Donald Trump as an Ayn Rand character

Would Ayn Rand Approve of Rule by a Rich and Powerful Capitalist? | Foundation for Economic Education - Christopher Machold:

July 22, 2016 - "As we get closer to the full swing of the general election cycle, those sympathetic to Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism will face this question: 'Shouldn’t an Objectivist be in favor of Donald Trump? He’s selfish and a powerful businessman, right?'... USA Today’s Kirsten Powers, in an interview with the now-official GOP nominee back in April, wrote this nugget: 'He identified with Howard Roark, the novel's idealistic protagonist who designs skyscrapers and rages against the establishment'....

"It’s a common slur used any time a conceited, cold-hearted politician emerges within the GOP: He’s straight out of an Ayn Rand novel. As a student of philosophy and a fan of Rand’s literature and ideas, I completely agree. But, far from the ideal characters of John Galt (Atlas Shrugged) or Howard Roark (The Fountainhead), Donald Trump is a cozy fit with another figure in The Fountainhead: Peter Keating, Howard Roark’s classmate and competitor....

"About Keating, Rand writes this: 'The exact opposite of Howard Roark, and everything a man should not be. A perfect example of a selfless man who is a ruthless, unprincipled egotist – in the accepted meaning of the word. A tremendous vanity and greed, which lead him to sacrifice all for the sake of a "brilliant career".’

"In other words, the 'ruthless, unprincipled egotist' – in our case, Donald J. Trump – is not what she means when she talks of selfishness as an ideal....

"This is confirmed in Rand’s opening remarks in The Virtue of Selfishness: 'In popular usage, the word "selfishness" is a synonym for evil; the image it conjures is of a murderous brute ... who cares for no living being and pursues nothing but the gratification of the mindless whims of any immediate moment.' One may note that these descriptions sounds much like Dan P. McAdams’ account of Trump’s narcissism in the Atlantic....

"A man constantly mired in fraud-related lawsuits and accused of defrauding his customers and contractors is not Howard Roark. The man accused by the ACLU of promoting countless unconstitutional violations of individual rights is not the same man who swore against violating the rights of any other man. A narcissist who brags incessantly and dishonestly about his wealth and IQ is not the self-confident and self-sufficient producer depicted in The Fountainhead. The candidate who has been dangerously anti-free trade is not the hero of a woman who believes in the morality of laissez faire capitalism.

"Donald Trump is an unprincipled, immoral and dangerous 'second-hander,' to use Roark’s (and thus Rand’s) own vocabulary.

"Peter Keating did, and was, those things too – 'everything a man should not be'."

Read more: https://fee.org/articles/would-ayn-rand-approve-of-rule-by-a-rich-and-powerful-capitalist/
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Ayn Rand at 110

Ayn Rand at 110 | Cato Institute - David Boaz:

February 2, 2015 - "In the dark year of 1943, in the depths of World War II and the Holocaust, when the United States was allied with one totalitarian power to defeat another, three remarkable women published books that could be said to have given birth to the modern libertarian movement. Rose Wilder Lane, the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder, who had written Little House on the Prairie and other stories of American rugged individualism, published a passionate historical essay called The Discovery of Freedom. Isabel Paterson, a novelist and literary critic, produced The God of the Machine, which defended individualism as the source of progress in the world.

"The other great book of 1943 was The Fountainhead, a powerful novel about architecture and integrity by Ayn Rand. The book’s individualist theme did not fit the spirit of the age, and reviewers savaged it. But it found its intended readers. Its sales started slowly, then built and built. It was still on the New York Times bestseller list two full years later. Hundreds of thousands of people read it in the 1940s, millions eventually, some of them because of the 1949 film starring Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal, and many of them were inspired enough to seek more information about Ayn Rand’s ideas. Rand went on to write an even more successful novel, Atlas Shrugged, in 1957, and to found an association of people who shared her philosophy, which she called Objectivism....

"George Gilder called Atlas Shrugged 'the most important novel of ideas since War and Peace.' Writing in the Washington Post, he explained her impact on the world of ideas and especially the world of capitalist ideas: 'Rand flung her gigantic books into the teeth of an intelligentsia still intoxicated by state power, during an era when even Dwight Eisenhower maintained tax rates of 90 percent and confessed his inability to answer Nikita Khrushchev’s assertion that capitalism was immoral because it was based on greed.'

"Rand’s books first appeared when no one seemed to support freedom and capitalism, and when even capitalism’s greatest defenders seemed to emphasize its utility, not its morality. It was often said at the time that socialism is a good idea in theory, but human beings just aren’t good enough for socialism. It was Ayn Rand who said that socialism is not good enough for human beings.

"Her books garnered millions of readers because they presented a passionate philosophical case for individual rights and capitalism, and did so through the medium of vivid, can’t-put-it-down novels. The people who read Ayn Rand and got the point didn’t just become aware of costs and benefits, incentives and trade-offs. They became passionate advocates of liberty.

"Rand was an anomaly in the 1940s and 1950s, an advocate of reason and individualism in time of irrationality and conformity. But she was a shaper of the 1960s, the age of “do your own thing” and youth rebellion; the 1970s, pejoratively described as the “Me Decade” but perhaps better understood as an age of skepticism about institutions and a turn toward self-improvement and personal happiness; and the 1980s, the decade of tax cuts and entrepreneurship.

"Throughout those decades her books continued to sell — 30 million copies over the years, and they still move off the shelves. The financial crisis and Wall Street bailouts gave Atlas Shrugged a huge push. A Facebook group titled 'Read the news today? It’s like Atlas Shrugged is happening in real life' was formed. More than 50 years after publication, the book had its best sales year ever. And sales have remained high — more than a million copies of Rand’s books were sold in 2012."

Read more: http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/ayn-rand-110
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