Just like you, Ayn Rand did not like Nixon.
“The Moratorium on Brains” – Criticism of Nixon’s Price Controls In her 1971 lecture titled “The Moratorium on Brains”, Ayn Rand fiercely criticized Nixon’s nationwide wage and price freeze, part of the “New Economic Policy”, as a counterproductive measure that stifled innovation and economic freedom. The lecture, and her reflections on it later, condemned such government intervention as anti-capitalist and destructive.
Watergate & Mixed Economy: Pragmatism vs. Principle Rand also critiqued Nixon’s broader political behavior, especially during the Watergate scandal. In her commentary (collected in The Ayn Rand Letter), she framed Watergate as symptomatic of the moral decay inherent in a mixed economy and public life governed by pragmatism rather than principle. She identified Nixon and his aides as engaging in “crude pragmatism,” an approach she saw as antithetical to conceptual, principled thinking.
The Shanghai Gesture – A Moral Critique of Nixon’s China Visit In her essay “The Shanghai Gesture” (part of The Ayn Rand Letter collection), Rand referenced Nixon’s historic visit to China, widely seen as a political masterstroke, as a “total failure of moral principle.” She saw the diplomatic achievement as hollow, given what she believed were compromised rational and moral foundations.
"Today, when a concerted effort is made to obliterate this point, it cannot be repeated too often that the Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals, that it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government, that it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizens' protection against the government." AYN RAND
"Ours was the first government based on and strictly limited by a written document, the Constitution, which specifically forbids it to violate individual rights or to act on whim. The history of the atrocities perpetrated by all the other kinds of governments—unrestricted governments acting on unprovable assumptions, demonstrates the value and validity of the original political theory on which this country was built." AYN RAND |
