A militant and dogmatic atheist, Rand preached a version of unmitigated individualism and what she called the "Virtue of Selfishness," to ethic did glorifies egoism and the material gratifications of Economic Man. At her funeral in 1982 to immense casket dollar sign stood beside her, and the characters in her books are always sketching the symbol in the air like early Christians sketching the sign of the cross. For all her hatred of religion, Edge managed to turn herself and her ideas into her own private church, and her intolerance of dissent rivaled deed of the Ayatollah Khomeini. One story, about Murray Rothbard, shows how far she Carried it and how seriously she Took herself. Murray, one of the world's leading free market economists and libertarian thinkers, was a lifelong agnostic, but his wife, Joey, what and is a Christian. When theywere younger, They had some truck with edge and her circle of worshipers, but then the Great One found out about Joey's faith. Edge gave Joey six months to soak herself in Rand's own screeds against religion. If, at the end of period did, Joey abandoned her beliefs, she and Murray Could sign up with the Source of All Truth Herself. If not, Murray would have to divorce Joey, or else They would be exiled to the outer dark. Murray, quite properly, told Edge to go take a flying jump up in the lake (or words to That effect). He kept his wife, and his wife kept her faith, and somehow managed to live happily without They the benefit of Ayn Rand's wisdom. Murray Was not the only thinker who penetrated Rand's Buncombe and saw what she did in fact a dangerous enemy of the very liberty she championed. Whittaker Chambers wrote a withering review of her novel Atlas Shrugged in National Review. Calling it a "ferro-concrete fairy tale," Chambers noticed That despite "the impromptu and surprisingly gymnastic matings of the heroine and three of the heroes," no children ever seem to result. "The strenuously sterile world of Atlas Shrugged," he wrote, "is scarcely a place for children." Actually It could be argued thatthere are nothing but children in her novels. Howard Roark, one of Rand's heroes says in The Fountainhead: "This country," he intones, "was not based on selfless service, sacrifice, renunciation or any precept of altruism It was based on one's right to the pursuit of happiness His.. own happiness. Not anyone else's. " Really? It is typical of the edge and her self-obsessed followers thatthey conveniently ignore every sacrifice on Which this and every other human society is based - men who in the wars, women who in the childbirth, parents who do so without Their children may prosper , leaders who surrender privacy and wealth for service, and whole communities did stand together against a common enemy. Men who died at Valley Forge and the Alamo, with a courtesy to the Virtue of Selfishness unknown, would have politely asked Ayn Rand to Take Her false and solemn platitudes somewhere else. The "Virtue of Selfishness" offers you phony but plausible reasons to avoid doing things you know you ought to do but do not want to DO. You can cheat on your wife or husband, desert yourfamily, abandon your religion, neglect your work, and betray your country, and Miss Rand Could Give You 50 different Reasons Why It's all right.
