I Am Not John Galt

My foray into the writings of Ms. Rand was really a matter of coincidence. Two nearly simultaneous events stirred me in her direction. First, I tend to regularly check CNBC, as a way of keeping abreast of the churnings and whirlings of global capitalism. Earlier this month, I came across an article praising Rand, whose philosophy defined the economic outlook of the Reagan White House. With leftists in the White House, she's more relevant than ever, crowed the article, which was written to pitch a book written by one of Objectivism's disciples.

Second, I read a short blog response to Atlas Shrugged written by a conservative with whom I've often gently jousted in past, one that showed him enthusiastic about many aspects of her ideology of self-actualization. In the face of that sympathy, though, he expressed some discomfort with certain aspects of her worldview. Like most conservatives, he's a Christian, and that makes embracing some of her views...difficult.

The reason for this dissonance can be found throughout her book, but nowhere more strongly than in the radio speech of John Galt, the great noble and mighty man of mystery who acts as the mostly unseen influence over the world of Atlas Shrugged. The radio address comes as he seizes control of the airwaves, bumping the weak and bureaucratic president so that he can deliver his monologue, to which the nation pays rapt attention.

And oh, what a monologue. It runs for fifty-three full pages of the book. As someone who preaches regularly from written texts, I did a quick calculation. That's a four and a half hour sermon, with no music, breaks or pauses. Even by Baptist standards, that's starting to get a little long. Even Rush Limbaugh runs out of steam before he can complete a rant of that magnitude. The idea that everyone would sit and listen to this shows that Ms. Rand may have lacked a grasp of 1) how humans process information and 2) the capacity of the human bladder.

This is Ayn Rand's Sermon on the Mount, the pinnacle of her philosophy, and the conceptual lynchpin of Atlas Shrugged. And what it is, unfortunately for conservatives who want to embrace her, is completely antithetical to Christianity. By this, I don't mean it opposes the institutional church. I don't mean that it raises concerns about the way in which Christians have used power to oppress others. It sets itself in explicit and ferocious opposition to the heart of Christian faith.

As Galt/Rand does the monologue thing, most of his invective is against the moral and ethical code that he views as having enslaved and destroyed humanity. That dark and oppressive morality is, as he puts it, "...to serve God's purpose or your neighbor's welfare." For the entirety of this defining speech, Galt/Rand assails the "mystics" who would give themselves over to God, and those "moralists" who would give themselves over to neighbor. The enemy of human actualization is, for Rand, the Great Commandment.

This is, to put it mildly, a non-trivial issue. As someone who'd known the oppression of Soviet Russia, Rand hated communism, and her seething hatred of the state made her philosophy seem appealing to American conservatives. But as much as she hated commies, she hated Jesus most of all. Her whole philosophy is carefully constructed in intentional, fundamental and irreconcilable opposition to the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.

You cannot be Christian and believe what Rand believes. I do not say this by way of assailing her, because she and I would agree.

And with that agreement, I think my conversation with Ms. Rand has come to a conclusion. Always nice to end with agreement.

A High and Lonely Destiny

It's slow going. Reading Atlas Shrugged is not providing me with one of those transforming philosophical/literary experiences. This isn't Brothers Karamazov or The Stranger. It seems more analogous to one of those long, long road-trips on superslab, where the scenery is just endless sameness and the only thing to break up the journey is keeping tabs on the mile markers. And they seem to go by with way too little frequency.

Ayn Rand does have a rather..cough...interesting style as a writer. She manages, somehow, to be both flowery and coldly inaccessible at the same time. Hers is a form of romanticism that seems to have sprung from the industrial 20th century, and her writing, for me, is like trying to read the music of Wagner. It's big, bombastic, and on a scale that has little to do with lesser mortals. The emotional subtleties of actual human existence are nowhere to be found. Every moment is a grand and towering gesture, all brass and kettledrums, brimming over with Meaning with a capital M. And yet, in the thick of all that fervor, it seems strangely inhuman.

Her characters...at least, the ones she presents as moral exemplars...all have an aesthete's disregard for every human being who does not meet their standards of profit, power, and pursuit of self-interest. Again and again in the first 100 pages we hear from them that human beings generally...and Mexicans in particular...are worthless parasites living off of the creative genius of a few glorious demigods.

As I settle in with Ayn Rand's band of sternly romantic, self-absorbed, and emotionally distant protagonists, I find that they remind me of someone else, someone from another story I first read long ago. That someone is Jadis, Queen of Charn. As she puts it in the Magician's Nephew:

You must learn, child, that what would be wrong for you or for any of the common people is not wrong in a great Queen such as I. The weight of the world is on our shoulders. We must be freed from all rules. Ours is a high and lonely destiny.

That the White Witch of Narnia would be a heroine in Atlas Shrugged is, I think, rather telling.

Atlas Shrugged, Then Looked for His Reading Glasses

I had, believe it or not, never actually managed to read any Ayn Rand. She's one of those authors who is viewed as a necessary element of a well-rounded education. Somehow, though, it was my lot to never be assigned The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged. Lately, though, I'm feeling stirred to remedy that.

Why?

Well, because Ms. Rand speaks deeply to the heart of the American conservative. I make it a point to read the blogs of folks who believe that health care reform is evil, and who view progressives and Democrats as evil, and who are, when I comment on their musings, happy to let me know just how hopelessly wrong I am. Sometimes, amazingly enough, they are people I've come to like.

For those folks, Atlas Shrugged resonates powerfully. The way that Ms. Rand articulates the purpose of humankind harmonizes with and informs the ethos of American conservatism, both through the objectivist philosophy she expresses in her writing and the way she writes. Understanding her mindset is, as I see it, a good way to grasp the spirit that moves in the hearts of the Right.

Earlier this week, I went to pick up the book at the library. This, I suppose, was getting off the to the wrong start. Libraries are a public good, and given what I know about Ms. Rand's view of government, are probably off limits to most objectivists. There were four identical copies of Atlas Shrugged on the shelf, all new fat bricky paperbacks. I opened one. It was bigger than I thought, at one thousand and sixty nine pages. Hmmm, thought I. For an author whose philosophy claims to be rooted in rational precision, that's a whole heck of a lot of text. But the page count was a bit misleading. Unlike the countless high school students who bump up their font size to flesh out their papers, this book could have been several hundred pages longer.

The font was tiny to the point of being abusive, perhaps 8 point, maybe less, making no compromise for those among us whose vision is not perfect. I'm still better than 20/20, but the idea of reading over 1,000 pages of microscopic prose suddenly seemed daunting.

But I know Ms. Rand well enough to know that it was appropriately daunting. She had nothing but contempt for the weak. Was I weak, one of the parasites who lack the courage to even enter the hallowed gates of Objectivist thought? It was a challenge. It was a test. I committed myself to continue. I would not be so easily cowed.

So into the introduction I went.