Happy Birthday, Ayn Rand!

[Ed Hudgins]

Happy Birthday, Ayn Rand!

Ayn Rand was born on February 2, 1905, in Russia. As a young woman she came to the United States to escape the horrors of the Communist revolution. In America she made her own revolution through novels like The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.

Rand developed the philosophy of Objectivism, which holds that reality is objective; that it can be understood through human reason; that the pursuit of personal happiness and flourishing should be the highest goal of every individual; that we should deal with our fellows based on mutual consent; and that government should be limited to protecting individual liberty.

Rand celebrated creators of all types who take pride and joy in their work. In the face of a hostile culture she especially held up as exemplars businessmen and women who, through their honesty, integrity, independent judgment, and vision, have created the prosperous society that we all can enjoy.

Today, all creators are under attack. President Obama famously declared that "If you’ve got a business--you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen." He has made a centerpiece of his governing philosophy the looting of what he calls “the rich.”

Only a moral offensive against those who would punish us for our virtues—-an offensive under the flag of the right of each individual to their own life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, including property!—-will restore freedom and create the kind of benevolent society fit for humans.

Ayn Rand’s ideas are needed now more than ever!

Happy 108th birthday, Ayn Rand!
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For further information:

*Edward Hudgins, Fred Smith, “Ayn Rand at 100: Will Businessmen Learn Her Lessons About Politicians?” December 2004.

*David Kelley, "Capitalist Heroes.” October 10, 2007.

“Senator Ron Johnson on Atlas Shrugged.” January 2013.

[syrakusos]

(Expanded below.)

[syrakusos]

Daunce Lyman 10

Ayn Rand 1

... says a lot ...

Right now, I am reading The King's English by Fowler & Fowler (3rd ed. 1931), an officious attack on the grammatical and lexical foibles of Huxley, Macauley, and the Times of London. In the spirit of triviality, allow me to point out that Ayn Rand did not seek to escape the communist revolution, but its socialist aftermath. She lived through the revolution and enrolled at university.

After the Russian Revolution, universities were opened to women, allowing Rand to be in the first group of women to enroll at Petrograd State University,[12] where she studied in the department of social pedagogy, majoring in history.[13] At the university she was introduced to the writings of Aristotle and Plato,[14] who would be her greatest influence and counter-influence, respectively.[15] A third figure whose philosophical works she studied heavily was Friedrich Nietzsche.[16] Able to read French, German and Russian, Rand also discovered the writers Fyodor Dostoevsky, Victor Hugo, Edmond Rostand, and Friedrich Schiller, who became her perennial favorites.[17]

Along with many other "bourgeois" students, Rand was purged from the university shortly before graduating. However, after complaints from a group of visiting foreign scientists, many of the purged students were allowed to complete their work and graduate,[18] which Rand did in October 1924.[19] She subsequently studied for a year at the State Technicum for Screen Arts in Leningrad. For one of her assignments, she wrote an essay about the Polish actress Pola Negri, which became her first published work.[20]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayn_Rand

And I must point out that it was only because of the Bolsheviks that she was allowed to enroll at university. This is a continuing theme. The United States invaded Iraq where women were enrolled at university after supporting Iraq in its war against Iran where the Islamic Revolution rolled back the advances under Shah Raz Pahlavi whose own wife was degreed. I wonder about the alternate universe in which the USA and USSR were allied in bringing the Enlightenment to Afghanistan. At any rate, alternate universes aside, Ayn Rand did not escape the communist revolution per se, but the success of political socialsm afterwards.

Point 2: You must define "objective" to define "Objectivism." It is a rule in definitions that you cannot use the word to define the word. More to the point. your definition meets the criteria for rationalism.

Rand developed the philosophy of Objectivism, which holds that reality is objective; that it can be understood through human reason...

If I may, allow me to suggest: "Objectivism holds that reason and experience validate each other, that logic and experiment cannot contradict each other."

President Obama famously declared that "If you’ve got a business--you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen."

If you watch the speech you cannot escape the knowledge that in context the President was speaking about infrastructure.

One of many YouTube clips here:

The grammatical difficulties (see Fowler & Fowler or Strunk and White's Elements of Style) came from the ad lib delivery, the differrence between speech and writing. Myself, I hate it when people read speeches because I can read faster than they can talk. If all you have to say is written down, then do not waste my time. However, President Obama was speaking interactively to a crowd. So, you must parse his comments for meaning and intention

Ayn Rand's ideas may be moving to center stage in American politics - Paul Ryan's denials notwithstanding - and her birthday is a nice opportunity to tout her philosophy. But Objectivism is more than politics. In fact, politics is consequential to ethics, which rests on epistemology, which depends on metaphysics. Tell that to 330 million people and you will lose 90% of them. But the other 10% make all the difference.