“I can say—not as a patriotic bromide, but with full knowledge of the necessary metaphysical, epistemological, ethical, political and aesthetic roots—that the United States of America is the greatest, the noblest and, in its original founding principles, the only moral country in the history of the world.”
–Ayn Rand
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It’s a bit excessively trimuphant, but………
if you look at history and compare our country to others —-it’s essentially true.
Most people and most societies do not value liberty. They much prefer security, comfort, tribalism, tradition, familiarity.
Liberty is a shock for most people. The cold reality that nobody will protect you, and that most people won’t care if you fail or fail to even try.
Ayn Rand was obnoxious and wrong on a lotta important ideals (particularly religion), but here she is definitely right. Despite our flaws, the USA remains the best, most noble hope for mankind.
HB
hank,
calls to mind the one about the stopped clock ;p
She was born under Communism and had such a free spirit that she seems to have developed a philosophy that was best described as the mirror image of Marxism. Since Marxism is a ridiculously wrong system of belief, we would expect its mirror image to be ridiculously wrong too, just in the opposite ways.
America is a country based more on ideas and ideals than most (although I won’t say all) other countries. That’s what underlies whatever truth is behind this statement by Ms. Rand.
I agree with Dean about Rand’s mirror image philosophies of Marxism. It seemed to me that she so hated where she came from she moved as far away from it (philosophically speaking) as possible. And ended up, in many ways, sacrificing the core values that served as the foundation of the nation she so obviously loved.
Hate will do that.
You’re all wrong.  Ranging from ever so slightly to maybe 90 degrees off course. Or at least I say that as one of Ayn Rand’s consistent readers.
I nurtured myself on Ayn Rand, especially the first novel of hers that I discovered, "The Fountainhead", back in about 1960-1962. John F Kennedy was everyone’s hero in those years. But not mine. And certainly not after the way he dumped on the cuban freedom fighters that his CIA sent in to fight as sacraficial lambs at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961. So I never even mourned for him when Lee Harvey Oswald — or whoever — shot him dead in Dallas in November 1963.
Instead, my hero was a character out of a novel. Howard Roark. A modern architect with the integrity and guts to refuse commissions to undertake work who design he did not approve, and to piss in the world’s eye by blowing up a building he had agreed to design, on condition that nobody interfere either with his design or its construction — a promise that was not kept.
I think it was because of him and not because of Ayn Rand or the rest of her philosophy that I became a fan of objectivism, the social, economic and political philosophy of Ayn Rand, the great woman who brought to life both heroes such as Howard Roark, Hank Rearden and John Galt, and villains such as Ellsworth Monckton Toohey.Â
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(Toohey, the critic, watching Roard staring up at one of his great New York skyscrapers:)
"What do you think of me, Mr Roark?"
(Roark, without turning his head:)
"I don’t think of you, Mr Toohey."
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I must have taken the time to re-read that passage at least 50 times over the years. Especially whenever I needed an inspiration to generate a similar if not identical answer to one of the world’s not un-numerous assholes. Â
One more thing. Over the years, I mainly have learned from reading. I never ever knew exactly what people meant by the term "altruism" until I read that book, and found that I absolutely, totally agreed with the author’s premise.
In any case, as some of you know from my comments over all these years, I more or less made up my philosophy from bits and pieces of deductions and reasoning that are the products of my brain, my experiences, my perceptions.
Nobody is my priest, pastor, rabbi, imam or master. And nobody ever will be my guru, either.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
with full knowledge of the necessary metaphysical, epistemological, ethical, political and aesthetic roots—that the United States of America is the greatest, the noblest,
blah, blah, blah,
One would have hoped the Signers like T Jefferson et. al. would have had the foresight to qualify presidential candidates at a slightly higher level than being natural born and age 35.
Instead we have a four year renewable cartoon of moneyed interests with clown class in front of the MSM and voters evaluating cheer leadership.
I couldn’t have said it better, McK. And not just because this is one of the more boring quadriennial presidential campaign years.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Thank you.
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