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Thursday, August 29, 2019

Collectivism Requires Brute Force..

Any Alleged Right Of One Man, Which Necessitates The Violation Of...

Ayn Rand Predicting The Enrichment Of Obama Donors With Doomed To Fail Green Companies

A Government Is The Most Dangerous Threat To Man's Rights...

Tuesday, February 7, 2017

In modern America, February 2 is best known as Groundhog Day. But it also marks the birth of one of the most praised and criticized thinkers of the past century – Ayn Rand.

Rand sold more than 30 million books. Atlas Shrugged has been ranked behind only the Bible as an influence on readers’ lives. She has also been stridently attacked for issues such as her militant atheism. But perhaps least understood has been her full-bore rejection of altruism. On her birthday, it is worth reconsideration.

Altruism has commonly been held up as the standard for moral behavior. But Rand rejected it, asserting it was “incompatible with freedom, with capitalism, and with individual rights,” and therefore “the basic evil behind today’s ugliest phenomena.”

That head-on collision arises from French philosopher Auguste Comte, coiner of the term altruism. The altruists.org website says he believed “the only moral acts were those intended to promote the happiness of others.” Comte’s Catechisme Positiviste asserts that altruism “gives a direct sanction exclusively to our instincts of benevolence,” and, therefore, “cannot tolerate the notion of rights, for such a notion rests on individualism.”

In Comte’s view, any act performed for any reason beyond solely that of advancing someone else’s well-being is not morally justified. That implies taking a tax deduction for a charitable act strips it of its morality. The same is true when done because “what goes around comes around.” Something as seemingly innocuous as feeling good about doing good also fails Comte’s joyless standards. Even “love your neighbor as yourself” fails his unlimited duty of altruism. As George H. Smith summarized it, “One should love one’s neighbor more than oneself.”

Ayn Rand’s attacks on altruism are aimed at Comte’s definition. However, modern usage has eroded his meaning of altruism to little more than a synonym for generosity, so Rand’s rejection of the original meaning is now often taken as a rejection of generosity, which it is not. In Roderick Long’s words,

… her sometimes misleading rhetoric about the “virtue of selfishness”… was not to advocate the pursuit of one’s own interest at the expense of others … she rejected not only the subordination of one’s interest to those of others, (and it is this, rather than mere benevolence, that she labeled “altruism”), but also the subordination of others’ interest to one’s own.

Rand’s categorical rejection of altruism was a rejection of Comte’s requirement of total selflessness, because that was inconsistent with any individuals mattering for their own sake. Rand vehemently opposed such an invalidation of individuals’ significance.

The basic principle of altruism is 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.

Rand’s “virtue of selfishness” was a response to Comte’s demand for complete selflessness. Not only is a requirement for everyone to completely disregard themselves an unattainable ideal, it is self-contradictory. You cannot possibly sacrifice yourself fully for me, while I am also sacrificing myself fully for you. And if no one has any intrinsic value, why would the results, even if possible, be meritorious? With Comte as a starting point, more attention to people’s own well-being – more selfishness, in Rand’s terminology – is the only way to move toward recognizing value in each individual and significance in each life.

Comte’s conception of altruism is also inconsistent with liberty, which was Ayn Rand’s focus. The duty to put others first at all times and in all circumstances denies self-ownership and the power to...

How Ayn Rand Predicted Dylan Mulvaney

Most of her fans – and probably her detractors as well – know Ayn Rand primarily through her four great novels. She also wrote essays, philosophy books, screenplays, and Broadway dramas… but we remember her for her novels.

We fear that the dystopian world of Anthem will come true someday, but not soon. We fear that the totalitarian tyranny of We the Living is approaching, any day now. And we know full well that the mindless, vicious, destructive bureaucratic rule of Atlas Shrugged is in some ways upon us already.

But the shocker is realizing that her most specific, dead-on prediction, the one we never saw coming, was in The Fountainhead, and it is all around us today.

A few years ago, a confused teenaged actor, much like tens of thousands of other teenaged actors, was hoping for a career in the theatre, and meeting with the minor success so common in youth: a role in a local professional play, perhaps even a part in the chorus line of a musical’s touring company. Then in 2021, following the strange year known as “the pandemic,” this young person decided to become “trans,” and to report on his “transition” on the Chinese online platform TikTok.

Soon, Dylan Mulvaney was being represented by Creative Artists Agency – not for acting, dancing, or singing ability but for “being” a trans activist and online influencer. Soon, as he began wearing the hair, makeup, and wardrobe of a woman, he was getting promoted by the Trevor Project.

In the spring of 2023, an American public that had never heard of this young man was suddenly seeing him everywhere -- in dresses, hats and pearls -- in print ads, on television and online commercials, even on the packaging of America’s most popular brands.

Consider: how did people become spokesmen in the old days? A television or film actor or singer, already famous, would sign an endorsement deal. An Olympic or sports team star, already famous, would appear on a cereal box or television commercial. They were always famous first, and an advertising executive thought their image might be a good fit for their product.

There have also been unknown actors who directly became famous from a commercial, but that was always one specific, memorable commercial character in a very creative, well-written sketch. For such commercial appearances to strike gold and launch an actor’s broader endorsement career is rare indeed.

Dylan Mulvaney is a new case, and possibly a prototype for a new way: he is suddenly ubiquitous, simultaneously hired by Anheuser Busch and Kate Spade, Nike and Ulta Beauty, CeraVe and Crest, InstaCart and Haus Labs. What a client list for a fringe, unknown actor!

Note that key word: simultaneously. One producer, one manufacturer, one ad agency didn’t come up with an idea, launch it, see how it went, and then, on the strength of a year’s increased sales due to his ads, leverage that success into more and more bookings.

No. All these companies joined the bandwagon together, practically overnight, without waiting for any other campaign’s results.

These businesses were sold on this young man as a concept, before there was any data available to objectively demonstrate that it would be a good marketing decision for them.

This just doesn’t happen. This never happens. While I am not an expert in the history of advertising, Gentle Reader, I am certain that this has not happened before.

All of a sudden, this skinny young man in a dress, looking like a Halloween party Audrey Hepburn impersonator, is popping up everywhere, like the Gallant Gallstone… and for exactly the same reason.

Ayn Rand’s fans will remember a character in The Fountainhead named Ellsworth Toohey, a newspaper columnist who spent years and years planting Marxists in every industry and association, spreading them throughout the country as sleeper cells, ready to be activated on his word.

One day, perhaps to test his approach, perhaps to gauge his influence, Ellsworth Toohey puts out the word to his army of plants that they should advertise a book by poet Lois Cook, a talentless hack who has written about a sentient gallstone making its courageous path through a human body. It’s outrageous, of course, sheer theatre of the absurd, but his plan works, as the character of the Gallant Gallstone is suddenly ubiquitous, seemingly overnight.

Only then are the eyes of other characters opened, and they begin to realize how dangerous, how powerful, this Ellsworth Toohey character has become.

By the same token, we Americans have watched for years as corporations big and small have added new jobs, even new board roles, and signed on to new corporate commitments, seemingly as a harmless sop to one interest group or another, unthinkingly, much like a political machine that creates a no-show patronage job for some party boss’s kid.

Our companies have appointed a “Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Officer” or an “Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Vice President.” Stockholders were happy to do it because Blackrock and other huge funds advocate it… and if you make them happy, it’ll count toward your Corporate Equality Index (CEI). These giant pool investing houses will buy your stock and push up your perceived market value.

What they didn’t know, what they never dreamed, was that these useless officers weren’t just no-show placeholders to satisfy a demand for a bribe. They would have actual power. They would sit at every board meeting; they would run a department. They would have a vote on company decisions, big and small, just like all the other board members.

We have seen this influence in recent years, as large companies, both publicly traded and privately held, have written checks, often for millions and millions of company dollars each, to hostile organizations like BLM. And now they are at the heart of the movement to put Dylan Mulvaney in front of every American’s face.

There are many imputed laws in the business world. Parkinson’s Law, that work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion. The Peter Principle, that in any hierarchy, each employee will eventually rise to his level of incompetence. O’Sullivan’s Law, that any organization not explicitly founded to be conservative will eventually become left-wing.

And perhaps we now need a law that we should always have thought would go without saying: If you give someone a seat at the table, he will take full advantage of it.

We – our modern American society – have thought that we were showing tolerance, open-mindedness, liberality, when we threw the left a bone and invited people clearly hostile to the principles of Western Civilization and capitalism onto the management hierarchy and the boards of directors of our business community. They have taken this opportunity and used it to their movement’s best advantage, undermining the profitability of the very companies that pay their salaries.

They have gotten oil refiners to insanely commit to wean themselves away from oil; they have convinced energy utilities to shut down their most efficient, most productive nuclear power plants; they have convinced advertiser after advertiser to produce commercials that insult and offend their customers.

And now, in perhaps the ultimate of such suicidal campaigns, they have convinced a beer company to put a guy in a dress on the front of their beer cans. They have convinced a makeup company to make this man the face of their cosmetics. They have convinced an athletic apparel company to have a skinny, non-athletic man model their sports bras.

These brands are bleeding customers daily as a result. Whether these specific companies will ever learn their lesson or not may be beside the point. The most striking lesson for us today is the fact that it happened at all.

An association of political activists, international in scope, has proven itself to have the ability to plant destructive people in the business community’s corporate boards, and to force businesses to willingly sabotage their own sales, undermining their own shareholder value, by advancing a...

Ayn Rand On Freedom Of Speech

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And Support Atlas Shrugged In Theaters..

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Ayn Rand On The Slow Rot Of Statism...

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Thursday, July 31, 2014

Ayn Rand On Capitalism..

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Tuesday, January 7, 2014

The Amazing Ayn Rand

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Saturday, March 25, 2017

Cosmopolitan Hates For Women To Orgasm If Men Enjoy It Too

Cosmopolitan has a long history of giving young women bad advice about how to deal with the young men in their lives, but they really outdid themselves with this spectacularly bad advice: “Why Guys Get Turned on When You Orgasm—and Why That’s a Bad Thing.”

Wait, what?

Hannah Smothers writes:

It’s not enough that men are already having more orgasms than women. To make matters worse, a new study published in the Journal of Sex Research found—aside from deriving pleasure from their own orgasms, obviously—men also derive a specific sort of masculine pleasure from making female partners orgasm. The researchers in the study, Sara Chadwick and Sari van Anders, refer to this incredibly predictable phenomenon as a “masculinity achievement.” I’m not exactly sure what that means, but I imagine a “masculinity achievement” looks something like Super Mario punching a coin out of one of those floating boxes in the video game….

“Despite increasing focus on women’s orgasms, research indicated that the increased attention to women’s orgasms may also serve men’s sexuality, complicating conceptualizations of women’s orgasms as women-centric,” researchers wrote.

In other news, there’s a widespread caricature of feminists as joyless scolds who hate men and want to outlaw fun. I have no idea where this could possibly have come from.

It’s easy to make fun of this article, so I can’t resist just one more. Alternate Cosmo headline: “Five Techniques for Mindblowing Sex—Unless the Guy Enjoys it, Too, Then Maybe Not.” But it’s worth investigating where this particular bit of insanity comes from, because there’s a deeper cause behind it that’s not funny at all.
Don’t Make Doing What Women Want a Bad Thing

First, let’s start by acknowledging that it’s absolutely correct that men enjoy bringing their partners to orgasm and regard this as an achievement that gives us a special thrill. (Pssst, don’t tell the feminist hall monitors, but women enjoy doing that, too.) The only thing this report adds to that rather obvious observation is its pinch-nosed, disapproving interpretation. For men, this is like “like Super Mario punching a coin out of one of those floating boxes in the video game.” As one commenter added, “Actually closer to when Mario gets the high point on the flagpole with a 6 in the time spot. Fireworks and fanfare included.” Achievement unlocked.

Men tend to be goal-directed and task-oriented. For decades, we have been specifically warned that it’s unfair for men to have orgasms while their partners remain unfulfilled, and some of us have taken that to heart and decided that if this is the metric we’re supposed to meet, by God we’re gonna meet it. Heck, we’re gonna exceed it. And we’re going to take pride in that achievement.

But notice the way Smothers describes that in a belittling, dismissive way, meant to make all of us eager men look like clueless bros playing a video game. Rephrase it without those dismissive terms, and yes, of course sex is about enjoying one’s ability to achieve a goal. That’s the whole point. That is specifically what the orgasm is about. It is joyous effort reaching toward a climax.

Ayn Rand, who was famous for the sex scenes in her novels, wrote a great description of an orgasm (and from a woman’s perspective): “then she knew nothing but the motion of his body and the driving greed that went reaching on and on, as if she were not a person any longer, only a sensation of endless reaching for the impossible—then she knew that it was possible, and she gasped and lay still, knowing that nothing more could be desired, ever.” If you feel like you need a cigarette after reading that, Ayn Rand would have approved.

So no, it’s not like Super Mario. It’s like climbing Everest. It’s like crossing the finish line of a marathon. It’s the ultimate reward for effort. Ideally, in a good relationship, this is a cooperative effort, two bodies working together for a common goal—which includes the man caring about the woman’s pleasure. After all, he loves her and wants her to be happy. Really, really happy. Twice.
How Can You Dislike Mutual Satisfaction?
So if everyone is enjoying themselves, what is there to complain about? The question answers itself. Everyone is enjoying themselves, and even worse, they’re enjoying themselves together. It’s the ultimate win-win, and we can’t let that happen.

The neo-Puritanism of today’s feminism is a product of its adoption of the ideological framework of Marxism. What contemporary feminism imported from Marx was the notion that...

Free eBook From Ayn Rand..

Ayn Rand’s 1946 monograph “Textbook of Americanism" has gone virtually unknown for decades. Now you can read it in its entirety at FEE.org/AynRand!

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Ayn Rand, We Need Your Intellect Now...

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Saturday, June 14, 2014

Ayn Rand On Individual Rights..

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Friday, September 2, 2016

Trump's Galt-Right Movement

Ayn Rand’s classic novel, Atlas Shrugged, opens with the question “Who is John Galt?” It’s a question often repeated amid an ongoing quest to discover the answer.

John Galt is a man who opts out of a failed society, who rejects a nation near collapse, an eroding economy, escalating crime, and an authoritarian government for a better life. Galt then recruits society’s producers, smart, inventive people, the best of the best. They gather in a secret community, Galt’s Gulch, and set to work to rebuild what they’ve lost.

In Hillary Clinton’s “alt-right” speech, I see shades of Rand’s dystopian society, feelings over thoughts, words over action. Hillary went for the jugular of feelings with the most divisive, insulting, and damaging words in the Democrat lexicon. It’s frightening to realize her hate speech will reach a segment of voters because that’s not who Donald Trump is, not who his supporters are. We are not “alt-right”.

But then I was browsing Free Republic, an on-line conservative site, and saw this:

Donald Trump is the leader of the “Galt-Right”, a movement which rewards success, freedom and individuality.

Bingo! I’m with the Trump movement and believe me, this is who we are. Trump’s right when he says...