Fountainhead of failure: Ayn Rand, her cult, and the moral absolutism of American conservatism

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Other than the obvious tyrants and totalitarians, there are few people in the history of the world I loathe more than Ayn Rand. Sure, I read her propaganda when I was in high school, and found much of it appealing. (It is, after all, pop philosophy for self-absorbed adolescent males.) But then I grew up, and out of it, and I quickly came to see her for what she was, and remains: a despicable egotist, a cult of personality at the head of a cult loyally attended by intellectually retarded submissives who fashioned themselves, like their mistress, members, subject to her whims, of an extra-special elite that, as they saw it, set them apart from, and above, the rest of society. (Although they, like her, were more like precocious college freshmen who read Nietzsche and think they're so cool. Eventually, of course, reality usually destroys such illusions and delusions.) All quite amusing, really, if only Rand had drifted off into oblivion. Instead, she became, and remains, much to its discredit, a heroine of the American right, a driving intellectual force behind conservative economic and social policy.

I highly recommend Jon Chait's review of two new books on Ayn Rand at The New Republic, "Wealthcare." Yes, it's fairly long, but do take the time to read it. What's clear is that Rand was a pretty awful human being -- and that she, like most of the American right, was wrong about pretty much everything.

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Here's a particularly amusing, if not also disturbing, passage:

Objectivism was premised on the absolute centrality of logic to all human endeavors. Emotion and taste had no place. When Rand condemned a piece of literature, art, or music (she favored Romantic Russian melodies from her youth and detested Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms), her followers adopted the judgment. Since Rand disliked facial hair, her admirers went clean-shaven. When she bought a new dining room table, several of them rushed to find the same model for themselves.

Chait is right that Rand's philosophy essentially amounted to inverted Marxism -- the elite supposedly kept down by the masses. As for her cult, it closely resembled the totalitarian Bolshevism she so loathed. (It got a lot worse, and a lot more sinister, than just admirers buying the same furniture. Read the review for some sordid details.)