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Weiss: Foolish to pretend Rand is repulsive

Simon Gibbs

The author plugged by George Monbiot in his emotional and dishonest tirade has found a few words of his own to say about Rand this week:

I’m not a Rand follower–an “Objectivist”–and never will be. …  But I can’t deny that there were aspects of her work that appealed to me. It’s foolish, I found, to pretend that Rand is a repulsive creature that only nutcases could fine appealing. If that were so, she wouldn’t be as powerful–and dangerous–as she is today.

His conclusion?

Today, the revolution is being waged by the right. It will be successful–unless the rest of us stop ridiculing Ayn Rand and begin taking her seriously.

Quite.

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One response to “Weiss: Foolish to pretend Rand is repulsive”

  1. Tom Burroughes Avatar
    Tom Burroughes

    I suppose it is a sign of progress that a leftist “liberal” in the American usage of that word feels the need to praise, or at least give a measure of credit, to a woman who, much to the annoyance of his allies, is still so influential. I note the rather contorted logic here: this man seeks to justify the modern welfare state, such as Medicaid and heavy regulation and tax, by reference to rational self interest. Rand, who by the way enjoyed paradox and had a sense of humour (a fact often overlooked by her detractors) would have been rather amused by this, but also angry at the same time.

    There is no doubt that Rand’s insistence on the virtues of productiveness, justice, honesty, etc, resonates even with those who are not fully on board with the case for free enterprise capitalism. This author does at least realise that writing Rand and her supporters off as evil or deluded is absurd.

    Perhaps one reason why the left has a grudging respect for Rand is that she showed, in Atlas Shrugged, how crony capitalism is fuelled by the deadly combination of big government and “second-hander” businesspeople. Today’s massive bank bailouts are evidence of that.

    Another point for we libertarians to remember is that one can learn a lot of positives from authors whose views we might regard as wrong in certain respects. Even Marx has lessons to teach, for example, as did the Fabian socialist SF writer, HG Wells.

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