View source for The Many Lives of Ayn Rand

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[[Category:Elizabeth Bruenig]]
[[Category:Ayn Rand]]
[[Category:Christian Criticisms Of Libertarianism]]
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{{DES | des = "Sometimes I think the fact that so many Christians slavishly devote themselves to Ayn Rand is part of her infernal punishment. I imagine Satan periodically delivering her reams of praise for her work, all of it penned by delusional Christianist libertarian types." | show=}}
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Sometimes I think the fact that so many Christians slavishly devote themselves to Ayn Rand is part of her infernal punishment. I imagine Satan periodically delivering her reams of praise for her work, all of it penned by delusional Christianist libertarian types. Thumbing through it on the way to her cell, I suspect the Prince of Darkness would be pleased, in part because the arguments so weak, and he loves lies; and in part because Rand is still doing the work of the devil posthumously, convincing Christians of her corrupt worldview. “Thanks for the hand, Rand,” I imagine him saying, while she despairs that all her would-be Galts are just doughy Christianists who hate income taxes.

I’ve long wondered: what is it about Rand that captures so many Christian imaginations? Is it the terrible prose? The lumpy bathos of Interview With the Vampire is at least suited to its material. Or is it the wanton, militantly atheist, libertine individualism? If that’s the case, why not go for the Marquis de Sade? His sex scenes are better, and he detested radical Jacobins with all kinds of zeal. My confusion is magnified by the fact that many defenders of Rand seem not to have read her trash; for instance, they will periodically claim her book exhibits ‘conservative values‘, by which I presume they refer to all the glorified adultery and non-procreative unmarried screwing in underground tunnels. Lena Dunham’s Tiny Furniture also has a scene like that, so I guess she’s a paradigm of conservatism by equal measures. (This point is contested.)

Of course, when conservatives apologize for Rand, they usually just ignore the terrible sex ethics. This can be frustrating, but it’s a gift to leftists: it means they acknowledge traditional sex ethics don’t have to come along with right-wing economics. The latest round of Rand-apologia comes from The Federalist, the literary equivalent of a landfill in reverse:

Rand’s atheism, materialism, and reduction of the human being’s value to economic productivity are all reasonable targets of critique for a variety of good reasons. Let those arguments continue to be made, though perhaps with less rancor. But it is important to be clear about the charges for which Rand should not have to answer. She was an atheist and clearly had an insufficient appreciation for (and accounting of) human solidarity, but she loved freedom and she understood the importance of work for human flourishing. And finally, although some accused her of fascism, she ardently opposed the cut-rate philosophy that makes an idol of the state. Ayn Rand deserves some of the opposition she has received from Christians and many others. But she also deserves better.
Why less rancor? Seriously, do you know what you’re dealing with here? For one, Rand’s libertine ethos (here expressed as a merely ‘insufficient appreciation for human solidarity’ and a ‘love of freedom’) produced more than an adoration of capitalism. In fact, the form of ‘freedom’ she embraced doesn’t even remotely comport with the sort of ‘freedom’ Christianity imagines. For instance, take Rand on abortion:

An embryo has no rights. Rights do not pertain to a potential, only to an actual being. A child cannot acquire any rights until it is born. The living take precedence over the not-yet-living (or the unborn). Abortion is a moral right—which should be left to the sole discretion of the woman involved; morally, nothing other than her wish in the matter is to be considered. Who can conceivably have the right to dictate to her what disposition she is to make of the functions of her own body?”
And moreover, what’s this nonsense about appreciating the use of ‘work’ for ‘human flourishing’? Rand didn’t regard work as a moral good insofar as it led to human flourishing; for instance, she didn’t have Oscar Wilde’s view that artistic production would be a great way to spend all our time, so we should funnel all income through state socialism. For Rand, the value of work was in its capacity to generate wealth, which is why the weasely author of this piece can point out that she would’ve thought the hard working factory laborer superior to the shiftless rich do-nothing. True, but she would’ve thought the enterprising rich venture capitalist superior to the factory laborer, which is where her ethics crash and burn in terms of Christian appraisal.

But the really interesting thing is this: if all you have to do is show some love of freedom, who can’t Christians apologize for? If you can claim that Jesus Christ himself was an immoral agent for sacrificing himself, which Rand did, and still earn the pathos of Christianist political types, who must be condemned by that logic? Is there any figure who we can dismiss?

Not really, no. And Rand’s appeal, I think, will continue to be refreshed by these seemingly unlikely fanboys precisely because their adoration of her is not related to the ways in which her ethics could — in isolation from their total system — periodically be forced into some kind of accord with deracinated Christian ethical principles. Rather, their love of Rand is specifically premised on the ways in which she is un-Christian; they like the elements of her work which flatly militate against Christian reasoning, and are willing to dress them up as vaguely Christian-esque in order to smuggle them past honest onlookers. So it’s not much use for me to say: hey, Rand was virulently anti-Christian and Objectivism is not only silly but evil. They already know that. The game is to confess as much and then try to reclaim a few seemingly small principles from her work, pardoned by their evident acknowledgement that the vast majority of them are evil.

But the principles they try to reclaim are not small, and they are all evil. If justice is poetic, Rand’s fans will be sealed in with her for eternity, she embittered by their love, they tormented by her rejection. And all the while her work will produce fresh crops for the inferno for ages to come.
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