Here's the problems I have with Ayn Rand, the darling of the libertarian movement, and the cult of personality surrounding her major works (i.e. objectivism).
Now don't get me wrong. There is much to be appreciated about Rands work. It is the general acceptance of the tenets of her ideas as being "true" with out critically evaluating and testing those ideas by those who espouse objectivism which bothers me. I think many readers of Rand are quite young (high school and/or college age) when first introduced to her works and it is often their first exposure to the world of "ideas" and thus has a profound impact on them but are they prepared to apply critical thoughts to those ideas?
Rand and her supporters have been guilty of what I consider intellectual inbreeding. They apply free market ideology to her ideas in a way that is not reasonable and therefore not objective. Rand and her supporters viewed her ideas as private intellectual property and due all protections there from. The problem with this is that these protections are legal protections to protect the individuals ownership rights in trade and commercial usage. The fact that Rand used this notion of intellectual property to discount others who examined and critically evaluated her ideas was at best intellectually lazy and at worst intellectual cowardice. Property rights are not nor never intended to prevent others evaluating, testing or using the ideas or products of others. They are intended to protect the owners of property from others who would profit from their property with out due compensation being rendered to the owner of said property. It is the contention of Rand's supporters (e.g. Leonard Peitkoff) that philosophies like "objectivism" are closed systems in which it's fundamental principles and consequences in all branches are immutable and laid down for all time by the author. Well, all I can say is that anyone with a solid science background will tell you is that this is just plain nuts. To paraphrase a certain philosopher, if you find a position contradictory, examine the premises that position is built upon as at least one of them will be wrong. The contradiction here is that no system of thought is immutable nor can it be free from the free exercise of observing the implications of those thoughts and ideas so as to observe, in reality, the truth (or lack there of) of these idea. It is this lack of critical thinking towards Randian philosophy that I find alarming.
So the questions for me about Ayn Rand is was she the first of the modern self help gurus, with pulp fiction sensibilities, that profoundly euphemized "Greed as good" for the terminally self centered or was she the last of the great 19th century intellectuals who produced a system of thought and ideas, that modern readers can appreciate, about the nature of freedom?
My conclusion may be a metaphysical cop out but objectively and in reality, she was both.
