?
These are the “conservatives” – or most of their intellectual spokesmen.” [CUI p 194]
Sources from Ayn Rand’s books:
CUI – Capitalism the Unkown Ideal
VOS – The Virtue of Selfishness
GS – Galt’s Speach (from Atlas Shrugged)
