Objections to Objectivism

I recently found a video on You Tube of Rand Paul explaining he was not named for Ayn Rand, contrary to internet rumor. His full name is Randall and it's just a coincidence that he's a big fan of her anti-government novels and philosophy. Lately, I have become interested in her work. I recently read her fantasy novella Anthem about a dystopian future where collectivism has destroyed civilization and the word "I" has been obliterated from the language. I also saw and reviewed the NY premiere of her 1934 play Ideal in which a movie star is accused of murder and seeks refuge with six of her devoted fans. Like Christ she asks her worshippers to forsake safety and side with her, all but one turn her down.

I have not read Rand's longer novels or her philosophical tracts on her view of life called Objectivism, but I did see the movie version of The Fountainhead with Gary Cooper, Patricia Neal, and Raymond Massey on TCM. I remember getting an almost Nietzchean vibe from it. The superhero has the right to conduct him or herself however they chose because of their superior sensibility. The hero Howard Roarke is unwilling to compromise his artistic vision in the slightest. When a building he was to have designed is erected by a lesser competitor, he blows it up and Rand believes he is justified in doing so. She later proclaimed she was not in favor of violence, but she did believe the rights of the individual supercede those of the society at large.

I think a lot of Tea Partiers have read her work and are now taking it literally. Any move by the government to have an effect on people's lives, for good or ill, is seen as the first steps towards a tyrannical dictatorship. Ronald Reagan actually made a record in the early 1960s saying Medicare would lead to slavery.

Things I like about Rand's philosophy:

1. Man should rely on reason and not faith. Therefore it is rational to not believe in a God.

2. Excellence should be rewarded. (OK, but that's like saying motherhood is great.)

3. Government should not interfere in people's lives. This can be interpreted several ways and some have taken it to mean no Medicare or Social Security or unemployment benefits. But Rand at least was consistent, believing the government should not lift a finger to help anyone, but it should also not stop anyone from getting an abortion or pass laws against homosexuality, even though she personally found gays repulsive mutant sickos.

Things I don't like:

1. No one should pay taxes. What are you nuts, Ayn? She advocates entirely private infrastructure and services. We'd all be paying tolls and fees through the nose. If every service which should be public--that is something everyone uses--were privately owned, competition would NOT drive prices down. The capitalists would all get together and drive the prices up. That is unless you have government regulations to stop them, and that is exactly what Rand was against.

2.Government should not help anyone at any time.

3.Capitalism should be totally unfettered with no government regulations as to safety, fairness to the consumer, or how the owners conduct business. (She believed the open market would eliminated crooks. Ha!) The Bush White House and Republican Congress removed constrains on Wall Street and the morgage brokers and we all know where that led: Obama getting all the blame.

Rand was raised in Soviet Russia and her father's pharmacy was taken over by the state. I believe she was a brilliant person who was so enraged at this injustice, she went to extremes in the other direction. I do want to read Atlas Shrugged, but the damned thing is over 1,000 pages.

Note: these are just impressions based on Rand's statements and what I have read of her philosophy and her interviews with Mike Wallace, Phil Donahue, and Tom Synder, all available on YouTube.

Old Books, Deep Are the Roots, and the Passing of Ted Kennedy

While driving toward Pennsylvania on vacation, my partner Jerry and I stopped at Doylestown, after visiting friends near Quakertown. We had heard it was a lovely little place with cute shops. (It also has a place in my family's history since my father drove us there once instead of taking my sister and me to our swimming lesson. So we also joked about how much we hated Doylestown because it made us miss our swimming at the Norristown Y.) Anyway, Doylestown was indeed a cute burg with quaint shops. We found a used book store and I bought a play from 1945 called Deep Are the Roots (pictured at left, a scene from the show on the cover of Theatre World magazine). Today it is chiefly remembered because it was directed by Elia Kazan and starred a very young Barbara Bel Geddes before she did Cat on a Hot Tin Roof with him. The play by Arnaud D'Usseau and James Gow was a hit in its day and deals with an intelligent African-American veteran returning to his Deep South home after WWII. He has grown up in the home of a racist Southern senator where his mother was employed as a housekeeper. All kinds of trouble results when Brett, the vet, attempts to improve conditions for his people and--worse--he is attracted to the senator's youngest daughter.

The play is dated and obvious--there's a visiting Northern writer who is engaged to the senator's older daughter (played by Bel Geddes) to represent the liberal viewpoint. The senator melodramatically frames Brett with stealing a valuable family heirloom. Brett is arrested but escapes for a climactic confrontation with the white family. What's interesting is this kind of play used to be done on Broadway with a degree of regularity--controversial topics like race prejudice and interracial romance would never be touched by Hollywood and TV was still in the planning stages. Broadway had its share of silly comedies and escapist fare in those days, but you saw thoughtful work too. Also, the liberal views espoused were given full voice and the evil--yes evil, I said it--of the old racist Southern way of life was exposed for what it was. Significant sidenote: Gordon Heath, the actor who starred as Brett later left America and settled in Paris because as a handsome, intelligent African-American actor who wasn't a Stephin Fetchit type, he couldn't find work on stage or screen. He decided to stay in Europe after the play's run in London. He also was gay and had a white lover whom he had met in America so he was fleeing both homophobia and racism. Also Kazan later cooperated with the House Un-American Activities Committee, resulting in the blacklisting of several of his friends who had views like those put forth in the play. One character even accuses Brett of being a Communist because he wants to change the Jim Crow South.

Today a play like that would never make it to Broadway. Too political. Too "liberal." The passing of Ted Kennedy calls to mind another passing--that of the word liberal. It's still a tainted word thanks to Ronnie Reagan. You notice that politicians and commentators now say "progressive" instead. I am liberal and not ashamed to say it. I believe government can and should help people who are down on their luck. I believe everyone should be treated equally. I believe religion should be a private matter and have no place in the public sphere. I should be able to marry my partner in any state in the union. Affordable health care should be a right, not a priviledge. Kennedy was an advocate for all of those things. With more people identifying themselves as conservative than liberal, I worry about the future of these issues. To me conservative means "Leave things the way they are; never change. Our health care may not be the best in the world, but I'm scared to lose what I have. So don't bother fixing it, you might make it worse."

I think most people associate liberal with "tax and spend" when if they really thought about it, they'd agree with liberal principles. President Obama said Kennedy helped him to achieve his goals through his legislative efforts including repealing the poll tax which prevented African-Americans from voting. Ironically, that's one of the wrongs the Brett character tries to end in the play. One of the plot points of the Deep Are the Roots involves Brett entering the public library by the front door and asking for a book without a note from the white family his mother works for. This causes a minor scandal in the town. Now we have a black president, how far we've come. But the roots of prejudice are still there.

The Power of Words

Several years ago, I saw William F. Buckley being interviewed by Morley Safer on 60 Minutes. The great conservative pundit was saying something denigrating about liberals and compassion. Safer challenged him, asking what was wrong with being compassionate. Buckley replied in that clenched-jaw, Thurston Howell III accent of his, "Compassion is a buzzword." He was trying to control the conversation by controlling the words being used, making the word "compassion" to suit his own meaning--that of a fake sop to the guilty consciences of bleeding hearts.

Ronald Reagan did the same thing when he made the word liberal into a curse word by stating Michael Dukakis would not admit he was one. Yes, he's a L word, the great communicator jovially ranted. He made the word suit his purpose and gave it the meaning of a "tax and spend" demagogue whose head was in the clouds, wasting the hard-earned money of the average, God-fearing American.

Now the GOP is trying to hijack the word empathy in connection with the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor. President Obama used the term to describe a quality he desired in a Supreme Court judge. The right wingers are twisting it to mean subjectivity and partiality to minorities. They are trying to make empathy into a weakness as Buckley wanted to do with compassion and Reagan did with liberal.