Reason Magazine - Topics > Ayn Rand

Libertarian Funny Pages

info@reason.com (Damon W. Root) — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 17:10:00 EDT

Entertainment Weekly gives a thumbs up to the new coffee table biography of Spider-Man co-creator and Ayn Rand fanatic Steve Ditko, calling the artist's life "one of the strangest comic-book tales ever: not just how a talented man was ripped off by others, but how he denied himself a larger place in comics history."

Ditko is one strange bird, no doubt about it. As reason contributor Julian Sanchez tells it:

[A]fter falling out with his Marvel collaborator Stan Lee, Ditko, well, went round the bend a little, and began churning out turgid, nigh-unreadable comics devoted to expounding Rand's Objectivist philosophy in tedious, rambling lectures punctuated by the odd fistfight. His primary mouthpiece was the costumed avenger Mr. A—as in "A is A," the tautology from which Rand purported to derive an elaborate system of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and political philosophy. Along with another Ditko creation, The Question, Mr. A would serve as the model for Rorschach in Alan Moore's seminal Watchmen.

In other comic book-related news, Eric Alterman described the latest Batman flick, The Dark Knight, as "both libertarian and fascistic," while reason contributor Ilya Somin weighed in on the "libertarian law and economics of Batman."

Marvin Gaye, Libertarian

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 10:45:00 EDT

Ta-Nehisi Coates has written this week's best piece of tongue-in-cheek music criticism:

I noticed that Marvin's politics were marked by a strong aversion to taxes ("natural fact is/Honey, that I can't pay my taxes" and "There's only three things that's for sure, taxes, death and trouble"), a disdain for foreign occupation ("Father, father we don't need to escalate"), and a strong belief in the right to privacy ("I want to get it on/You don't have to worry that it's wrong" or "There's nothing wrong with love/If you want good loving, just let yourself go").

Indeed there is way of listening to "Let's Get It On" as anthem for gay--or interracial--marriage. I mean think about lyrics like, "There's nothing wrong with me loving you/Giving yourself to me could never wrong, if the love is true." Give a good listen to "Right On" which has an almost laissez-faire acceptance of the natural order of things ("Some of us born with money to spend/Some of us were born with races to win/Some of us are aware that is good for us to care/Some of us feel the icy wind of poverty in the air"). At the end, Marvin addresses those who live "where peace is craved," those who "live a life surround by good fortune and wealth," those who are simply "enjoying ourselves" and those who "got crowned in the sea of happiness," with a simple "right on." Or think of the title cut to Trouble Man where Marvin says that "I come up hard, but that's OK/Trouble man, don't get in my way" or "I come up hard, but never cruel/I didn't make it sugar, playing by the rules." The song is clearly a meditation on the limits of the state and the power of individual will.

Speaking of tongue-in-cheek criticism: I submit, without comment, Brad Hicks' outline of Ayn Rand's unfinished novel, Atlas Shrugged 2: Shrug Harder.

On the Media's Take on Ayn Rand (featuring Reason's Nick Gillespie)

Mon, 12 May 2008 17:02:00 EDT

NPR's On the Media did a long segment over the weekend about Ayn Rand's continuing popularity and influence. Among the folks they interviewed was reason's Nick Gillespie. Snippets here:

BROOKE GLADSTONE: That's Gary Cooper playing Howard Roark, the tall, angular architect of tall, angular buildings in The Fountainhead. That book has sold something like six million copies since it was published in 1943. Ron Paul should be so lucky.
Rand died in 1982 - but Rand lives!
NICK GILLESPIE: Let's put it this way: Ayn Rand's work, I think, is popular for the same reason Prometheus has always been popular with humans. It's about somebody who dares to struggle against great odds and, you know, steals fire.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Nick Gillespie is the editor of Reason.com and Reason TV and former editor of Reason Magazine, a Libertarian journal whose name is a nod to Rand's favorite wordreason, above all - reason above conventional pieties, reason above religion, above especially collectivist societies and command economies, the horrors of which she witnessed as a child in St. Petersburg during the Russian Revolution - reason that finds its purest expression in capitalism.
NICK GILLESPIE: Virtually every CEO of every major company will list Ayn Rand as a major influence. A bevy of Hollywood stars, ranging from Brad Pitt to Angelina Jolie to Vince Vaughn - a director like Oliver Stone, who is fond of Castro, says that Ayn Rand is one of the most important figures in his intellectual life. Martina Navratilova, Billie Jean King, Hugh Hefner - I mean, the reach of this author is pretty astonishing....
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I don't think that influence derives from her persuasive argument against command economies.
NICK GILLESPIE: She gives egoists a positive case for why the world should revolve around them and around their efforts. If you are the person who is creating value, if you are the star, the sun really does revolve around you. And not only should it be that way, but that's the moral order of the universe....
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Nick Gillespie, of Reason, says he was never wowed by Rand's novels but that the attacks on them are often swipes by people who would rather not seriously engage her ideas.
NICK GILLESPIE: How many characters from Saul Bellow novels, how many characters from Don DeLillo novels, inarguably great writers, how many of them have penetrated the American cultural consciousness in the way that a Howard Roark or a John Gault [sic] has, to a degree where these are shorthands for an entire system of ideas?
I think that that speaks pretty highly of her power as a writer. She is a great author because she has a phenomenal audience, including a lot of people who go through a worshipful phase with her. And, you know, here we could be talking about Alan Greenspan, the former head of the Federal Reserve, as well as any number of pimply-faced adolescents who decide to grow beyond her.

Whole transcript here.

The piece, which runs about 15 minutes, is rich with bits of audio. Listen to it:

reason on Rand here.

Galt's Gulch & Trust

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Tue, 06 May 2008 09:12:00 EDT

NPR reports:

John Allison, CEO of banking giant BB&T, calls Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged "the best defense of capitalism ever written." He says that Rand changed his life, and he's working to ensure that the deceased author isn't left out of the nation's college curricula.
Since 2005, the BB&T Charitable Foundation has given 25 colleges and universities several million dollars to start programs devoted to the study of Rand's books and economic philosophy. In January, the company announced it was donating $1 million to Marshall University in West Virginia.
The money would establish a course dedicated to Rand's Atlas Shrugged and Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, and help create the BB&T Center for the Advancement of American Capitalism on campus.

I'm not sure I see the problem, here. Hell, my alma mater had classes on pornography, the Beatles, and the music of Frank Zappa (note: I consider this a good thing). It would be one thing if BB&T were establishing an entire econ department staffed only with Objectivists. But an elective class on the virtues of capitalism that exposes students to Rand's ideas doesn't seem all that nefarious. Of course, some people disagree:

Rick Wilson, a sociology instructor at Marshall and head of the West Virginia Economic Justice Project, says that Rand's philosophy, objectivism, is based on the view that selfishness is the only moral value.
"[Objectivism] goes against the collective wisdom of the human race, I think, pretty much everywhere," says Wilson. "I think it's a curious interpretation of philanthropy to use corporate money to promote, really, an extreme philosophy."

I'm not sure when it became accepted logic that corporate philanthropies should only fund ideas and causes that are hostile to free markets. But that certainly seems to be the prevailing sentiment in the philanthropy world. And Rand's weaknesses aside, I'd say you could make a pretty good case that capitalism, the economic system that accepts and harnesses self-interest, has served humanity pretty darned well.

Jeff Taylor blogged about a similar Allison gift to UNC-Charlotte last March, and wrote about BB&T's lead-by-example capitalism in 2006.