Ayn Rand's Corrosive Influence on American Politics

The three and a half years he’s been in the White House, Donald Trump has shown himself to be a greedy, self-involved, narcissistic, sociopath. At the same time, Republican leadership in the U.S. Senate to be of like mind with Trump. It’s not difficult to understand why; their brand of political conservatism is, at its heart, sociopathic.

But the true inspiration behind their hard-edged conservatism is neither Pinochet nor Friedman, but a mediocre, early 20th century novelist and self-proclaimed philosopher named Ayn Rand. Rand’s brand of social Objectivism has been the center of extreme right philosophy. GOP Senator Rand Paul, along with his former Republican congressman father, Ron Paul, are hard-core adherents to Ayn Rand’s philosophy. Her belief system was also behind the Tea Party movement.

Her novel, The Fountainhead, is one of the few books Trump said he enjoyed reading. When he became president, Trump proclaimed he would appoint Rand acolytes to cabinet posts. One of those, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, told the Washington Post, “One of the very first serious books I read when I was growing up was Atlas Shrugged, and it really had an impact on me.” Pompeo is said to be currently facing multiple internal corruption probes.

The problem is, Ayn Rand’s philosophy and writing are sociopathic.

The Russian-born Rand has been poisoning the minds of self-absorbed adolescents for decades with her philosophy of the individual as the center of the universe. That philosophy holds well with high schoolers who truly believe the universe revolves around them. Most people say adieu to Rand and her rants as they mature. Those that don’t become sociopaths— as Rand was herself.

The terrorist-hero of The
Fountain was based on a
real-life psychopathic killer.

Had she ever laid herself on a psychiatrist’s couch, Rand no doubt would have been diagnosed as sociopathic. Throughout her life, Rand—like the heroes in her best-known books, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged—believed whatever was good for her was right. She once wrote the basis of her philosophy stemmed from her childhood in post-Revolution Russia when her parents refused to buy her a dress she wanted or give her a cup of tea like the grown-ups were drinking. She believed if she wanted something, she should have it. It is said she once took money that her family needed for food to buy tickets to the theater.

Rand was so enamored with the idea of the unfettered self, she developed an infatuation with the notorious psychopathic serial killer, William Edward Hickman. In 1928, Hickman kidnapped his last victim, a 12-year-old girl, and held her for ransom. When the girl’s father paid the ransom, Hickman dumped the girl’s eviscerated and dismembered body in the street. At the time, it was considered one of the greatest crimes of the century.

Psychopathic 'Superman'

Ayn Rand felt otherwise.

In her notebooks, Rand wrote admiringly of Hickman. “Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should,” she wrote. She added, using words eerily prescient of what the Nazis would be saying a few years hence, that Hickman had “no regard whatsoever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. He has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel ‘other people.’”

Hickman, who was executed in 1928, became the model for Rand’s Fountainhead hero, Howard Roark, a self-absorbed architect who wins a woman’s devotion by raping her, and ends up committing an act of terrorism—blowing up the Fountainhead building—because he didn’t get his way.

Howard Roark, like his real-life model, was one sick puppy.

Rand’s self-proclaimed Objectivism philosophy basically says man makes his own reality. Whatever he determines to be, is. Evidence of how wide-spread this narcissistic philosophy is among the extreme right of the Republican Party was seen when Karl Rove, then chief advisor to President George Bush, told journalist Ron Susskind, “we create our own reality … we’ll act again, creating other new realities.”

Former GOP House speaker Paul Ryan, also an Ayn Rand fan, carried that same philosophy to the podium at the 2012 Republican Convention when, as Mitt Romney’s running mate, he delivered a diatribe on the Obama administration that was so separated from reality that even Fox News criticized its lies.

Kindred Spirits

Ryan, in fact, has a lot in common with Rand. Like her, Ryan likes to bite the hand that fed him. Ryan, youngest son of an upper middle-class family, received Social Security survivors’ benefits after his attorney father died of a heart attack. Since his family didn’t need those benefits to survive on, Ryan stuffed them away and used them to pay for his college education. Later he advocated doing away with Social Security for those who do need it.

Ryan's home in Wisconsin was declared a national historic site, meaning the Ryan family receives a taxpayer subsidy to maintain it. Since graduating from college, Ryan drew a government paycheck, first as a congressional aid, then as a congressman. Now retired from Congress, Ryan continues to collect a government pension and tax-payer subsidized health care.

Ayn Rand, too, took advantage of a government-sponsored education in the Soviet Union, and then turned against the system as soon as it no longer benefited her. She was the beneficiary of many government programs in the United States, as well. When her first play abruptly closed in 1938, the Works Progress Administration took it on a nationwide tour and paid Rand a weekly salary. In her old age, Rand regularly criticized those living on Social Security, even though she was receiving Social Security benefits under a married name.

Like Trump, Ayn Rand was an amoral, narcissistic, sociopath, and her poisoned pen continues taint American political thought and corrupt American political morals.

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UPDATE (July 8, 2020): Like the woman whose juvenile rhetoric they advocate, the Ayn Rand Institute admitted on July 7 that it had received up to $1 million in forgivable loans from the Paycheck Protection Program approved by Congress to help businesses during the Covid-19 crisis. The institute, which continues Rand's criticism of government welfare of any kind, used twisted logic to rationalized why it took the bailout. Apparently it isn't enough for the institute to keep Rand's childish philosophy of greed and selfishness alive, they also follow her hypocrisy, too.

 

For further reading:

Trump Administration Embraces Ayn Rand's Disdain for the Masses

US Republican leaders love Ayn Rand

The new age of Ayn Rand: how she won over Trump and Silicon Valley

Ayn Rand-acolyte Donald Trump stacks his cabinet with fellow objectivists

Romancing the Stone-Cold Killer: Ayn Rand and William Hickman

‘We Took PPP Funds and Would Do It Again’

In sign of the times, Ayn Rand Institute approved for PPP loan