-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.zolatimes.com/V3.9/pageone.html <A HREF="http://www.zolatimes.com/V3.9/pageone.html">Laissez Faire City Times - Volume 3 Issue 9</A> ----- The Laissez Faire City Times March 1, 1999 - Volume 3, Issue 9 Editor & Chief: Emile Zola ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Woman Who Turned God into Man by Nina von Altendorf There is a long tradition of favoring the poor and the slow-witted. I suppose we could blame the Church, but it's too easy a target. Of all the plausible culprits, ancient and modern, Christianity is as paltry a villain as her troupe of pitiful beggars and intellectual mendicants, limping along through history like an idiot whose crime consists of incompetence. I would be ashamed to put dear old foolish Faith in the dock. Indeed, though it was Jesus of Nazareth who probably invented the notion of charity, it would be decidedly unfair to accuse him of poor judgment. Failed carpenters and simple Jews need our protection, rather than scorn. See? -- I've fallen into the same trap, exonerating those who "don't know any better". It is a double standard by which the able pay dearly, myself included. Every time we succeed in life, a deep-rooted collective conscience whimpers an objection that few can ignore. Save the children. Feed the hungry. Share the wealth. Love thy neighbor. Even now, it occurs to me that this essay skates dangerously toward charity. Who is the intended beneficiary, if not a reader less fortunate than I? Perhaps I could write for the dead -- so lucky am I to have been saved. I could write for the unborn, but wiser than that, I could write for something unborn in me, in the hope that there's still time. Every day is a step toward -- or a step away from -- the thing we call God. Oh dear ... the cat is out of the bag, I fear. How many lives were damned by that word "God", or "Allah" or "Krishna" if you prefer? And who in the blood-drenched cavalcade of evolution had enough ingenuity and simple courage to turn God into Man, saving both? Only one that I know of, the patron saint of healthy children -- Ayn Rand O'Connor. She was born in Soviet Russia ... well, not quite: in 1905 her hometown, later renamed Leningrad, was still called St. Petersburg. Her parents were middle-class merchants. You can guess the rest: fleeing from the Bolsheviks, running into poverty, forbidden to leave by law and custom. Pure luck brought her to the United States in 1927, a young girl who spoke no English and dreamed of writing stories that would set the world on fire. In a sense, she achieved everything she set out to do. To date, Ayn Rand's epic novels (We The Living, Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged) have sold millions of copies, igniting the aspirations of every reader. Her non-fiction essays on human rights, free enterprise and technical philosophy shaped an entire generation of leaders. Greenspan in the United States, Thatcher in the UK, and tens of thousands in business and the professions. This is not to say that Ayn Rand "single-handedly" inspired the Me Generation, or the Thatcher Revolution, or Ivan Boesky's oft-quoted creed that "greed is good". But, apart from Milton Friedman and the Austrian school of economics, there were very few voices in the world which consistently championed capitalism as an ideal system. Ayn Rand was the first to declare that "greed is good" and make it stick. In a celebrated passage toward the end of her most influential novel, Atlas Shrugged, the hero demolishes 2000 years of altruism and enunciates a Bill of Rights for those who love life. The message is simple. Stop supporting your destroyers. Think. Act in your own self-interest. To the rest of the world, it was heresy. To me, it was a desperately needed lifeline that lifted me out of a sea of wreckage. For about five years after I read Atlas Shrugged, I must have thoroughly exhausted each of my friends and acquaintances with non-stop proselytizing and eager announcement of the Promised Land. It's here, it's now, it's in each one of us to understand and achieve. We are God. No spirit in the sky, but spirit in us, on earth. Life is worth living, if you live for your own sake. Mostly, it fell on deaf ears. I stopped talking about freedom for others. With church and state in near-monopoly of Western culture, there was no point in trying. Mystical concepts and New Age rhetoric had firmly grasped the minds of those around me and, Shirley McLaine notwithstanding, I could not stomach the popular notions that A is not A; that one creates one's reality; that nothing is real, all is illusion. I presume that mine was a typical experience. Discover Ayn Rand, try to spread the good news, give up because people are too frightened and cowardly to follow. And so, the "virtue of selfishness" which Ayn Rand preached remains locked away in private lives and daily life, like a secret society of thieves who stole the world's greatest treasure, each running off with a single gem to keep for the rest of their days -- the knowledge that my life belongs to me. With such a simple message, you'd think that more people would find it attractive and easy to swallow. But there's more to Rand's philosophy that meets the eye. Boesky is a good example: he took it to mean that self-interest equals Wall St. chicanery. Please observe that this definition of greed put him in prison and stripped him of every penny he had earned/stolen/gathered. Another example of misplaced faith: Steven Spielberg has made more money than any other filmmaker in history. In the process of doing so, he lost a wife and his ability to distinguish fact from fiction. Being popular with the childish masses is not an end in itself. Indeed, that's what Ayn Rand was all about. Never popular with the masses, she spoke entirely to the rational adult minority, who, paradoxically, are healthy children. Before we learn to be socialized smooth-talking collaborators in a conspiracy against reason and self-interest, we begin as little saints � 100 percent dedicated to our sanity and honesty. If you're lucky enough to have a child, look carefully into its eyes. He or she wants to know things. Not lies and fantasies you were taught to pass on. Not half-truths and mistakes you feel ashamed to admit. Children want to know Where am I?, and Is it worth it? There are only two honest answers: You're a mortal on earth, and -- yes -- It's worth being here if you defend your right to exist. That means, among other things, that each child has a right to struggle for life, to compete, to pursue and keep the knowledge and material wealth he can acquire. These things don't come free. They require effort. And they are much easier to achieve if you recognize the rights of others, because free trade (giving value for value) rewards those who give the greatest value and increase everyone's mutual productivity. It takes an enormous amount of thought and effort for a child to fully understand capitalism, deferred gratification, long-range planning, science, logic and love. Love is the hardest of all. Give it away to random strangers and you will lose the capacity to generate more. Pay it scrupulously to those who earn your affection, and it will grow at an exponential rate, like interest on a well-managed bank account. And around age 15 or 16, when the chaos of adolescence is about to overwhelm the child's immature grasp of life, give them Ayn Rand. Everything forbidden and mysterious is there to be discovered and marveled at: revolution, rape, idealism, suicide and triumph. Like life itself, her works are a mighty challenge to the best within us. Why do it? -- because your child will turn into a monster if you fail to tell him or her that A is A, that freedom and self-esteem are values to be defended or lost, and that there is no "free lunch". Why should I blunder along in another futile attempt to preach the gospel according to Saint Ayn? -- because I want to live in a world that, someday, is a little freer and a little saner. Government and royalty are ill- conceived. Taxation is ill-conceived. Religion (of all stripes and varieties) is ill-conceived. That's the only reason to write about Ayn Rand. If I don't, no one else will, and the received wisdom of Love Thy Neighbor will ooze along like an unquestioned, unopposed disease, taking what little freedom and dignity remains in the West. Ayn Rand was born in the Soviet Union. She knew the price people paid for socialism and egalitarianism. It is not surprising that freedom and democracy eventually began to triumph in the Eastern Bloc. Nor is it surprising that in Britain and the United States, we are busily eroding freedom in favor of socialism and "a kinder, gentler society" that offers free lunches for all. But, as Miss Rand once said, watch for the day when those blank cheques of charity and faith bounce back and wreck Western society, because our account was overdrawn long ago. Write-offs of Third World debt are only the tip of a very large iceberg, I'm afraid. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Nina von Altendorf is President of The Cthonia Institute. -30- from The Laissez Faire City Times, Vol. 3, No. 9, March 1, 1999 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Published by Laissez Faire City Netcasting Group, Inc. Copyright 1998 - Trademark Registered with LFC Public Registrar All Rights Reserved Disclaimer The Laissez Faire City Times is a private newspaper. 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