The Wesley Mouch of the Legal Profession

Here is an interesting video on the Commerce Clause and how the political classes have reinterpreted it to justify almost unlimited powers to the government: i.e., to themselves. Prof. Erwin Chemerinsky defends the broad interpretation of the commerce clause.

Over the years numerous people have ridiculed Ayn Rand for making her villians unappealing in every sense of the word. Even though William F. Buckley is dead, his vendetta against Rand continues with a new generation of conservatives. A recent issue of this conservative rag attacks Rand, among other things, because you know who is evil "by looking at them" with the physical signs of evil "being obesity, baldness, round-facedness, and soft- or watery-eyedness." Well, not quite, but lets roll with it.

That said, I couldn't help but watch this video with the distinct impression that Chemerinsky was one of Rand's villians in living form. Of course, many of her villians were in fact inspired by living people, though for obvious reasons Chemerinsky wasn't one of them. But he certainly could have been added to Rand's pantheon of evil.

Atlas surrenders: No Will for Freedom

As this blogger sees it the Atlas Society, that band of Ayn Rand aficionados, has joined the hysterics about immigration. Atlas, the mythical man that is, was strong, holding the world on his shoulders. Atlas, the society, seems to have become sniveling state-worshippers that would give up liberty just as long as the authoritarians pass a law first.

One of their writers, Will Thomas, has penned a pro-state essay that would be the envy of any collaborator with the Vichy regime.

Background on the Arizona law.

Mr. Thomas basically says that when a law is passed which throws freedom under the bus, then Objectivists like himself must support the law. In particular he means the legislation that Arizona passed requiring anyone suspected of being an illegal immigrant to provide ID to police upon demand. I had wished to gather the evidence to do a full expose of the origins of this law, but in a nutshell, it was written by a group from outside Arizona that has close ties to racist organizations. The law was actually written by a group called the Federation for American Immigration Reform—don't let the name fool you, they don't want to reform immigration they want to end it, especially for non-white immigrants.

FAIR has received $1.2 million in funding from a little-known racist outfit known as the Pioneer Fund, founded by, and this is not hyperbole, Nazi sympathizers and advocates of racial eugenics. This may explain why the local legislator who introduced the law was caught sending out anti-Jewish articles from a neo-Nazi group. The founder of FAIR, John Tanton gave his personal papers to a library, and those papers include his correspondence with numerous racists, anti-Semites, and ne0-Nazis. Tanton introduced FAIR to the Pioneer Fund, founded to promote "race betterment." And he told one of FAIR's major funders to read the work of an anti-Semite in order to "give you a new understanding of the Jewish outlook on life." Tanton told this woman that the book "explains a large part of the Jewish opposition to immigration reform," by reform he means restrictions.

Tanton also said for "European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-American majority, and a clear one at that." Tanton promoted a book that claims that Jews actively try to undermine cultural majorities in any country where they live in order to enhance their own power. Among the alleged tactics of "the Jews" was promotion of non-white immigration.

Tanton started a publishing house that focuses on two bugaboos: the threat of immigrants and the threat of so-called overpopulation. One book he published is America Extinguished, written by a notorious racist and anti-Semite, Samuel Frances. Another book they print is the racist rant, The Camp of the Saints, a book filled with bad economics, open racism and hysterical projections about the threat of non-white immigration. Tanton's own website says this novel "envisions the overrunning of European civilization by burgeoning Third World populations."

Ayn Rand: Illegal Immigrant?

As further background you should know that Ayn Rand was both Jewish and an immigrant herself. And we should be clear that Ayn, in order to escape communist Russia, lied to get into the United States. She basically entered the country illegally. As has been well documented, the young Ayn pretended to be coming to the U.S. in order to study the film industry so that she could return to Russia to work in the film industry there. Her first actually published writings were two booklets the Soviets published by Rand about the American film industry.

Rand, however, knew she had no intention of ever returning to Russia. Rand's biographer and friend, Barbara Branden, also an immigrant and Jewish, described Ayn's dilemma. Even though Ayn had secured Soviet permission to visit the U.S. for six months, she still had to secure a U.S. visa. Anti-immigrant hysteria in the U.S. had lead to the passing of numerous laws meant to keep out immigrants of a certain kind: and among them were Eastern Europeans, mainly Jews who were fleeing a history of pogroms against them.

Branden says Ayn could only secure a visa "if she could convince the consul that she did not plan to remain in the United States," this in spite of her having every intention of staying in the U.S. Rand had already decided that if the visa were turned down by the consulate in Latvia, where she had to travel to receive it, "she would vanish into the anonymity of Latvia, and find a way to flee to Europe." When Ayn meet with the U.S. consulate official, who would approve or deny her visa, "she thought she must tell him every reason she could invent to convince him that she wished to return to Russia."

As the official was looking over her application she read the dossier he had in front of him. She noticed it said she was engaged to marry an American. Ayn pounced, insisting that the information was wrong. And then she embellished the truth by saying that she was engaged, but to a Russian whom she would marry upon her return. She was not actually engaged to anyone. The official took a closer look and realized that her papers had been confused with another woman's and told her he was about to deny her the visa but would now approve it—after all, she was to be married in Russia, after her temporary visit to the U.S.

As far as I can see, Ayn Rand was forced to lie to U.S. officials in order to secure a visa to come to America. I am no expert on 1920 immigration law but I suspect that lying to secure a visa is itself a crime, perhaps one that would be considered severe enough to cause the cancellation of said visa. Ayn Rand secured her visa under false pretenses, but I don't fault her, legal (truthful) immigration had been closed to her. So, in order to get the papers she needed, she invented a lie. She most likely broke the law to do so and I suggest that her immigration to the United States was illegal as a result. After her arrival in the country, she did go to Hollywood and the rest is history. She met and married Frank O'Connor, and because of that marriage she became a citizen. It was also well known to O'Connor that the marriage was necessary for Ayn to remain in the United States.

A law is a law. But what about rights?

Now I want to turn to precisely what Mr. Thomas said and why I find it so objectionable from a libertarian, even an Objectivist, viewpoint. The Thomas piece starts with the premises: "illegal immigration is illegal, isn't it?" Yes, so is marijuana, so was sodomy up until a couple of years ago, and so are numerous things defended by Objectivists. Objectivists, would even argue that people have the right to engage in activities that are illegal. Rights trump the law, which was a major point of Rand's theory. She argued that individual rights limit the power of the state, not that the power of the state limits individual rights.

Thomas tries to take a middle ground by acknowledging:

People who cross the border without permission are violating no one’s rights. Ignoring the INS does violence to no one. They’re just ignoring a restriction on freedom. When their lives and well-being are at stake, they are morally justified in taking that chance.

So he recognizes a right to immigrate and that the immigrant is not violating the rights of another person. He even says that our current immigration policy is not compatible with a free society. But then he goes off into statism: "Yet the idea of a free society is even less compatible with the failure to enforce the law. The rule of law is the basis of all dependable liberty and open government."

The rule of law was never intended to mean that all laws must be obeyed. That is just a recipe for totalitarianism. Rule of law bound, not just citizens, but governments as well. The premise is that rights, as Jefferson said, exist prior to the establishment of any government. And all legitimate government is founded for the purpose of protecting the pre-existing rights of the individual. As such, the law when properly understood binds the state. In the course of protecting rights government has the obligation to do so in a clear, consistent manner with rules that are obvious, objective and consistent with the rights of the individual. Immigration law is anything but that. It is often arbitrary, and it is clearly inconsistent with individual rights. The sad reality is that illegal immigration is widespread because, for most of these people, legal immigration is not possible.

This isn't a matter of these people "getting in line" like everyone else. They aren't allowed in the line. The line is closed to them. American immigration law denies the possibility of legal immigration and that forces people to resort to illegal means.

Thomas seems to be saying that obeying all laws, regardless of how bad the law, is important for freedom. He puts the worship of law above the primacy of individual rights and liberty. Obedience to the law comes first. He writes:

So if the Arizona government will actually enforce the existing Federal laws, bully for them! Certainly, the Federal government should do more to enforce its own laws. Whatever the law is, please, let’s enforce it objectively and with due process. When the law is unjust or unwise (and so many are!), we must fight at the polls to correct them. But if we undermine the rule of law just to win the odd smidgeon of liberty, we are cutting our own throats.

Read that carefully please. "Certainly, the Federal government should do more to enforce its own laws." What the fuck! Is this what Objectivism has come to? Consider what this means. We have drug laws so, according to Thomas the Federal government should send armed DEA agents into more homes, shoot more family pets, violate more property rights, kill more innocent people. After all, the law must be enforced even more than it already is.

According to the logic of Mr. Thomas, the IRS should do more to audit tax scoffers, more to enforce onerous confiscatory tax policies, and arrest more tax evaders and imprison them. After all "the Federal government should do more to enforce its own laws." As Mr. Thomas has written his statement, the Feds should enforce all the laws on the books and enforce them good and hard—in the name of freedom. Dare I mention that if the Feds actually enforced all the laws on the books, with 100% efficiency, there would be no freedom left in this country.

But according to Thomas "the rule of law" means that government legislation trumps individual rights, something he refers to as an "odd smidgeon of liberty." Consider that in Arizona no one is allowed to work for another person without their name being on a state database giving them permission to work. Under e-verify it is a crime to enter into a private labor agreement with another person without "verifying" with state authorities that they have the "right" to work. This interferes with the rights of every single employer to enter into private contracts. But it’s just an "odd smidgeon of liberty" and so government can control every single labor contract, in the name of liberty and the rule of law.

Another thing Thomas pooh-poohs as meaningless is that government has stripped people of the right to move about without government documents on their person. He writes:

I don’t understand what the griping is about: if you have a passport with a valid visa, or a green card, or a U.S. passport, just carry them. I carry my passport every day living in a foreign country as I now do.

So, in the name of liberty every citizen can be forced to carry government identification. Eduardo Caraballo, who I mentioned yesterday, is a natural-born American citizen who looks Mexican. He was held for three days by Immigration even though he had ID on him and had his birth certificate shown to them. Mr. Thomas may think he is lily-white enough to pass inspection, so that the law never harasses him, but Mr. Caraballo knows the reality. He had ID, he was born in U.S. territory and he was still imprisoned for three days while the Immigration bureaucrats tried to verify this.

In other words, any U.S. citizen can be incarcerated on the assumption that are illegal until the bureaucrats, moving at their usual snail's pace, verify that the person is not illegal. Even carrying government ID, as Caraballo was doing, is not sufficient. Ask Mr. Caraballo if he thought three days imprisonment was merely a violation of an "odd smidgeon of liberty." What is an odd smidgeon of liberty to Mr. Thomas was three days unjust incarceration to Mr. Craballo.

Certainly Mr. Thomas does think he is white enough to be safe. He notes that the “illegals” everyone worries about "are Mexicans and Central Americans. ...So it's perfectly reasonable to check whether apparently foreign-born Latinos are in the country legally. Just as it is perfectly reasonable to check whether anyone with a non-native-speaker accent is in the country legally." Mr. Thomas just doesn't want to get to the point where we have "check-points or conduct random checks: that would hassle everyone, and it would be pretty ineffective at finding illegals, too." See, we shouldn't be "griping" about a law that hassles only people who "look" Mexican, after all the alternative is hassling everyone, i.e. white folk like Mr. Thomas, who currently think they are, or should be, immune from harassment.

There is an interesting aspect to the wonderful Cory Doctorow novel, Little Brother, where the Homeland Security thugs take over San Francisco after a terrorist attack. They begin monitoring everyone's travel habits using RFIDs in the travel cards that people are required to carry. The "Little Brothers" who are out to tear down Big Brother use their knowledge of technology to confuse the RFIDs so that individuals appear to be making suspicious trips, which triggers an investigation by Homeland Security. As more and more people got caught up in the gvoernment's net support for the bad law falls leading to the end of the practice. Mr. Thomas thinks this is a bad law, he just wants to make sure that people who don't look Mexican, like himself, aren't hassled by it.

Try Telling that to Ayn

I also note he thinks it reasonable for government agents to demand ID from anyone they encounter who has a "non-native speaker accent." Imagine this policy being enforced while Miss Rand was alive—she with her deep, guttural Russian accent as thick as the soups from her homeland. I would not want to be the bureaucrat who demanded "papers please" from her. She would have neutered the man on the spot and been livid about the experience for months. You would be able to hear her vitriolic denunciations of this sort of intrusion by the state, merely because she had a "non-native speaker accent," from miles away. She would denounce such a policy as being entirely inconsistent with the premises on which America was founded. And she would be right.

And, if some apologist for the system dared approach her and said: "I don't understand what you are griping about: if you have a passport with a valid visa, or a green card, or a U.S. passport, just carry them. Why are you worried about the odd smidgeon of liberty when failure to obey the state is undermining the rule of law. Why, if you don't put up with this, because you have a Russian accent, we are cutting our own throats."

How do you think Miss Rand would reply that? If she didn't reach down the weasel's throat and literally pull out his intestines, she would certainly do it metaphorically. But, if said weasel did it in the name of Rand's own philosophy, I wouldn't want to watch the carnage. On second thought, yes I would. I would love to be able to see Mr. Thomas attempt to make this argument to Rand herself. Once he uttered "odd smidgeon of liberty" he would have been out on the pavement. I think I know enough about Ayn to know she would never have tolerated this sort of bullshit from anyone, let alone from someone spreading it in the name of her own philosophy—a philosophy that wouldn't exist today if Ayn Rand had not intentionally lied to secure a visa to come to America—something which I still insist made that immigration an illegal one.

Smearing Ayn: Rand, Nietzsche and the Purposeless Monster

One of the aspects about Ayn Rand that I have learned to really appreciate is how the mere mention of her name unhinges some rather extreme ideologues—both on the Right and the Left. But I have to admit that those on the Left are more entertaining. Blinded by their faith in the omnipotent state, they attack all heretics with a zeal worthy of the extreme fundamentalist. And like Ann “the Screech” Coulter they typically resort to extreme vitriol and dishonesty to accomplish their goal.

The Right is tedious in their explosive dislike of Rand, they can only focus on her atheism or the “sex” in her novels. Rather boring actually. But the Left becomes completely unhinged and begin spouting wild distortions of Rand’s ideas. For the most part you will learn nothing about Rand by reading what the Left has to say about her, but you do learn something about the mental stability, or the honesty, of the person “informing” you about the “truth” on Ayn Rand.

Recently someone sent me a question regarding this claim:

One reason why most countries don’t find the time to embrace her thinking is that Ayn Rand is a textbook sociopath. Literally a sociopath: Ayn Rand, in her notebooks, worshiped a notorious serial murderer-dismemberer, and used this killer as an early model for the type of “ideal man” that Rand promoted in her more famous books — ideas which were later picked up on and put into play by major right-wing figures of the past half decade, including the key architects of America’s most recent economic catastrophe….

So what, and who, was Ayn Rand for and against? The best way to get to the bottom of it is to take a look at how she developed the superhero of her novel, Atlas Shrugged, John Galt. Back in the late 1920s, as Ayn Rand was working out her philosophy, she became enthralled by a real-life American serial killer, William Edward Hickman, whose gruesome, sadistic dismemberment of 12-year-old girl named Marion Parker in 1927 shocked the nation. Rand filled her early notebooks with worshipful praise of Hickman. According to biographer Jennifer Burns, author of Goddess of the Market, Rand was so smitten by Hickman that she modeled her first literary creation — Danny Renahan, the protagonist of her unfinished first novel, The Little Street — on him.

For an indication of how unhinged this writer was, consider the title of this article : ATLAS SHRIEKED: AYN RAND’S FIRST LOVE AND MENTOR WAS A SADISTIC SERIAL KILLER WHO DISMEMBERED LITTLE GIRLS. (The capitals were in the original.)

One of the traits found online, when it comes to ideological fanatics, is that they tend to copy their material. They rarely do original investigations, they merely parrot what other ideologues have said. In one debate with fundamentalist Christians it was notice that they were misquoting a book, and had the author’s name wrong. On Christian site, after Christian site, the exact same errors were repeated. The reason was simple: none of them had read the book. They were merely repeating what other fundamentalist crazies had said, on the assumption that their allies were all honest and truthful—which in their case is a particularly egregious error.

The individual I quoted above has made precisely the same error—and probably doesn’t care. His claims are based on an article at the left-wing site Alternet. The original author, that is the man who originated the deception, is Mark Ames. And he appears to base his claims entirely on a small section of the Burns book. Not only does he exaggerate what Burns said, but since he didn’t actually see Rand’s Journals, he effectively makes claims out of context. His story got picked up by Leftists all over the net, each apparently competing with the rest to exaggerate or falsify the facts even more.

In many ways one sentence in this little tirade is accurate: “The best way to get to the bottom of it is to take a look at how she developed the superhero of her novel, Atlas Shrugged, John Galt.” But, if you do that, what you get is not a Rand who was promoting Hickman as her ideal man, but a repudiation of Hickman. Rand didn’t see Galt as a more perfected form of Hickman at all. Nor did she see Hickman as an ideal man. And, for good measure, the article pretty much distorts what Jennifer Burn’s said as well.

But, to put this in context, we have to start with Ayn Rand’s ideological journey. Rand was not born a full-fledged Objectivist, saying “A is A” as the first words in her crib. Rand’s ideas developed and morphed, and in some important ways, changed completely. Unfortunately, in her later life, Rand did tend to pretend that the views she held then were the views she had always held. That is not true. In fact, she changed substantially. But for whatever reason—pride, ego, embarrassment—she refused to acknowledge the evolution in her ideas and, even worse, actively worked to hide them. That is one legitimate criticism of Rand, and there are more but accuracy is the not the purpose of these smears.

Let us start by looking at a letter Rand wrote HL Mencken, July 28, 1934, “I hope you will understand my hesitation in writing to one whom I admire as the greatest representative of a philosophy to which I want to dedicate my whole life.” What this couldn’t possible be, is Rand’s own philosophy of Objectivism. Mencken could not have been a “representative” of Objectivism since Objectivism didn’t exist. What Rand was referring to were her first philosophical beliefs—the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche.

Mencken translated some of Nietzsche’s work into English and published them in the United States. Mencken, the atheist, was drawn to Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity, The Anti-Christ. Mencken wrote an introduction to the work and applauded this critique rather enthusiastically. It was to Mencken’s enthusiasm for Nietzsche that Rand was referring. Her early short stories did not project the ideal Randian man at all, they reflected the ideals of Nietzsche, ideals Rand would come to thoroughly repudiate.

Consider the somewhat famous passage from We the Living, which Rand removed from later editions. In a scene her main character, Kira, is arguing with the Andrei, a Communist. Andrei says to Kira: “I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say, as so many of our enemies do, that you admire our ideals, but loathe our methods.” Kira, however says quite the opposite: “I loathe your ideals. I admire your methods. If one believes one’s right, one shouldn’t wait to convince millions of fools, one might just as well force them. Except that I don’t know, however, whether I’d include blood in my methods.” Kira goes on to express contempt for the common man.

Yet, later in life, Rand expressed frequent and sincere admiration for the so-called “common man,” something Burns made quite clear in her book, and was a staunch opponent of the initiation of force. These are not contradictions, they are Rand at two very different times in her life, with two very different philosophical systems. The first does not represent Rand’s system at all, but that of Nietzsche. But, even in this exchange, we see some of Rand’s own ideas starting to emerge, for instance, when she criticizes “the claim that man must live for the state.”

We the Living was Rand’s first novel and it expressed her views at the time of the writing it. By 1959 there was a different Ayn Rand and when the book was republished for the first time, she edited out passages she felt would mislead her readers, bring the story more in line with her own philosophy.

To find the influence of Nietzsche on Rand one must turn to her unpublished short stories, or to her writings on possible stories. There is one clearly Nietzschean character in her later novels, but he wouldn’t make Rand sound nearly as evil as her detractors wish to do. I will get to him shortly.

We need to look at Rand’s Journals to see what she actually said about Hickman. Did she worship him so profusely, as her attackers pretend? Was he really the model for her ideal character?

The story she was considering writing was tentatively called The Little Street. All this was published by Rand’s estate in her Journals in 1996, long before Jennifer Burns wrote her book. Rand's estate revealed the information, not Burns. The protagonist in the The Little Street would be Danny Renahan. Remember all the information that is purported to show Rand’s evil views come from her own journals. Yet, what they don’t quote is Rand’s own appraisal of the relationship of Renahan to Hickman. She said that Renahan is “very far from him [Hickman], of course. The outside of Hickman, but not the inside. Much deeper and much more. A Hickman with a purpose. And without the degeneracy. It is more exact to say that the model is not Hickman, but what Hickman suggested to me.”

So, the very source for the accusation against Rand, quite clearly says that Hickman is not the model for Renahan, yet the critics say the complete opposite. Not very honest of them, is it?

Rand, in her Nietzschean phase considered protagonists who were criminals. In the Night of January 16th the main character is fashioned after Ivan Krueger, who apparently was a swindler. (It is interesting to note that the playwright, Terrance Rattigan, whom Rand admired, also used Krueger as the inspiration for his play Man and Boy.) Rand wrote that what interested her wasn’t that she thought these criminals were good or admirable. She wrote,

I do not think, nor did I think when I wrote this play, that a swindler is a heroic character or that a respectable banker is a villain. But for the purpose of dramatizing the conflict of independence versus conformity, a criminal—a social outcast—can be an eloquent symbol.”

This is what she said about, The Night of January 16th. But is clearly also what she thought of The Little Street. Burns said that Rand: “…appeared to be drawing from both her own psychology and her recent readings of Nietzsche as she mused about the case and planned her story. She modeled Renahan along explicitly Nietzschean lines, not that ‘he has the true, innate, psychology of a Superman.” Burns says that Rand’s view was a “popular, if crude, interpretation of Nietzsche’s Übermensch.

This view, Rand’s estate said, showed up in her notes as her “most malevolent story. It provides a sharp contrast to the ‘benevolent universe’ premise” that she normally held. “Here she is bitterly denouncing a world that seems to have no place for heroism.” These untypical malevolent premises dominated the story plot. Burns says that “Rand’s bitterness was undoubtedly nurtured by her interest in Nietzsche. Judging from her journals, unemployment precipitated a new round of reading his work. Her notes filled with the phrases ‘Nietzsche and I think” and “as Nietzsche said.’”

In her journals Rand called Hickman “a purposeless monster.” She wasn’t worshipping him, she was looking to explain how he became the way he did. The very idea that Rand thought a “purposeless monster” was the personification of her ideal man is absurd. Yet none of these attacks on Rand mention Rand’s explicit condemnation of Hickman. Why? Because none of them read her Journals, they are ripping comments out of context from the Burn’s book and Burns didn’t mention that repudiation.

In her notes for The Little Street, Rand echoed a theme used by the Left. She wrote:

“Yes, he is a monster—now. But the worse he is, the worst must be the cause that drove him to this. Isn’t it significant that society was not able to fill the life of an exceptional, intelligent boy, to give him anything to out-balance crime in his eyes? If society is horrified at this crime, it should be horrified at the crime’s ultimate cause: itself. The worse the crime—the greater it’s guilt. What would society answer, if that boy were to say: “Yes, I’m a monstrous criminal, but what are you?”

Rand confessed in her notes that it sounds as if she is idealizing Hickman and that “he probably isn’t” like the Renahan character at all. She said that didn’t matter for her fictional story because she was writing about what could be, not what was. She wasn’t writing about Hickman but about a character that the Hickman case “suggested” to her.

Rand did not praise Hickman but created a fictional story about an exceptional young man destroyed by the society around him. But Rand’s story, and her theory about the cause of the crime, is not uniquely Rand’s. There are eerie similarities to another crime, one in which a leading light of the American Left, stood up in a courtroom and made the same arguments that Rand made above. He, however, is lionized by the Left, while Rand is derided.

That case was the trial of Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold, 18 and 19-years of age respectively. Leopold and Loeb were highly intelligent young men who lived in the Kenwood area of Chicago. Together they plotted the murder of 14-year-old Bobby Franks, believing they could create the perfect murder.

Their defender in court was the famous Clarence Darrow, whose ideals were quite different from Rand’s. Darrow blamed the crime on outside influences: “this terrible crime was inherent in his organism, and it came from some ancestor… Is any blame attached because somebody took Nietzsche’s philosophy seriously and fashioned his life upon it? … It is hardly fair to hang a 19-year-old boy for the philosophy that he was taught at the university.” Darrow argued the boys were created by the forces around them—a very Marxian premise. He says they were turned into killers by forces over which they had no control. Darrow said: “They killed [Franks] because they were made that way.” Time magazine said: “For twelve hours Clarence Darrow argued that the crime had been one of compulsion, that Nathan Leopold and Dickie Loeb could not have helped themselves. When he finished, tears were streaming down Judge Caverly's cheeks.” (Darrow's summation can be read here.)

Odd that Rand is viciously castigated for merely considering a fictional story using this defense but that Darrow, who actually used the defense for two young men who murdered a 14-year-old boy, is praised by the American Left. Rand’s consideration of a fictional story is enough to brand her as “scarier than the Manson family” while Darrow is endowed with sainthood. Consistency? Not, when Ayn Rand is the target.

As Rand prepared to write The Fountainhead she spent a great deal of time writing out her ideas and debating ideas with herself. The Fountainhead started out as a Nietzschean novel but ended a Randian one. The character who best represents Nietzsche in the book is Gail Wynand, while Howard Roark is the Randian man.

Wynand believes he held power over the masses, through his newspapers. When he decides to defend Roark he tells his workers: “We have always made public opinion, so let’s make it.” As philosopher Lester Hunt wrote:

The result is a complete disaster for Wynand. Instead of justifying his life, it reveals that his has been based in a mistake. When he violates the contract of an employee who refuses to cooperate in his campaign, by firing him, the union goes on strike. His campaign does nothing to help Roark's reputation. It simply adds another to the long list of popular objections to Roark: that he has for some inscrutable reason become "Wynand's pet." The circulation of the Banner goes into steep decline. Truckloads of copies come back unsold and unread. No sooner does Wynand turn sharply against public opinion than his power over it evaporates as if it had never existed. Finally, there is a meeting of the board of directors at which its members demand that he reverse his position to save the paper from complete ruin. Realizing that the campaign is impossible in principle, he authorizes Scarret to write an editorial denouncing Roark. In an internal monologue as he wanders aimlessly down the city streets, he reflects on the illusory appearance of his power. "You were a ruler of men," he says to himself. "You held a leash. A leash is only a rope with a noose at both ends." (716.) What he thought was power on his part was built on pandering to popular prejudices. Insofar as he had any power at all, it was wielded according to a certain strict condition: it had to be used to express those prejudices. As soon as this condition was violated, the appearance of power disappeared, and the reality became visible: it was his would-be subjects who had power over him.

"I made every one of those who destroyed me. There is a beast on earth, dammed safely by its own impotence. I broke the dam. ... I gave them the weapon. I gave them my strength, my energy, my living power." (719-20.)

Hunt recognizes that the failure of Wynand, the Nietzschean, and the success of Roark, the Randian man, was a direct challenge by Rand to the ideas of Nietzsche. He says Rand “unearths” issue that are “decisive ones for anyone who wants to apply Nietzschean ideas in the world we now live in, for anyone who wants to develop a usable Nietzsche.” Rand’s flirtation with Nietzsche was over by the time she finished The Fountainhead. She contrasted her ideal, Howard Roarke, with the Nietzschean Wynand. And it is Wynand who fails. In her screenplay for the film version of the novel she makes Wynand’s failure even more explicit as he commits suicide in despair. Roark, however, builds the tallest skyscraper, that Wynand had commissioned, before his death.

By the time Rand started working on Atlas Shrugged, and the final view of her ideal man, John Galt, she had repudiated most the elements of Nietzsche from her own philosophy and her characters. The mature Rand was hardly Nietzschean at all. Prof. Stephen Hicks listed 68 areas of philosophical thought and contrasted the views of Nietzsche to those of Rand. He finds 51 areas of major disagreement and only 17 of agreement.

Of the agreements “11 of them are negative agreements, i.e., agreements that something is false or wrong —e.g., that God does not exist, that values are not intrinsic, that Plato and Kant are not wonderful human beings.” He contrasts their views on philosophy in several major areas thusly:

If we compare the agreements and disagreements by area of philosophy, then we get the following.

In metaphysics, Nietzsche and Rand agree on nothing except that God is dead and that consciousness is functional. They disagree on the priority of process, about identity, causality, teleology, and on a series of issues involving the extent to which (putting it in Objectivist terms) philosophers can do armchair science.

In epistemology, there is even less agreement between the two. Except for agreeing that philosophy is systematic and that intrinsicism is false, they disagree on everything from whether consciousness is identification, to the validity of sensation, concepts, logic, reason, and the universality of truth.

In human nature, there are no areas of agreement. (Though if we added traditional mind/body dualism to the table, then the two would agree that it's false.)

In ethics, there is significant agreement on two major issues: that morality should be in the service of life, and that altruism is anti-life. There are also substantial disagreements: about whether conflicts of interest are fundamental, about whether life is the standard of value, about whether power or happiness is the end, about whether sacrifice is good, about whether rationality is the primary virtue or even a virtue at all.

In politics, they agree that contemporary civilization has very significant problems, and that socialism and the welfare state are nauseating; but while Nietzsche has good things to say about aristocracy, slavery, and war and bad things to say about capitalism, Rand says the opposite.

Finally, they share the same exalted, heroic struggle sense of life—although Nietzsche adds to that a strong dose of bloodthirstiness that we do not find in Rand, while Rand regularly adds a strong dose of anger that we do not find in Nietzsche.

Hicks concludes that “differences between Nietzsche and Rand greatly outweigh the similarities.”

Rand herself dismissed Nietzsche, saying he was “a mystic and an irrationalist” preaching a “’malevolent’ universe” with an epistemology that “subordinates reason to ‘will,’ or feeling or instinct or blood or innate virtues of character.” She said he was a poet who “projects at times (not consistently) a magnificent feeling of man’s greatness.” But she condemned him for:

...replacing the sacrifice of oneself to others by the sacrifice of others to oneself. He proclaimed that the ideal man is moved, not by reason, but by his “blood,” by his innate instincts, feelings and will to power—that he is predestined by birth to rule others and sacrifice them to himself, while they are predestined by birth to be his victims and slaves—that reason, logic, principles are futile and debilitating, that morality is useless, that the “superman” is “beyond good and evil,” that he is a “beast of prey” whose ultimate standard is nothing but his own whim. Thus Nietzsche’s rejection of the Witch Doctor consisted of elevating Attila into a moral ideal—which meant: a double surrender of morality to the Witch Doctor.

The article I started with, said: “The best way to get to the bottom of it is to take a look at how she developed the superhero of her novel, Atlas Shrugged, John Galt.” That is absolutely correct. If we get to the bottom of how Rand developed her ideal man, John Galt, it isn’t found in the Nietzschean elements of Renahan, or in the “purposeless monster,” Hickman. When we follow Rand’s development of her main characters, what we see is an evolution away from Renahan. She moves from criminals, who express their individualism through rebellion against society, to men who express their individuality through acts of creation. Instead of individuals who try to subordinate others to their will, her heroes are those who seek to trade value for value. You won’t find the Renahan character in Galt at all. But in Galt you will find the repudiation of Renanhan.

Sadly for Miss Rand’s critics, on this account they are woefully off base. They misrepresented what Rand did say about Hickman and what she meant for her character in The Little Street. They said she worshiped Hickman, when she actually called him a “purposeless monster,” a monster she knew was nothing like her character in The Little Street—a novel she never wrote, probably because it so violently clashed with her view of a benevolent universe.

Rand’s attackers ignore both the evolution of her ideal man in her stories, and the changes in her own views, in order to smear her. I am the first to say there are areas where Rand deserves criticism, but criticism that is honest. This attack on Rand was not honest, and unfortunately, so few of the criticisms I see directed against her, are. Most barely reach above the level of the sneering, sniping hatred that we saw in this article. And that is too bad. An honest dialogue about the virtues and problems of Rand is needed, but you won’t get that from the Left (or the Right, I fear).

Note: The first lectures systematizing Rand's philosophy were The Basic Principles of Objectivism, by Nathaniel Branden. For the first time these lectures have recently been published in book form, as The Vision of Ayn Rand. They are an excellent place to start if one wishes to understand what Rand really said, as opposed to what she is purported to have said. They are available here.

Photos: 1.) Ayn Rand at the time she was writing her short stories. 2.) The "purposeless monster", William Hickman. 3.) Friedrich Nietzsche. 4.) Nathan Leopold, Clarence Darrow, Richard Loeb. 4.) Gary Cooper as Howard Roark in the film version of The Fountainhead.

New Ayn Rand books are sure to heat up the debate

It is well known that some of Ayn Rand’s followers have long tried to present Rand as some sort of infallible messiah. I have long thought they have done her a great disservice. The ideas she presented stand on their own, separate from her life as a very fallible human being.

But, whatever you may think of her ideas, and I admit sympathy for many of them, although not total agreement, her life was as fascinating as her novels. And that is what has worried her acolytes and sycophants. The drama of her life is compelling, not just because of her virtues and her triumphs but because she also made some astoundingly bad choices.

The most well known of such blunders was her affair with the much younger Nathaniel Branden. Don’t get me wrong: I am neither horrified, shocked or particularly titillated by the affair. As I see it, if a woman her age, could get a man half her age to want her, more power to her. But, I note, that in the process others were hurt, particularly Nathaniel’s then-wife, Barbara, and Ayn’s husband, Frank. But both partners had consented, so that’s that. However, Ayn and Nathaniel should have seen that, consent or not, their respective spouses were suffering.

As I said, none of this impacts on the ideas that Ayn espoused. They rise and fall entirely on their own.

But Rand’s absurdly labelled “intellectual heir,” Leonard Peikoff, has done his best to fake reality by turning Rand into some sort of messianic figure, without flaw or scandal. For decades he denounced the Brandens, who divorced as may be expected, as liars for even hinting that such a relationship had existed. Unfortunately for Leonard among Ayn’s belongings, which he inherited, were her personal journals which outlined in clear detail that such an affair, actually existed. Always the true believer, Leonard didn’t bat an eye. He admitted the affair and still said the Brandens were liars who were enemies of Rand.

The problem for Leonard is that there were many witnesses to the more egregious failings of Ayn as a person. In a word, she often screwed up. I know some people take great joy in that. I shrug my shoulders and say, “welcome to the human race.” We all fuck up, and sometimes spectacularly. I don’t see Rand’s failings as being particularly horrific. She didn’t send people to death camps. She didn’t beat children or rob banks. She was sometimes unpleasant and often quite generous. She offended people and impressed them. She was, in a word, human. Whoopee!

Peikoff, not long ago, unleashed one of his sycophants to attack the Brandens with an absurd book entitled, The Passion of Ayn Rand’s Critics. It is really a continuation of Peikoff’s hate campaign against Nathaniel and Barbara. You would think that at his age Peikoff would have better things to do than nurse his petty hatreds. He doesn’t. Unfortunately for him, he’s never had a better thing to do, but to be Ayn Rand’s total servant. That was the only role in life that he could play. He was, and is, in many ways, the premier second-hander. (Those who have read Rand will know precisely what I mean.)

Peikoff’s role as the keeper of the flame of Ayn Rand has become increasingly more difficult. The release, this October, of Anne Heller’s biography, Ayn Rand and the World She Made, will be troubling to Lenny. (You can order your copy here.) The only reason he isn’t spinning in his grave is because he’s still alive; though reading this book may resolve that issue. He might pull the routine he did when his cousin, Barbara Branden, wrote her biography of Ayn. Then he denounced it as dishonest while admitting he had never read it, and wouldn’t. However, I expect total silence is more likely. He will pretend it doesn't exist.

People will forgive anything, but the truth. Nathaniel and Barbara spoke the truth. Leonard will not forgive them. He sent James Valliant after them with his ridiculously bad work, The Passion of Ayn Rand’s Critic (a title Valliant derived from Barbara’s work, The Passion of Ayn Rand). Leonard and his cult want to pretend that Valliant has proven that the Brandens are liars. Unfortunately for him, a dissection of Valliant's work proves him totally unreliable.

Anne Heller is a Rand admirer, she admits, but not an Objectivist. She has her reservations and has questions. She is an independent observer who wanted to write the definitive biography of Rand. She had nothing at stake. Valliant tried to present the Brandens as vicious attackers of Rand, seeking to distort facts in order to ruin her reputation. But, Heller’s biography, which I have read, doesn’t contradict the Brandens on any major statement of fact.

In fact, as I read the biography, I have to wonder whether the Brandens hadn’t actually protected Ayn’s reputation—the complete opposite of what Valliant and Peikoff allege. Surely, if they were the destroyers that the Peikoffians alleged they were, they would have revealed and relished in anything that might tarnish Rand’s image.

Consider the matter of Rand being prescribed an amphetamine for her to control her weight. She did so with a prescription and it may, or may not, have effected her moods. There is some evidence that it could have, but we can never know for sure. Both Brandens, while mentioning this, played it down. Heller makes a bit more of it. She clearly did believe that it had an effect on Ayn. Apparently so did Isabel Patterson, Rand's one-time best friend, who urged her to stop taking them. Jennifer Burns, in her less sympathetic, but still interesting book, Goddess of the Market, also thought the issues of amphetamine usage was more significant than either of the Brandens.

Why is it that “enemies” like the Brandens were playing this matter down, while two independent researchers found it more significant? That doesn’t fit the portrayal of the Brandens as character assassins.

Let us also discuss a matter that Heller reveals publicly for the first time, and something I have long suspected. Heller writes that early in her career Ayn had an abortion. Neither of the Brandens ever mentioned this detail. Yet, is it possible that they never knew? I doubt that. I did ask one of them about whether Ayn had an abortion and the response was one of utter astonishment with me being asked what caused me to ask the question. I said my suspicions were aroused because of Ayn’s very passionate views on the matter, far more passionate than I thought the issue itself warranted. (I share Ayn's views on abortion but can assure you that I’ve never had one, which itself would be something of a medical miracle.) The reply I got was a non-reply and I respected that. I still do. I can understand, why both of them, who are still very fond of Ayn, wouldn’t want to bring up something that personal.

Even the affair was not something they wished to reveal. In truth, no one came out of that mess looking good. So everyone had a reason to want to keep it private. Ayn forced the issue with her denunciation of the Brandens. Even then, their reply to Ayn, issued at the time, danced around the issue. In her denuciation Ayn mentioned a letter Nathaniel had given her, which caused the break. She never told her readers what it said, only that she deemed it irrational. Branden, in his 1968 reply, described the letter as: “a tortured, awkward, excruciatingly embarrassed attempt to make clear to her why I felt that an age distance between us of twenty-five years, constituted an insuperable barrier for me, to a romantic relationship.” Even then, at the height of Ayn’s attacks on the Brandens, Nathaniel skirted the issue, protecting Ayn. His wording could be read as meaning that he rejected the idea of a relationship and that it never took place. At worst it says Rand wanted such a relationship, but doesn’t actually say she had been involved in such a relationship for many years and that Nathaniel was terminating it.

Yet an Ayn Rand “enemy” would relish in this fact and publicize it widely, especially among conservatives. To my knowledge neither of the Brandens ever mentioned the abortion. Heller only gives it the briefest of mentions herself. It is a sensitive issue and I can understand that. No doubt the fanatical types in society will latch onto it, but then would already be hysterical about Ayn’s atheism.

Heller’s biography quite clearly says that Ayn had a passion for younger men. Again, no blame from me on that, just admiration if she succeeded. I also had long suspected this. Barbara’s wonderful biography, at most, hinted that such things were possible. But Barbara didn’t report every salacious detail and failed seduction. But Barbara had interviews with many of these young, male acolytes of Rand’s. And they were forthcoming that they believed Ayn was being seductive with them. She didn’t choose to emphasize that. Once again she was not acting the role that Valliant and Peikoff had assigned her.

I will venture into uncharted waters here and voice a suspicion. Note that this is only a suspicion and it is one that may explain Rand’s seeking of relationships outside her marriage, and her husband’s willingess to go along with such things. Ayn clearly preferred a sexual relationship where the man took charge, sometimes rather strenuously. Frank never did. He was a passive partner who answered Ayn’s call but never initiated a sexual relationship with her. This is clear in both Barbara’s book and Heller’s book.

Frank was from a large family and his closest brother was Nick, who went by the name Nick Carter. Nick was also a close friend of Ayn’s. Nick was gay. Heller describes Frank as somewhat feminine. Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not condemning Frank. Every person I have spoken to about him described him as a caring, gentle man who was kind and pleasant. No one had a bad word about him. Frank, to a large extent, and long before it was considered socially acceptable, took on the woman’s role in the relationship. He decorated their house, not Ayn. He was the one who tended the flowers, became a flower arranger, and took up painting as a hobby. Frank O’Connor acted very much like a closeted gay man. I don’t know if he was. And I don’t care if he was. Married gay men can perform sexually with their wives, but they are far less likely to be the initiators of the physical aspects of married life.

Heller’s biography shows Frank to be rather accepting of the relationship. When Nathaniel would come to the apartment for his biweekly sexual sessions with Ayn he often meet Frank in the hallway. Nathaniel felt awkward but Frank seemed far less perturbed. There is no doubt in my mind that Frank loved Ayn very much. And even less doubt that she loved him very much. But their sexual relationship was not what Ayn needed. One has to wonder if Frank didn’t appreciate, at least sometimes, that Nathaniel was pitch-hitting for him. So much of Frank’s actions seem to fit the situation of a married, gay man that I have to wonder if this was not a strong possibility. It would explain a lot.

Both the Burns and Heller books are interesting works. Burns reveals that Peikoff’s Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) plays a very dishonest game with Ayn’s previously unpublished works. Peikoff and crew set up the Ayn Rand Archives, but access tends to be limited. Burns, somehow managed to get into them. Heller was banned. That was certainly a particular dumb choice since Heller is clearly more sympathetic to Rand than is Burns. If anything they should have done the reverse. But Lenny often made some major errors in judgment, so this is no surprise.

Burns cautions readers of Ayn’s newly published papers. She compared the original writings and the published versions and discovered that the ARI crowd changed what Ayn wrote. She writes, concerning Rand’s journals: “On neary every page of the published journals an unacknowledged change has been made from Rand’s original writing. In the book’s foreword the editor, David Harriman, defends his practice of eliminating Rand’s words and inserting his own as necessary for greater clarity. In many case, however, his editing serves to significantly alter Rand’s meaning.”

She warns people to see these published collections as “an interpretation of Rand rather than her own writing.” She is quite scathing in what she reveals as outright fraud. She says that the unacknowledged editing “add[s] up to a different Rand. In her original notebooks she is more tentative, historically bounded, and contradictory. The edited diaries have transformed her private space, the hidden realm in which she did her thinking, reaching, and groping, replacing it with a slick manufactured world in which all of her ideas are definite, well formulated, and clear.” She also reveals that the same problems exist in Ayn Rand Answers, The Art of Fiction, The Art of Non-Fiction, and Objectively Speaking. All these works, she says, have been significant rewritten.”

What purpose does this serve? All Peikoff and Co., have managed to do is portray themselves as unreliable, deceptive and untrustworthy. Burns shows that.

What struck me about Heller’s biography, is that while it reveals new details, and more information, there simply was nothing there that indicated the Brandens had been deceptive. That has to be a problem for Pope Lenny and his sect.

As I said, whatever you think of Ayn Rand and her ideas, there has never been a shortage of drama around her life. Dead all these years, that hasn't changed at all. But all in all, those who are trying to protect Rand are doing her far more damage than they realize.