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Ayn Rand’s Ideal Man

Add comment May 5th, 2009at 11:44am Posted by Eli

This is dead creepy, but sure does explain an awful lot.  Here’s Ayn Rand describing her idea of a “real man”:

In her journal circa 1928 Rand quoted the statement, “What is good for me is right,” a credo attributed to a prominent figure of the day, William Edward Hickman. Her response was enthusiastic. “The best and strongest expression of a real man’s psychology I have heard,” she exulted….

At the time, she was planning a novel that was to be titled The Little Street, the projected hero of which was named Danny Renahan. According to Rand scholar Chris Matthew Sciabarra, she deliberately modeled Renahan – intended to be her first sketch of her ideal man – after this same William Edward Hickman. Renahan, she enthuses in another journal entry, “is born with a wonderful, free, light consciousness — [resulting from] the absolute lack of social instinct or herd feeling. He does not understand, because he has no organ for understanding, the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people … Other people do not exist for him and he does not understand why they should.”

Now, as it happens, Hickman happened to be a guy who committed multiple armed robberies (killing at least one person in the process), and was finally caught after kidnapping, killing, and gruesomely mutilating a 12-year-old girl.  But even if one didn’t know who he was, or if he were a purely fictional construct, the fact remains that Rand describes her ideal man as a textbook sociopath.  Yes, I know her premise is that people can achieve and create great things when they’re not held back by concern for what others think, but in practice the people with that kind of absolute moral detachment simply take and cheat and destroy.

And this is the woman whose writings so many conservatives have based their ideology on.  It’s a terrifying thought, but it also explains their gleeful amorality – it’s not a bug, it’s a feature.  Any sense of right and wrong, or anything at all beyond naked self-interest, would simply hold them back from achieving their full potential.  And who wouldn’t want people like that in charge of our country?  I mean, look how well it worked out!

Heckuva job, Randie.

(h/t Phoenix Woman)

Entry Filed under: Politics, Republicans