Ayn Rand, one of my favorite authors, is seen by many conservatives as “one of them”, as their “champion”, because she was totally opposed (and rightly so) to socialism and collectivism, supposed characteristics of “liberals” (at least in the American definition of the term).
However, conservatives have “stolen” Ayn Rand in pretty much the same way that Charles Manson “stole” Helter Skelter, a very good song by the Beatles. The song became associated with a repulsive murderer, while its creators never intended such a thing.
Like I said, it’s the same thing. I can’t say I love Rand’s books and philosophy without being seen as “conservative”. And yet…
- Ayn Rand was an atheist. Conservatives are mostly Christian (and usually pretty fanatical about it).
- Ayn Rand had no use for tradition. Conservatives worship tradition.
- Ayn Rand said that reason should be man’s only absolute. To conservatives, reason is irrelevant; what matters is faith, obedience, duty, tradition (again), etc..
- Ayn Rand believed in a minimal government. Conservatives like to convince themselves of the same, but in fact they want their governments to legislate morality, outlawing anything they believe to be “wicked” – even if done by consenting adults. (edit: if you don’t see what I mean here, read the 2nd comment)
- Ayn Rand believed in the heroic. Conservatives have no use for it.
- Ayn Rand believed that man’s own happiness is the moral purpose of his life. Conservatives believe in sacrifice to “the country” (much like socialists believe in sacrifice to “the people” – see, they aren’t so different after all), and servitude to God.
- Ayn Rand believed in progress (though not in the sense that socialists say “progressive”), and in improving our lives. Conservatives do everything in their power to return to “better times”, or, at least, to keep everything as it is.
- Ayn Rand believed that only rational beings have rights. Conservatives have no problem with killing people in a war (they’re foreigners, anyway), but believe embryos, which aren’t sentient and don’t even feel pain, are “sacred”, and can’t be harmed, even if it means sacrificing living people with diseases.
- Ayn Rand said that morality comes from rational principles. Conservatives believe it comes from God, that there is no rational reason to be “good” except that God wills it.
- Ayn Rand believed in the non-initiation of force. Conservatives invaded Iraq for no reason at all.
- Ayn Rand believed in freedom. Conservatives believe in freedom to agree with them.
And I could go on.
Dear conservatives: please stop trying to steal one of my favorite thinkers for yourselves. She wasn’t like you at all, and you are only showing that you never understood what she wrote (or never read it at all) in the first place. Thank you.
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Tags: definitions, objectivism
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You said, “Ayn Rand believed in a minimal government. Conservatives like to convince themselves of the same, but in fact they want their governments to legislate morality, outlawing anything they believe to be “wicked” – even if done by consenting adults.” You are joking, right? I may hold myself morally accountable, but rarely do I subject my own morals into political beliefs. Perhaps your understanding of conservatives is lacking.
Or perhaps you call yourself “conservative” just because you’re not a socialist.
Conservatives want to ban gay marriage, sodomy, sex out of marriage, stem cell research, abortion, violent video games, explicite lyrics in music, and a lot more.
Will you tell me that that’s not “legislating morality”?
Now, if you told me that the Bush administration, the Religious Right, and so on, aren’t “real” conservatives, you might have a point there (though I think they are – it’s what the word “conservative” suggests, after all – not to mention that most people who call themselves conservatives fully agree with them).
off topic – black background and grey foreground makes for very poor readability
Nathan: thanks. I can read it well here, but not everyone has the monitor with the same brightness and contrast as I do, and I’ve really been meaning to change it – and several other things – about this theme. Tomorrow, I hope.
EDIT: there. Not perfect, but it’s more readable.
Pedro,
I tried to send this to you via email, but it bounced back to me.
Thanks so much for the backup on my blog. You said the things I was going to say, but you said it better than I could.
It’s a bit hurtful, because I intentionally try NOT to hurt anyone’s feelings. You’re right — people accuse others of “ad hominem” when they are refuted.
I haven’t seen him cite any actual examples yet…
M.
Martian: you’re welcome.
About the email problem, I was using SORBS on my home email server, and it didn’t like your server’s IP address, probably due to being a dial-up one. I’ve changed it now, not to use SORBS, so there should be no more problems in the future. Banning open relays is good, but banning an IP address just because it’s dial-up or something is just wrong – though with so many zombie Windows machines out there it’s understandable…
Hmm, I’m getting offtopic. Sorry.
So, if I might, there is a problem confusing the issue, here: on a simple, linear political spectrum (“right” versus “left”), it may seem that one conservative is just like the next. However, I think you’re making the mistake of assuming that all conservatism is equivalent with the “religious right.” If I may:
Let’s look at the distinction between a socialist and a free-market capitalist. Obviously, these are radically-opposed political ideologies. In fact, we can place them on opposite ends of a one-axis spectrum; “left” in this case would be socialists, while “right” would be free-market capitalists. Of course, again, this is oversimplified; but it should at least be obvious when it comes to things like corporate interests, environmental protection, and social welfare programs, these two ideologies are going to split along the more familiar lines…
Now, then: in this sense, where does Ayn Rand fall? As you say: she’s an atheist. But any free-market capitalist (Adam Smith, etc.) is going to recognize NO authority higher than the almighty dollar; ergo the separation of church and state. In this sense, religion is a non-issue, or at least a red herring; conservatives can be every bit as secular as their liberal counterparts. Furthermore, the appeal to tradition is equally misplaced; a true free market allows nothing to guide it but supply and demand; PROGRESS, as you also mention, is the rule of the day! Reconsider the “more vs. less government” issue, and it should again be pretty clear that Rand falls on the side of capitalism vs. socialism. The “invisible hand of the market” is supposed to trump all other authorities.
There is no coincidence, here; Rand’s ethics, indeed, her entire system, is a wholesale appropriation of capitalism. (If one tries to imagine capitalism as an ethical theory, can it lead to anything other than rational egoism?) The me-first approach, recognizing no moral authority to anything that isn’t a rational being (think animal rights, etc.), is in this sense VERY MUCH a conservative ideology.
You are absolutely correct, however, in seeing the fundamental incompatibility of the more classic, free-market conservative approach with the newer (NEO) conservative, “religious right” version. And this is why we are seeing a radical split in the “right” wing in America today. Look, for instance, at Francis Fukuyama’s most recent book, in which he criticizes and abandons neo-conservatism. Is Fukuyama now a liberal? No way! But nor is he a member of the religious right. However, by seeing the enemy of my enemy as my friend, we make the mistake of embracing conservative ideology just because it is hostile to other (perhaps MORE) conservative ideologies.
Thanks so much for a thought-provoking blog!
Rand WAS a conservative. What has happened is that the so-called conservatives today spend more money, love bigger government, and meddle endlessly in citizens lives. These are NOT conservatives.
Bob: but what defines “conservative”?
We can go at it in two ways:
1- the meaning of the word. To conserve is to maintain, to keep. Most people who call themselves “conservative” love tradition, and want to go back to some idealized “Fifties”, when people obeyed their elders, everyone was a devout Christian, there were no gay rights, and, why, black people still stayed at the back of the bus. Conservative is, in a way, being against anything new just because it’s new. It’s what the word means, you know…
2- what most people who call themselves “conservatives” are like. Again, I don’t see most of them saying that they want a minimal government – if they did, they’d be the biggest opponents of the Bush administration. What I see them doing is to try to ban gay marriage, stem cell research and abortion, save brain dead women, put the 10 commandments in public places, teach Intelligent Design, and justify the Iraq war by saying that “in matters of war we undermine presidential credibility at our nation’s peril” (a direct Joe Lieberman quote, who, to me, is as conservative as they come).
Now, if “true conservatives” are a minority, and most people who call themselves “conservatives” really aren’t, why don’t the “true ones” speak up? Why is it that everyone who criticizes the Bush administration or opposes the war (not on the grounds that it’s being “mismanaged”, but because there was no justification for it in the first place, except lies about “terrorism” and “WMDs”) is imediately branded “unpatriotic”, “a traitor”, “a commie”, ” a socialist”, “a liberal” (gee, a dirty word!), “un-American”, and so on?
If you disagree with Bush you are automatically a socialist? Is that it? Because that’s surely what it looks like.
There is no one, right now, saying “I’m a conservative, and let me tell you, Mr. Bush, you are no conservative.”
The problem I am having here is that too many generalities are being thrown out. It is impossible to group the right side of the political aisle into one. Many of the assertions you made fall victim to an inability to quantify the right side of the political aisle. In fact, it is more difficult to do so than it is on the left side. I myself am very religious personally, but I am a Libertarian politically. I am extremely unhappy with the big government Republicans. And yet, there is a reason they win elections. True liberals are too far out of the mainstream and are hurting the Democratic Party.
In a perfect world, I would be able to cast my vote for ousting anyone believing in big government. The problem is that my hand has been forced and I have voted in a manner where I choose the lesser of two evils. Perhaps, at some point, the Libertarian Party will gain ground and I will be able to commit fully to those beliefs. Until then, I don’t necessarily vote for something, but against straight liberalism.
Keep in mind, that this is not a referendum against social liberalism. I personally couldn’t care less what people do in private. I would argue that there are a lot more conservatives in this group than you might think. What I would further argue is that you are grouping conservatives based on a word that is lacking (when considered by the definition and not the practical application). A true conservative believes in limited government. As such, a true conservative is forced to set aside many of their religious beliefs for the sake of that principle of small government.
[...] However, Rand’s philosophy has been completely misunderstood several times. I’ve written about one of the ways before, but there’s another which I find quite annoying, because its authors simply don’t know any better, and should learn a couple of things before putting their confused ideas in writing. [...]
You’re confusing “conservative” with “reactionary,” someone who believes it was better in the good old days. The conservative philosophy is explicitly stated by St. Paul: “Test all things. Keep what is good.” In contrast to the conservative, who believes that life in the West today is fantastically good–I wouldn’t trade places with any king in history before the twentieth century–liberals are so arrogant in their pride that they think they can toss it all out, start over from scratch, and do better. And they never learn from such experiments as Communism, which is just liberalism but with a monopoly of guns. (Read the website of the Communist Party USA and see if you can find any difference between them and the Democratic platform.)
Your first nine points summarize the traditional conservatives very well – a bit harshly perhaps, but true none-the-less. The last part of your last point: “Conservatives [only] believe in freedom to agree with them.” is too broad I think. The point I most wanted to comment on is your tenth:
…. “Ayn Rand believed in the non-initiation of force. Conservatives invaded Iraq for no reason at all.”
and this follow up:
…. Conservatives “justify the Iraq war by saying that ‘in matters of war we undermine presidential credibility at our nation’s peril’ (a direct Joe Lieberman quote, who, to me, is as conservative as they come).”
I used the qualification “traditional” – “traditional conservatives” – to distinguish conservatives from “neoconservatives.” It’s really the neoconservatives who support the Bush Administration and their crazy foreign policy. Traditional conservatives, like Pat Buchanan, Paul Craig Roberts, Ron Paul, etc. oppose it.
As you say, Ayn Rand herself would have opposed what the Bush Administration is doing. But to make matters even more confusing, the so-called “Ayn Rand Institute” supports the Iraq War and now calls for an Iran War. And many alleged “Objectivists” go along with it.
But there are some Objectivists – many or more perhaps, it’s hard to say – who see through the ARI. The website ARI Watch at
…. http://ariwatch.com
discusses this at length. It shows how the Ayn Rand Institute has betrayed Ayn Rand’s ideas.
Mark: thanks for the link. Every objectivist or libertarian should read that site.
cialis…
news…