Denialism

What do Ayn Rand and Kevin Trudeau have in Common?

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by

MarkH
in

The NYT had a piece on the life and times of Ayn Rand yesterday, and I just couldn’t get over these two paragraphs.

For years, Rand’s message was attacked by intellectuals whom her circle labeled “do-gooders,” who argued that individuals should also work in the service of others. Her book was dismissed as an homage to greed. Gore Vidal described its philosophy as “nearly perfect in its immorality.”

But the book attracted a coterie of fans, some of them top corporate executives, who dared not speak of its impact except in private. When they read the book, often as college students, they now say, it gave form and substance to their inchoate thoughts, showing there is no conflict between private ambition and public benefit.

You see, I was also reading this MSNBC story about Kevin Trudeau (crank and quack extraordinaire) and his recent legal troubles with the FTC. You see, Trudeau sells books by telling people what they want to hear, whether it’s true or not. In this case, that you could follow his diet, and also eat all the food you want.

In both cases, the authors manage to sell people lots of books by telling people what they want to believe, rather than anything resembling the truth. In Trudeau’s case, that his quack cures will let you live forever and lose weight. In Ayn Rand’s case, that unenlightened self-interest is the highest form of moral behavior (side note – also that rape is consensual sex). It’s like “the Secret” for CEOs, total nonsense, but sure to sell.

Comments

  1. Drat

    Rats. I thought you were going to tell me Ayn Rand had done some prison time.

    Reply
  2. Brian

    I thought you were going to tell me Ayn Rand was a man.

    Reply
  3. cuchulkhan

    scary thing is – alan greenspan, one of the most powerful men in the us for many a year, was a major devotee of the ayn rand cult.

    Reply
  4. DragonScholar

    This is the woman who said of the American Indians:
    They didn’t have any rights to the land, and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights which they had not conceived and were not using . . . . What was it that they were fighting for, when they opposed white men on this continent? For their wish to continue a primitive existence, their ‘right’ to keep part of the earth untouched, unused and not even as property, but just keep everybody out so that you will live practically like an animal, or a few caves above it. Any white person who brings the element of civilization has the right to take over this continent.

    http://lefarkins.blogspot.com/2007/09/fifty-years-of-moral-illiteracy.html

    Yep. Ayn Rand taught that if she doesn’t like how you use your land/property/territory, white people can come on in and take it.

    What cracks me up about Randists, of whom I can never take seriously, is their idea that a civilization can exist founded on her discordant ideology. When I see Rand used it’s either to justify antisocial behavior, glorify oneself (while denigrating others), or justify one’s social/economic position.

    More snake oil. Like Creationism and “The Secret” with a different angle.

    Reply
  5. Booker

    Rats. I thought you were going to tell me that Kevin Trudeau was dead.

    Reply
  6. Moopheus

    Ayn Rand is the anti-Buddha.

    Reply
  7. Ted

    …one of the most powerful men in the us…

    Careful, or we’ll be going down that road that trilaterals control the world….

    Look, the central banker in the US for 18 years (how influential is that role again?), and by the reading of the NYT article, many other bankers, financiers, CEOs etc, are crypto-randroids.

    How can we be surprised that we act with the outlook that we have? Do we assume that these VIPs have nothing to do with setting national morality and direction? For god’s sake they are the creators and producers. They have a RIGHT to do the right thing.

    They didn’t have any rights to the land, and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights which they had not conceived and were not using . . . .

    And don’t we see this exemplified in the current US foreign policy? Anyone catch today’s Diane Rheem show about attacking Iran? Egads but we’re a dumb bunch of f*cks that LIVE the Rand philosophy daily.

    Reply
  8. Mark P

    The major problem with Rand’s philosophy is that it isn’t really one at all. It’s a bunch of sophomoric mental masturbation about how a bunch of losers would run the world if they were in charge. Unfortunately, it seems that the losers are now in charge.

    Reply
  9. Blake Stacey

    But the book attracted a coterie of fans, some of them top corporate executives, who dared not speak of its impact except in private. When they read the book, often as college students, they now say, it gave form and substance to their inchoate thoughts, showing there is no conflict between private ambition and public benefit.

    Gee, that’s nice. In other news, you can kill people by pointing a stick at them and shouting “Avala Kedavra!”

    Wait. Are you telling me that fiction isn’t the same as reality?

    Darn.

    Reply
  10. Chris H

    I could see how Rand could appeal to a teenager–there are special people (I, of course, am one of them), everyone else is in the way of these special people, therefore, in order to have progress and goodness, the “gray as dishwater” masses should get the fuck out of MY WAY! Some teenage readers of Rand grow up, those who don’t become libertarians.

    Reply
  11. Blake Stacey

    I’ve heard several people say that the readers in their high schools divided up between “the kids who read Ayn Rand” and the kids who read somebody else, either Vladimir Nabokov or Isaac Asimov. For example, consider Allen Barra’s article in Salon, “Reading Lolita in Alabama” (22 December 2005).

    Many of the most important relationships in my life have revolved around “Lolita.” In high school in Birmingham, Ala., being a lover of “Lolita” and other Vladimir Nabokov novels, but especially “Lolita,” was exciting, like being part of some secret society. A gay friend of mine in 12th grade said that being a Nabokov reader in high school was kind of like being gay: You never openly admitted it but always looked for telltale signs of those who were of similar persuasion, often by making furtive eye contact with someone you saw reading the novel in study hall. Reading Nabokov was one of the only ways to make friends with gays or would-be poets or just about anyone strange or different or interesting. I knew of only one other writer who inspired such an odd cult among high schoolers, Ayn Rand, who, like Nabokov, was a Russian émigré with an intense hatred of communism. Aside from that, the two could not have been more different. Rand’s novels were the kind of transparent philosophical tracts that Nabokov loathed as much as he loathed Marxism. The similarities between the Nabokov and Rand cults was creepy; even more creepy was that I almost never came across anyone who read both of them.

    Salon wants me to pay to read this, but I dug a copy out of the NABOKV-L mailing-list archives, wherein one can also find D. Barton Johnson’s “Strange Bedfellows: Ayn Rand and Vladimir Nabokov“. I love this parenthetical bit:

    The aristocratic Nabokovs were very rich and enormously cultured; the Rosenbaums were of the bourgeoisie. With Rand as with Nabokov, however, there was the governess who imparted French and German (but, alas, not Nabokov’s English), extended family visits to Western Europe, and summers in the Crimea where later the Rosenbaums, like the Nabokovs, vainly waited out the young Bolshevik regime. At the end of their Crimean sojourn, however, the Rosenbaums returned to Petrograd, and the Nabokovs moved on into exile.

    Reply
  12. Science Avenger

    I think people are too quick to dismiss Rand because of her often sloppy thinking while overlooking the tremendous influence she has had popularizing the good concepts in her books. One can certainly do worse than an insistence on rationality and self-reliance, even when the messenger frequently fails to live up to those standards. Her interpretation of the Garden of Eden myth is almost worth plowing through Galt’s entire speech to read, and every kid should read Francisco’s speech on the meaning of money.

    For many of us who grew up in the 70’s and 80’s, either sneering at the material wealth around us, or taking it for granted, Rand was an in-your-face challenge we needed. Sure we grew out of it, just like we grew out of dungeons and dragons, and our training wheels. Still good in its time.

    Reply
  13. khan

    I’ve always thought Rand’s works should come with a warning sticker:

    If you are under 25, this will make you feel terribly important.

    (I read both Rand and Nabokov, in my early 30s.)

    Reply
  14. Watt de Fawke

    I read Atlas Shrugged in high school and thought it was childish. Her Hank Rearden was so brilliant he invented everything and he deserved all the credit for it, and if he walked off the job the world would collapse.

    In the real world, if all of the little people walked off the job, Hank Rearden would soon be reduced to making his own clothing and foraging for food, having to discover what’s good to eat by trial and error.

    The towering arrogance of Rand scared me. I’ve been watching out for her kind ever since, so I actually got a benefit from the book.

    Reply
  15. DragonScholar

    Watt,

    I always felt Rand’s heroes were essentially Mary Sues.

    Reply
  16. minimalist

    One of the many reasons to love the game Bioshock is its relentless assessment of the consequences of a true Randian society. It’s a very sly, funny game, and it expresses many of the points listed above.

    Basically, everyone goes to Randian Rape Paradise, dreaming dreams of being True Men, innovators and geniuses… only to discover that only so many people can be top dog. Everyone else ends up poor, exploited, and pissed-off, working for pennies a day.

    Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?

    NO!, says the man in Washington, it belongs to the poor;

    NO!, says the man in the Vatican, it belongs to God;

    NO!, says the man in the Kremlin, it belongs to everyone.

    Reply
  17. random guy

    I liked Rands writings as a teen then in my twenties I reread Atlas Shrugged and saw many of the gapping holes in her logic. I started reading interviews of her and thought she was just an egoist with a grab-bag of beliefs that she called a philosophy. Her abhorrence for anything natural or non-white generally pissed me off. But she also got me to think about welfare, income tax, and generally led me to challenge and change many of my beliefs.

    But on the other hand I loved her books because they are essentially modern hero myths. The only problem is that most Randites forget that they are myths. There is no Hank Rearden. Industrialists do not start out by working in a coal mine at fourteen to eventually become famed businessmen and inventors (with no formal education whatsoever). The vast majority of real world wealth is inherited and has nothing to do with “earning it” in the Rand sense.

    I also find it funny that so many people immediatly jump on the Libertarians as soon as Rand is mentioned. What is it with them, why do so many people hate them with a passion? To me they’re no different than any other political party, some of their stuff I agree with other stuff I don’t.

    Reply
  18. Ted

    What is it with them, why do so many people hate them with a passion? To me they’re no different than any other political party, some of their stuff I agree with other stuff I don’t.

    Because they’re a crypto-party. A cuddly social libertarian might get elected; an economic libertarian can’t, but they can protect their interests by undermining the collective through corrupt and power seeking Republicans and Democrats. And that’s why the CEOs and CIOs are unwilling to publicly admit their fandom of Rand (although Greenspan has never actually kept much of a secret on it so that’s an interesting question in itself — why make a cult member the global central banker?)

    Would you vote Greenspan into office if he was to run for something? On what basis? But what is Greenspan’s influence on the global economy? In many ways greater global influence (and more lasting) than the president’s power.

    Reply
  19. Ted

    More Alan Greenspan!!! You can never get TOO much really. From Angry Bear:

    AMY GOODMAN: Alan Greenspan, you write in the end of your book, “A Federal Reserve System that will be confronted with the challenge of inflation pressure and populist politics that have been relatively quiescent in recent years” is something that is very significant. You say the year — the United States in 2030 is likely to be characterized by populist politics that have been relatively quiescent in recent years. How important is populist politics, and what do you envision those to look like?

    ALAN GREENSPAN: Well, remember what populist politics is. It’s a very special brand of short-term focus, which invariably creates very difficult long-term problems. A goodly part of the book, as you know, is written about how populism has gripped, say, many Latin American countries to their detriment. And the term “populist politics” is essentially another way of saying short term versus longer term. And people who emphasize short-term benefits for long-term costs end up with very little in the way of economic growth and prosperity.

    Angry Bear doubts that definition of populism.

    Reply
  20. JoyM

    The thing that bugs me the most about Ayn Rand’s popularity, even more than the fact that so many people find her absurd, self-centered “philosophy” to be profound, is that she is a BAD writer. AWFUL. I read Atlas Shrugged when I was a teenager, and even then noticed the irony of a book which champions individualism written by an author whose writing skills are so poor that all of her characters were indistinguishable.

    Reply

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