Rep. Kevin McCarthy Currently Reading Atlas Shrugged
Another member of congress, this time Rep Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), wants us to know that he’s getting his policy ideas from a crank novelist. This time we learn via Twitter:
Still reading Atlas Shrugged – its quite the read. #TCOT #sgp #books
Something I think most liberals don’t understand is exactly how stupid many conservative leaders are. There is, yes, a condescending tendency to believe that no smart person could be on the right ideologically at all. That’s dead wrong. Plenty of bright people on the right. But the way their movement works, intelligence or understanding of politics and policy has no meaningful role in advancement. If anything, there’s something of a negative correlation between knowing what you’re talking about and being able to get ahead in right-wing politics.
So you get stuff like this. He’s not cocooning by reading Milton Friedman, he’s cocooning by reading Ayn Rand. It’s nuts, but it’s the way things work.
92 Responses to “Rep. Kevin McCarthy Currently Reading Atlas Shrugged”
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March 6th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
What he means by “still reading” is he started it in high school and hasn’t finished it yet.
March 6th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
Well, Reihan and Ross are employed. That’s something.
March 6th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
I concluded long ago that to be a conservative you had to be either stupid or extremely greedy – but I still can’t figure out which fits for a particular case.
March 6th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
When I finally got around to reading Atlas Shrugged in my late 20’s, I thought, “Man, I would have loved this when I was 15!”
March 6th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
Eh..I don’t understand all the hostility towards that book. I like it. It’s a good book and its villians are spot on. They’re not as numerous as it would lead you to believe but its villians are out there. Its heroes are way off however, which is a pretty big flaw.
It’s not the book’s fault that a legion of bloodthirsty shut-ins cite the book as justification for their every petty small minded emotional outburst.
March 6th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
so after a spell in his cubby, curled up with his Atlas Shrugged, this Congressman pops up to go back to work and he is inspired to do what? Seriously, what is it he might come away with?
March 6th, 2009 at 5:39 pm
This is my congressman…unfortunately, he wil run opposed for years to come; just as his predecessor did (Bill Thomas).
Can we find someone who will challenge this clown?
I will lead the charge!!
March 6th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
The headline and photo look like something out of the Onion. And the fact he twittered about it makes me sad inside.
It’s not the book’s fault that a legion of bloodthirsty shut-ins cite the book as justification for their every petty small minded emotional outburst.
I’ve never read the book, but find it guilty by association.
March 6th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
I read the whole thing as a sophomore in high school. Found it in the library, didn’t know anything about her, kept going because it genuinely seemed to exasperate the Jesuits. I’m not sorry I read it, any more than I’m sorry that I was a sophomore.
Note to Rep. McCarthy: there’s no need to actually read Galt’s speech. Really: flip ahead to the end before you wade in. Maybe just read the first and last couple of paragraphs.
March 6th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
He’s just trying to figure out what they mean by “going Galt.” It’s a threat by rich Republicans to retire to their country clubs and spend the rest of their lives sulking– more like a dream come true.
March 6th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
Gee I read that back in high school I thought it was pretty good as far as romance novels go. But as far as objectiveism goes my high school brain understood any philosophy that calls it self objectiveism, and then makes it’s case by romanticizing a perfect fictional archetype as supermen vs. is very dumb.
Today 30 years latter my critic of that book would be different, the captains of industry have had the technology to make high speed rail for decades, they won’t do it. It’s going take governmental bureaucrats to realize the dreams of Ayn Rands archetypal superman.
March 6th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
How do you get to be a Republican Congressman without having already read “Atlas Shrugged”? Isn’t it on the required reading list for Republicans?
March 6th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
Is there a blog to follow the insane twitters of the Republicans?
I just want to be a jerk and mock them, so reading actually useful things like their schedule would be useless to me!
March 6th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
Although I have respect for a lot of the current Democratic leadership, there’s not exactly wall-to-wall eggheads in their congressional delegation either.
Say what you will about his general evil-ness, but it wasn’t too long ago that the Repub. leader was Newt Gingrich, who could geek it up with the best of them on policy.
March 6th, 2009 at 6:15 pm
Matt, do you really think Republicans are learning from the books are just using it to confirm their priors? As Brad DeLong noted, it’s not like John Galt was a Christian.
Give blame where blame is due.
March 6th, 2009 at 6:15 pm
My father, who was quite a diehard conservative, actually had an insighful opinion of the book. He said “yeah, it sounds really great until the first time you wonder what would happen to you if you didn’t happen to be one of Rand’s elites.”
I think one of the downfalls of modern conservativism is the almost complete absence of a self-reflective side.
March 6th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
Greg Easterbrook wrote this in Slate 9 years ago in a piece called “The Fumblehead”:
Dennis Green stood astride the simulated polymer-type grasslike substance as an immense, superhuman megacolossus. Lesser men were too puny, too trembling, or too ethnically surnamed to comprehend the heights to which he aspired. Masculine, rippling, striding, Dennis Green would mold the Minnesota Vikings into the vehicle of his soaring vision. Destroy and rebuild them every offseason, if that was what it took. Others would laugh, fail to understand. Their derision would prove his genius.
Change quarterbacks every year? No other coach had the courage. But if it brought Dennis Green closer to the realization of his vision, quarterbacks would have to be waived; their destinies scarcely mattered except to the so-called imaginary “God” of the weak-willed losers who deserved their fates. Sean Salisbury, Jim McMahon, Rich Gannon, Warren Moon, Brad Johnson, Randall Cunningham, Jeff George. Use them and toss them aside, this was what great men did with others, and Dennis Green did it to quarterbacks without hesitation because it served his will. His only disappointment was that he failed in his attempt to use Dan Marino and toss him aside; even the greatest must overcome setbacks. The beautiful cheerleaders and glamorous, gorgeous starlets who came to Vikings games drawn by Green’s force of will could only wish he would use them and toss them aside as well!
And if his teams are 94-53 during the regular season yet only 3-7 in the playoffs? Lesser men used this against him, claimed it showed he could not win under pressure. They did not understand his vision! They could never understand his vision because these lesser men were short or were ethnically surnamed or were women. Dennis Green did not care if his teams lost in the playoffs; he cared only for his vision and would pursue it despite what was said by sniveling naysayers. Let them arrest him and put him on trial—he would welcome it, welcome the chance to defend himself for all the world! At his trial he would be surrounded by masculine, rippling, striding men. These manly men, who know what they want and will take it from the sniveling, ethnically surnamed doubters of the world, would slowly, purposefully strip off their sweat-soaked garments to reveal their rippling masculinity and bulging, throbbing masculine powers. Bulging and throbbing, these masculine men would force their …
Note to copydesk: Ayn kinda wanders here into 10,000 words on the sexual prowess of NFL players. There’s a readership for this, of course. But could we get her to condense?
March 6th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
But Rorschach is still one of the coolest characters ever.
March 6th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
What happens if he gets his hands on a copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance or Jonathan Livingston Seagull?
March 6th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
From his simple twitter of Still reading Atlas Shrugged – its quite the read, how do you get the idea that he’s using it for policy ideas or cocooning himself with the book? Maybe he’s just … reading a novel. I know whenever Democrats were reading Harry Potter I was deathly afraid they were going to make quidditch the national pastime.
March 6th, 2009 at 6:42 pm
Rand was so batshit crazy even the National Review crowd couldn’t stand her (and neither could Friedrich Hayek or Milton Friedman, for that matter). Here is Whittaker Chamber’s trashing of Atlas Shrugged in the National Review, 1957:
http://www.nationalreview.com/flashback/flashback200501050715.asp
Classic section:
“Something of this implication is fixed in the book’s dictatorial tone, which is much its most striking feature. Out of a lifetime of reading, I can recall no other book in which a tone of overriding arrogance was so implacably sustained. Its shrillness is without reprieve. Its dogmatism is without appeal. In addition, the mind which finds this tone natural to it shares other characteristics of its type. 1) It consistently mistakes raw force for strength, and the rawer the force, the more reverent the posture of the mind before it. 2) It supposes itself to be the bringer of a final revelation. Therefore, resistance to the Message cannot be tolerated because disagreement can never be merely honest, prudent, or just humanly fallible. Dissent from revelation so final (because, the author would say, so reasonable) can only be willfully wicked. There are ways of dealing with such wickedness, and, in fact, right reason itself enjoins them. From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: “To a gas chamber — go!’”
March 6th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
Something I think most liberals don’t understand is exactly how stupid many conservative leaders are.
Something I think most people don’t understand is exactly how stupid most congresscritters are.
March 6th, 2009 at 6:50 pm
Well, I’d like to put aside the sophomoric problem of Randianism, but it really is related to the argument in MY’s post.
Is there a real distinction between the level of intellectual competence of Democrats and Republicans?
Seems like a problem you need to pull apart to answer. Are we talking about liberals and conservatives, or just members of political parties? If party members, are we talking about regular voters, activists, or politicians?
I think there may be varying answers for all these different groups.
But, ultimately, I think that, at least in the present and in recent decades, there is an essential populist component of conservatism that is suspicious of intellectualism and advanced education. And, really, isn’t this a natural division between conservatives and liberals in that the post-Enlightenment history of education is that education is inherently progressive and therefore anti-traditional?
Here’s a very person, though illuminating, example: I attended St. John’s College, the “Great Books” college, which has a single degree and basically consists of reading the Western Canon, even down to the level of recapitulating the history of science by reading the original works and doing the experiments…it’s not just a literature and philosophy program.
The politics surrounding this are interesting. For a variety of reasons, a wide variety of elective courses and a break from western canonical works is unarguably progressive and therefore the SJC Program is traditional and conservative. It appeals to conservative parents.
Yet, until recent years (tellingly, as the college has become more highly regarded as an elite institution), it didn’t generally attract conservative students. It attracted very idealistic students who, generally being too young and mostly uninformed about the politics of the matter, naturally thought that reading Plato and Kant and Einstein sounded very, very cool.
Meanwhile, some of the people originally involved in creating the Program (in the late 30s) and their fellow travelers were quite politically conservative. There’s a relationship between Strauss and the Straussians and St. John’s. The two founders of the Program were not politically conservative—they were friends of Adler and most of the Chicago folk, but basically (with some exceptions) the Great Books people who were very politically conservative and activist gravitated toward developing the Chicago program and the apolitical or liberals moved to St. John’s. More to the point, the SJC pedagogy is explicitly anti-authoritarian: professors are called “tutors” and there is essentially no lecture and all courses are seminar style with mostly minimal teacher involvement. There’s very little opportunity for a teacher to present, say, the Straussian view of things, even when they are very much Straussians (a tutor I knew was Wolfowitz’s Cornell roommate and both of them were among Strauss’s first acolytes).
So, within the faculty and the community, there is some politicization and a conservative, culturally chauvinistic presence.
Yet, almost all of the undergraduate population is completely unaware of this. Less so today, but still true, is that the students are mostly politically apathetic progressives, with small minorities of progressive and conservative activists…with the progressive side dominant. I recall a National Review article mentioning St. John’s which admired the Program but was puzzled that the students were mostly liberal.
Now, this is relevant to this discussion because of the both the sociology involved as well as the essential issue of what modern education is with regard to conservative and progressive temperaments.
Most of my friends are politically progressive and our experience of the SJC Program, our view of Western history, is that this is radicalizing stuff. Over and over again, the intellectuals who were temperamentally conservative were wrong, the radical right. In science, in philosophy, in politics. Exactly how someone can embrace this tradition and be, well, traditional is a mystery to me.
Furthermore, this tradition and the SJC Program present all these competing, advanced ideas. Discovering new viewpoints is dangerous. And over and over and over at St. John’s, in all our seminars and tutorials, students are forced to divorce themselves from their preconceptions and biases, to evaluate the readings on their own basis and as intellectually rigorously as possible. This is, I think, antithetical to a basic instinct of political conservatives who make their intuitions and biases prior.
Yet there’s paradox here. A prominent former faculty member of St. John’s is Leon Kass—the guy Bush appointed as head of the bioethics commission and a sort of pundit who argues for conservative positions on the very basis of the idea that these intuitions should have priority.
People like Kass are exotic conservatives, I think. They are people who have (supposedly) taken the radical step of being rigorous intellectuals who have kept biases at arms reach and have investigated many competing ideas and have learned many things in great detail and complexity…and yet use all this erudition and experience as a means to elaborately validate all the things that they were predisposed to temperamentally believe anyway, the ideas which are the traditional social norm. And thus these folk become the only intellectuals who are trusted, they’re necessary only to provide whatever small amount of intellectual validation is necessary to comfort a group of people and a way of seeing the world that generally distrusts intellectualism and complexity.
Rand herself is an example of this, I think. Her history is complicated by her personal experience in a very similar way that, say, Edward Teller’s was. Their virulent anti-communism was a product of their childhood experience and has been coopted by a group of people for whom anti-communism is very different and, I think, fairly ignorant and self-serving. Certainly the essential ideas involved in Rand books are self-serving, self-justifying for those who find them attractive.
But let’s also keep in mind that most people are, well, intellectually average. Just reading this blog places us into an above-average category. What draws someone to politics is not the same as what draws someone to intellectual activity and erudition. In that context, Rand’s books are rather sophisticated, aren’t they? More’s the pity.
I know I’ve rambled, but I’m trying to say that I think there’s truth to the idea that education and intellectualism and in many ways things which are antagonistic to the conservative temperment. That doesn’t mean that conservatives are necessarily dumber than progressives. It probably means they’re more ignorant, though.
However, it is a fallacy to say that those who are not tempermentally traditionalists are necessarily hostile to being self-justifying and friendly to opposing ideas. Liberals and progressives are not necessarily more intellectually virtuous than conservatives. Because, I think, the larger force involved in political affiliation is social identity rather than temperment and intellectual outlook. I’ve known about as many leftists who rationalize their own biases as I’ve known rightists who do.
So the truth is that you can’t see this as unidimensional—political affiliation is at least about both social identity as it is temperment. We can guess that there’s some moderate correlations between, say, being conservative and being anti-intellectual and not being very erudite. But assuming this is causal and universal leads to many false conclusions.
March 6th, 2009 at 6:58 pm
They could never understand his vision because these lesser men were short or were ethnically surnamed or were women.
Damn, that passage is almost enough to put Easterbrook back in my good graces.
March 6th, 2009 at 6:58 pm
Reading something doesn’t necessarily crafting policy from it, but then again it’s not at all unexpected that a MattY post about how some people are stupid would contain a stupid statement from MattY. We’re so used to stupid statements from MattY most people probably won’t notice it.
P.S. If you want to see stupid, here’s some background information on the Center for American Progress, MattY’s employer.
March 6th, 2009 at 7:14 pm
The average congressperson is probably of average or slightly above average intelligence. Which means they are not stupid. The average person can be extraordinarily knowlegeable about any number of things and very competent at more than a few.
Then comes politics. Politics is a lizard brain thing. Reason and logic go right out the window and the lizard brain takes over when politics is involved. Throw in that history, broad areas of philosophy and public policy issues of all kinds are enmeshed in politics and thus tainted by the lizard brain and you have stupid. Stupid politician and stupid political players and just political consumers, ie. voters.
I think the modern conservative is far less likely to escape the bounds of their lizard brain but tht might be my lizard brain talking. I am sure over time it is about equal among all parties and coalitions.
Then when you throw in self interest you have the perfect mess.
March 6th, 2009 at 7:29 pm
Keith, I usually skip longs comments, but I really enjoyed yours.
March 6th, 2009 at 7:48 pm
On Death Row too.
March 6th, 2009 at 8:37 pm
Yeah, laugh all you want, that’s just ’cause you don’t know enough to appreciate how much your side is in debt to Looking Backward.
March 6th, 2009 at 8:51 pm
If you ever go to an event at the Cato Institute, outside their auditorium there is a row of portraits about 12 “great people.” Locke is there. Jefferson is there. And the very last of these portraits, which are arranged chronologically, is the owl-faced mug of Ayn.
The lesson of this is that libertarians (aka extra greedy conservatives who like to smoke pot) Ayn is the intellectual equal of John Locke and Thomas Jefferson.
March 6th, 2009 at 9:13 pm
Can’t speak to her fiction, but in High School, I was a reader of Ayn Rand’s nonfiction, of Capitalism; The Unknown Ideal, and The Virtue of Selfishness in particular.
I remember not being terribly impressed by the first book (on her economics), but finding myself very drawn to the ethics discussed in the later.
What I come away with, from this stage, is that humanity (certainly including myself) is not in any way inherently “altruistic” (at least as it is generally understood). Further, I still believe, it is not to any human being’s benefit to be molded into separating their values from their well-being, and certainly not by getting them to accept definitions of themselves imposed by their larger group (community, nation, collective, what have you).
Since High School, however, I have come to greater appreciate how human interaction enhances his freedom, giving each of us a fundamental incentive to help (enhance the freedom of) others, and work toward a more just world.
So, in short, I am glad for having read her.
March 6th, 2009 at 9:19 pm
Thank you, eriks, it’s kind of you to take a moment to comment about it.
March 6th, 2009 at 9:31 pm
There are plenty of smart people on the right. The appearance of stupidity comes from the need to 1) maintain party solidarity, and 2) distract voters from the fact that most are in it to either hoard all profit-making opportunities, or power in general.
March 6th, 2009 at 9:32 pm
But a good many of the smart peoples’ useful idiots are indeed clueless.
March 6th, 2009 at 9:48 pm
I’m much more disturbed that Congress is now twittering than what’s on anyone’s reading list.
March 6th, 2009 at 9:53 pm
All it takes to blow Ayn Rand’s philosophy out of the water is an infant.
March 6th, 2009 at 9:59 pm
Keith M Ellis writes: “I attended St. John’s College, the “Great Books” college, which has a single degree and basically consists of reading the Western Canon, even down to the level of recapitulating the history of science by reading the original works and doing the experiments…it’s not just a literature and philosophy program.
The politics surrounding this are interesting. For a variety of reasons, a wide variety of elective courses and a break from western canonical works is unarguably progressive and therefore the SJC Program is traditional and conservative. It appeals to conservative parents.
Yet, until recent years (tellingly, as the college has become more highly regarded as an elite institution), it didn’t generally attract conservative students. It attracted very idealistic students who, generally being too young and mostly uninformed about the politics of the matter, naturally thought that reading Plato and Kant and Einstein sounded very, very cool.”
Fascinating stuff! I applied to 3 colleges out of high school, and St John’s was one of them – I even visited it, which was something I didn’t do with the other two schools, which were much closer. Financial aid considerations led me to an Ivy instead, but I think that if it had been possible I would have picked St John’s. I envy your experience, even though I did enjoy my own.
March 6th, 2009 at 10:27 pm
Thanks for your comment, Keith Ellis. Did you go to St John’s in Annapolis or Santa Fe?
Son of one of my good friends graduated from the Santa Fe campus 5 or 6 years ago and may be one of the best educated people (BA level) for his age I think I have ever met. I correspond with him and several of his friends (all also Johnnies)in e-mail and all are of the same ilk.
Very impressive
March 6th, 2009 at 10:31 pm
Keith, some day I wish you’d put more of your thoughts on your website — not necessarily a blog where you feel compelled to make it topical or update it every day. Just write a few articles on matters where you find that you have something to say which no one else (or not many other people) are saying. (Also, if jack lecou is out there, this applies to him too. I’m probably the last person who should be asking others to put stuff on their own websites and quit just commenting on others’ blogs, but at any rate…)
Anyway, I think that Kass is an interesting case. Most conservatives seem inclined to accept the progressives of previous generations, to some extent — to say “Okay, Locke was right about religious toleration, Mill was right about women’s suffrage, but no way are Martha Nussbaum or Peter Singer or any of those people right about gay rights/animal liberation/transhumanism/etc.” Kass doesn’t do that, though: he earnestly rejects the enlightenment wholesale. Therefore, to Kass it’s likely that many of the Great Books of St. John’s serve as examples of progressive thought — and he rejects them as such.
I think that there are certain issues where it pretty much is true that the smart and knowledgable people are on one side and the stupid and ignorant are on the other. Same-sex marriage, for instance, really doesn’t seem to have any intelligent intellectual opponents — or at least, if they are intelligent, they’re not intelligent about that issue. The smartest anti-SSM post ever written was probably written by Belle Waring, and was written pretty much as a joke. David Brooks came out with a conservative pro-SSM op-ed. I think creationism/intelligent design vs. modern evolutionary biology is probably another example.
I don’t know whether there are any issues where the generic liberal position on issue x is just the stupid one and generic conservative position on issue x is the smart one. I used to feel that that was the case with regard to trade, but 1) while I’d still consider myself a free trader, I don’t think the intellectual case is as clearcut as I used to, and 2) liberals and conservatives don’t have a consistent pro/anti-free trade position, although probably free trade is somewhat more common to the right.
At any rate, that was the closest I could come up with. So, I can think of several cases where the generic conservative view on some specific issue really does seem to be stupid and the generic liberal view smart, but I can’t think of any specific cases where the reverse is true. It’s posssible that that’s just an intellectual lacuna on my part, but there you go.
March 6th, 2009 at 11:21 pm
MoeLarryAndJesus, I hear that a lot: people who considered SJC but went elsewhere and sometimes regret it. It’s an extraordinarily education with regard to personal idealism. It takes a leap of faith that you won’t regret something so self-evidently impractical and un-vocational. But a very large portion of johnnies—at least prior to this decade, anyway—end up choosing SJC because they’re pretty sure they wouldn’t be happy anywhere else. I attended several other schools before I went to SJC. I knew I wasn’t happen elsewhere.
Really, for me, the pedagogy was more important than the material. I was older and had read portions of the Program already; and, more importantly (and to my dismay when I began at SJC), I had been thinking on most of these “Big Ideas” for many years, anyway (so I was far ahead of my fellow freshmen). (Nothing transfers into SJC, everyone starts as a freshmen regardless of how many credits you’ve earned elsewhere.)
Campesino, I was at Santa Fe in the early 90s. I never went to Annapolis—but roughly 60% of all johnnies transfer between campuses. It’s good to experience both cultures; they’re very different even though it’s the same school and the same curriculum.
Julian Elson, my biggest problem is that I’m a johnnie through-and-through. For me, it’s all about discourse. I couldn’t maintain an interest in blogging because I didn’t like feeling like I was lecturing to an audience. Same problem with writing monographs or whatever and posting them to my blog. I like interaction; that’s why I like commenting. To me—and this is essentially johnnie-like—understanding comes via discourse, through grappling with ideas cooperatively. I just can’t come up with the enthusiasm to write outside that context on the broad range of subjects I will write about discursively. However, I do think I have a talent for making some complex ideas comprehensible—I have considered writing on a few science topics, perhaps some economic topics, as well.
As far as the bulk of your comment, I’m reluctant to go as far as you do. I’ve always lived in a sort of terror of being self-justifying; it’s very difficult for me to argue that liberals are smarter and/or more knowledgeable than conservatives. As I get older, I have more trouble making excuses for them, though. Even so, this is aggregate; unlike you, I’ve known lots of conservative exceptions to this rule.
I mean, it’s easy to say that conservative argument X is stupid. But I’ve found that when discussing argument X with smart conservatives, it gets more complicated. And who am I to be certain that I and some of my beliefs don’t appear the same to them?
Everything is complicated and beliefs ultimately are mostly reducible to temperment and values. Intellectual arguments are usually elaborate rationalizations for conclusions arrived at necessarily as a result of temperment and values. My whole life has been one long attempt to ensure my beliefs are more empirical and rational than this. But it’s been extremely difficult, I don’t know how successful I am, and I know that I work at it more than anyone else I’ve met. So that leaves me with the practical problem of the completely quixotic character of holding everyone else to some impossibly high standard of intellectual integrity and consistency.
And, even then, there’s so much uncertainty that every step of the way in an argument about anything complex in the real world—which politics most certainly is—involves implicit choices in slight shadings of what supposed facts and authorities are trustworthy and what facts are not, and we can’t avoid how our biases affect those subtle shadings. Cumulatively, they can result in the difference between a “conservative” or a “liberal” policy position.
The only thing I feel sure of is what I wrote in my comment: that contemporary conservatism mistrusts intellectualism and privileges commonsensical (and, not coincidentally, the cultural status quo) intuitions about things. This bias, I think, inevitably results in wrong conclusions about complicated matters. It is dumb, and there’s an aspect of conservatism that celebrates this.
March 6th, 2009 at 11:22 pm
Is reading Ayn Rand “nuts”? In what sense? Because it is a sucky novel? Does that matter? Lots of books are more important for their influence than for their literary merit. Critics generally consider “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” a pretty bad book. But that doesn’t matter, because nobody reads it as a novel anymore.
So does it makes sense to read Rand? Well, I think it does if you are interested in a profile (or more negatively, a caricature) of a worldview that values the things Rand claimed to value. And, uh… I think it makes a lot of sense for elected officials to be interested in that kind of profile.
That’s not to say you have to agree Rand is Dostoyevsky. But I find it kind of shocking–depressing, actually–that someone of MY’s curiosities hasn’t bothered to read Atlas Shrugged. Sure, you suffer in parts. But I suffered through intermediate econ, too.
March 6th, 2009 at 11:53 pm
I agree with you. But you have to understand that reading Ayn Rand is more of a social marker than anything else. If you grew up in the right environment, you knew long beforehand that only “those people” read Ayn Rand.
In my case, though, I read “Fountainhead” as an adult and before I was aware that I shouldn’t bother reading it. I was liberal and too old to find the misunderstood adolescent genius vibe seductive. But it was at least as well written as a lot of genre novels I read; and I thought that it was a decent novel of ideas, even though I disagreed with her conclusions and found her socialism bashing to be comically unhinged (and the corresponding leftist villains to be mustache-twirlingly one-dimensional).
Having read “Fountainhead”, I don’t feel I need to read “Atlas Shrugged”. I know the plot, I know Rand’s viewpoint, and I know how well she writes. It’s not worth it to me to read it.
But complicating matters are the legions of Internet Rand fans. Rand is, without a doubt, the most overrated writer and intellectual of the 20th century. Her fans are absolutely insanely generous in their praise relative to the actual intellectual value of her writings. She styled herself a philosopher, and her fans deem her among the greatest, yet she recapitulates in an undeveloped fashion philosophical ideas that have existed and been debated since the birth of Western philosophy and earlier. She’s the very definition of sophomorism in that she both believes she’s the first to deeply examine these ideas and that she does so with any real skill or insight. Just so her fans.
And so it’s very hard not to be part of a very strong backlash against this if you’re among those who know better. She’s not just sophomoric, but she’s wrong and dangerously wrong.
If you were someone who knew all this beforehand; if you were erudite enough in political philosophy (and epistemology!) to know how worthlessly stale and simpleminded Rand’s ideas were; and if there was a social stigma attached among your peer group for reading Rand…would you have read her?
And the thing is, sadly, Yglesias is barely competent as an intellectual, pretty good as a pundit, but completely captive to the viewpoints of those who have always been his peers. He’s not an independent thinker, not the least. Of course he’s never read Rand. He’s the kind of person who knows beforehand entire libraries of books that some regard highly yet he knows aren’t worth his time to read. That’s the kind of person he is. Doesn’t make him a bad person; just makes him like most people, really.
March 7th, 2009 at 12:00 am
Keith M Ellis Let me add to that suggestion to put all your best writing on one Blog.
I have often written stuff that starts as a response but deserves to avoid the ephemera of the conversation of that moment, or that blog. Other times there is long research that results in an extended report that may or may not get crossposted.
Many is the time I would be simply repeating myself, and a link to the previous rant is more controllable and certainly more findable on my own blog.
In this case there is very much I could/would write, about the central logic hole in Rand/Friedman/Libertarian “thinking”, or the authoritarian pathology, the framing wars, and a whole lot more than anyone is likely to read here.
So I recommend bookmarking the website attached to my name or
this one that is a list of as much basic knowledge as I have found on the web.
Julian Elson – the one Generic Conservative position frequently better (IMHO) is a preference for small and local. Frequently that is only to make it easier to subvert or hijack, but with a “Big Brother” limited in power to only preventing such subversion, there is much to be said for it.
March 7th, 2009 at 12:26 am
I read “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged” when I was twelve. Mostly because there was this exotic wealthy neighbor woman on whom I had a tremendous crush who was way into Ayn Rand. It made me feel incredibly adult to sit with her, drink coffee, and discuss objectivism. However, I did have some trouble with the logic of Rand’s views and even then thought “Atlas Shrugged” was poorly written. I’ve always been incredibly grateful to that woman though for giving me the opportunity to thoroughly explore those concepts and even take them seriously so that I could save myself the trouble and embarassment of doing that when I was older.
March 7th, 2009 at 12:36 am
Rand is, without a doubt, the most overrated writer and intellectual of the 20th century.
She is? I think to make such a statement there has to be widespread agreement she was talented. There isn’t. What there is a smallish but enthusiastic fan base of unsophisticated readers.
March 7th, 2009 at 1:19 am
Julian Elson Says:
March 6th, 2009 at 10:31 pm
The problem is that free trade is a Contested Concept. The Conservative speaks as if Free Trade were universally commoditized trade and any sensible person might agree, but as the link points out the Capitalist cannot make a profit without a decommoditizing cheat that allows it control.
The Conservative speaks of “efficiencies” of scale, but that is just newspeak for power. (Consider the efficiency of a ten acre hamburger stand vs the power of a McDonalds, or the silliness of world traveled goods you could make at home) It is this kind of hypocrisy that has created the crushing disaster we call our economy.
March 7th, 2009 at 3:15 am
Why would it be necessary for someone to be widely considered talented for them to be the most overrated writer and intellectual? It’s sort of the point that she’s not very talented yet a considerably number of Americans think she was supremely talented.
Anyway, mine was probably an overstatement. Yet I have trouble coming up with anyone else who is thought of as highly and has such an enduring influence who is so manifestly mediocre for anyone with the erudition and insight to be able to recognize it. She’s wildly overrated.
By everyone? By intellectuals? Well, no. But by a unreasonably large and influential class—everyone from Internet blowhard to Alan Greenspan.
I guess you’re taking overrated to apply only to those who are highly rated, in general. An example that comes to mind, in my opinion, is Toni Morrison. She’s widely understood to be very good, and many consider “Beloved” to be one of the best novels of the 20th century. I know an English/Women’s Sudies Prof who considers it the greatest 20th century American novel. In my opinion, that’s a gross over-estimation. But that’s not to say that it’s not very good.
But what strikes me about Ayn Rand is the sheer distance between the accepted knowledgeable view of her competence and the view of her competence by her influential and far too numerous fans. The gap is huge. So that’s why I think she’s arguably the most overrated.
March 7th, 2009 at 6:06 am
“he’s getting his policy ideas from a crank novelist…”
From a crank Russian novelist at that. The extremism, logorrhea and total disregard for practicalities of Ayn Rand (born 1905, St Petersburg) are as Russian as borscht.
March 7th, 2009 at 7:30 am
Keith says:
“But complicating matters are the legions of Internet Rand fans. ”
Well, I think this reality argues for reading it. The glee MY takes in informing readers that he hasn’t read the book (while still opining about it; or, I guess, as a form of opining about it) is every bit as tedious as the people who don’t own televisions and take every opportunity they get to tell you about it.
“No, friends. I cannot participate in your discussion of ‘The Office’ because my family has decided that the medium of television lacks the literary and intellectual vigor we have come to expect from… Wait…. where are you going? Please. I want to tell you more about intellectual and literary vigor! See! I have never seen ‘The Office’! Did you hear that? The Sopranos? Goodness no. Because… Wait. You’re leaving again.”
Matt spends a great deal of time bashing the ideas that come out of certain parts of the political spectrum. He ought to bother to engage a little more with the cultural touchstones that animate those ideas.
How much respect would you have for a conservative who refused to read “The Jungle” or “Silent Spring” on the basis tha they are not “great”? How much less would you have if that conservative was widely known as–and proudly professed to be–a person who devoured all manner of cultural material, both good and bad, out of sheer curiosity?
I would say that conservative was wearing blinkers and ought to be a little embarrased.
Say what you want about libertarians and objectivists. Maybe they are jerks. Or dicks. Or evil. But they are a powerful cultural (some might even say political) force in contemporary America. Even more so in contemporary American mythology. And… well… Ayn Rand’s portrait is one of 12 on display at the Cato Institute.
Might be worth looking into.
If you are an intellectual person deeply interested in American culture, you probably ought to see a baseball game at some time in your life. You probably ought to eat a hot dog at least once. You should probably experience the Jersey Shore or its equivalent. You probably ought to see a live rock and roll show, not to mention a jazz show. You should probably try to drive a car at least once, even if you don’t own one. You should probably fire a gun.
And you probably ought to read Atlas Shrugged.
Because of the legions of Internet fans. Not despite them.
March 7th, 2009 at 8:23 am
You gotta give ATLAS one thing… it is probably the second greatest American novel never filmed.
First would have to be John Wayne Gacy’s favorite PRETTY BOYS MUST DIE.
March 7th, 2009 at 9:26 am
I’ve never read Atlas Shrugged, but instinct tells me that Rand misunderstood the image in her title. Atlas isn’t holding up the globe out of the goodness of his heart. No, the gods and Titans had a war and the stupid Titans were outwitted and defeated. Titan holds up the globe as punishment. He’s a slave. What Rand is advocating, according to her title, is for big dumb people to go do something other than what their clever masters want. If that’s the case, her readers and advocates have misunderstood Rand.
March 7th, 2009 at 9:58 am
The glee MY takes in informing readers that he hasn’t read the book …is every bit as tedious as the people who don’t own televisions and take every opportunity they get to tell you about it.
Of course, it’s not like that at all. Boy, some of *you* guys aren’t very smart, however educated – or overeducated – you may be. It’s called ‘a sense of humor.’ Look into it.
Don’t like to write blog posts or ‘monographs’ because you don’t want to feel like you’re ‘lecturing’, Keith? You sound very much, to me, like you’re lecturing. Blogs have comment sections, which the author can use. Discourse!
March 7th, 2009 at 11:03 am
No dubois, Rand has her title right.
Rand’s hero is the great man, the strong, creative engine responsible for innovation and progress in our society.
But our society uses law and government to turn the great man into our Atlas, enslaved and forced to support the world and its consumers (all of us little people) with his genius and labor and wealth the first two produce.
The question for Rand is what happens when finally Atlas rebels and shrugs his shoulders and allows the “world” to fall.
March 7th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
If Atlas “shrugs” and if shrugging means to release the burden, then I guess it means to let the sky collapse in on the Earth, then presumably sky and Earth embrace once again so as to destroy the existing people who live on Earth. Atlas fought with the Titans against Zeus and the other Olympians, and lost.
The imagery that successful businessmen are Titans (or close enough) bearing the weight of the heavens upon their shoulders is ludicrous enough. To then try to closely analogize it to the Atlas myths just gets even weirder.
March 7th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
JT, if that’s how Rand sees it, she’s misusing the mythology: Atlas wasn’t a great man. He was a dumbo Titan, defeated by Zeus and the other Olympians. Mark Twain objected to using the 2nd cousin of the word you want, and this is definitely a case of it. Atlas wasn’t imprisoned by the little people: he was imprisoned by the clever guys.
March 7th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
The wonderful (and terrible) thing about the US is that just about anyone and everyone can run for office — and they do.
In my admittedly not extremely expansive experience working on a variety of local and statewide political campaigns, I’ve observed that the most consistently shared feature of male policians is a greater than average desire to be liked and admired — by EVERYONE. For female politicians it appears to be a desire to be useful (and therefore respected — by EVERYONE).
Intellectual astuteness may or may not accompany such a desire. Genuine self-awareness and comprehension of one’s own limitations and failings rarely does.
But all of that is a separate issue from the problem of Randian influence — that over the last several decades has spread broadly, throughout the financial community especially, and among the worst self-absorbed and self congratulatory bully boys of the “liberatarian” Right. Santelli, for instance, in justifying his “loser” rant on CNBC explained that he was an “Ayn Randian.” As, I’m sure, were all those traders on the floor cheering him on. (And, by the way, mostly ignored and overlooked in a media intent on indicting the usual, most cliched cultural villians, a close friend of the Columbine Shooters, in a TV interview, defended them from the suggestion that they had been dumb consumers of evil video games by insisting they were smart and serious young men who “read Ayn Rand.” A fact, frankly, that I’ve long thought had more influence on both their horrific arrogance and their horrific plot than anything else.)
Rand is unimportant as a literary figure. But she has been a much more pervasive, and more detrimental, modern cultural and economic influence than many people realize.
March 7th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
no kiddin. check out the Reader’s List,
March 7th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
The extremism, logorrhea and total disregard for practicalities of Ayn Rand (born 1905, St Petersburg) are as Russian as borscht
Honestly, I’d be more likely to attribute them to the fact that she wrote on amphetamines.
March 7th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
I have actually purchased the book, along with Fountainhead and Anthem. I have, unfortunately, not gotten yet comfortable enough with her prose to read through them with enjoyment. I do hope that at some future point I might read the work; I understand that many people have been inspired to enterprise and great intellectual epiphany by it. However, at present, I think I will do what’s most comfortable for me, keeping at Sir Kingsley Amis, Anthony Powell, Evelyn Waugh, and James Joyce.
The last thing I want is to ruin the effect of the book by forcing myself through it banally and mechanically. That would be like going through Shakespearean tragedies in freshman year of high school; completely ruined my taste for it once and for all (I still like Shakespearean comedy).
March 7th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
no kiddin. check out the Reader’s List,
I am more disappointed to discover that Brideshead Revisited only made No.80 on the Broad’s List and 88 on the Reader’s. That demonstrates a remarkable lack discrimination.
March 7th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
Thank you, Dr. Manhattan. A little OT and very dog-whistley, but appreciated.
I honestly hadn’t seen that connection before, despite loving both The Fountainhead and Watchmen, but now that you mention (err, “imply”) it, it’s unavoidable. Although I thought that Roark was taller.
March 7th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
I just flipped through a recent Batman comic, in which the Joker is recuperating from a stabbing wound in a hospital bed, and he’s reading The Fountainhead. Thought it was funny.
March 7th, 2009 at 4:42 pm
The two or three of you who are, not to put too fine a point on it, *sneering* at M.Y. for not having read Rand’s “masterpiece” in light of this post of his…
I wonder if any of you actually understand what M.Y. is getting at. Kieth hinted at it with his note about Greenspan being a fan of this underwhelming work of fiction, but none of you actually came out and said it. The fact is, the people primarily responsible for the current economic hole we’re in, and who are agitating for us to dig it even deeper, view “Atlas Shrugged” as a textbook, not merely as a fun-to-read philosophy novel. These are people who *brag* that they are Randian economists who had their lives changed by John Galt and his ilk.
So when a congressional republican is broadcasting the fact that he is (re-)reading “Atlas Shrugged”, this is a very clear statement of opinion about the current economy and what he intends for us to do about it. And anyone who has been paying attention to major economists (such as Dr. Paul Krugman, who recently won a Nobel prize because he has been, you know, **correct** about everything) understands that Randian-style selfish elitism is the cause of our problems, not the solution to them.
I get the distinct impression that, in your eagerness to sound erudite and smart, some of you are missing the forest for the trees.
March 7th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
no kiddin. check out the Reader’s List,
Hysterical that the top of that list is a twisted mix of Rand and L. Ron Hubbard books. I think I’ll take my religious cues from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy that I found at #51, just to be different.
March 7th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
That’s not to say you have to agree Rand is Dostoyevsky.
No, she’s Chernyshevsky. No, worse than that. Think Gladkov’s Cement. Capitalist realism.
March 7th, 2009 at 6:04 pm
Officer Barbrady: Yes, at first I was happy to be learning how to read. It seemed exciting and magical, but then I read this: Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I read every last word of this garbage, and because of this piece of s**t, I am never reading again.
i read Rand’s Anthem , and it was a total POS, but less than 200 pages so i don’t feel quite so cheated.
March 7th, 2009 at 6:36 pm
anyone who is taking economic philosophy from a romantic novel is just crazy. but just because the republicans don’t understand the source material (if they really did ayn rand’s anti-religious/atheist sentiments would get their heads spinning) doesn’t mean that you shouldjust use the books as a doorstop. the most compelling thing about her books is the personal philosophy. while her own life shows following it doesn’t lead to enlightenment, there are truths embedded within.
we are selfish creatures, everything we do we do it for ourselves. we do whatever we can for our children because of the love we feel, for the way that love makes us feel.
another benefit to her thinking is the way we look at the unfortunate, the poor. they aren’t people that deserve our pity, they are human beings that deserve respect, they deserve opportunity to accomplish what they can. and violence against another human being is the worst thing.
so in the end you can take out these books, integrity, self-reliance, non-violence, and respect for your fellow man. i refuse to believe that these are conservative beliefs or liberal ones. these should be human beliefs…
March 7th, 2009 at 7:11 pm
“Dr. Paul Krugman, who recently won a Nobel prize because he has been, you know, **correct** about everything”
Really? That’s the standard for the Nobel?
If so, I suggest you swing by George Mason University some time soon. For some learnin’.
Here you go:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernon_L._Smith
Wow. Does anybody use these prizes as a measure of “correctness” anymore? Besides clowns, I mean?
How’s Yassar Arafat’s Nobel Peace Prize doing?
March 7th, 2009 at 8:20 pm
“Really? That’s the standard for the Nobel?”
Really? That’s how you reply to people’s posts? By taking a single statement out of context and going off on an irrelevant tangent? How cowardly and dishonest of you.
Tell you what. Rather than be a snarky asshole, **prove Dr. Krugman wrong**. If you can. You can’t, of course, because, after all, he isn’t.
March 7th, 2009 at 8:42 pm
Bugmenot,
In what sense was it taken out of context?
The context was, you agree with Krugman, and you use the fact that he won a Nobel Prize as a cudgel. Using assinine phrases like he as “correct” about everything. Conveniently ignoring the fact that loads of serious economists have a lot of different ideas. About stimulus. About Ayn Rand. About everybody.
Look, dude. You read the NYT. You like Krugman. THe fact that he won a Nobel Prize makes you feel smart. Great.
Just dial it back a notch.
As for snark, what do you call it when you say things like: “because he has been, you know, **correct** about everything”
If you are going to try snark, at least be good at it.
March 7th, 2009 at 11:03 pm
I read Atlas Shrugged in 1971 while riding in the family station wagon when we moved from MN down to W. KY at the end of my freshman year in college. I enjoyed it as a way to pass the time, the plot went fast and it was easy to read quickly. But I could not think of one person in public life who had the ability to crash up the works similar to John Galt. It was a nice fantasy, but many treat it as reality to the detriment of society. I seem to recall that Ronald Reagan was a fan, which I do not find surprising.
March 7th, 2009 at 11:21 pm
“In what sense was it taken out of context?”
The context was, republicans reading “Atlas Shrugged” have ideas about the economy which are wrong. You completely ignored that in favor of focusing on a tiny side detail and trying to derail the conversation in another direction.
March 8th, 2009 at 12:06 am
“The context was, republicans reading “Atlas Shrugged” have ideas about the economy which are wrong. You completely ignored that in favor of focusing on a tiny side detail and trying to derail the conversation in another direction.”
Uh, no. You implied that since Krugman won a Nobel, he must be right. Which is a crap argument.
You made a shitty, snide remark and got called out.
Deal.
By the way, Krugman did win a Nobel. But not for ANYTHING having to do with his recent commentary. At all.
March 8th, 2009 at 3:58 am
Pete Says:
March 6th, 2009 at 6:15 pm
My father, who was quite a diehard conservative, actually had an insighful opinion of the book. He said “yeah, it sounds really great until the first time you wonder what would happen to you if you didn’t happen to be one of Rand’s elites.”
I read the book in high school, as it happened followed by Les Miserables. Hugo won.
March 8th, 2009 at 9:54 am
One small comment. I went to college with Mike Pence (Hanover College). He was one of those types that was a little dim, but thought that he was very bright. (the type of person who’d compare a Iraqi marketplace in a war zone to a farmer’s market in Indiana and think that it was a very clever thing to say.)
He wasn’t very good on the whole self-awareness thing and was more than a little self-righteous. I can’t say he’s changed much.
March 9th, 2009 at 11:48 am
“Over and over again, the intellectuals who were temperamentally conservative were wrong, the radical right. In science, in philosophy, in politics. Exactly how someone can embrace this tradition and be, well, traditional is a mystery to me.”
Well, there’s a selection process going on there. We’re interested in those radicals whose ideas turned out to be right, rather than those whose ideas ended up being irrelevant or wrong-headed or who for one reason or another, didn’t have influence on the direction of ideas: you’re reading books that were influential and changed the way we think, otherwise why read them? You’ll spend a lot longer with Keynes, Mill, Rousseau, Voltaire or Adam Smith than with, say, Robert Owens or Bakunin or Saint-Simon or Karl Kautsky.
March 9th, 2009 at 11:55 am
“If so, I suggest you swing by George Mason University some time soon. For some learnin’.
Here you go:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernon_L._Smith”
Well, my answer would be that Vernon Smith is a microeconomist, not a macroeconomist like Krugman. I appreciate his insight, but I go to a doctor, not a microbiologist, when I get sick.
March 9th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
“Rand herself is an example of this, I think. Her history is complicated by her personal experience in a very similar way that, say, Edward Teller’s was. Their virulent anti-communism was a product of their childhood experience and has been coopted by a group of people for whom anti-communism is very different and, I think, fairly ignorant and self-serving.”
This is very insightful, Keith. I used to think that the influence of anti-communism fundamentally weakened the U.S. left, but it may actually have done more damage to the U.S. right, in terms of their discourse and the curious mirror-image of Leninism in movement conservatism. But most fundamentally, the U.S. right has constructed a narrative of history where Reagan (and by extension, those who worship him and their perception of his ideology) became the primary and indispensible vanquisher of Communism (with a bit part from Margaret Thatcher). Loathing of communism has been translated to those seen as being insufficiently anti-communist and worshipful of Reagan, i.e. the U.S. liberals and left.
Never mind what Reagan actually did, e.g. he actually increased state government expenditure as a share of Gross State Product faster than any other post-war governor when he was Governor of California, or that radical conservatives like Cheney thought he was being duped at the summit with Gorbachev in Rekjavik.
March 12th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
we are selfish creatures, everything we do we do it for ourselves. we do whatever we can for our children because of the love we feel, for the way that love makes us feel.
Randroids base their entire worldview on the fallacy of equivocation encapsulated here.
There are two meanings of “selfish”. One is “to do what the self wants”, which is a tautology, but which begs the question of what the self elects to want. This tautology, like most, is not terribly insightful.
The second meaning of “selfish” is the vernacular – acting like a dick, i.e. the self choosing to want things without regard for what others also want. This is not a tautology, and is what most people mean when they refer to a person as “selfish”.
By asserting the first definition, Randroids then believe themselves justified in behaving according to the second.
All of Rand’s crap proceeds from this fallacy of equivocation. Yes, we act as we choose, and we choose what we (in some sense) want; that’s a tautology. If what you want is chosen without regard for what others want, then you’re a dick. Don’t be surprised when you get treated like one. And don’t be surprised when this fails to make you a superman.
March 12th, 2009 at 10:40 pm
Kevin McCarthy better not go Galt. He’s the only one who can save us from the pod people.
March 23rd, 2009 at 9:31 pm
The fact that Rep McCarthy is “still” reading this book has nothing to do with his intelligence. It tells me he’s just a very busy man who has to balance life between 2 coasts and his priorities are his job and family. When you’re trying to maintain a career, be an actively-involved parent, and stay informed with current events (which I’m sure is requisite for a Congressman) I would think that an afternoon with a good book is a rare indulgence. Would you prefer to see President Obama sitting in the rose garden reading “War and Peace” or watching his daughter’s dance recital?
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