 | Thursday, September 13, 2007 at 15:47:53 mst
Comment ID: #3 (link)
Name: PMB
"Ayn Rand was predictably wary of kinship ties and, like radical feminists, saw the family as a soul-killing prison."
There is a lot of evidence against this (see her comments on converting one's parents in Ayn Rand Answers), but the most powerful, IMO, is Ayn Rand's letters to her sister Nora, whom she had not seen since she left Soviet Russia, after Nora contacted her in the early 70s. That is not someone who viewed her family as a soul-killing prison. |
| Thursday, September 13, 2007 at 17:57:10 mst
Comment ID: #4 (link)
Name: Nick B.
Justin said:
quote
"Ayn Rand was predictably wary of kinship ties and, like radical feminists, saw the family as a soul-killing prison."
Umm, cite please?
unquote
I can think of two examples (going by memory) in her novels which might lead someone to believe this was true. First, in Atlas Shrugged, Taggert's wife left her family because life with them *was*, in Hymowitz's words, 'soul-killing.' Second, Howard Roark says "I don't love my dear old mother...," and professes to have no family. Adding to this the circumstantial facts that none of the principal characters in Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead had children or had (obvious) close ties to their parents, and that Ayn Rand left her family in Soviet Russia for America and never had children herself, you can see the case that Hymowitz, assuming she's read Ayn Rand and knows a little about her personal life, might have made in her mind for this quite false assertion.
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| Thursday, September 13, 2007 at 20:08:58 mst
Comment ID: #5 (link)
Name: Joseph Kellard
E-mail: Theainet1(at)optonline.net
URL: http://www.theamericanindividualist.blogspot.com/
Here is what I posted over at OpinionJournal
After publishing an essay specifically on Ayn Rand two Septembers ago, Commentary magazine is once again employing its smear tactics against her, this time in a highly muddled essay on libertarianism:
http://tinyurl.com/3d2354
At first, I was happy to see the author correctly points out that libertarianism essentially adopts the view "do whatever you want." But then, as a typical conservative is wont to do, her essay boils down to essentially criticizing libertarians for not recognizing that capitalism is based on "tradition" and "family values."
Here's just a few examples:
*[About a particular libertarian she spotlights]: "He has read his Max Weber and knows that middle-class norms are the indispensable cultural infrastructure of free-market economics; he appreciates the irony that, without Protestant self-discipline and respectability, Americans would not be enjoying their Napa Chardonnay and Internet porn."
What are those "norms"? All she offers is "self-discipline" or "self-responsibility."
* "The complex, dynamic economy that libertarians have done so much to expand needs highly advanced human capital--that is, individuals of great moral, cognitive, and emotional sophistication. Reams of social-science research prove that these qualities are best produced in traditional families with married parents."
What great morals and what traditions? Again, she mentions virtually nothing beyond what I mentioned just above. And what are the ideas of these married parents? Traditionalism, in whatever form, I suppose.
*"Children do not come into the world respecting private property. They do not emerge from the womb ready to navigate the economic and moral complexities of an 'age of abundance.' The only way they learn such things is through a long process of intensive socialization--a process that we now know, thanks to the failed experiments begun by the Aquarians and implicitly supported by libertarians, usually requires intact families and decent schools."
"Socialization," i.e. conformity, leads to a respect for private property rights? What makes schools "decent"? I guess that they primarily aim to "socialize" children.
Oh, brother! And this is presented as an alternative to libertarianism, an intellectual and political movement that the author does not, and most likely cannot, identify as essentially amoral and thus anarchist. Just read a few prominent libertarians, and you'll find that they're all over the map intellectually, including offering "traditionalism" and religion as a basis for capitalism. But you won't find that in this essay.
As to the author tying Rand to libertarianism, calling her a "guru" of the movement, those that have a basic, clear understanding of her philosophy could not write the following mistakenly (and, note again, the author's focus on "the family"):
"Libertarianism was complicit, too, in the vociferous attack during the 1960's on the bourgeois family. After all, blood relationships are involuntary, and parents with any interest in rearing and educating their children are unlikely to look for guidance in Atlas Shrugged. Ayn Rand was predictably wary of kinship ties and, like radical feminists, saw the family as a soul-killing prison ..."
The paragraph continues, but that's all she has to say about Miss Rand. Notice that there's no explanation for her comments about her. I guess you're suppose to (incorrectly) assume that there is no parenting presented in Atlas Shrugged, despite that Galt's speech is a fundamental guide for life, including childrearing. And what evidence is there for writing that Ayn Rand was "wary of kinship ties" and believed the family is a "soul-killing prison"? She provides none because there is none; but let's be happy she didn't go on to rationalize this view. |
| Friday, September 14, 2007 at 6:35:44 mst
Comment ID: #6 (link)
Name: Dana
E-mail: xxx.dana(at)gmail.com
I think the author's misunderstanding of Rand's presentation of family in Atlas Shrugged is a result of the typical "conservative"'s inability to recognize that they hold the exact same fundamental first premises as the Kantian Leftists they claim to oppose.
It seems to me, and better informed objectivists will correct me i'm sure, that Rand was using family obligations as a vehicle for the criticism of Kantian Duty in any form, family simply being the most immediate and recognizable place this comes into play in most people's lives. Ms. Hymowitz is a writer on family matters, not a philosopher--her ability to parse out that extremely fine distinction may simply not exist. She has an explicitly pro-traditional family bias and has likely never questioned the assumption of Causeless Duty To You Because We Are Related inherent in that family bias. |
