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A Defense of Ayn Rand
by Glenn Woiceshyn
The following was published on Jan/20/96 in the Globe and Mail.
Re: "The Appalling Charm of Rand's Fountainhead"--by Robert Fulford--Jan/17/96--The
Globe and Mail
Dear Editor,
Over the years I have grown accustomed to witnessing modern intellectuals distort
Ayn Rand's views and sneer at her--rather than honestly address the ideas she presented
and validated in her books. It's sad that Robert Fulford has joined the circus.
Mr. Fulford claims that Ayn Rand "spent all her life teaching: We should all
concentrate on our own desires and stop trying to help others." Actually, Miss
Rand spent much of her life teaching that one should concentrate on reality and live
by reason. She discovered and defined an objective code of moral principles, an ethics
of rational self-interest, which is incompatible with acting blindly on one's desires--but
fully compatible with voluntarily helping others under certain circumstances.
Mr. Fulford claims that Ayn Rand hated "all forms of altruism" and "argued
that humanity suffers from too much kindness." Miss Rand described altruism
as the moral theory which holds "that man has no right to exist for his own
sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that
self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue and value." She demonstrated,
at great length in her novels and nonfiction works, why altruism is inherently irrational,
destructive and incompatible with kindness. She demonstrated how altruism served
as the perfect weapon for power-seekers throughout history to rule, loot, enslave
and murder their victims.
Despite the attempts by Mr. Fulford and his ilk to sneer at Ayn Rand by painting
a "cult" image of her and her admirers, or, by spitting out words like
"egomaniac" or "twisted" or "heavy-handed trash" or
"self-intoxicated looniness," Miss Rand's philosophy of Objectivism remains
true, brilliant and unchallenged in a culture that suffers from a severe case of
intellectual, moral and political bankruptcy.
Sincerely,
Glenn Woiceshyn
© 1997 Glenn Woiceshyn. All rights reserved.
This article can be found on-line at at http://www.capitalism.org/glennw. |
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