Whittaker Chambers Review of Ayn Rands _altas Shrugged

For someone who represented herself every bit the acme of philosophy and private strength, Ayn Rand could be remarkably touchy.  Whittaker Chambers'south famous review of Atlas Shrugged in National Review infuriated her, to the point that she would not be in the aforementioned room with William F. Buckley always later.

Buckley and Chambers weren't the only ones to feel her volcanic wrath.  Over at the fine Starting time Things blog, Matthew Schmitz directs our attention to an obscure 1998 volume past Robert Mayhew entitled Ayn Rand's Marginalia : Her Critical Comments on the Writings of over Twenty Authors.  I'm not sure information technology is proper to publish anyone'southward marginalia or casual notes, and this project certainly doesn't do Rand much credit.  Turns out Rand didn't similar Hayek, von Mises, or Barry Goldwater.  She appears to exist the perfect person to argue why the People's Front of Judea is superior to the "splitters" in the Judean People'south Forepart.

Turns out she really didn't like C.S. Lewis.  Fair enough for an atheist like Rand.  Merely the Lewis volume she takes on is The Abolition of Human, which is Lewis'south entirely reason-based statement against moral relativism and in favor of natural constabulary.  Lewis's theology doesn't turn up at all.  It builds a stiff case confronting centralized political power based on scientific pretensions to principles that he reveals to be nihilism.  Nonetheless Rand proves herself the most casual and sloppy reader of Lewis's argument, making marginal comments that would earn a high schoolhouse student a C- form for missing the point entirely.  For example, at that place this passage from Lewis:

I am because what the affair called 'Man's power over Nature' must always and essentially be.No doubtfulness, the picture could be modified by public ownership of raw materials and factories and public control of scientific research. But unless we have a earth land this will all the same mean the power of one nation over others. And even within the world land or the nation it volition mean (in principle) the power of majorities over minorities, and (in the concrete) of a authorities over the people.And all long-term exercises of power, especially in breeding, must mean the power of earlier generations over later ones.

The underlinings are Rand's.  To which she attaches these comments in the margin:

And so in the pre-science age, there was no ability of majorities over minorities – and the Middle Ages were a period of honey and equality, and the oppression began merely in the The statesA. (!!!) The abysmal bastard!

It gets worse, but this is enough.  Schmitz has more if you like in his original postal service.  If Rand had taken care to grasp the whole statement of this short book (I read information technology in loftier school, and had no difficulty), or if she had bothered to read Lewis's other essays on the subject of regime, she'd have known that Lewis regarded the idea of world government—or increased government power of most kinds—with horror.  Better still, she ought to take read the dystopian novel Lewis wrote to dramatize the point: That Hideous Strength.  Cartel I incur the wrath of Randians everywhere if I propose that Lewis's dystopian novel is the best of the entire genre of mid-20^th century group that includes 1984 and Darkness at Apex.  Which ways it is also far superior to Atlas Shrugged, not just in fashion but in content besides.

Whittaker Chambers had information technology right that Atlas Shrugged is a "strenuously sterile world" filled with "operatic caricatures."  By contrast, Lewis's portrait of the bookish bureaucrat Withers holds up along side Randall Jarrell'southward Pictures from an Institution.  (Information technology has some other relevant wit: the National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments—or N.I.C.Eastward.—is expressionless-on for the kind of authoritarian bodies and processes—sensitivity training anyone?—the therapeutic Left imposes on all of the states today.)

To be sure, Atlas Shrugged has taken on a whole new salience in the Age of Obama.  As Glenn Reynolds commented way dorsum in the early on weeks of Obama'due south rule, the Obamanauts seem to regard it is a how-to manual for expropriating the wealth and demonizing the productivity of American business.  Only Shrugged doesn't capture the subtle shadings of what Lewis rightly chosen "the Progressive Element" well-nigh every bit well, and hence it lacks persuasive force beyond true believers.  And then today it ironically fits the criticism leveled by Chambers that information technology is "a massive tract for the times."  That doesn't mean it will accept staying power over the very long run, which is why I go along to recollect that in the fullness of time Rand'due south works will become, like Edward Bellamy's wildly popular socialist novels of 125 years ago, more a literary curiosity than a vibrant creed.

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Source: https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/03/rand-versus-lewis-its-no-contest.php

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