All this fuss about Rand is a distraction, I think. She was a weird person with a non-traditional life, scandalous, even, in her time. Which was during the Cold War, which was a period of stark contrasts. That was when the US put "under God" into the pledge of allegiance to more clearly differentiate "us" from "them." Rand was a lousy novelist. Her plotting was stark, her characters, one-dimensional, cartoonish. All the easier for young people to read to help them evaluate the world around them and how they fit into it. And all the easier for today's polarization and hyperbole and mindlessness to make it into a cause celebre. She was a unique individual because her background and temperament enabled and inspired her to clarify a lot of things about communism.
We have in the US a lot of push and pull over direction and contrasts are again stark. We have reason vs religion, individualistic vs communal, capitalism vs socialism, creators vs consumers, economic and social inequality. What we don't have anymore is institutions of constructive political discourse where we can have a debate those things. People just pick a side, one that may not be internally coherent, and throw things. Anyway, Rand came down on the side of the first of all those pairs--reason, individualism, capitalism, creation--made a case for them, and didn't bother herself with the last item. The Cold War was on and first things first. |
