Introducing Jennifer Burns on Ayn Rand

Jennifer Burns, a history professor with the University of Virginia, has a new book out called Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right. I don't have time to review the entire book at this time, so for now I'll merely make a few notes about Burns's introduction.

The first thing to note about Burns's book is that it is a thoroughly researched, scholarly book. It was published by Oxford University Press, among the most respected academic publishers in the world. Burns includes an eight-page "Essay on Sources" (pp. 291-298). Her notes consume another 45 pages, and her bibliography takes another fifteen pages. Clearly she's worked hard on it.

Unfortunately, Burns seems to have a superficial understanding of some of Rand's main ideas. However exhaustive her historical research, Burns is not likely to shed as much light on Rand as she might with a better understanding of what Rand was about. I'll address a few quotations from Burns's introduction in the order they appear. Please note that my purpose here is to point out some of Burns's missteps, so I don't review the great lines from the introduction. And of course I readily acknowledge that Burns may fill in some of the needed context further in her book. Again, this is only a first and limited take.

"Ideas were the only thing that truly mattered, [Rand] believed, both in a person's life and in the course of history," Burns writes (p. 1).

Rand certainly believed that one's explicit and implicit ideas basically set the course of one's life, and that similarly the dominant ideas of a culture basically set the course of a society. Yet Burns overstates the point. One's friends, one's romantic love, one's career -- these are not ideas, they are values. And they are of central importance to a person's life. Ultimately, for Rand, the entire point of developing sound ideas is to help us achieve the values we need to live successfully. Burns's comment on the point is not wildly misleading, but neither is it a careful summary of Rand's beliefs.

On the second page, Burns writes:

Along with her most avid fans, she saw herself as a genius who transcended time. Like her creation Howard Roark, Rand believed, "I inherit nothing. I stand at the end of no tradition. I may, perhaps, stand at the beginning of one." ... The only philosopher she acknowledged as an influence was Aristotle. Beyond his works, Rand insisted that she was unaffected by external influences or ideas. According to Rand and her latter-day followers, Objectivism sprang, Athena-like, fully formed from the brow of its creator.

While again Burns's comments reveal grains of truth, on the whole they mislead. Rand correctly thought that she made important and original contributions to philosophy. But the notion that she thought she "transcended time" in the sense intended is silliness. She thought no such thing. All Burns is doing here is parroting unfounded smears she's heard others make.

Now, there is a sense in which Rand saw any authentic, consistent creator as timeless. Steven Mallory says of The Fountainhead's Howard Roark:

I often think that he’s the only one of us who’s achieved immortality. I don’t mean in the sense of fame and I don’t mean that he won’t die some day. But he’s living it. I think he’s what the conception really means. You know how people long to be eternal. But they die with every day that passes. When you meet them, they’re not what you met last. In any given hour, they kill some part of themselves. They change, they deny, they contradict – and they call it growth. At the end there’s nothing left, nothing unreversed or unbetrayed; as if there had never been an entity, only a succession of adjectives fading in and out on an unformed mass. How do they expect a permanence which they have never held for a single moment? But Howard -– one can imagine him existing forever. (page 452 of the small paperback)

However, we should also remember here that Roark purposefully entered the tutelage of architect Henry Cameron, and Rand herself found inspiration for the novel in the work of Frank Lloyd Wright.

Rand makes a similar comment regarding her own literary timelessness in her introduction to The Fountainhead. She quotes Victor Hugo: "If a writer wrote merely for his time, I would have to break my pen and throw it away." She writes that Romantic art "deals, not with the random trivia of the day, but with the timeless, fundamental, universal problems and values of human existence." Rand then paraphrases Aristotle that art properly concerns itself "not with things as they are, but with things as they might be and ought to be." Notice here that, in a single page, Rand acknowledges three of her influences, Aristotle, Hugo, and the Romantic school generally.

What of Roark's comment that he inherited nothing? It is useful here to consider the context of that quote. Roark has just been kicked out of architecture school. The dean of the school is trying to talk (what he regards as) sense into Roark. The dean says (page 24), "Nothing has ever been invented by one man in architecture. The proper creative process is a slow, gradual, anonymous, collective one, in which each man collaborates with all the others and subordinates himself to the standards of the majority."

To this, Roark replies, "But the best is a matter of standards -- and I set my own standards. I inherit nothing. I stand at the end of no tradition. I may, perhaps, stand at the beginning of a new one."

Here Roark is saying that, rather than subordinate one's judgment to the standards of the majority, one should develop and stand on one's own judgment. He is further saying that, in architecture, he does not wish to follow in any established architectural tradition, but rather create buildings of his own, unique and fitted to their site. Notably, by this time, Roark has already found inspiration in the work of Cameron, who holds similar views on the importance of independent judgment.

If we wish to adapt Roark's insight to the realm of philosophy, we can say that one should not just blindly follow in some philosophical tradition just for the sake of belonging to that school. But, if by one's own judgment, one finds value in the insight of some school, then obviously one should integrate that insight into one's body of knowledge. Roark happily learned from the engineering tradition and adapted that knowledge to his own work.

The mere fact that Roark says he might "stand at the beginning of a new" tradition shows that Roark has nothing against tradition per se. In philosophy I can learn from Rand and other philosophers in the same way that in architecture Roark learned from Cameron and his engineering professors.

What about Burns's claim that the "only philosopher she acknowledged as an influence was Aristotle?" This has better grounding: in her "About the Author" note for Atlas Shrugged, Rand writes, "The only philosophical debt I can acknowledge is to Aristotle." Rand particularly praises Aristotle's "definition of the laws of logic and of the means of human knowledge." However, it is important to understand just how profoundly important Rand thought Aristotle was. Rand also appreciated and learned from thinkers like Aquinas, Locke, and Thomas Jefferson -- whom she counted as essentially in the Aristotelean line. So, by acknowledging a debt to Aristotle, Rand is not cutting herself off from all subsequent thinkers; she is acknowledging Aristotle's influence on those thinkers.

Notably, Burns here overlooks Rand's further acknowledgment in the next paragraph to her husband, Frank O'Connor.

Beyond the realm of philosophy, Rand acknowledged the American movies of her childhood, the economist Ludwig von Mises, the authors Hugo and Dostoevsky, and many others. In her introduction to The Fountainhead, Rand blasts Nietzsche's ideas but finds value in him "as a poet" who "projects at times (not consistently) a magnificent feeling for man's greatness."

Is Burns correct that Rand thought of herself as a genius? She denied it when her student and heir Leonard Peikoff called her a genius. Peikoff recounts her words on page 350 of The Voice of Reason: "My distinctive attribute is not genius, but intellectual honesty." In answer to Peikoff's persistence, Rand added, "One can't look at oneself that way. No one can say: 'Ah me! the genius of the ages.' My perspective as a creator has to be not 'How great I am' but 'How true this idea is and how clear, if only men were honest enough to face the truth.'"

Granting Rand's penchant for dramatic statements, Burns's talk about Rand thinking she was a genius who "transcended time" is, in the sense intended, untrue.

Next consider a strange paragraph from Burns on page 3:

[Rand's] indictment of altruism, social welfare, and service to others sprang from her belief that these ideals underlay Communism [etc.] ... Rand's solution, characteristically, was extreme: to eliminate all virtues that could possibly be used in the service of totalitarianism. It was also simplistic. If Rand's great strength as a thinker was to grasp interrelated underlying principles and weave them into an impenetrable logical edifice, it was also her greatest weakness. In her effort to find a unifying cause for all the trauma and bloodshed of the twentieth century, Rand was attempting the impossible.

But what is simplistic here is Burns's reading of Rand. First simply notice Burns's bias: she presumes at the outset that Rand's entire approach is basically wrong ("extreme," "simplistic," "impossible"). But Burns doesn't really illuminate Rand's basic approach. To begin with, we must know what Rand meant by "altruism" -- and what she thought about mutually beneficial human relationships -- to get any idea of where Rand was headed.

The deeper point is that altruism is an ethical doctrine (growing from certain metaphysical premises), and as such it is much broader than any political system. For instance, the altruism that Roark fights in The Fountainhead lies outside of the political system. Similarly, the altruism enacted at the manufacturing plant in Starnesville in Atlas Shrugged arises outside of any political program. While certainly Rand saw altruism as a central driving force of any collectivist political system, she attacked altruism (which she saw as inherently self-sacrificial) broadly, not merely as it pertained to politics.

Certainly Rand was influenced by her childhood experiences in Russia. But Rand's moral theories are not merely a product of her personal experiences or the historical era in which she lived, as Burns seems to suggest. Rand's unique moral theory of ethical egoism must be evaluated on its own terms as philosophy, not blithely dismissed as some rationalistic coping mechanism for childhood trauma.

Next, on the same page, Burns writes, "... Rand advanced a deeply negative portrait of government action. In her work, the state is always a destroyer, acting to frustrate and inhibit the natural ingenuity and drive of individuals."

Burns's statement here is simply false. Rand advanced a deeply positive portrait of government action that protects individual rights. She loudly praised the Founding Fathers of the United States. She vociferously denounced the anarchism of Murray Rothbard. She wrote an essay titled "The Nature of Government" in which she passionately defended the need of a rights-protecting government.

True, of her three main novels, two are set in periods in which the government has become corrupt and thus antagonistic to the requirements of human life. Yet Atlas Shrugged also features Judge Naragansett, who justly oversees the courtroom and studies constitutional law. In the Fountainhead, Roark's enemy is not a government bureaucrat but rather villains out to destroy his reputation and career. In the end Roark is vindicated by the government-run court.

On page 5, Burns writes, "Although [Rand] preached unfettered individualism, the story I tell is one of Rand in relationship..." This statement misrepresents Rand's theory of individualism, which has nothing to do with being a loner or avoiding relationships. Indeed, Rand's works are filled with deep friendships, passionate romances, and respectful business alliances. By individualism Rand means that the individual is the fundamental basis of moral value, not to be sacrificed to the collective. This sort of individualism incorporates healthy relationships with others.

Burns also writes, "For all her fealty to reason, Rand was a woman subject to powerful, even overwhelming emotions." But "fealty to reason," despite the common stereotypes of Star Trek, does not imply that one is cut off from emotion or experiences muted emotions. Indeed, Rand believed that only a devotion to reason as the means of cognition can give rise to a life of passion and joy. I think Burns's point here is that Rand could sometimes let her emotions get the best of her. Having watched some of her interviews, I agree that Rand could have a fiery temper. (While I share that tendency, I'm trying to overcome it.) But that's a different issue than whether "fealty to reason" conflicts with "powerful emotions."

Burns writes onto page 6 about Rand's system: "... Objectivism as a philosophy left no room for elaboration, extension, or interpetation..." Yet Burns's own bibliography disproves her statement here.

Burns correctly suggests that the social group surrounding Rand, led by the vicious and deceitful Nathaniel Branden, grew strange, unfriendly, and stultifying. I suppose that Rand would acknowledge as her greatest mistake getting tanged up with that catastrophe. The tendency Burns describes was deeply unfortunate. But it did not define Rand's broader social relations or her ideas. Thus, Burns is unfair to claim that Rand's "system" was "oppressive to individual variety." (And Rand did not advocate variety as such, but variety in the context of an individual's rational goals.)

Burns reveals her fundamental misunderstanding of Rand in the closing sentence of her introduction, which posits a "clash between [Rand's] romantic and rational sides." If Burns had any serious understanding of Rand's ideas, she would understand that no such clash is possible. Rand made some mistakes, but Burns doesn't capture their nature here.

If the introduction to her book is any indicator, Burns may have captured many important details about Rand's life, but she doesn't capture Rand the woman or the thinker.

Atlas Shrugged Relevant for Modern Times

The following article originally was published September 14, 2009, in the Longmont Times-Call.

Atlas Shrugged relevant for modern times

by Ari Armstrong

"Who is John Galt?" Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand's novel first published in 1957, is more relevant than ever. Modern political interventions from the bailouts to health controls mirror events of the book, and the novel reveals innovative moral themes behind the politics.

In response to heightened interest in Rand's answers to today's moral and political crises, a local group that promotes Rand's philosophy, Front Range Objectivism, is sponsoring a twenty-week Atlas Shrugged reading group in Longmont starting October 1.

Sales of the novel have surged, surpassing 300,000 copies in the first half of this year, a 250 percent increase over the same period last year. The novel has been discussed recently by media ranging from the New York Times and National Public Radio to Rush Limbaugh.

John Allison, who turned BB&T bank into a stable and profitable powerhouse, has credited Rand's ideas for some of his success and called Atlas Shrugged "the best defense of capitalism ever written."

Meanwhile, respected philosophers such as Tara Smith forge bright new paths in moral theory and other fields based on Rand's work.

What is it about Atlas Shrugged that draws continued interest?

While the novel features detailed treatment of complex moral and political ideas, including a challenging speech by the story's hero, it is first a classic work of literature.

Rand draws rich, psychologically complex characters, including great champions of industry and the arts as well as despicable villains.

Which reader can forget the driven railroad executive, Dagny Taggart, or her passionate affair with steel titan Hank Rearden? Or Dagny's manipulative brother James? Or the struggle of James's virtuous wife Cheryl to understand her husband's viciousness? Or the three students and their beloved professor who vow to "stop the motor of the world" until its producers can work on their own terms?

On one level, Atlas Shrugged is about politics. Interventions such as Troubled Asset Relief, General Motors, "cash for clunkers," numerous offices of czars, and pending legislation on energy and health reflect the political controls of industry chronicled in the novel.

Rand eloquently makes the case that the proper purpose of government is to protect individual rights, including rights to control one's resources and exchange goods and services with others voluntarily. Government should protect us against force and fraud and otherwise leave us free to pursue our business.

Yet Rand advocates much more than free markets. She explains why we need economic liberty to live successfully. We produce the things we need to advance our lives through reason, by understanding reality and then acting in the world to achieve our values. Houses, computers, foods, medical treatments, automobiles: all are produced by applying one's knowledge to the task of living well.

Reason requires freedom. One must be free to look independently at reality and pursue knowledge, wherever it may lead. To the degree that some resort to force, they shut down reason and impede productive advancement. To live as beings of reason, we must achieve political and economic freedom and a world in which people interact through persuasion, not force.

Rand pushes ever deeper, exploring the foundations of value. Rand's heroes are driven by a love of existence -- a passion to understand the world around them and live successfully in it. It is ultimately this commitment to living that grounds all values, Rand's heroes discover.

The villains of the novel, on the other hand, seek to block out and obscure their knowledge, cheat reality, and ultimately abdicate their responsibility to pursue their lives.

Several participants of a summer reading group commented that, though they'd read Atlas Shrugged before, reading and discussing it in greater detail almost turned it into a new novel. It is a long book with a complex plot and set of ideas. The heroes develop over many pages and story-months, so Rand's meaning is not always obvious.

If you have never read Atlas Shrugged, now is the perfect time. If you have read it before, consider returning to the novel to mine its riches. It is a work capable of changing its reader -- and the world.


Ari Armstrong publishes FreeColorado.com. For more information about the Atlas Shrugged reading groups, see FrontRangeObjectivism.com.

Atlas Shrugged Reading Groups in Denver, Longmont, Colorado Springs

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

WHO IS JOHN GALT?
SURGING INTEREST IN AYN RAND'S ATLAS SHRUGGED SPURS STUDY GROUPS

In response to record-breaking sales of Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged, readers will form study groups in Longmont, Denver, and Colorado Springs this fall.

Sales of Atlas Shrugged topped 300,000 for the first half of 2009, a 250 percent increase over that period last year (see http://bit.ly/1aT1r6). Readers see eerie similarities between the 1957 novel and recent events, particularly with government take-overs and bail-outs.

While Barack Obama said "I am my brother's keeper," Rand renounces such claims and champions the individual's moral right to his own life.

One participant of a summer group in Lakewood said, "The novel offers rich moral and political themes, and reading it during this 'interesting' period of our nation's history sheds light both on the novel and on the culture in which we live."

The Denver group, sponsored by the Auraria Campus Objectivist Club, starts September 15th.

The groups in Longmont and Colorado Springs, sponsored by Front Range Objectivism, start October 1st. These two groups assume that participants are already fans of the novel.

The groups will meet for twenty weeks from the fall through the spring. A person knowledgeable about the novel and Rand's ideas will moderate each group. For details see http://bit.ly/BuuaJ

Front Range Objectivism is an organization dedicated to understanding and advocating Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism along the Front Range of the Colorado Rockies.

Cuffy Geithner

I'm re-reading Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged right now, and this story sounds like it comes straight out of the novel:

Core Reforms Held Firm As Much Else Fell Away
In Triage Mode, Economic Team's Goal To Expand Fed's Power Trumped Others
By David Cho and Zachary A. Goldfarb
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, June 18, 2009

... Fresh from meeting with Obama, [Treasury Secretary Timothy F.] Geithner asked the lobbyists what they were up to. When they explained they preferred that a council of regulators, rather than the central bank, safeguard the financial markets, Geithner silenced the discussion with a string of obscenities, according to people who were present.

"I don't believe in rule by committee," he said. ...

Apparently, in Geithner's world the only alternative to "rule by committee" is rule by a strong man.

Are you paying attention, friends?

Brook Addresses Virginia Republicans

Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Center recently offered a keynote address for the 2009 Republican convention in Virginia.

If you are a Republican -- or if, like me, you hope for a Republican resurgence along proper ideals -- please listen to this speech. The future of your party -- and the future of our nation -- depends upon the kinds of ideas that Brook discusses.

If you are an advocate of liberty and individual rights, watch the speech from the perspective of how to craft an effective message.

PJ on Antitrust

Recently I argued briefly against the Obama administration's threat to beef up antitrust persecution.

Now Pajamas Media has offered an outstanding video, "Obama Administration Cracking Down On Monopolies." Both Terry Jones of Investor's Business Daily and Alex Epstein of the Ayn Rand Institute do a fantastic job summarizing the flaws and destruction of the antitrust laws. If you are one of those "conservatives" who advocates central political control of this economy in this area, it is past time for you to reevaluate your views.

Classic Rand Interview

Playboy has published a 1964 interview with Ayn Rand online.

In two brief answers, Rand summarizes the essence of her philosophical beliefs:

PLAYBOY: What are the basic premises of Objectivism? Where does it begin?

RAND: It begins with the axiom that existence exists, which means that an objective reality exists independent of any perceiver or of the perceiver's emotions, feelings, wishes, hopes or fears. Objectivism holds that reason is man's only means of perceiving reality and his only guide to action. By reason, I mean the faculty which identifies and integrates the material provided by man's senses.

PLAYBOY: In Atlas Shrugged your hero, John Galt, declares, "I swear—by my life and my love of it—that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine." How is this related to your basic principles?

RAND: Galt's statement is a dramatized summation of the Objectivist ethics. Any system of ethics is based on and derived, implicitly or explicitly, from a metaphysics. The ethic derived from the metaphysical base of Objectivism holds that, since reason is man's basic tool of survival, rationality is his highest virtue. To use his mind, to perceive reality and to act accordingly, is man's moral imperative. The standard of value of the Objectivist ethics is: man's life -- man's survival qua man -- or that which the nature of a rational being requires for his proper survival. The Objectivist ethics, in essence, hold that man exists for his own sake, that the pursuit of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose, that he must not sacrifice himself to others, nor sacrifice others to himself. It is this last that Galt's statement summarizes.

The onslaught of bad news these days can seem overwhelming. We have political takeovers or attempted takeovers of major industries from banking to auto manufacturing to health care. Added to the dismal political news are natural problems like swine flu and earthquakes. It is, however, an opportune time to get back to fundamentals. Rand's masterpiece, Atlas Shrugged, has been flying of the shelf because, I think, more people than ever are concerned with the direction the world is headed -- and they're looking for a rational alternative.

Read the Playboy interview -- and don't stop there.

The Real Ayn Rand

Today's Denver Post published four letters about Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, three of them negative. But the negative letters don't actually offer any arguments against Rand's ideas, or even correctly summarize them. So I left the following online comments:

I want to clear up a few basic misconceptions about Ayn Rand's work. As Anders Ingemarson advises, read Atlas Shrugged for yourself, rather than assume that its detractors correctly summarize Rand's message.

Dick Sugg seems never to have read Atlas Shrugged. Regardless, he completely misrepresents its theme. The book is NOT about "winners... who make their fortunes by exploiting the losers." Instead, Rand favors a free society in which people cooperate to mutual advantage while respecting individual rights.

In the novel, Rand presents "honest, intelligent, hard-working people" as morally virtuous, productive members of society who make their own way. The exploiters, on the other hand, are the political looters and power-lusters who control the producers of all levels of ability.

Contrary to Sugg's claim, Rand did not oppose charity, and she certainly advocated just "regard for other people." Atlas Shrugged is filled with examples of virtuous friendships.

It is interesting that both Peter Johnson and Cathy Davis claim -- without a shred of evidence or logic -- that capitalism created the economic crisis. In fact political controls caused the economic crisis by promoting risky lending. For details, see the Ayn Rand Institute's web page devoted to the matter:
http://tinyurl.com/47urlw

As an aside, Ayn Rand opposed the libertarian movement, and Johnson's "libertarian" antagonism toward capitalism and his failure to grasp the destructive consequences of political economic controls help illustrate why.

Thanks, -Ari Armstrong
http://www.freecolorado.com/

Quillen Misses Atlas's Point

Ed Quillen, a columnist for the Denver Post whose work I often appreciate, recently wrote a snarky, misleading review of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. While his column illustrates -- and perhaps helps contribute to -- the continued popularity of the novel, his remarks could stand some improvement.

Quillen illustrates a common problem in interpreting the book. He says he read the book when he was 16, and apparently he hasn't read it since. Often kids read the novel without seriously understanding any of Rand's ideas or any of her literary subtlety, then, later, they complain that the book is juvenile based on their juvenile understanding of it. I too read Atlas Shrugged when I was around 16 or a bit older, but I didn't really get what she has to say until later in life. So read the novel as an older teen, and then read it again when you're 25, and perhaps again later on with Rand's other essays (the novel was published when Rand was 52, in 1957), and then write a newspaper column about it.

Quillen correctly indicates that the novel's plot is about what happens when, in the context of socialistic political controls of the economy, the producers go on strike. I've written about this as well, with my dad. Rand describes the strike of the novel as a "fantastic premise" and a "hypothetical case." Indeed, she explicitly wrote that she didn't think it is time to go on strike. Yaron Brook, head of the Ayn Rand Institute, also said the appropriate move is not to go on strike, but to fight back intellectually. Furthermore, the novel is not just about the producers going on strike; it is about them paving the way to return to a world of reason and political liberty.

Yet, as Rand was aware, higher taxes and more political controls do discourage and impede productive effort and sometimes encourage people to quit their paying jobs, so her premise does have its roots in reality. Furthermore, in a fully totalitarian society, producers should go on strike, either by leaving the country or fighting back.

But of course, as Brook indicates, the real theme of the novel is not just that producers should quit working in the face of increasing political oppression. If that's all you get out of the novel, you're not actually reading it. Rather, Rand builds a case for rational self-interest, which neither exploits others nor subjects one's self to exploitation, leading to a life of reason and a morality suited for living a successful, prosperous life on earth.

Quillen suggests that Rand's philosophy is similar to that of Nietzsche, despite the fact that Rand explicitly denounced Nietzsche's philosophy as irrational and deterministic. For more on this, see Robert Mayhew's essay, "We the Living: '36 and '59," in Essays on Ayn Rand's We the Living.

Next Quillen conflates the productive geniuses with those "trying to get their hands on even more public money." But Rand does not confuse independent producers with government moochers. Indeed, Atlas is filled with villains who are the sort of businessmen who seek political advantage, including the brother of the heroine, James Taggart.

Quillen argues that "there's little reason to worry about the withdrawal of some current Galt, since others might well be ready to step up to the plate." As evidence, he lists a few cases in which people independently came up with similar inventions. For instance, Leipniz invented the calculus along with Newton. But does Quillen seriously doubt that the world would be a different place, a worse place, had Newton never lived and contributed so much to physics, far beyond the discovery of calculus? What if both Leipniz and Newton had lived in the sort of world that crushed intellectual advancement?

Quillen then notes that he dislikes Microsoft, despite the fact that the company played a major role in the spread and development of the personal computer, and despite the fact that certain Microsoft products, such as Word, continue to be industry standards even on other platforms, including the Mac.

True, in any industry often a handful of individuals help build the industry. But a relatively small number of individuals built the modern computer industry, and our world would be a far different place without the likes of Steve Jobs, Stephen Wozniak, and Bill Gates. In many cases a single individual makes astounding advances that would not have been duplicated by others or that would have been delayed by decades if not centuries.

The question, then, is whether we want to build the sort of world that recognizes and rewards productive geniuses, and permits them the freedom to work according to their own judgment and reap the rewards of doing so, or a world that increasingly yokes producers with political controls, thereby impeding their progress.

Atlas Shrugged promotes a world of reason, rational self-interest, voluntary cooperation, progress, and liberty.

Brook on Atlas Shrugged Sales

Sales of Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged are off the charts.

In an article for the Wall Street Journal, Yaron Brook, president of the Ayn Rand Institute, explains the obvious reason and the deeper reason for this.

The obvious reason is that "Rand tells the story of the U.S. economy crumbling under the weight of crushing government interventions and regulations," something that is happening to our own economy to a degree.

But why was Rand able to project an economy in which these trends accelerated? It is because she was able to see the moral basis of political economic controls and the logical conclusions of those moral precepts. In short, Rand upheld rational self-interest and renounced self-sacrifice. Rand pointed out that rational self-interest, not sacrifice, is the true path to authentic love of (deserving) others, and that rational self-interest forbids exploiting others, whereas the morality of self-sacrifice demands it.

Thus, Brook explains:

Why do we accept the budget-busting costs of a welfare state? Because it implements the moral ideal of self-sacrifice to the needy. Why do so few protest the endless regulatory burdens placed on businessmen? Because businessmen are pursuing their self-interest, which we have been taught is dangerous and immoral. Why did the government go on a crusade to promote "affordable housing," which meant forcing banks to make loans to unqualified home buyers? Because we believe people need to be homeowners, whether or not they can afford to pay for houses.

Read the rest of Brook's article. And, if you have not yet read Rand's ground-breaking novel, now is the perfect time to do so.

Political Controls Provoke Producers to Go On Strike

The following article originally was published March 2, 2009, by the Grand Junction Free Press.

Political controls provoke producers to go on strike

by Linn and Ari Armstrong

The economy has recovered from every recession so far, so it's a good bet that, eventually, the economy will recover from the current recession as well. We can be sure that, so long as the recession lasts, Barack Obama will blame outside forces, and as soon as the recession has ended Obama will take the credit.

Assuming the economy starts growing again, it will do so in spite of, not because of, Obama's new forced wealth transfers and political controls of the economy. The controls of Obama, the Congress, and the state legislature, on top of earlier controls promoted by both political parties, threaten economic prosperity.

Such controls violate the rights of producers -- of doctors, engineers, programmers, builders -- to set their own destiny, control their own business and property, and interact with others on a voluntary basis. Political controls subject producers to the whims of bureaucrats.

Controls also forcibly transfer wealth from some people to others, thereby reducing the incentive to produce wealth. Around 40 percent of each new dollar earned goes to taxes. The deficit spending of Obama and George W. Bush threatens to impose the hidden tax of inflation.

When producers face the twin threat of bureaucratic meddling and confiscation of the fruits of their labor, many throw up their hands and either quit producing or cut back. They go on strike, in part or in full, loudly or quietly.

We have talked with countless friends who have decided to invest less or work less. Many would rather work on the house or the car, where at least their labor is not taxed, than spend more time in their chosen field where they are largely directed by bureaucrats and forced to hand over much of their earnings to others.

We have heard of doctors leaving medicine or certain specialties to avoid the associated bureaucratic nightmares.

We have heard of entrepreneurs who would rather sell their dreams to safe corporations than risk opening a new business under the regulatory nightmare of Sarbanes-Oxley and other controls.

We have heard the outrage of working-class families, who are struggling to make their ends meet even as they are forced to subsidize the irresponsible, such as the woman in California who added octuplets to her six prior children. We hear, "Why am I working so hard?"

This idea of a strike of producers is hardly new. In 1937, Harold Ickes, FDR's Secretary of the Interior, "gave a radio speech assailing America's wealthy, charging that sixty families who ran the nation were on strike against the rest of the country," writes Amity Shlaes in The Forgotten Man.

The next year, Wendell Willkie fired back at a similar claim made by Assistant Attorney General Robert Jackson. Willkie said, "Mr. Jackson has previously spoken of a 'strike of capital' against the government. If there is any strike of capital it comes from these millions of small investors, not from the wealthy few... The main problem is to restore the confidence of investors in American business, and to do this will require more than pleasant speaking on the part of government. For several years the government has taken definite action to show its hostility to business." [See This Is Wendell Willkie (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1940), p. 70.]

Ayn Rand, who lived through both the Russian Revolution and the Great Depression, made the idea of the productive strike the theme of her 1957 novel, Atlas Shrugged. For many years the working title was "The Strike." Rand described the theme as "what happens to the world when the Prime Movers go on strike."

Rand wrote of her "fantastic premise," a "hypothetical case" in which the world's top producers disappear, one by one. (Much of the drama takes place in a fictional valley near Ouray.) But the truth behind Rand's literary device remains: political economic controls discourage the producers from creating the wealth necessary for our lives.

Today the fantastic pushes through reality. In a touching YouTube video called "My Strike," a man begins his address by quoting Atlas Shrugged. He explains how friends of his have left their fields. He says, "Now I'm on strike... I woke up one morning and could not think of a single reason to come to work... We live in a time when billions of dollars of market capitalization can be wiped out by a single political speech, statutory command, or regulatory decree. And those politicians consume our lives as much as our dollars."

It's no wonder that sales of Atlas Shrugged have tripled over the same period last year, reports the Ayn Rand Institute.

Perhaps it's time for you to fold up this paper, roll up your sleeves, and get back to work. Because that's what we always do, right? We go back to work, no matter what the politicians do to us or how much they take from us. Until they cross that line and we the producers say, "No more."

Three on Rand

Yaron Brook writes in an Ayn Rand Institute media release:

Obama-nomics couldn't be more wrong. Prosperity requires that the government drastically cut government spending. That way, as much real capital as possible will remain in private hands, and be put to productive use by entrepreneurs to create valuable goods and services to sell at home and abroad. By taxing and inflating our wealth away, Obama will simply be creating more of the crushing debt that brought about the current crisis. You don't put out a fire with more gasoline. And you don't end a recession by destroying capital.

Keith Lockitch (also of the Institute) writes for the Washington Times:

Why is it that no matter what sacrifices you make to try to reduce your "environmental footprint," it never seems to be enough? Well, consider why it is that you have an "environmental footprint" in the first place. Everything we do to sustain our lives has an impact on nature.

And Stephen Moore writes about Atlas Shrugged for the Wall Street Journal:

For the uninitiated, the moral of the story is simply this: Politicians invariably respond to crises -- that in most cases they themselves created -- by spawning new government programs, laws and regulations. These, in turn, generate more havoc and poverty, which inspires the politicians to create more programs . . . and the downward spiral repeats itself until the productive sectors of the economy collapse under the collective weight of taxes and other burdens imposed in the name of fairness, equality and do-goodism. ...

The current economic strategy is right out of "Atlas Shrugged": The more incompetent you are in business, the more handouts the politicians will bestow on you.

Moore makes a couple of missteps -- what he describes is not "simply" the "moral of the story," which is much richer, and the Atlas Society that Moore mentions doesn't do justice to Rand's work -- but his article is worth a read, as are the other two pieces.

Ayn Rand's work is increasingly relevant in today's world.

Brook Makes Newsweek

Recently Newsweek interviewed Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand institute. He said a number of interesting things, only a few of which I'll quote here.

For the first time I'm aware of, Brook laid primary responsibility of the current crises at the feet of the Federal Reserve. He's claimed the Fed was a major cause; here he says:

The current crisis was caused by the housing bubble, and the primary cause of the housing bubble was the Federal Reserve keeping interest rates at 1 percent in 2003. They were asking people to borrow money, basically begging them. The financial problem we face today was a problem of overleverage, of too much debt -- but that's exactly what Federal Reserve policy encouraged.

Newsweek claimed that "AIG's downfall was due largely to credit-default swaps." Brook replied, "There's nothing wrong with credit-default swaps. If they'd let AIG fold, we would have discovered that. There's been no problem with the credit-default swap-market to date."

Citing the CFA Institute's 2008 Derivatives and Alternative Investments, Wikipedia explains:

A credit default swap (CDS) is a swap contract in which the buyer of the CDS makes a series of payments to the seller and, in exchange, receives a payoff if a credit instrument (typically a bond or loan) goes into default or on the occurrence of a specified credit event (for example bankruptcy or restructuring).

I haven't looked into why Newsweek thinks this was a key to AIG's downfall, or what role it actually played. It is clear, though, that the issue is peripheral to the mortgage meltdown.

Brook predicted renewed interest in Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged:

I think it's going to go up dramatically. I think it already has. [People] are saying, "We're heading toward socialism, we're heading toward more regulation." "Atlas Shrugged" is coming true. How do we get out? How do we escape?

Indeed, there's still plenty of time to put Atlas under the tree...

Rand on Prohibition, Hoover

Yesterday I briefly discussed Rand's take on Prohibition and FDR. Jeff Britting turned me on to a couple of comments that Rand made about Prohibition and Hoover. Mark Wickens looked up these quotes and sent me the result. Here's what Rand had to say:

Only one thing is certain: a dictatorship cannot take hold in America today. This country, as yet, cannot be ruled -- but it can explode. It can blow up into the helpless rage and blind violence of civil war. It cannot be cowed into submission, passivity, malevolence, resignation. It cannot be "pushed around." Defiance, not obedience, is the American's answer to overbearing authority. The nation that ran an underground railroad to help human beings escape from slavery, or began drinking on principle in the face of Prohibition, will not say, "Yes, sir," to the enforcers of ration coupons or cereal prices. Not yet. ("Don't Let It Go, Part II," The Ayn Rand Letter, Vol. 1, No. 5, December 6, 1971, page 21 of the bound volume.)

President Nixon opened the way for [McGovern] (just as another "conservative," President Hoover, opened the way for the welfare-state policies of President Roosevelt). ("The Dead End," The Ayn Rand Letter, Vol. 1, No. 20, July 3, 1972, page 85 of the bound volume.)

It has been an interesting hundred years, and I suspect our times will grow more interesting still.

Ayn Rand Doesn't Need a Bailout

The Following article originally was published on November 10, 2008, in Grand Junction's Free Press.

Ayn Rand doesn't need a bailout

by Linn and Ari Armstrong

Ayn Rand recognized a common pattern in the growth of political power: the enemies of liberty blame the free market for economic problems caused by government interference, then use those problems as a pretext for yet more political controls. Much of Rand's prescient novel Atlas Shrugged revolves around that cycle.

Now Rand's critics sound exactly like the villains of Atlas. They wouldn't attack her if they didn't recognize her as a barrier to their grand central plans.

Recently Alan Greenspan fueled the Rand hunt. In an October 23 statement to a Congressional committee, Greenspan said he had "found a flaw" in his ideology of "free, competitive markets."

There's just one problem with Greenspan's statement: he practiced no such ideology. For two decades, Greenspan served as Chairman of the Federal Reserve, a central-planning agency tasked with manipulating the money supply. Greenspan's flaw is that he long ago abandoned the ideology of liberty.

Two decades before becoming a central planner, Greenspan, while still in association with Rand, warned of the dangers of the Federal Reserve. In a 1966 article, Greenspan noted that, in the late 20s, the "Federal Reserves pumped excessive reserves into American banks." This "spilled over into the stock market -- triggering a fantastic speculative boom." Sound familiar? Greenspan became the monster he once warned against.

Today's crisis centers around risky home loans. But were these loans made on a free market? No. Instead, they were encouraged, and in some cases mandated, by the federal government.

Not everyone has forgotten Rand's wise criticisms of central planning. Before the election, we asked Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute to summarize the causes of today's crisis.

Brook answered, "The most harmful instances of government interference in the economy include, but are not limited to: the Federal Reserve Board's inflationary policy of keeping interest rates artificially low and the money supply artificially high, the government's hand in the creation and management of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, other government 'affordable housing' policies including the Community Reinvestment Act, and the policy of bailing out large financial institutions deemed 'too big to fail'."

Brook further explained the damage of government inflation: "As Ludwig Von Mises and other members of the Austrian school of economics stressed, inflation does not simply raise everyone's prices. It leads to massive, unfair redistributions of wealth. It starts with the injection of money into one sector of the economy, where participants are rewarded with higher prices for their products -- most recently, we saw an enormous redistribution of wealth to those involved in home-buying -- and then gradually spreads to drive up all prices higher than they would be absent the inflationary spending."

The cycle Rand warned about is in full force. Brook noted, "Unfortunately, despite a few enlightened and courageous voices out there, most politicians and commentators are blaming greed and the market for the current crisis and demanding more government control of markets as the solution -- and most of the public believes them. The media share the general cultural antipathy toward genuine capitalism, so they are inclined to publicize views that blame the market for today's problems."

Both major candidates for president followed that stock line. While John McCain also blamed unspecified "corruption in Washington," he emphasized the "greed and mismanagement of Wall Street."

Barack Obama blamed greed and deregulation, despite the fact that nobody can point to the repeal of a regulation that could have caused the crisis. By contrast, the mechanisms by which government controls caused the crisis are clear.

Obama's rhetoric ignores the nature of the free market, in which the government consistently protects the individual rights of each participant.

Can people be "greedy" on a free market? If that means they can pursue their own prosperity and happiness while respecting the rights of others, sure. If greed means people can use political force to get their way, then we're no longer talking about the free market -- we're talking about the sort of system that McCain and Obama advocate.

Does the government "regulate" the market by protecting property rights, resolving contractual disputes, arresting those who threaten and practice brute force, and rooting out fraud? In a sense, yes. But by imposing political controls that infringe people's rights, the government makes the market irregular and disrupts the rational plans of individual participants.

Unfortunately, Obama has sworn to impose even more economic controls. He wants more corporate welfare and more central planning for energy. He wants to further socialize medicine, even though costs are so high because of existing political controls of the health market. He wants increased federal spending, resulting in higher taxes or more deficit spending.

Obama's central plans are bound to create more economic problems, which he will no doubt blame on whatever liberty we have left. At least Rand through her works will continue to set the record straight.

Ayn Rand on Economic Crises

Congratulations to the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights -- newly established in Washington, D.C. -- for its recognition by Time.

The Center issued an outstanding release by Alex Epstein quoting Rand.

Epstein notes that some writers have blamed the spirit of Ayn Rand for the economic mess. He replies:

There was no free market in mortgages or finance--these markets were riddled with controls and distortions, courtesy of the Fed, Fannie and Freddie, the CRA, the FDC, and Sarbanes-Oxley. And that lack of a real market was precisely the problem; it induced irrational behavior through dictates, handouts, and bailouts.

If the critics of capitalism had bothered to read Ayn Rand, they would know that their attacks are part of a historical trend of blaming capitalism for the sins of government intervention -- a trend that needs to stop if we are to prevent further economic damage.

The release then quotes Rand from The Voice of Reason: "One of the methods used by statists to destroy capitalism consists in establishing controls that tie a given industry hand and foot, making it unable to solve its problems, then declaring that freedom has failed and stronger controls are necessary."

And in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, Rand wrote:

If a detailed, factual study were made of all those instances in the history of American industry which have been used by the statists as an indictment of free enterprise and as an argument in favor of a government-controlled economy, it would be found that the actions blamed on businessmen were caused, necessitated, and made possible only by government intervention in business. The evils, popularly ascribed to big industrialists, were not the result of an unregulated industry, but of government power over industry. The villain in the picture was not the businessman, but the legislator, not free enterprise, but government controls.

In related news, Diana Hsieh quotes from a release by Senator Jim DeMint, who writes, "This plan does nothing to address the misguided government policies that created this mess and it could make matters much worse by socializing an entire sector of the U.S. economy."

Support The Undercurrent

The Undercurrent asked me to spread the word about the publication, which I'm happy to do:

The Undercurrent (TU) is an independent, student-run Objectivist newsletter distributed twice a year to college campuses across America. TU is currently looking for distributors and donors for its fall edition, and will stop taking orders on or about September 22, 2008.

If you would like to distribute, please visit http://the-undercurrent.com/subscribe/ and buy your copies of TU today. If money is an issue, please contact Guy Barnett, our head of distribution, at guy**AT**the-undercurrent**DOT**com. There is limited funding from donors for students who want to buy and distribute TU but cannot afford to do so. If you're part of an Objectivist campus club, you may want to see if your college will fund distribution of TU as a club activity.

If you would like to donate, please visit http://the-undercurrent/donate/ and contribute directly using PayPal. ...

Spreading rational ideas on college campuses is critical to making this world a better place. Your assistance is necessary for the achievement of that goal.

Thank you for your support.

Why Harry Potter Fans Should Read Ayn Rand

This article originally appeared in Grand Junction's Free Press.

September 1, 2008

Why Harry Potter fans should read Ayn Rand

by Linn and Ari Armstrong

As September 1 marks the first day of school at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, we decided to ignore Colorado's political scene for the moment and focus on something truly important: great literature.

We've both long been fans of Ayn Rand's works. In fact, when Ari was young, Linn read aloud Anthem as a bed-time story. Anthem is Rand's novelette about a dystopian future in which people are known by numbers, not names, and the word "I" has been outlawed. The hero of the story rediscovers electricity in secret and eventually escapes with his beloved to freedom. The book inspired Ari's preoccupation with liberty.

More recently, Ari has grown passionate about another novelist: J. K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series. Ari has even written a book of literary criticism called Values of Harry Potter; see ValuesOfHarryPotter.com. In its focus on the heroic valuer, the book explores Rowling's themes of courage, independence, and free will, then critically examines her minor themes of self-sacrifice and immortality.

Ari's shared passion for Rand and Rowling is no coincidence. The two authors explore many of the same themes and offer their readers gripping, tightly plotted stories filled with great heroes, dastardly villains, and intriguing ideas. Fans of Rowling easily could fall in love with Rand's works, and vice versa.

Both novelists have written great Romantic works. In her introduction to The Fountainhead, Rand writes that Romanticism "deals, not with the random trivia of the day, but with the timeless, fundamental, universal problems and values of human existence." That helps explain why Rand's books remain strong sellers decades after their initial release and why Rowling's books have appealed to readers across continents in many languages. These are not stories of the neighbor next door and his neuroses. These are grand epics of monumental clashes between good and evil.

As Ari argues in Values of Harry Potter, the central theme of Rowling's novels is the heroic fight for life-promoting values. Harry and his allies fight courageously to protect their lives, loved ones, futures, and liberties from the vicious tyrant Lord Voldemort. For example, in Sorcerer's Stone, Harry gives a fiery speech to his friends Ron and Hermione, persuading them to take action against Voldemort to save their lives and world.

Rand's characters, too, fight passionately for their values. In The Fountainhead, Howard Roark refuses to compromise his integrity as an architect, even if that means he must work in a granite quarry or blow up a building that has ripped off and debased his design. In Atlas Shrugged, John Galt and Francisco d'Anconia walk away from their normal lives in order to finally subvert the evil men and ideas taking over the world.

After learning he's a wizard, Harry takes the Hogwarts Express to a magical world filled with wonder, possibility, and great champions like Professor Dumbledore. Hogwarts is Harry's escape from the oppressive Dursleys. In Atlas Shrugged, Dagny Taggart's Transconinental Railroad also symbolizes movement into a world of near-mythical champions such as the steel-producer Hank Rearden.

While Harry has Hogwarts, Dagny discovers Galt's Gulch, the place where her heroes live. After Dagny crash lands her plane in the Gulch, she experiences, "This was the world as she had expected to see it at sixteen... This was her world, she thought, this was the way men were meant to be and to face their existence..." It is to this spirit of youthful passion and confidence that both novelists remain true.

As Rand explains, free will is the foundation of Romantic literature, because free will is what enables a person's "formation of his own character and the course of action he pursues in the physical world." Because of the fact of free will, people can form or reform their characters and act for their values. This is the premise behind any compelling plot, which depends on the characters making and then enacting choices toward some goal. It is no surprise, then, that Dumbledore endorses free will, saying "it matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be."

Rowling and Rand share an interest in other themes as well. Both authors love liberty and hate tyrants; both John Galt and Harry Potter work outside the established government to fight those wielding power corruptly. Both authors present fiercely independent heroes who refuse to unquestioningly follow self-proclaimed authorities.

Of course the writers also have their differences. For example, while Rand solidly rejects religion, Rowling includes the Christian elements of self-sacrifice and life after death in her novels. Yet their similarities are more intriguing.

If you haven't yet read these novels, then you are in for an enthralling and potentially life-altering adventure. It is yours to discover your own Hogwarts or Galt's Gulch, not merely in the realm of imagination, but in your daily life.

Who Is John Galt? Letter Writers Prove Point

In a recent article, my dad and I criticize both McCain and Obama for their assault on individual rights. The article closes:

Ari feels free to mention that he's seriously considering writing in John Galt for president. With so many political "leaders" blaming liberty for the problems caused by political controls, and promising as the answer more severe controls, this election is starting to feel a lot like the world of Atlas Shrugged.

Two letter writers make my point for me.

Jim Ciha replies:

As a forward-thinking progressive not stuck in the capitalistic pro-gun mindset, it's always amusing to read Linn and Ari Armstrong's column. In their latest diatribe, Ari considers voting for Obama because McCain is the worst evil in the race but then he changes his mind (shocking!) and decides not to vote for Obama.

Now, it's pretty laughable to be told that Ari was ever considering voting for Obama when the two Armstrongs spend 13 paragraphs criticizing Obama and only two paragraphs criticizing McCain. The Armstrongs are such teasers. Just when you think they might turn into forward-thinking human beings working for the common good, they go ahead a fall back onto their hysterical Democrats-are-going-to-destroy-our-way-of-life routine. These Armstrongs are such kidders.

What's remarkable about this letter is that it does not contain a single argument. Instead, it accuses me of dishonesty, ignoring the fact that the article explicitly mentions another piece of mine from June 6 in which I lay out my case for voting against McCain by casting my vote with Obama.

Ciha claims that he is "forward-thinking," "progressive," not "stuck" in some mindset presumed (but not shown) to be wrong, and an advocate of "the common good," which of course Ciha doesn't bother to define.

Like I said, "this election is starting to feel a lot like the world of Atlas Shrugged."

In another letter, Robert I. Laitres writes:

The most recent Armstrong column ("How Obama lost another vote") provides us with another example of intellectual myopia and the resultant view of the world.

Some of us do agree that religious organizations have absolutely no business receiving tax dollars. What amazes me in the Armstrong position is that they obviously ignore an even larger group of "pigs at the trough."

We are speaking of industries, financial institutions and agricultural organizations who believe that they are "entitled" to subsidies and "incentives." It would seem that, it being a much larger problem, the Armstrong[s] might rail against those even louder. But they do not. ...

Where do the Armstrongs stand on those issues? Or is their belief in "corporatism" so deep that they cannot bring themselves to condemn the irresponsibility endemic in their philosophy and its consequences?

What of the reported food poisoning of thousands (the real figure is "reported cases" multiplied by 30 to 40) of citizens throughout the United States? Or are the Armstrong going to repeat their standard mantra of "The free market will take care of it?" It may, but after how many people have become sick and/or died?

Theory is fine, but even the Armstrongs will have to admit that people do not live in the theoretical world of John Galt? They live in, and have to deal with, the real one.

Laitress here simply accuses us of something of which are not guilty: accepting or in any way sanctioning "corporatism," understood here as granting select businesses political favors. We have indeed routinely and loudly condemned all forms of corporate welfare and political favoritism. (The fact that we did not do so in the cited column proves only that we can't solve the problems of the world in 800 words.) Yet Laitress tries to smear us with the corporatist position in order to discredit our free-market position, which is diametrically opposed to corporatism.

Laitres does bring up an interesting issue with poisonings; I assume he's referring to the cases of bacterial contamination. In response, I point out that the free market did in fact take care of it. As soon as it becomes known that a certain product is contaminated, stores immediately clear their shelves of the item, and the company responsible takes a huge financial hit. A free market operates under laws protecting individual rights, including torts that protect against harm. Nobody argues that under a free market everyone and every product is perfect. Yet Laitres implicitly condemns us for (non-existent) utopianism.

The part of Laitres's letter that reminds me of Atlas is his insistence that the "theoretical world" is not to be trusted. After completely misrepresenting what our theory actually is, Laitres suggests that theory per se is suspect. And according to what theory does Laitres make his arguments? He doesn't bother to inquire.

It's almost as though Ciha and Laitres were intentionally mimicking the minor villains of Atlas Shrugged.

Peikoff 17

I'm already a podcast behind, but here I briefly review Leonard Peikoff's seventeenth podcast, which deals mostly with matters of politics.

1. What is treason? Peikoff distinguishes between "giving aid and comfort to the enemy in wartime" from criticizing a war.

2. Is torture of wartime enemies ever appropriate? Peikoff answers that it's "moral when it's necessary to advance the war for freedom." The problem is that torture rarely yields useful information, he adds. It might be useful if, for example, the military has captured someone who knows about a bomb soon to detonate. It is a matter of tactics, but "not a primary or major issue of a war." I am curious whether those who absolutely oppose the use of all torture would hold their ground if U.S. forces captured a terrorist who had planted a nuclear bomb in a major U.S. city.

3. Can Objectivists be soldiers, police officers, or others devoted to "public service?" Peikoff answers that this is no different for doctors or other professionals. A soldier properly fights to preserve liberty for himself, his family, and his country, and to offer an engaging career. (I skipped another minor question before this one.)

4. Did Ayn Rand regret her "provocative tone?" Peikoff's answer here is too good for me to summarize; listen to the podcast.

5. Is reproduction a source of values from a biological perspective? "Of value to whom?" Peikoff asks. The notion of a sort of transcendent biological "value" is an instance of intrinsicism.

6. If you're engaged with someone (for athletics, sex, etc.), do you have a legal as well as a moral responsibility to help the person if they have an emergency health problem? Peikoff answers yes, because you've entered an implicit contract with them. I think he's right here, but the problem is that it would be rarely possible to legally enforce. But if you're having sex with somebody who wouldn't help you with a health emergency, you have bigger problems than your health.

It's a particularly fun podcast.

Brook Explains Freedom's Retreat

Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute has written another outstanding article for Forbes outlining the retreats from capitalism in South America, Europe, and the United States -- and explaining the causes of them.

It feels like the early stages of Atlas Shrugged. But we can turn the tide for the same reason that liberty has been slipping; as Brook writes: "There's no preordained direction for the world economy -- only an undetermined future that will take the shape of whatever ideas and policies we choose to uphold."

Brook points out, "Capitalism and the profit motive continue to be viewed with suspicion. ... This is why Barack Obama can get away with belittling the 'money culture,' his wife can smugly counsel youth to shun 'corporate America' and John McCain can brag about working 'out of patriotism, not for profit'."

Read the entire article.

Two New Ayn Rand Resources

The Ayn Rand Institute recently has launched two new web pages devoted to Ayn Rand and her work.

AtlasShrugged.com includes various essays about the novel and its history, several hours of video by Onkar Ghate featuring a "chapter-by-chapter discussion," and audio recordings by Ayn Rand and others.

FacetsOfAynRand.com reproduces in full the book by Marry Ann and Charles Sures. For me, the highlight of the web page is a collection of audio recordings by Mary Ann Sures, Leonard Peikoff, and others. So far I've listened to only a couple of the recordings, but they are delightful and fascinating.

These two new resources join the Ayn Rand Lexicon, which makes available extensive quotes from Rand's many works, organized topically.

Finally, AynRand.org makes available media releases and essays and, on the registered users' page (registration is free), an extensive library of audio and video recordings of Ayn Rand and others. For example, so far in 2008 the page has made available the lectures "Darwin and the Discovery of Evolution," by Keith Lockitch, and "The 'Market Failure' Fallacy," by Brian Simpson.

Though this material is available for free to the user, it is extremely valuable, and those of all backgrounds and levels can find many hours of illuminating discussions here. I applaud the Ayn Rand Institute for making these outstanding resources available to the general public.