Daily Archives: May 6, 2022

AnthemPublished in 1938 & 1946

Anthem is Ayn Rands hymn to mans ego. It is the story of one mans rebellion against a totalitarian, collectivist society. Equality 7-2521 is a young man who yearns to understand the Science of Things. But he lives in a bleak, dystopian future where independent thought is a crime and where science and technology have regressed to primitive levels.

All expressions of individualism have been suppressed in the world of Anthem; personal possessions are nonexistent, individual preferences are condemned as sinful and romantic love is forbidden. Obedience to the collective is so deeply ingrained that the very word I has been erased from the language.

In pursuit of his quest for knowledge, Equality 7-2521 struggles to answer the questions that burn within him questions that ultimately lead him to uncover the mystery behind his societys downfall and to find the key to a future of freedom and progress.

The countrys top banker a leading oil producer a once-revered professor an acclaimed composer a distinguished judge. All vanish without explanation and without trace.

A copper magnate becomes a worthless playboy. A philosopher-turned-pirate is rumored to roam the seas. The remnants of a brilliant invention are left as scrap in an abandoned factory.

What is happening to the world? Why does it seem to be in a state of decay? Can it be saved and how?

Atlas Shrugged is a mystery story, not about the murder of a mans body, but about the murder and rebirth of mans spirit.

Follow along as industrialist Hank Rearden and railroad executive Dagny Taggart struggle to keep the country afloat and unravel the mysteries that confront them.

Discover why, at every turn, they are met with public opposition and new government roadblocks, taxes and controls and with the disappearance of the nations most competent men and women.

Will Hank and Dagny succeed in saving the country and will they discover the answer to the question Who is John Galt?

In her first notes for The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand describes its purpose as a defense of egoism in its real meaning . . . a new definition of egoism and its living example. She later states its theme as individualism versus collectivism, not in politics, but in mans soul; the psychological motivations and the basic premises that produce the character of an individualist or a collectivist.

The living example of egoism is Howard Roark, an architect and innovator, who breaks with tradition, [and] recognizes no authority but that of his own independent judgment. Roarks individualism is contrasted with the spiritual collectivism of many of the other characters, who are variations on the theme of second-handedness thinking, acting and living second-hand.

Roark struggles to endure not merely professional rejection, but also the enmity of Ellsworth Toohey, beloved humanitarian and leading architectural critic; of Gail Wynand, powerful publisher; and of Dominique Francon, the beautiful columnist who loves him fervently yet is bent on destroying his career.

The Fountainhead earned Rand a lasting reputation as one of historys greatest champions of individualism.

The setting is Soviet Russia, early 1920s. Kira Argounova, a university engineering student who wants a career building bridges, falls in love with Leo Kovalensky, son of a czarist hero. Both Kira and Leo yearn to shape their own future but they are trapped in a communist state that claims the right to sacrifice individual lives for the sake of the collective.

When Kira is kicked out of the university as an undesirable and Leos past makes him unemployable, life becomes a grim struggle for physical survival. Leo contracts tuberculosis but cant get admitted to a state sanitarium, despite Kiras best efforts. Desperate, she seeks help from Andrei Taganov, an ardent young communist whose love for Kira helps awaken him to the meaning of genuine personal values, not to be surrendered for others sake.

What will happen as these three struggle to be living individuals in defiance of the power of the collectivist state?

The method of capitalisms destruction, Ayn Rand writes, rests on never letting the world discover what it is that is being destroyed. InCapitalism: The Unknown Ideal, Rand and her colleagues define a new view of capitalisms meaning, history, and philosophic basis and set out to demolish many of the myths surrounding capitalism.

Does capitalism lead to depressions, monopolies, child labor or war? Why is big business so hated? Why have conservatives failed to stop the growth of the state? Is religion compatible with capitalism? Is government regulation the solution to economic problems or their cause? What is freedom and what kind of government does it require? Is capitalism moral?

Capitalism: The Unknown Idealtackles these and other timeless questions about capitalism, and lays out Rands provocative thesis: that the system of laissez-faire capitalism is a moral ideal.

In the lengthy introductory essay ofFor the New Intellectual, Rand argues that America and Western civilization are bankrupt, and that the cause of the bankruptcy is the failure of philosophy: specifically, the failure of philosophers and intellectuals to define and advocate a philosophy of reason.

In the subsequent selections, culled from her novels, Rand presents the outline of her philosophy of reason, which she calls Objectivism. These excerpts cover major topics in philosophy from Objectivisms basic axioms to its new theory of free will to its radical ethics of rational egoism to its moral-philosophic case for laissez-faire capitalism.

For the New Intellectualcontains some of Rands most important passages on other philosophers, including Aristotle, Plato, Hume, Kant, Hegel and Nietzsche. Many of its selections also develop Rands unprecedented critique of altruism the notion that our basic moral obligation is to live for others.

Philosophy: Who Needs Itis the last work planned by Ayn Rand prior to her death in 1982. In these essays, Rand shows how abstract ideas have profound real-life consequences. She identifies connections between egalitarianism and inflation, collectivism and the regulation of pornography, alcoholism, and the problem of free will vs. determinism.

Contrary to the notion that philosophy is detached from the practical concerns of life, Rand sees philosophys influence everywhere, leading her to ask questions like: How can a persons views about metaphysics impact his ambition and self-confidence? How has the notion of duty given morality a bad name? How did the belief that faith is superior to reason unleash the horrors of twentieth-century totalitarianism?

Philosophy: Who Needs Italso includes Rands assessment of a number of prominent thinkers, including John Rawls, John Maynard Keynes, B. F. Skinner, and, above all, Immanuel Kant, whom Rand regards as her arch philosophical adversary.

In these eighteen essays, readers learn why Rands answer to the question of who needs philosophy is an emphatic: you do.

In this collection, Ayn Rand explains the indispensable function of art in mans life (chapter 1), the source of mans deeply personal, emotional response to art (chapter 2), and how an artists fundamental, often unstated view of man and of the world shapes his creations (chapter 3). In a chapter that includes an extended discussion of music, Rand explores the valid forms of art (chapter 4).

Rand also presents her distinctive theory of literature (chapter 5) and sheds new light on Romanticism, under which category Rand classified her own work (chapters 6 and 10). Later essays explain how contemporary art reveals the debased intellectual and esthetic state of our culture (chapters 7, 8 and 9).

In the final essay (chapter 11), Rand articulates the goal of her own fiction writing and upholds the value of art that depicts men as they might be and ought to be. Chapter 12 is a short story Rand wrote in 1940, illustrating how an artists sense of life directs his subconscious and shapes his creative imagination.

Most ethical discussions take for granted the supreme moral value of selfless service. Debate then centers on details: Should we serve an alleged God or substitute society for God? How much sacrifice is required? Whos entitled to benefit from others sacrifices?

In this volumes lead essay, The Objectivist Ethics, Ayn Rand challenges that basic assumption by reconsidering ethics from the ground up. Why, she asks, does man need morality in the first place? Her answer to that question culminates in the definition of a new code of morality, based in rational self-interest, aimed at each individuals life and happiness, and rejecting sacrifice as immoral.

In additional articles, Rand expands her theory and discusses practical questions such as: Do people face intractable conflicts of interest? Isnt everyone selfish? Doesnt life require compromise? How do I live in an irrational society? What about the needs of others? What are political rights? Whats the rational function of government? Her fresh, provocative answers cast new light on what it means to be genuinely selfish.

Mans mind is able to grasp the atomic structure of water and the trajectory of a planet. What explains this enormous cognitive power, far outstripping that of any other animal? The key, Ayn Rand argues, is that man can form and use concepts.

InIntroduction to Objectivist Epistemology, Rand introduces her theory of knowledge by means of its central feature, a new theory of the nature and formation of concepts. Along the way, she provides her fundamental answer to the Kantian turn in epistemology, offering a non-skeptical, non-mystical approach to knowledge.

The 1990 second edition contains edited transcripts of four workshops Rand conducted between 1969 and 1971 with professors and experts in philosophy, physics and mathematics. These extended conversations show Rands mind at work in real time, providing additional detail, examples, explanation and context for her theory.

Although Ayn Rand defined a full philosophic system, which she called Objectivism, she never wrote a comprehensive, nonfiction presentation of it. Rands interest in philosophy stemmed originally from her desire to create heroic fictional characters for her novels, especiallyAtlas Shrugged, whose final philosophic speech she called Objectivisms briefest summary.

In 1976, philosopher Leonard Peikoff, her longtime student and associate, gave a lecture course that Rand described as the only authorized presentation of the entire theoretical structure of Objectivism, i.e., the only one that I know of my own knowledge to be fully accurate.

Following Rands death, Peikoff edited and reorganized those lectures to produceObjectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, the first comprehensive statement of her philosophy. Published in 1991, this book presents Rands entire philosophy metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics and esthetics in essentialized and systematic form.

The 60s are usually glorified as a time when Americas youth stood up in rebellion against the cultural establishment. Protesting everything from Vietnam to industrial capitalism, college students under the banner of the New Left forcibly occupied campus buildings and idolized Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro and were hailed as idealistic revolutionaries.

Ayn Rand viewed them very differently.

In a number of essays, she analyzes the campus protests and the ideology of the New Left, concluding that far from rebelling, they were slavishly following every basic idea of their teachers and that far from being idealistic, they were attacking the key foundations of a rational, free society.

Rands writings on these and related topics were collected inThe New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution(1971). A 1999 edition,Return of the Primitive, added supplementary articles, including three by editor Peter Schwartz analyzing the New Lefts enduring legacy.

Between 1961, when she gave her first talk at Ford Hall Forum in Boston, and 1981, when she gave the last talk of her life in New Orleans, Ayn Rand spoke and wrote about topics as different as education, medicine, Vietnam and the papal encyclicalHumanae Vitae (Of Human Life).

The Voice of Reasonis a collection of these pieces gathered in book form for the first time. Here we get some of Rands most in-depth treatments of issues such as religion, sex, abortion, foreign policy and the mixed economy.

With Rands selections are five essays by philosopher Leonard Peikoff, Rands longtime associate and literary executor, covering such topics as education and socialized medicine, as well as a piece by Objectivist scholar Peter Schwartz on the difference between libertarianism and Objectivism.

The work concludes with Peikoffs epilogue, My Thirty Years with Ayn Rand: An Intellectual Memoir, which answers the question What was Ayn Rand really like?

See the original post:

Free Books - AynRand.org

The lead character is an independent woman who sleeps with different men. She lives life on her terms.

People talking about socialism vs capitalism vs libertarian have it all wrong!!

Its not about economics, its about feminism!

Warn the general public before its too late!

^^Elisabeth Moss for the biopic.

Famous Libertarians:

Rand Paul - Senator from KY - KY is in the top 3 dependent on SOCIALISM for its survival. He also went to Universal healthcare Canada for surgery.

Curt Schilling - Retired Pitcher - The taxpayers of RI had to bail out his shit video game company to the tune of a couple million when it failed.

Paul Ryan - Former SotH - Social Security moocher

Ayn Rand - Social Security and medicare moocher

R2 yes she would capture her look perfectly, and honestly a biopic would have to more enjoyable than her books.

Walter Pidgeon was in one of her Broadway plays. Do you think he made a play for her husband?

That's not writing, it's typing.

Follow this link:

Atlas Shrugged Is A Feminist Tome - datalounge.com

We are as gods and might as well get good at it. Stewart Brand, Whole Earth Catalog

Ayn Rand was a brilliant, inventive thinker whose contributions go largely unsung outside libertarian circles. Rand developed a secular eudaimonist ethics decades before the 20th century revival of virtue ethics ignited. She pioneered a thick ethical and aesthetic defense of capitalism that celebrated business and innovation as heroic; her frontal assault on altruism represented a fundamental shift away from defending economic freedom under the pall of suspicion of the profit motive. She erected a philosophical permission structure for rational self-interest, achievement, and the pursuit of happiness.

Rand forged a synthesis of possessive and expressive individualism and fashioned a perfectionist political doctrine of truly human flourishing, sweeping away the Marxist monopoly on such rhetoric and anticipating its reemergence in the capabilities approach by several decades. She promised a vision of human possibility, progress, and triumph over limitations that boldly assumed that we are indeed as gods, and that the greatest threats to our future are philosophies prioritizing impossibility, failure, and weakness.

Rand achieved all this as a refugee from Soviet Russia by way of a couple of gripping, wildly successful philosophical novels that cast rail networks and steel production in romantic glory. She launched a movement that rocked conservative politics, shaped the nascent libertarian movement, and is still going strong some four decades after her death.

Ill have several sharply critical things to say about Rand in this essay, which explores how her philosophy of Objectivism relates to the liberal tradition. Indeed Ill question whether Rand really belongs within the liberal tradition at all, as several aspects of her thought reveal an illiberal, even reactionary hue. For whatever harsh words follow, I maintain that Rand was an ingenious thinker and a talented novelist who deserves respect and sympathy. Despite the doubt I will cast on Rand qua liberal and indeed qua social thinker, I will conclude by sketching what a liberal and genuinely emancipatory Objectivism might look like.

Rand is usually seen as one of the pillars of the modern classical liberal tradition. For libertarians, famously, it usually begins with Ayn Rand. Yet at a time when some major political parties in the worlds liberal democracies, once so comfortingly colonized by liberal habits, are flirting with or openly endorsing antiliberal values, its worth reevaluating foundational assumptions. It is in that spirit that I explore points of tension between Rands philosophy and the liberal tradition, and argue that she is better understood as a heterodox conservative.

Ill set the stage by specifying what I mean by liberalism and its alternatives. Liberalism is an approach to politics that seeks to defuse, redirect, or even harness conflict in a society of reasonable individuals who differ in beliefs, backgrounds, and concerns. At minimum, liberalism holds to some level of representative government with genuinely open elections, basic freedoms of religion, speech, assembly, and commerce, and a tolerance for internal pluralism and diversity. Liberalism stands explicitly against absolutist power, in the form either of monarchies or totalitarian communist regimes, among other possibilities. Its closer (and overlapping) neighbors are socialismwhich weakens or opposes the sanctity of commerce and in its extreme forms undermines the other liberal desiderata in order to empower the working classand conservatismwhich tends to weaken pluralism and the freedoms of minorities and in its extreme forms compromises representative government and the rule of law to favor a preferred racial or religious group.

Rand advances a comprehensive doctrine, Objectivism, that sits uneasily with the political liberalism of democratic authority. Rands idealist views of the history and meritocracy of capitalism naturalized traditional hierarchies and justified contempt for the poor and marginalized. While Rand despised religious faith and thus the traditional religious authority much of conservatism appeals to, in her own life she thought of herself as on the political right, focused most of her rhetorical fire against the left, and exemplified a kind of reactionary anti-leftism. Rands illiberal conservatismhowever heterodoxis showcased with particularly stark clarity in her epic masterpiece, Atlas Shrugged, in which a vanguard party engineers a total social and economic collapse to pave the way for a society ordered according to Objectivist values.

The role of comprehensive worldviews in a pluralist society is one of the perennial sources of tension in liberal thought. So-called liberal neutrality requires that a government favor no comprehensive doctrine over any other. But some comprehensive doctrines (like Catholic integralism) require that society be reshaped in their favored mold; some doctrines simply dont play well with others. Rand insisted, even in her nonfiction, that there can be no conflicts of interest between individuals whose interests are rational. This idea first appears in Atlas Shrugged at steel industrialist Hank Reardens trial for violating regulations on the use of Rearden Metal.

Are we to understand, asked the judge, that you hold your own interests above the interests of the public?

I hold that such a question can never arise except in a society of cannibals.

What . . . what do you mean?

I hold that there is no clash of interests among men who do not demand the unearned and do not practice human sacrifices.

Rand, represented here by Rearden, goes beyond the belief that people may be mistaken or taken in by erroneous ideologies. She instead introduces the idea that a clash of interests must involve error or evil. Where bog standard political liberalism assumes innocent conflicts of interests and a boisterous polity of worldviews in tension with each other that must be managed for the sake of peaceor in a stronger vein, this diversity actually provides greater resources for solving social problemsin Rands Objectivism some party must be illegitimate. If, as Rand insists, any compromise of good with evil only profits evil and some party of every social conflict is evil then the idea that disagreement should be settled by elections is abominable. Democracy is by necessity a handmaiden to evil.

In Atlas Shrugged democracy is entirely sidelined. The plot follows the quickening erosion of economic freedom and its replacement with an economy of political threats and favors. All of the politics in the novel takes the form of corrupt, backroom deals between dishonest businessmen, lobbyists, political hacks, and ultimately economic czars of one kind or another. Rands virtuous heroes stay above this fray, and struggle valiantly to conduct ordinary business in an increasingly hostile environment. Importantly, Rands heroes really are virtuous: incorruptibly honest, just, hard-working, dependable, and even benevolent. The novel explores how such virtue is punished in statist economic regimes, those that fall short of laissez-faire capitalism.

While there is a legislature, an executive, and legal courts, theres no mention of democratic elections or formal political parties (though there are factions). In So Who Is John Galt, Anyway? Objectivist commentator Robert Tracinski suggests this absence of the expected democratic institutions is because they had already been swept away in political turmoil prior to the main events of the novel. But this is unsatisfying. Such a cataclysm would surely leave marks on the main characters who would have ample reason to reference it. And if Rands heroes simply ignored the political worldwholly engaged as they were in their productive toiluntil the looters government bore down on them, then this would reveal culpable negligence.

Rand conveniently includes a perfect being in Atlas Shrugged, John Galt, whose philosophical determinations and emotional reactions are beyond reproach. In the momentous scene at the heart of the novel that sets in motion Galts strike of the men of the mind there is no mention of prior or present political activism. Voting is rarely mentioned throughout the novel, and when it is its usually denigratory, as in Galts speech where he accuses his misguided audience of [voting politicians] into jobs of total power over arts you have never seen, over sciences you have never studied, over achievements of which you have no knowledge, over the gigantic industries .

Objectivists may think that honest business people shouldnt have to be bothered with politics, but this reveals the problem with Rands conception of no rational or innocent conflict of interest. Good, rational people simply do see the world from different angles and come to different conclusions, and democratic politics is in part about managing these differences peacefully. When this essential vice of disagreement is coupled with the extreme conclusions of Rands political philosophysuch as that taxation is theft and all regulation of business violates the prohibition on the initiation of forcethe entire range of normal democratic politics is rendered illegitimate, vicious, and evil. This weakens any hold normal liberal democratic politics has on the Objectivist and frees them from any restraint of perspective.

This antidemocratic element in Rands thinking finds its fully antiliberal expression in Galts Gulch, where Galts strikersRands heroesdecamp to withdraw their productive capacity from society, watch it collapse, and prepare to reenter society on their own terms. Rand scholar Chris Matthews Sciabarra notes in Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical that Galts Gulch is effectively organized as an ideological commune, with every person adhering to the same belief system, obviating both politics and government. But this misses the planned hostile takeover of the outside world. The strikers are not passive communitarians engaging in some kind of Benedict Option, but vanguardists specifically seeking to overthrow the current regime. Ostensibly, this vanguardism is nonviolent, but the strike is effective only in Rands fantasy worldbuilding, wherein the removal of a thousand or so of the most talented industrialists, engineers, and capable people of all kinds would reduce society to a state of total dysfunction, literally unable to keep the lights on.

I must note here that in her actual life, Rand participated avidly in democratic politics, campaigning for (Republican) candidates and encouraging her followers to vote in certain ways. So Rands no-compromise-with-evil position never took the antidemocratic, anti-voting turn popular among some Marxist-Leninists and anarcho-capitalists. So its certainly possible to be an Objectivist and still be a small-d democrat. My purpose here is to explore the tensions between Objectivism and liberalism, which sometimes but not always result in illiberal politics.

Rand sits uneasily with the liberal idea of inescapable political conflict and democratic politics. But how could Rand be a conservative when she opposed the religious right, fiercely defended the right to abortion, and was an outspoken atheist who condemned religious faith? Rands philosophy is on the surface quite liberal. Her own vision of capitalism was one of progress, openness to new ideas, and an openness to strivers from all backgrounds to test their mettle in the market and strike it rich.

Rands critics who assume she merely shilled for the rich and business interests face an awkward set of facts. Most of Rands villains in Atlas Shrugged were wealthy businessmen, her heroes all discard or destroy their worldly riches, and her ideal man, John Galt, was a manual rail laborer.

At times Rand goes out of her way to admire the quiet, modest dignity and competence of the regular laborer. Track workers saluting Dagny Taggart, Rands rail heiress protagonist, and cheering the initial run of the John Galt Line is a notable example of this, and its paralleled by the good relations both Rearden and Francisco, Rands ultra-capable and flamboyant copper industrialist, have with their respective employees.

The first main character we meet is Eddie Willers, a decent man and ally of Dagny and unwitting confidant of Galt, but no bermensch. Cheryl Taggart, Dagnys sister-in-law and a victim of Jim Taggarts psychopathic need for warrantless love and praise, provides an example of a simple store clerk discovering the values of Rands heroes. Rand gives at least two redemption arcs, in the railroad tramp Jeff Allen who Dagny deputizes in an emergency, and in the Wet Nurse sent by the government to spy on Rearden who is converted to Reardens cause and values.

Rearden rose from unskilled, dangerous work in ore mines as a teenager to owning his own steel mills and even inventing a lighter, stronger alloy. Such rags-to-riches stories are to be expected in Rands capitalism. But so is the obverse. In his famous money speech, Francisco argues that those who are born rich must eventually fritter away their wealth if they are incompetent. This is the morality of capitalism: ability and hard work are rewarded and sloth and venality are punished. To the extent capitalism fails to match Rands vision, its because we mix capitalism with socialism in a mixed economy. Rand associates the explosive innovation and productivity of the 19th century with the relatively purer capitalism of that era.

In its ideal form, Rands capitalism embraces liberal equality and universalism. It is color-blind, recognizes equal rights for women, and is open to ambitious, freedom-seeking immigrants (like Rand herself). Dagny is a capable, confident woman thriving by her own lights in a mans world. In what might be viewed as an early manifestation of sex-positivity, Dagny knows what she wants in love and sex and is undeterred in pursuing her sexual ends on her own terms, which incidentally never involves marriage.

Rand in practice differs markedly from her ideal theory. In the end she does endorse many traditional values. But her conservatism assumes the form of an orientation toward upholding extant social hierarchies. Rands capitalism is free and equal in the ideal, but by a rhetorical sleight of hand Rand in practice naturalizes and romanticizes hierarchy in a way that neatly maps onto existing social strata.

In tension with the respect she sometimes shows for workers, Rands heroes frequently show contempt for the poor. An early example of this is when Dagny measures herself against both her peers and the adults around her and notes the regrettable accident that she is imprisoned among people who were dull. Later she contrasts normal people with her fellow superlative, Rearden.

Watching him in the crowd, she realized the contrast for the first time. The faces of the others looked like aggregates of interchangeable features, every face oozing to blend into the anonymity of resembling all, and all looking as if they were melting. Reardens face, with the sharp planes, the pale blue eyes, the ash-blond hair, had the firmness of ice; the uncompromising clarity of its lines made it look, among the others, as if he were moving through a fog, hit by a ray of light. (Emphases added)

Note the physical differences between Rearden and others under Dagnys gaze. Rand persistently associates physical attractiveness with superior capability and moral uprightness throughout Atlas Shrugged. Capability for Rand is a singular value; in what might be considered a tension with another liberal tenetthe division of laborRands heroes are good at anything and everything they do. Where ordinary people are often portrayed as untalented and unmotivated about whatever job they find themselves in, Rands superlatives can farm and sew with the same elite skill they apply to their chosen profession.

By strongly associatingif not exactly equatingattractiveness, capability, and morality, Rand naturalizes hierarchy. This association becomes all the more alarming when we consider that all of Rands heroes are white, most of them blond. There is something essential within heroic individuals that fundamentally sets them apart from normal folks, just as Dagny surmised at age nine. Of course there are some rags-to-riches cases in actual capitalism. But this is far from the norm, and contra Franciscos faith that fools and their money are soon parted, phenomenally venal and incompetent peoplethink Donald Trumpare born to wealth and live their lives in luxury and power as their wealth maintains itself on autopilot.

While ordinary folks are not always contemptible, they are always expendable in Atlas Shrugged. The non-superlative but ethical characters discussed aboveEddie, Cheryl, and the Wet Nurseall meet grisly fates. The strike of the men of the mind is itself the prime example of the expendability of the mediocre, as millions die or are brutally impoverished (though its worth considering how many children are victimized by the strike who may have grown into superlative adults). It was part of Rands romantic vision that none of the denizens of Galts Gulch ever died or suffered serious misfortune. Rand insisted that pain, fear, and guilt should not be taken as primary. But lesser characters, like real world mortals, dont have this plot armor, and have plenty of reason for fear.

Rand insists that real capitalism has never been tried, and capitalism la Rand really never has existed, but this doesnt stop Rand from appealing to the meritocratic and productive properties of ideal capitalism to defend actually existing capitalism. This creates a perilous discursive situation in which Objectivists can with suspicious convenience attribute all the good results of modern mixed economies to capitalism and all the bad results to the failure to adhere to Rands precise specifications.

In practice this constitutes a justificatory algorithm for defending the esteem of anyone who is richand the legitimacy of their wealth whether it was acquired by inheritance, implicit or explicit government transfers, or Herculean effort and Promethean innovationand blaming the poor, regardless of their circumstances. Rand thus defended the upper classes from incursions by the lower orders in both theory and in practice, and Objectivists have followed her lead.

Despite Dagny, Rand affirms patriarchal values. Rand believed it was a womans purpose to worship a man who embodied her greatest values. She believed there would be something sinister about a woman ever being President because such a woman would be betraying her feminine nature. For all Dagnys assertiveness and capability, she is the only female titan of industry, and even in Galts Gulch there appear to be few women, most of whom remain unnamed and have come to join their menfolk. Dagnys sex-positivity must be understood alongside Rands persistent slut-shaming, as when Francisco lectures Rearden that he can tell everything about a mans values just by seeing the woman he sleeps with.

Rand is untroubled by sexism and misogyny. In an early throwaway exposition Dagny dismisses sexual prejudice and casually resolves not to consider it again. Perhaps Rand envisaged a world without misogyny. Indeed Dagny receives no abuse, denigration, or lowered expectations from men in a book littered with scenes of otherwise all-male board rooms. Yet if thats the case, were left with the troubling question of why Rands fiction isnt peopled with more women like Dagny. The ready answer is that women arent natural leaders or innovators.

In real life women cannot shrug off sexual and domestic violence, discrimination and harassment in the workplace, objectification, and non-remuneration of reproductive and domestic labor as easily as Dagny can. In her nonfiction and her public comments, Rand loathed feminists, even referring to herself as a male chauvinist. Firmly supporting the right to abortion on grounds of bodily autonomy, though laudable, doesnt absolve her of her traditionalist views about womens roles or her reaction against social movements to liberate women from those roles.

Rand averred that homosexuality was immoral, the result of psychological disorder, even disgusting. Needless to say theres no distinction between sex and gender for Rand, and these are strictly binary. The government has no role in enforcing sexual values, but gender and sexuality are a site of judgment, with nary a presumption of innocent difference or respecting human diversity. In Atlas Shrugged Rand evades the problem of gays, lesbians, and transexuals byblank-outsimply leaving them out of her world-building. In the real world, homophobic and transphobic rhetoric supports narratives of non-Objectivist rightwing parties that do not so scrupulously refrain from force and fraud. This matters. Young Objectivists tend to think Rand was wrong about homosexuality but Objectivists generally endorse anti-trans talking points.

Another tool Rand deploys for justifying hierarchy is an epistemic vice she decried in her adversaries: what the great liberal philosopher Charles Mills would dub the epistemology of ignorance but Rand named blanking out.

Thinking is mans only basic virtue, from which all the others proceed. And his basic vice, the source of all his evils, is that nameless act which all of you practice, but struggle never to admit: the act of blanking out, the willful suspension of ones consciousness, the refusal to thinknot blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know. It is the act of unfocusing your mind and inducing an inner fog to escape the responsibility of judgmenton the unstated premise that a thing will not exist if only you refuse to identify it, that A will not be A so long as you do not pronounce the verdict It is.

Rand doesnt discuss race at all in Atlas Shrugged, but omission speaks volumes. Slavery for Rand is usually a histrionic metaphor for the oppression of the industrialist. When she refers to genuine slavery in history, its the non-racialized slavery of antiquity, and its followed by an apparent denial of the racialized slavery of antebellum America.

That phrase about the evil of money comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slavesslaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebodys mind and left unimproved for centuries. So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer.

[]

To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of moneyand I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, mans mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human beingthe self-made manthe American industrialist.

Rand blanks out slavery itself in a stunning hagiography of America, notes that she knows real slavery has existed in history and studiously blanks out race throughout the rest of the novel except when describing the white features of her heroes.

Rands history is no better when she engages race in her nonfiction, where she argues that racism was strongest in the more controlled economies, such as Russia and Germanyand weakest in England, the then freest country of Europe. There might be some truth to this if Rand judged 19th century America as unfree, but for Rand in its great era of capitalism, the United States was the freest country on earthand the best refutation of racist theories. Rand continues,

It is capitalism that broke through national and racial barriers, by means of free trade. It is capitalism that abolished serfdom and slavery in all the civilized countries of the world. It is the capitalist North that destroyed the slavery of the agrarian-feudal South in the United States.

Such was the trend of mankind for the brief span of some hundred and fifty years.

Rand explicitly rejects the notion that some races have greater incidence of men of potentially superior brain power but her historical analysis reveals she viewed slavery and the oppression of Jim Crow as minor deviations from a system of full individual freedom.

In her essay on racism, Rand goes on to condemn Black leaders as racist for supporting affirmative action, compulsory school integration, and anti-discrimination laws on private establishments. Like todays anti-anti-racists, Rand projects the notion of collective racial guilt onto whites for the sins of their ancestors for policies aimed at repairing racial inequities despite no significant Black thinker using such concepts, certainly not the specific activist Rand quotes in her essay. Such inequalities obtained, Rand recognized, on account of government policies, but Rand ignored or didnt understand the extent to which the government continued to support racial inequality with policies like redlining, segregation, relative deprivation of public funds for Black communities, and a long laissez-faire approach to anti-Black terrorism. But even if, as Rand imagined, direct government racism had ended, a vast difference in life prospects would have remained for Black and white individuals. Rands just-so story in which racism is a minor problem and the graver threat comes from the redistributionist policies of anti-racists functions as an ideological bulwark against policies to promote racial equality, once again reinforcing the status quo socio-economic hierarchy.

In all these cases Rand instinctively defends the relatively advantaged and inveighs against the claims of the disadvantaged. Rand and her followers would claim that she merely defends individual rights, especially those of property, and does so in accordance with equality before the law. But this reactionarya word Rand self-appliedkind of nominal liberalism erodes the rule of law in fact while upholding it in name. Liberalism cannot be collapsed into rights alone; there must be a dimension of political contestation. A highly hierarchical society that jealously guards property rights without real political contestation is not any kind of liberalism, but feudalism.

Consider the disproportionate violence inflicted on Black men by police. On its face this is a failure to uphold equality before the law, but if the resulting protests are successfully framed in terms of alleged looting of private property, then Objectivists will flock to the defense of the rights-violating police. In contrast to Rands version of the great era of capitalism, real people who are not wealthy white men have not enjoyed equality under the law. By aggressively objecting to alleged excesses of any appeal to social justice, blanking out historical evidence of oppression, and insisting the most legally and institutionally coddled classes are really the most oppressed, Rand undermines the civic equality of all persons.

Blanking out inconvenient truths combines with the antidemocratic elements of Rands political philosophy to brutal effects. The illegitimacy of actually existing governments renders the supposedly objective political theory subjective in practice. This enabled Rand to endorse deeply illiberal ideas, such as the right to invade dictatorshipswhat does this mean when all actual governments are illegitimate by her lights?and the lands inhabited by savages who dont share Rands concept of property rights (neither has America, ever). Yaron Brook, the erstwhile Executive Director of the Ayn Rand Institute, would take this reasoning further to condone torture and preemptive nuclear strikes. Rand adopted a kind of American exceptionalist outlook based not on the actual proximity of American governance to Objectivist doctrine, but to her biased views of Americas founding ideals and her largely imagined history of early American capitalism. Rand pitted America in theory against the rest of the world in practice.

Randian reaction today is expressed by befuddlement in the face of genuinely antiliberal, antidemocratic authoritarianism. I have no doubt that Rand would have condemned Donald Trumphe really is like one of her villains, only less believablebut its not at all clear she could have held her nose enough to support Democrats. The mere presence of democratic socialists like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the wings would likely have spooked Rand into a pox on both houses stance. Some prominent Objectivists today exhibit such both-sidesism, and even invite Trumpist figures like Peter Thiel to their galas.

To recap, Ayn Rand is more fruitfully understood as a heterodox conservative than as a liberal, and is at best a rightwing liberal with illiberal tendencies. Rand advanced a politics of the good that viewed its ideological adversaries as fundamentally illegitimate. Her totalizing vision of the political orderhowever easily stated on one foot as strict laissez-faire capitalismallowed her to be a kind of nationalist, an American chauvinist. Rand defended the rule of law in principle, but undermined civic equality in practice by promoting hierarchy and reaction.

To touch grass for a moment, of course Rand was a conservative, or at least a rightwinger. Rand saw herself as on the political right, was active in rightwing political campaigns throughout her entire life until the rise of Reagan, and is embraced almost exclusively by the political right. These claims arent controversial. My controversial claim is that Rands heterodox conservatismespecially as expressed in her magnum opushas underappreciated tensions with liberalism (even classical variety) that sometimes slips into illiberalism.

It is not so hard for admirers of Rand to stay on the side of liberalism. It means firmly supporting democratic institutions and practices. Some Rand enthusiasts remain firmly liberal. Robert Tracinski is admirable in this. In academic philosophy, Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl have fleshed out a Randian liberalism that plausibly manages the tension between political liberalism and Rands perfectionism. Neera Badhwar lessens the tendency for Objectivism to view other ideologies as basically illegitimate.

Its no accident that Rand has many fans in gay and queer communities. Its not unheard of even for some prominent progressives to signal appreciation for Rand, a recent case being Stacey Abrams. I attribute this to Rands celebration of individualism against the crowd, of triumph over adversity, and of joy in ones own projects and self-directed life. These sentiments have cross-political appeal. The fact is, people will continue reading and finding inspiration in Rand because she was a fascinating and inspiring figure. It is thus worthwhile both for those dismissive of Rand to see what is valuable in Rand and for her enthusiasts to identify and jettison the illiberal elements of her philosophy. I end by offering an under-explored left Randian liberalism that I hope can serve as a bridge over the apparently impassable chasm separating Rand from social liberalism.

Rands exaltation of the innovative and productive powers of capitalism is shared by Marx and other socialists. Marx associated productive labor with the essence of human nature. The dimension of Rand that evokes the unfolding of human potential mirrors both Marxism and the expressivist left liberal branch of the liberal tradition stretching from Adam Smith through J.S. Mill and T.H. Green to the capabilities approach of Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen. Sciabarra recounts,

Peikoff argues that at the core of Objectivism is a belief in the actualization of human potentialities. In this regard, Objectivism follows the Aristotelian conception of eudaemonia as the human entelechy. For Aristotle, the proper end of human action is the achievement of a state of rich, ripe, fulfilling earthly happiness. [Branden] argues that human life involves the expansion of the boundaries of the self to embrace all of our potentialities, as well as those parts that have been denied, disowned, repressed. The actualization of human potential is a form of transcendence, an ability to rise above a limited context or perspectiveto a wider field of vision. This wider field does not negate the previous moments; it is a struggle from one stage of development to a higher one, emotionally, cognitively, morally, and so forth

This provides the basis for a Randian left liberalism: securing the conditions for the free development of capabilities for all persons. This requires a reevaluation of certain empirics and a gestalt shift in how the demands of social justice are perceived. A move away from Rands categorical prohibition on the initiation of force to a more complicated limitation of coercion within the rule of law is also needed. A categorical non-aggression principle is a floating abstraction in a world characterized by pervasive historical injustice and complex social relations and institutions that persist over generations. Redistribution toward some base level of relational equality for all and effective capability to pursue ones own flourishing is more akin to Rands philosopher pirate Ragnar Danneskjolds liberatory antics than it is to kleptocratic predation.

Rand gets a number of facts about the world simply wrong. The reality of global warming is one of the least controversial examples. Objectivists deny global warming in defiance of a broad scientific consensus, perhaps because it is seen as a threat to capitalism. But the fossil fuel industry has feasted on subsidies, has an entrenched lobby for political pull, enjoys implicit advantages like the government embrace of suburbs and car culture. The fossil fuel industry hardly embodies laissez-faire capitalism. Pollution causes real harm and is best tackled not by courts and litigation, as Rand preferred, but by legislation and regulation, preferably by pricing in externalities.

Theres no intrinsic reason to glamorize Big Oil and its tycoons instead of Big Renewables and their own heroic scientists, engineers, and business leaders. Environmentalism is not, as Rand maintained, inherently anti-human or anti-development. The gestalt shift here is to see fossil fuel companies as villains clamoring for handouts (by not paying the full cost of greenhouse gases) and solar, wind, and nuclear companies as heroic innovators struggling against the odds to usher forth an era of energy abundance. Stewart Brand, whose epigraph opens this essay, combines just such a Randian vision for human potential with no-nonsense environmentalism.

Even orthodox Objectivists should accept this revision. But social justice issues are thornier because they directly challenge Rands reactionary tendencies. The extent, contours, and social and economic impact of sexual harassment and sexual violence is matter for objective study, one where perhaps feminists know whereof they speak. Theres little reason for Objectivists to categorically dismiss these concerns other than by slavish adherence to Rands prejudices.

Rand loathed feminists for making demands on the government, but the gestalt shift here is that the domestic and reproductive labor typically performedunpaidby women is socially necessary (wait til you see what a strike of the womb can do) and men feel entitled to the fruits of that labor. Patriarchy is rule by the moochers and looters of sex, care, and reproduction. Institutions to reward feminine-coded labor like subsidized child care and paid parental leave would engender a more consistent capitalist order, even if they are built upon a platform of social provision.

Philosopher Kate Manne persuasively describes patriarchy as a set of entitlements, and one of these entitlements is for women (and men in a roundabout way) to conform to a normative image and set of functions. The backlash against trans and nonbinary persons owes to the failure or refusal to conform to the patriarchal model. Thats it; theres not even a significant demand for redistribution in the struggle for trans rights and dignity. But a Randian feminist sees trans liberation as a heroic refusal to perform gender on anyones terms but ones own.

I already discussed above that Rands understanding of the history and legal reality of race in America is largely a fabrication. Objectivists who want to take individual liberty seriously should reckon not only with the profound unfreedom of slavery but with the persistent resistance to policies conducive to Black equality and Black flourishing. Objectivists imagine that the impediments of racism have largely been removed. The racial disparities in policing and incarceration suggest this is overstated. But the entanglement of race in American policies and institutions makes merely removing superficial impediments a deceptive goal. White Americans have been showered with political advantages, legal privileges, and asset-building handouts like the G.I. Bill, land grants, and preferential home loans that have enabled them to accumulate intergenerational wealth and disproportionate political power. Banning only public discrimination and doing nothing to repair the damages caused and permitted by the state constitutes a failure of the state to secure equality before the law. Rands idea that this is about collective racial guilt is defensive histrionics.

The gestalt shift here is that policies of Black flourishing are not special pleading for collectivist redistribution. They reverse more than two centuries worth of white collectivism and upward redistribution of wealth and esteem to whites. The white plantation owner should be seen as the most profound of Randian villains, along with the white legislator, the white prison warden, and the white NIMBY.

Securing the conditions for all persons to fully participate in capitalist enterprise is the lodestar of Randian left liberalism. To do this requires understanding that social justice is not collectivism but the appropriate, targeted response to the collectivism of white supremacist patriarchy. Just as Galts sense of benevolence and his desire to live in a free world prompted him to liberate his fellow heroes from an unfree system, we should likewise foster the conditions of freedom and abundance in which more heroic innovators will emerge. Though Rand may not have approved, this vision retains a distinctively Randian sense of life by celebrating achievement, damning genuine collectivism, and affirming the rational joy of the world where the rail lines merge.

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Liberalism versus Reaction in Ayn Rand Liberal Currents - Liberal Currents

The halls of academia may appear to be overrun by battles over academic freedom, free speech, identity politics, cancel culture and overreaching wokeness. But why does it look that way? And what are the real causes? The influential political theorist Wendy Brown has spent her career studying the very ideas those of identity, freedom and tolerance that are central to current debates about whats happening on college campuses across the country, as well as to the attacks theyre undergoing from within and without. Were confused today about what campuses are, says Brown, who is 66 and is the UPS Foundation Professor in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. Weve lost track of whats personal and public and whats acceptable speech where. That confusion happens in part because boundaries are so blurred everywhere.

When people talk about free speech problems in colleges, its often in the context of woke ideology run amok. Which to me seems like a simplistic understanding of what might be causing changes in discourse on campuses. What do you see as being responsible? Campuses are complicated spaces, because they arent just one kind of space: Theres the classroom, the dorm, the public space that is the campus. Then theres what we could call clubs, support centers identity based or based on social categories or political interests. Its a terrible mistake to confuse all of these and imagine that the classroom or the public space of the campus is the same as your home. Some of that confusion, and I dont think its limited to the left, is responsible for the effort to regulate or denounce what transpires in public spaces. The other thing is that we are suffering from highly politicized discourse about education discourse that often doesnt care one whit about actual education. The most recent example is Gov. Ron DeSantiss Florida math-book banning for reasons that he cant explain and that have some vague connection to something he doesnt understand called either critical race theory or social-emotional learning. The politicization of academic environments is unhelpful in being able to understand how we teach and orient ourselves to contesting views. What you need is to have the classroom as a space where were not talking left wing and right wing but offering the learning that students need to be able to come to their own positions and judgments. So there are two problems. One is the loss of distinctions among different spaces on campus. The other is the hyperpoliticization of knowledge and education.

Whos responsible for clarifying those campus distinctions? I want to suggest that the biggest onus is on faculty themselves to think through this problem and teach it in their classrooms. Tell students, These are the different kinds of spaces on a campus, and heres whats appropriate in each. Theres an important set of issues to teach and to understand rather than just being reactive. Administrations for the most part have tried to dodge this issue in two ways. One is by issuing vague civility or time, place and manner codes. When Milo Yiannopoulos or Richard Spencer come to campus, administrations try to throw their time, place and manner codes at the problem, but that doesnt settle it. On the other hand, many administrators try to send out general encomiums about tolerance and respect and civility and responsible speech. But those dont address the deeper problem. We need to orient students differently, not just regulate them. Its quite possible to do. If you ask students to think with you about where they think its appropriate to limit speech and where they dont, and you talk them through the histories, the social theories and laws, the jurisprudence on this, theyre game.

Orient them how? Or, put another way, wheres the most common disagreement between student views on free speech and those of you and your colleagues? Certainly we have had for some time a debate about whether hate speech is free speech or ought to be covered by free speech, and if not, what qualifies as hate speech. There are excellent I cant believe Im about to use this term critical race theorists who have written volumes on the question of whether hate speech can be specified, what it means to specify it and whether it can be categorized as an exception to free speech. Thats an important zone and a difficult one. Many students today go quickly to the position that there is such a thing as hate speech, that they know it when they see it that and it ought to be outlawed. For me thats a topic to teach, not to simply honor or denounce. Im revealing myself here as a person whose chords and arpeggios and scales are always the history of political thought: John Stuart Mills On Liberty is the place to start. He says that the line between your freedom and its end is where it impacts on anothers freedom. Thats the question with hate speech: When does it do that? Ill also mention Charles Murray. Thats tricky, because his science has been discredited by his peers, and his conclusions are understood by many as a form of hate speech, because he makes an argument about the racial inferiority of Black people in their capacity to learn and to succeed in this society. It feels terrible to give him a podium and a bunch of students who would sit and imbibe that as the truth. I think if Murray is invited to campus, you can picket him, you can leaflet him, but I dont think it should be canceled. The important thing is for students to be educated and educate others about the bad science, the discrediting of his position, and then ask, Why does he survive in the academy, and why does that bad science keep getting resuscitated? Those are important questions for students to ask and then learn how to answer. Thats whats going to equip them in this political world.

Wendy Brown at a rally at Williams College in 1985, where she was an assistant professor. From Wendy Brown

Questions about whats happening on college campuses keep turning into questions about politics, which happens a lot these days but which maybe also conflates various things. A debate over cancel culture on campus, for example, is a different thing from legislators enacting laws limiting what can be taught in schools. So where are the useful connections and what are the unhelpful conflations as far as politics and on-campus issues? Here I think its time to talk about the very serious right-wing effort to use free speech and freedom more generally as a flag for a political, social and moral project. On campus, for example, the constant harangues about cancel culture and wokeness on the left that you get from the right keep us from seeing enormous amounts of foundation money and use of the state to try to control what is taught, to build institutes and curriculums that comport with a right-wing engine. Guilford College, this little Quaker school in North Carolina takes half a million dollars from a foundation in love with Ayn Rand. Every econ and business major in the college for the next 10 years had to be given a copy of Atlas Shrugged, and at the center of the curriculum there had to be a course in which Atlas Shrugged was the required textbook. This story has been repeated over and over. Then you have colleges and universities not so desperate but nonetheless willing to take large amounts of Koch and other right-wing-foundation money to set up institutes, even hire faculty. All of this is under the aegis of free speech, organized as correcting for wokeness and cancel culture. The right is also mobilizing the state. Not just to cancel math textbooks in Florida but the Dont Say Gay bills, the C.R.T. bills. Its important that we have our eyes wide open about that. Little episodes about cancel culture make great tidbits in newspapers and talk shows, but they dont represent this larger and deeper project of the right of mobilizing state power and corporations for their agenda in schools. They also dont represent the deeper problem with which we began: the confusions and the loss of boundaries between something like academic freedom and free speech. That boundary is just totally messed up.

Where should that boundary be? Academic freedom needs to be appreciated as a collective right of the faculty to be free of interference in determining what we research and teach. Were accountable to our disciplines, our peers. We cant just do anything and have it called quality scholarship or teaching. But the idea of academic freedom is that we are free of external interference. Free speech is different. Its an individual right for the civic and public sphere. Its not about research and teaching. Its not even about the classroom. Its what you can say in public without infringement by others or the state. Now, whats the mess-up? The right today is mobilizing state power and using corporate money to attempt to constrain academic freedom in the name of free speech. Theyre attempting to say what cant be taught in primary and secondary schools, and theyd like to get their hands on the public universities. They dont say were trying to constrict academic freedom. They bring free speech in as the rubric for these constraints or censorship and often bring parental rights as well. Now lets go to the left. The left has permitted a certain moral, political strain to gain a foothold in classrooms where things ought to be more open and contestatory. Thats where I think theres confusion on the part of the left and the right about whether the classroom is that civic space for free speech or whether it ought to be governed by something more like academic freedom, which is, again, a faculty right. Then the question is, What can and should students be able to do there? My own view is that they ought to be able to try out their ideas but not simply have them presented as a political broadside. Thats not what class is for. Thats for civic space.

Brown speaking at a seminar at the Institute for Advanced Study in 2021. Andrea Kane/Institute for Advanced Study

So in your view its a kind of category error to think of an academic classroom as a site for free speech? Yes. Not because there shouldnt be openness for ideas to circulate but because its not a free-speech zone. You cant just say anything. You come into my class on political theory, and were talking about John Stuart Mill or Plato, and you want to begin yelling about the Russians attacking Ukraine, Im going to tell you thats not appropriate. Ive given you a kind of extreme example. To the student who starts denouncing Marx clearly not having read the text, which is terribly common Im not going to say, OK, you get your five minutes and the next student gets their five minutes. No, its not a free-speech domain. It should be a domain in which all kinds of concerns that bear on the topic have a place, no doubt about that, but thats not free speech.

I find it difficult to understand the extent to which fears about cancel culture or free-speech issues on campus could be akin to a kind of moral panic. In your own experience are these phenomena more alive and dangerous than they used to be or are people just fixating on them more? I do think that in order to feel effective in a world that makes many politically progressive or socially conscious kids feel extremely impotent, that there may be a little upsurge of righteousness; you try to control the tiny world that youve got. Theres probably some of that, but I agree with you not just that this is a kind of moral panic but also that its basically a right-wing mobilizing trope. Critical race theory, the supposed education of little kids in sexuality and gayness and cancel culture are being used with great effect to convince a base that the left is a totalitarian socialist nightmare and that universities and schools are crawling with this stuff. The analogy I would offer is communists under the bed: Its everywhere; its in the math books; its in every kindergarten; its got to be cleaned out.

Looking specifically at college campuses, though, what do you think are the biggest threats to academic freedom? What worries me is that we cant see the extent to which academic freedom is in serious peril these days from increasing corporate sponsorship of research, which contours that research in a private-enterprise direction and away from research for the public. Also, adjunctification: The phenomenon in universities in this country today in which about 70 percent of teaching is done by non-tenure-track faculty means that 70 percent of those who are teaching basically dont have academic freedom. Technically they have it, but they dont have it in the sense that they dont have job security. Theyre dependent on student evaluations on the one hand and faculty approval on the other. What does that mean? They have to teach in a way that is entertaining. They cant teach anything too challenging. They cant teach the basic literacies that students need to understand the world in a deep way. So adjunctification, corporatization and then the rankings-and-rating systems of programs and faculties and individual academics also mean that we are increasingly constrained by a narrow set of norms in the discipline by which we either rise or fall. Its also important to distinguish between academic life and political life. In a classroom, in a research project, you have to be treating good challenges as something you cherish. The political world, you stake your position and you try to win. A highly politicized academy is a real disaster, because it messes up the importance of more open space for thinking, for undoing something you had arrived at. That needs to happen in any research or seminar or lecture hall. Thats the opposite of political life.

Has the hyperpoliticization that you mentioned earlier changed what students expect to be getting out of university? Which is to say, their willingness to entertain uncomfortable ideas? The immense hurdle is the idea that your future income prospects and investment in those prospects are what youre in college to pursue. The second problem here is that instead of approaching higher education as a place where you expect to be transformed in what you think the world is, what it takes to understand it, that ideal of a higher education which is essential to developing citizens has been almost completely displaced by the idea of bits of human capital self-investing to enhance that capital. So political views, social views, are for many students bracketed if not altogether irrelevant to what they expect a university education to be. Whats the implication of this? That those views are treated as something that you just have culturally, religiously, according to family but not something that you develop, enrich, maybe change. To put it in brief, neoliberalism essentially aims to roll out education as vocational training, and the extreme right essentially aims to turn education into church. What you have in the middle are a bunch of kids earnestly concerned with social justice, climate crisis, police violence, screaming into that context that their views matter, and that their view should hold sway and if not dictate curriculums at least dictate the culture of campus.

How much should students views dictate the culture of a campus? I dont think they should dictate curriculum. I certainly think that in the open public space of campus, what students believe and student disagreements and student political and social aspirations for the world will govern that. If I can add this: We need to appreciate that young left activist outrage about a burning planet and grotesque inequality and murderous racial violence and gendered abuses of power is accompanied by disgust with the systems and the rules of engagement that have brought us here. Young left activists are pulling the emergency brake because it feels as if theres no time for debate and compromise and incrementalism; because many see conventional norms and practices as having brought us to the brink and kept us stupid and inert. I dont think theyre entirely wrong. #MeToo, with its flagrant disregard for due process, did in two years what previous generations of feminists could not pull off, which was to make sexual harassment totally unacceptable in school and workplaces. Black Lives Matter in a summer pushed Americas violent racial history and present into the center of political conversation and transformed the consciousness of a generation. My point here is that if we just focus on this generations political style and we have to remember youth style always aggravates the elders we ignore their rage at the world theyve inherited, and their desperation for a more livable and just one, and their critique of our complacency. That is part of what is going on in the streets and on our campuses. But that remains different from educating that rage and helping young people learn not just the deep histories but even the contemporary practices that will make them more powerful thinkers and actors in this world. If theyre right about our complacency, what we still have to offer is knowledge and instruction and some space in a classroom to think.

This interview has been edited and condensed from two conversations.

David Marchese is a staff writer for the magazine and the columnist for Talk. Recently he interviewed Neal Stephenson about portraying a utopian future, Laurie Santos about happiness and Christopher Walken about acting.

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Why Critics of Angry Woke College Kids Are Missing the Point - The New York Times

Scholar David L. Pike has had an eclectic career, writing about such diverse topics as the modernist obsession with imagery from ancient and medieval underworlds (Passage through Hell: Modernist Descents, Medieval Underworlds, 1997), underground spaces such as sewers and railways (Subterranean Cities: The World Beneath Paris and London, 2005) and contemporary Canadian cinema (Canadian Cinema Since the 1980s: At the Heart of the World, 2012). One recurring thread in his work has been a fascination with underground spaces of all kinds, and his latest book, Cold War Space and Culture in the 1960s and 1980: The Bunkered Decades, is no exception, focusing specifically on the underground bunkers and fallout shelters of the cold war.

Another recent book on a closely related topic, Bunker: Building for the End Times (2020) by experimental geographer Bradley Garrett, is concerned with the physical space of bunkers themselves, and the doomsday preppers whose various fringe theories feed their need to bunker themselves. In contrast, Pikes comparative study suggests that the bunker is not a fringe concept, it is something that has entered our collective subconscious and mutated to the point where it is all around us, and yet not always instantly recognizable.

Cold War and Space Culture returns us to a time when worldgovernments spent excessively on nuclear arms and fortifying shelters. Meanwhile, ordinary Americans were encouraged to build shelters in their own backyards and basements and to prepare for a potential disaster.Popular culture of all kinds expressed what Pike calls the bunker fantasy, expressions of the dreams and nightmares of nuclear destruction.As he explains:

As idea, as image, and as physical space, the bunker dominated Cold War culture; since 1989 it has continued to dominate the way we respond to and process everything we inherited from that war, and the ways we think about shelter, security, boundaries, and difference. But we seldom attend to the meanings mobilized by these ideas, images, and spaces, to our profound ambivalence towards them, or to the ways they contain our deepest fears entangled with our strongest desires.

For Pike, this obsession with bunkers, as fortresses, personal spaces, and more, has wide-reaching but not always easy to notice resonances, hence his eclectic, interdisciplinary approach. The bunker fantasy is at least twofold: its not only a yearning for security that verges on a nostalgic desire to return to a womb-like state but also a desire that the country should become a fortress, fortified against outsiders. Readers may recognize in this latter formulation some overtones of Donald Trumps MAGA project, but Pike doesnt confront this directly, perhaps hes weary of glib comparisons or of dating his analysis.

Pikes focus on two specific decades cleaves the book into two main sections.The 1960s and 80s are studied as particular high points in the coldwar.The early 60s saw the resumption of Soviet nuclear tests and the Cuban missile crisis, while the less-studied cold war culture of the 80s was fueled by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which began in 1979 and heated up the cold war again. The dtente period of the 70s is not covered here, as it produced quite a different strain of pop culture (the spectacle-oriented campiness of the James Bond franchise, for example.)

The 60s section is organized according to five themes: 1. home shelters, 2. the cave as the home for a feral humanity, 3. survivalism and the private bunkers, 4. shelter and community, and finally 5. the kind of government shelters seen and talked about in films such as Stanley Kubriks Dr. Strangelove and Sidney Lumets Fail Safe. At the outset of the 1960s section, he cites historians Peter J .Kuznick and James Gilbert, who argued that the principal effect of the Cold War on culture was a psychological one, not a direct one. This allows Pike his heterogeneous approach.

Despite this eclecticism, the 1960s section cleaves fairly closely to the bunker theme. Pike draws useful insights from considering the bunker in relation to gender. He demonstrates how the bunker relates to the idealized suburban home of the 1950s/60s as a feminine domain, and how it has also been conceived as a space for a particularly masculine kind of alienation and isolation.

While images of Cold War suburban nuclear anxieties have become pop culture staples (seen in TV shows such as The Simpsons, for example), the idea of the government super shelter has been less studied, and so the final chapter of the 1960s section is of particular interest. As Pike notes:

The tension between fascination with secret underground headquarters, fear and suspicion of government secrecy, corruption and favoritism, and disapproval of the existence of technologically sophisticated and heavily fortified government shelters with nothing remotely analogous available to regular citizens drives the imaginary around these supershelters even more than around the private bunkers discussed above.

Here, Pike contrasts two political versions of the bunker fantasy: the liberal version of the bunker myth, in which the apocalypse proves a kind of theodicy for government, proving their worth in times of crisis, and the conservative version, exemplified by Ayn Rands novel, Atlas Shrugged (1957), in which the apocalypse purges the bureaucratic excesses of government.

Rand, of course, didnt become mainstream until the 1980s, the focus of Pikes next section.

The remaining three chapters deal with the following: mens action fiction, what Pike calls nuclear realism, and feminist approaches to the bunker fantasy.The chapter on nuclear realism is one of the books broadest, starting with the recognizably realistic Testament (Lynne Littman, 1983)and Threads (Mick Jackson, 1984), before moving to satirical treatments of the nuclear threat, before finally discussing pop songs such as Two Tribes by Frankie Goes to Hollywood. It becomes clear that nuclear realism isnt about fealty to naturalism, but about a long hard look at what the reality of a nuclear apocalypse would look like, something that would eventually filter into the usually carefree sphere of pop music.

Pike provides a dizzying amount of interdisciplinary references in Cold War and Space Culture, from Wisconsin-based feminist sci-fi writers such as Jeanne Gomoll, who were involved with the magazine Aurora, to the found-footage documentary The Atomic Caf (Kevin Rafferty, Jayne Loader, and Pierce Rafferty, 1982). Indeed, this is undeniably an incredibly well-researched book, brimming with detail and the ability to connect even the most mundane piece of popular culture to the fear-driven Cold War. As such, it is an essential read for anybody interested in Cold War culture or how apocalyptic themes manifest themselves in film, literature, and other forms of culture. As Pike suggests in his conclusion, other existential threats such as the climate crisis will ensure that the bunker fantasy continues to mutate and influence our culture.

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Digging into the Atom Bomb's Effects on Cold War America - PopMatters