Free Association: Ayn Rand at Her Worst

America's Counter-Revolution

The Constitution Revisited

From the back cover:

This book challenges the assumption that the Constitution was a landmark in the struggle for liberty. Instead, Sheldon Richman argues, it was the product of a counter-revolution, a setback for the radicalism represented by America’s break with the British empire. Drawing on careful, credible historical scholarship and contemporary political analysis, Richman suggests that this counter-revolution was the work of conservatives who sought a nation of “power, consequence, and grandeur.” America’s Counter-Revolution makes a persuasive case that the Constitution was a victory not for liberty but for the agendas and interests of a militaristic, aristocratic, privilege-seeking ruling class.

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Ayn Rand at Her Worst

4 comments:

shemsky said...: Didn't she feel the same way about Native Americans as she did about the Arabs - that they were "savages" and therefore they had no rights?

Pure collectivist thinking on her part. What a shame.; August 22, 2012 at 6:49 PM
Sheldon Richman said...: On this issue she had no idea what she was talking about.; August 23, 2012 at 5:49 AM
JOR said...: shemsky, yeah, it was her basic attitude to all of the world's "uncivilized" natives whose property claims (whether tribal, common, or in many cases as "individualistic" as European property patterns) stood in the path of Western Civilization and Enlightenment Values.

It's an interesting contrast to her view of the civil war and Southern slave-holding, oddly enough. I guess funny-colored savages have no rights until they can be used as political rationalizations for the adventures of the US Military, which she seemed to regard as the embodiment of Reason, Justice, and Liberty for non-obvious reasons.; September 1, 2012 at 12:48 PM
Technomad said...: There were times when Ayn Rand was a transcendent thinker, and times when she was a cranky old Russian woman. The cranky old Russian woman came out more and more toward the end of her life.

She also had a bad, bad habit of popping off her mouth without knowing much about what she spoke of.; October 12, 2016 at 12:53 AM