Conservative or Liberal or What?
It is an easy claim that most admirers of Ayn Rand's works consider themselves conservatives. When presented with that, I believe that many will balk, insisting on their atheism as an easy out. A woman's right to terminate a pregnancy is another delineation. Yet, I suggest that a formal poll on specific issues and specific politicians would reveal a strong correlation across the American political right, including admirers of Ayn Rand. Paul Ryan and Ron Paul are perhaps paradigmatic.
Analogs among Democrats seem non-existent. I do offer Christopher Hitchens as self-defined political liberal who publicly denigrated Ayn Rand, yet whose own words often were echoic of her own sentiments - and not just on atheism. He was perhaps the Austen Heller of our time.
In "Ayn Rand Answers: the best of her Q&A" the subject of gun control appears twice. She was ambivalent providing no easy answer but only an open question: how do we balance your right to self-defense with the state's monopoly on force? The only purpose of a handgun is to kill another human being, she said, and no one has that right. (Yes, you can hunt handgun. That is not the issue she was addressing.) This is not a debate about gun control, but only an identification of the issue as a way to sort conservative from liberal, Republican from Democrat, in America today. On that issue, as on religion, and on abortion, Ayn Rand was liberal. In fact, in the Objectivist Newsletter she was explicit in her affinity for the fact that liberals take an intellectual approach to problems, whereas conservatives fall back on tradition.
*** SPOILER ALERT ***
A minor point, a subject she herself did not explicitly address, but which unites the right wing, is the place of gold currency in the economy. In "Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal" the essay on gold was the work of Alan Greenspan. In the Valley, when John Galt pays Dagny with a gold coin, she asks him "On whose authority?" and he points to the legend "United States of America." That anyone should be able to create their own money was not a specific consideration. In that, held an implicitly liberal or progressivist view.
Retreatism crosses the left-right distinction. Back in the 60s, the "Whole Earth Catalog" sold goods and ideas to people who wanted to get out of the cities and back to the land. Today's conservatives share that same fear of cities. Ayn Rand, of course, glorified New York City. In that, she shared a passion for urban culture with Jane Jacobs, an avowed socialist, who also rhapsodized about the success of civilization as (literally) city culture, urbanity.
Ayn Rand found homosexuality disgusting. Whether she would be laissez faire about gay marriage is a moot point. It is easy to project from her actual writings that she would consider it none of the state's business. But that would apply, also, to smoking marijuana, which she definitely did not advocate. Rand developed Objectivism as a philosophy for personal living. In other words, you may well have a political right to be irrational, but, morally, it is wrong.
That takes Ayn Rand off the political scale (or plane) entirely.
Analogs among Democrats seem non-existent. I do offer Christopher Hitchens as self-defined political liberal who publicly denigrated Ayn Rand, yet whose own words often were echoic of her own sentiments - and not just on atheism. He was perhaps the Austen Heller of our time.
In "Ayn Rand Answers: the best of her Q&A" the subject of gun control appears twice. She was ambivalent providing no easy answer but only an open question: how do we balance your right to self-defense with the state's monopoly on force? The only purpose of a handgun is to kill another human being, she said, and no one has that right. (Yes, you can hunt handgun. That is not the issue she was addressing.) This is not a debate about gun control, but only an identification of the issue as a way to sort conservative from liberal, Republican from Democrat, in America today. On that issue, as on religion, and on abortion, Ayn Rand was liberal. In fact, in the Objectivist Newsletter she was explicit in her affinity for the fact that liberals take an intellectual approach to problems, whereas conservatives fall back on tradition.
*** SPOILER ALERT ***
A minor point, a subject she herself did not explicitly address, but which unites the right wing, is the place of gold currency in the economy. In "Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal" the essay on gold was the work of Alan Greenspan. In the Valley, when John Galt pays Dagny with a gold coin, she asks him "On whose authority?" and he points to the legend "United States of America." That anyone should be able to create their own money was not a specific consideration. In that, held an implicitly liberal or progressivist view.
Retreatism crosses the left-right distinction. Back in the 60s, the "Whole Earth Catalog" sold goods and ideas to people who wanted to get out of the cities and back to the land. Today's conservatives share that same fear of cities. Ayn Rand, of course, glorified New York City. In that, she shared a passion for urban culture with Jane Jacobs, an avowed socialist, who also rhapsodized about the success of civilization as (literally) city culture, urbanity.
Ayn Rand found homosexuality disgusting. Whether she would be laissez faire about gay marriage is a moot point. It is easy to project from her actual writings that she would consider it none of the state's business. But that would apply, also, to smoking marijuana, which she definitely did not advocate. Rand developed Objectivism as a philosophy for personal living. In other words, you may well have a political right to be irrational, but, morally, it is wrong.
That takes Ayn Rand off the political scale (or plane) entirely.
