Ayn Rand & Objectivism

Congressman Steny Hoyer criticizes Ayn Rand, whom he blames for the Republicans’ unwillingness to compromise. However, Rand is discussing a compromise on a moral issue, between what is ethically right and ethically wrong. The improper type of compromise, she writes, involves “the betrayal of one’s principles.”

On the Foundation for Economic Education’s website, Max Borders and Craig Biddle debate the question of whether liberty is best defended by reference to a single, demonstrably true moral foundation or a diversity of moral perspectives. Check out the debate, and vote for the side you think makes the most sense.

In his article—“The Atheist Libertarian Lie: Ayn Rand, Income Inequality and the Fantasy of the 'Free Market’”—Werleman fundamentally misunderstands the nature of capitalism, and he completely fails to grasp the facts cited by Rand and others supporting the idea that capitalism is the only moral system.

Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged is a literary masterpiece and one of the most read and discussed novels of the 20th century. It tells the story of “men of the mind,” led by John Galt, who go on strike as the world around them collapses. The trilogy of films is a cheap, inept attempt to represent the original.

Leftists as well as religious conservatives routinely misrepresent Ayn Rand’s ideas—often wildly so—and then mock the straw men of their own creation. Although one might have expected better from PJ Media, Andrew Klavan and Bill Whittle take the same approach in their recent PJ video.

These days various journalists and pundits routinely misrepresent Ayn Rand’s ideas in order to smear her. The latest smear comes from an article by Bijan Stephen in Time magazine about a coffee shop that uses a voluntary honor system for payments.

In May, at a conference cosponsored by FEE and the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism, Max Borders and Craig Biddle debated the question, "Moral diversity: asset or liability for the liberty movement?"—and the discussion was, by all accounts, profoundly interesting. We present in this issue of TOS the transcript of that debate.

Every so often, people hostile to Ayn Rand’s ideas try to attack them by saying that Rand said or implied something she never said or implied and then attacking that thing she never said or implied. Given that Rand’s actual views are so readily available, it’s baffling that her detractors wantonly make this stuff up.

In “Terrorism, Altruism, and Moral Certainty,” the Afterward to my book Loving Life, I explain that “Islamic terrorists are religious altruists: They selflessly commit human sacrifices for the sake of a supernatural ‘other’—an alleged God.” A Muslim professor at the Islamic University in Gaza recently acknowledged this too.

Unfortunately, when some economists think of values as “subjective,” they assume that there is no objective standard for determining moral value; they assume that value is only a matter of personal opinion.