Christians and Ayn Rand (again)

A few months ago I posted something about the curious and (I think) inconsistent affection some Christians have for Ayn Rand. My conjecture was:

I’ve suspected that what they, the Christians, do is to separate Rand’s economic ideas from her metaphysics. They read Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead and are thrilled by the achievements of the heroes, and filled with indignation toward their malicious collectivist enemies. They either miss or mostly ignore the materialist and atheist foundations of Rand’s didactic stories; what they see is an inspiring story of individual heroism against collective stupidity and venality.

(You can read the whole post here.) Yesterday, more or less by accident (following a link to the same site sent to me a friend), I came across a post by Quin Hillyer at The American Spectator which seems to confirm my conjecture:

I know numerous, numerous conservatives, myself included, who thrill to part of Rand's message while utterly rejecting other parts of it. There is not a single contradiction in that unless somebody actually says he embraces Rand in full and then still tries to claim to be a devout Christian.

(Whole post here.) Quin Hillyer is no dummy. He used to work for the local paper here, and was a very astute observer and a good writer, and I was sorry when he moved on. He may be right or he may be wrong, but he's not stupid. And he's right that there is no contradiction in agreeing with one thing Rand says but not another. Left-wing Christians do it with Marx all the time. It depends somewhat, I guess, on what in Rand imparts that thrill. I don't think I experienced a thrill of any sort at any point while reading Atlas Shrugged.

Comments

[Rob G]

What bugs me about the Right's attraction to Rand is its sheer non-necessity. There are any number of trenchant, coherent critiques of collectivism out there that can be drawn from that aren't attached to a poisonous philosophy.

[Mac]

I think it's the novels. A lot, I mean a LOT, of people think they're very vivid and exciting. I don't understand that at all, but it seems to be the case.

[Grumphy]

When I see trailers for movies on my DVDs I * always* want to see the movies being trailed. It's a good thing my memory is too bad to bring the list into work and stick it on amazon. On one of the last DVDs I saw, there was a trailer for the new Atlas Shrugged movie. It was positively dis-appealing, an antidote to DVD greed.

[Grumphy]

Mac, I would really like to agree with you, because I don't like moralising and so I'm turned off by the moralising tone of the RC mockers of Paul Ryan. But I can't accept the analogy with left Catholics accepting what they like and rejecting what they dislike in Marx. There are true insights in Marx's thought. 19th century European established Christianity could have been said to be offering 'pie in the sky when you die' to the working class. There is some correlation between the means of production of an era and its ideas. Etc. Are there any actual insights in Ayn Rand's thought?

[Mac]

Yes, I think there are. Keep in mind that I've only read Atlas Shrugged and a few quotations here and there, but I think AS does have some valid insights. Don't have time to elaborate on that further right now. I do think they're fairly slim pickings. But I realize, now that I said that above about the novels, that that's really the key to it. Most people are not looking at her work from an abstract philosophical perspective, but responding to the drama in the stories, which, in a nutshell, pit the gifted against the envious. So trying to pull out the abstract principles that are and aren't defensible doesn't really address the phenomenon.

[Mac]

Also, my point about the Marx analogy isn't whether or not the insights are valid but that people do in fact make that kind of separation.

[Mac]

In another respect, though, Grumphy, you're right that the Marx analogy doesn't hold. Marx is read mainly for the ideas, and by relatively few people, and is not many people's idea of a fun read. Rand's novels are read for pleasure by millions. They aren't looking at them in the same way that readers of Marx look at his work--they aren't consciously evaluating ideas, saying this one's good and this one's bad, the way a Christian intellectual might do with Marx. They're absorbing a drama, and most of Rand's really horrible ideas are not stated explicitly in it.