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The Unquiet Grave: Ayn Rand Declared Conservatism Dead in 1960

By Walter Donway

December 19, 2019

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Is the rationalistic, utopian ideology of Objectivism vulnerable to Edmund Burke’s fundamental dictum of conservatism: Only the hard-won, accumulated, traditional wisdom of our species can guide beneficial social change and avoid disaster?
 

Conservatism: An Obituary

Rand upset all expectations by speaking on “Conservatism: An Obituary.”

Published in 1957, Ayn Rand’s novel, Atlas Shrugged, became “hot” enough to win her invitations to speak at top Ivy League Schools. Today, that seems unimaginable. But, in 1960, she addressed an audience at Princeton University. Characteristically, Rand flipped over the card table (upset all expectations) by speaking on “Conservatism: An Obituary.”

She was eloquent, with a relatively simple logic and theme, both driven home with pounding rhetorical questions, accusations, and shocking epithets. She said that contemporary liberals were dishonest and sneaky, advancing their goal of statism (socialism of the communistic or national socialistic [fascistic] stripe) without ever naming it.

But conservatives, she said, in her pivotal rhetorical flourish, were still more contemptibly cowardly and dishonest. They not only refused to name, but “spit on” and “rejected” their actual ideological goal—capitalism—hoping to “trick” voters into somehow supporting it without ever acknowledging it.

In this charade, she said, the sole motivation of the conservatives was fear of challenging the morality of altruism. Rand believed that conservatives, as traditional religionists, were wedded to a Christian morality of sacrificing human success and ability to failure and need. This was utterly incompatible with capitalism, which required and was consistent only with the uniquely American political ideal of the individual’s right to live for his own sake, his own “pursuit of happiness.”

Conservatives had been disastrous defenders of capitalism. Despite the historical record of capitalism as the economic system that promoted innovation and production, consumer plenty, longer human life and flourishing, and political, cultural, and social liberty, the conservatives could not bring themselves to utter “capitalism”–to defend it as the triumph of the morality of individual self-fulfillment. (She would later publish The Virtue of Selfishness and Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.)

Conservatives were losers. Their strategy that capitalism could be achieved by stealth was dead. Here was their obituary.

Conservatives were losers. Their strategy that capitalism could be achieved by stealth was dead. Here was their obituary.

There was “history” behind her thesis and “I will bury you” rhetoric. She had met leading conservatives, including Isabel Patterson, NY Herald Tribune book literary critic, and William F. Buckley, Jr., at the epicenter of an American conservative revival around National Review. Perhaps she had expected the support of conservatives for her brilliant, unprecedentedly intellectual, unabashedly moral defense of capitalism in Atlas Shrugged. Buckley assigned the review to Whittaker Chambers, former Communist Party member turned informer. Chambers trashed the novel, ending by implying that Rand’s was but another sure ideological path to the [concentration] “camps.” Reportedly, Buckley agreed with Ayn Rand’s complaints about the pre-publication copy of the review but refused to “censor” Chambers.

Is all this mostly forgotten skirmishing in New York City almost 70 years ago worth recounting? Yes.
 

A New American Conservatism?

Stanton Evans issued the historic “Sharon Statement,” accepted since as a classic formulation of American conservative ideals.

In the same year that Ayn Rand delivered its obituary at Princeton, M. Stanton Evans issued the historic “Sharon Statement,” accepted since as a classic formulation of American conservative ideals. A Texan, Evans had studied at Yale, like Buckley, achieving ranking academic success, and joined Buckley for 13 years (1960-73) as associate editor of National Review. From the charming Connecticut town of Sharon (and the Buckley family home), Evans released this statement on behalf of Young Americans for Freedom (YAF):

We, as young conservatives, believe:

  1. That foremost among the transcendent values is the individual’s use of his God-given free will, whence derives his right to be free from the restrictions of arbitrary force;
  2. That liberty is indivisible, and that political freedom cannot long exist without economic freedom;
  3. That the purpose of government is to protect those freedoms through the preservation of internal order, the provision of national defense, and the administration of justice;
  4. That the Constitution of the United States is the best arrangement yet devised for empowering government to fulfill its proper role, while restraining it from the concentration and abuse of power;
  5. That the market economy, allocating resources by the free play of supply and demand, is the single economic system compatible with the requirements of personal freedom and constitutional government; and that it is at the same time the most productive supplier of human needs;
  6. That American foreign policy must be judged by this criterion: Does it serve the just interests of the United States?

 

Take away God, replace “market economy” with “capitalism,” and you virtually have an Objectivist manifesto.

Some adherents of Ayn Rand’s philosophy might cheer this manifesto of American conservatism coming from the virtual co-founder of National Review. Would Ayn Rand have objected? Well, Evans views human nature, including free will, as created by God, and Ayn Rand emphatically does not. And the manifesto uses the term “market economy,” not “capitalism.” Does it evade, spit on, and slink away from “capitalism”? It does not seem so, to me. Take away God, replace “market economy” with “capitalism,” and you virtually have an Objectivist manifesto.

Was American conservatism evolving, here, even as Ayn Rand buried it? A case can be made for that. Evans is contrasted with another towering American conservative, Russell Kirk, a “traditional” conservative. Evans joined forces with National Review co-editor Frank Meyer, who said of the traditionalist and libertarian camps of the conservative movement: “The idea that there is some sort of huge conflict between religious values and liberty is a misstatement of the whole problem. The two are inseparable.”

Ayn Rand disagreed. History does not record that Meyer and Evans, in New York City, as was Ayn Rand, ever sat down with her to hash it out.

What seems probable is that Ayn Rand’s view of conservatism, and what she sought to bury in Princeton, was a snapshot of the ideas of William F. Buckley, Jr., and intellectuals such as Whittaker Chambers that Buckley had gathered around National Review. The magazine came upon the scene in New York City in 1955, just two years before Atlas Shrugged.  William Buckley was a Roman Catholic, unapologetically devout, who, when asked about his serene confidence in the future, replied: “I know that my Redeemer liveth.”

Not that Ayn Rand was unaware of the larger conservative movement. Her closest intellectual interlocutor for many years was Isabel Patterson, also Roman Catholic. Those “in the know” can discern in Atlas Shrugged references to Gilbert Keith Chesterton, the towering English conservative and Catholic apologist (1873-1936) and other conservatives. Ayn Rand interred them in the Taggart Tunnel collapse.

A typical summary of conservatism undertakes to distinguish liberal conservatism, conservative liberalism, libertarian conservatism, fiscal conservatism, national and traditional conservatism, cultural and social conservatism, religious conservatism, paternalistic conservatism, and fusionist conservatism.

If Ayn Rand’s “obituary” was intended to apply to all, it was premature. Of course, Ayn Rand always spoke of trends in the most fundamental, long-term philosophical context. When she pronounced the death of conservatism, she certainly meant in principle, given the long-term logic of how ideas worked out. “The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small.” Logic will out.

In years following her Princeton speech, the dominant movement in American politics seemed to be toward libertarian conservatism. Certainly, that was evident in the Sharon Statement. Libertarianism did not start with Ayn Rand, but her name, ideas, and influence were plastered all over libertarian politics. The libertarian political party in California, and eventually nationally, had leaders devoted to Ayn Rand. The founder of the leading libertarian think tank, the Cato Institute, Ed Crane, acknowledged that his ideological base and that of Cato was Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism. Other founders of Cato, Murray Rothbard and billionaire Charles Koch, were fans of Ayn Rand at the time (later, Rothbard had a falling out with Rand).

Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Branden, partners in the impressive earliest growth of Objectivism, might have embraced the surge of libertarianism on the American scene.  But Ayn Rand directed at libertarianism an unconditional, sustained, homicidal attack. She anathematized libertarianism as she had conservatism.

Libertarianism, she said, sought to defend political liberty without reference to any philosophical base. Libertarians believed they could make the case for economic and social freedom on its own terms—its inner logic and practical success.

Ayn Rand thundered that to attempt to defend capitalism without its roots in philosophy—reason, individual rights, the morality of egoism, individualism, and individual’s rights—was worse than futile. It left the field of battle wide open to the forces of religious faith and altruism, both entirely incompatible and inconsistent capitalism and liberty—indeed, both essential premises of collectivism and statism.

For an Objectivist to defend libertarianism became grounds for anathema and excommunication.

For an Objectivist to defend libertarianism became grounds for anathema and excommunication. It seems that for Ayn Rand the movement of conservatism toward a fusion with libertarianism counted for less than nothing.

In decades since, the libertarian movement as represented by the Cato Institute has become far more influential, not least in Washington politics, than Objectivism. Libertarian political parties are active. The conservatives, too, have their think-tank strongholds such as the Heritage Foundation. During the presidency of Ronald Reagan, both became sources of White House staff and ideas.

Notable individuals inspired by Ayn Rand keep popping up: Clarence Thomas, Alan Greenspan, Margaret Thatcher, Rand Paul, Malcolm Fraser, Jimmy Wales, John Stossel, Hunter Thompson, and Paul Ryan. But over half a century, any systematic impact of Objectivism on education, public intellectual discourse, the academic world, and Washington politics has been barely perceptible, at times–but never much more.

Today, in the unpredicted victory and enduring appeal of Donald Trump—and conservative political victories throughout Europe and parts of South America and Asia—a visceral, non-ideological conservatism seems to be at work. Historically, the politics of “reaction” are the extreme fringe of conservatism. If so, this fringe of conservatism today is rampant in America and much of Europe. Among supporters of President Trump is evident an outspoken, angry reaction to the politically correct, leftist politics, and “anti-Trump syndrome.”

 

The Conservative Challenge to Ideology

Decidedly quiescent, in our time, outside of Objectivism is the influence of ideology. The appeal of philosophical principles, moral values, and human nature dominated international left-wing politics until the end of World War II. By then, the ideologies of socialism—Marxist communism, German national socialism, Italian fascistic socialism—were perceived by Western intellectuals and politicians as catastrophic failures.

Ayn Rand boldly advanced Objectivism as a radical alternative to socialist ideology, as an ideology consistent with human nature, requirements of human survival, and human happiness on earth. Adherents to Objectivism made their case in terms of fundamental premises, logic, hierarchical structure, complete consistency, and universality.

“Dangers of ideology” could have been the title of Burke’s attack on the French Revolution.

Those elements of systematic ideology, of course, are exactly what conservatism arose to oppose. “Dangers of ideology” could have been the title of Burke’s attack on the French Revolution. And in the 20th Century, American and European conservatism stood down communism around the world with attacks that often made the connection between ideology and fanaticism at least as a subtext.

Can Objectivists afford to dismiss entirely a very alive and increasingly politically influential conservatism’s “wisdom of mankind” counteroffer to Ayn Rand’s ideology? That is the question for Part II of this article.

 

 

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