Colbert Shrugged: Ayn Rand Institute Responds to 'Rand Illusion'

Since March 11th, I've received several hundred messages via facebook and twitter (@juliettepowell) suggesting I look at The Colbert Report's 'The Word' segment called 'Rand Illusion'. And so I did, again and again, torn between a giggle and a sigh.

Call me old school but my first reaction to all of these Atlas Shrugged references in the media of late was to wonder if these pundits had actually read and understood the book. I suspect they have, but probably figure that, of the millions who have read Rand's acclaimed 1957 novel, few would actually bother to argue about it in a public forum. Having personally read the book several times -- four, to be exact -- these last couple weeks have shown me that I do care enough to help set the record straight on Rand's story and philosophy.

Why? Because I found myself talking back to the tv monitor every time a media commentator 'explained' what John Galt would do in this economic crisis and because, even though I've read Rand's books multiple times and was quite sure where Galt might stand, given the myriad of media references to Atlas Shrugged lately, I genuinely began to wonder -- perhaps I was the one who had completely misinterpreted Rand's work. Since Rand herself can no longer address the way her words are being interpreted, I found someone who could.

Interview with Onkar Ghate, senior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute (part 1)

by Juliette Powell

What do you think of the Colbert Report's segment called the 'Rand Illusion' where Colbert asserts that Atlas Shrugged is a 'Conservative Bible' and 'is being used by Conservatives to spur a movement . . . a calculated work slowdown? What do you think Colbert wanted to accomplish and what did he accomplish?
Stephen Colbert's television show of course parodies (allegedly) right-wing television hosts like Bill O'Reilly. In the process it ridicules Republicans, conservatives, O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, and so on.

The segment on Atlas Shrugged was an attempt to ridicule Rand's novel. I found the segment distasteful. Many people of course disagree with the ideas contained in Atlas Shrugged. Rand knew that the novel challenged moral ideas entrenched in Western thought for over 2,000 years.

To disagree with the ideas and theme of the novel is different from what the Colbert segment did. It treated the novel as though it were not a significant work of literature -- the segment suggested that if you've read to the end of the book "the world does owe you."

This is ludicrous. In purely literary terms, Atlas Shrugged is a great novel. The segment then went on to misrepresent the content of the story. For instance, to claim that Atlas Shrugged "can be used to justify anything" is absurd. Perhaps more than any other novel, Atlas Shrugged presents a firm and detailed view of what is morally right and morally wrong. Rand said (accurately) that the theme of the novel is "the role of the mind in man's existence -- and, as corollary, the demonstration of a new moral philosophy: the morality of rational self-interest." One may of course disagree with the moral philosophy contained in the novel, but to suggest that the book is so vague as to be capable of justifying anything is disingenuous.

Or to take another example, the Colbert segment said that the hero of Atlas Shrugged, John Galt, tells the poor of America: "You have nothing to offer us. We do not need you." But if you read the actual novel, you will discover that Galt has called on strike the men of the mind (rich and poor alike) and that these words of his are in fact addressed not to the poor. They are addressed to those who advocate or accept a philosophy that damns the individual's happiness, mind and life. Here is the passage from the novel, in context (John Galt is speaking on the radio):

"Do not cry that it is our duty to serve you. We do not recognize such duty. Do not cry that you need us. We do not consider need a claim. Do not cry that you own us. You don't. Do not beg us to return. We are on strike, we, the men of the mind.
"We are on strike against self-immolation. We are on strike against the creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties. We are on strike against the dogma that the pursuit of one's happiness is evil. We are on strike against the doctrine that life is guilt.
"There is a difference between our strike and all those you've practiced for centuries: our strike consists, not of making demands, but of granting them. We are evil, according to your morality. We have chosen not to harm you any longer. We are useless, according to your economics. We have chosen not to exploit you any longer. We are dangerous and to be shackled, according to your politics. We have chosen not to endanger you, nor to wear the shackles any longer. We are only an illusion, according to your philosophy. We have chosen not to blind you any longer and have left you free to face reality--the reality you wanted, the world as you see it now, a world without mind.
"We have granted you everything you demanded of us, we who had always been the givers, but have only now understood it. We have no demands to present to you, no terms to bargain about, no compromise to reach. You have nothing to offer us. We do not need you." (Atlas Shrugged, Part III, Chapter VII)

So what did Colbert want to accomplish? As I said, he wanted to ridicule Atlas Shrugged. Did he succeed? No, because the segment simply ignored the novel's literary virtues and misrepresented its content.

Is Colbert, and the media in general, taking a cheap shot -- going for the easy laugh using Rand's philosophy of selfishness -- or are they using humor and irony to open a much needed public debate?

The Colbert segment was a cheap shot, so, no, I don't think he was trying to open a debate. If anything, by attacking a straw man, he was trying to close debate.

But I don't think the media in general has been taking cheap shots at Rand or Atlas Shrugged during the present financial crisis. There have been many more accurate stories, such as the one in The Economist (which the Colbert segment mentioned) -- a news story that reported the dramatic increase in the sales of Atlas Shrugged and suggested a connection between this fact and the financial crisis.

What we are witnessing, I think, is the fact that precisely because Atlas Shrugged is a radical book -- it presents a new view of morality, a morality of rational self-interest -- it creates passionate admirers and passionate detractors. And as has been the case since the novel's publication in 1957. Detractors almost always misrepresent the book's ideas because they are unable or unwilling to mount an argument against what Rand actually says. The Colbert segment was a small example of this.

Ayn Rand fans, Colbert fans -- the ball is in your court! What do you think of the Ayn Rand Institute's response to Colbert's 'Rand Illusion' segment so far? I'll try to connect with the folks at Colbert for their comments and hope to have that, along with Part 2 of my interview with Onkar Ghate, senior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute shortly. Keep checking in here for Part 2 in the next few hours and days where we discuss the political implications of the mediatization of Atlas Shrugged.

If you want to reach me directly, facebook me or @juliettepowell
~> j*

Comments

[ihavenoname]

"In purely literary terms, Atlas Shrugged is a great novel."

No, it's really not. At least, not if you know anything about "literary terms," which it seems you don't. It's rife with didactic dialogue and Mary Sue-style authorial insertion, not to mention stilted prose and godawful sex scenes.

In purely literary terms, it's an absolutely terrible novel, which is why no literary critics have ever paid it any attention whatsoever. Unfortunately, it seems that Randroids simply don't read widely enough or are too blinded by ideological agreement to ever notice exactly how bad of a writer Rand was. She's one of the 20th century's worst--right down there with Dan Brown and L. Ron Hubbard and R.L. Stine.

Wait, that's not fair to Stine. He knew he was writing to children.

[RobertHenryEller]

Miss Powell:

Whether Atlas Shrugged is a great book or not is irrelevant. I myself read it while I was in high school. At the time, it electrified me. Would it now? It doesn't matter.

What does matter is that, indeed, Rand's ideas are being distorted . . . by both those who "agree" and "disagree" with her. Those on either "side," apparently, have either not read, or do not understand, or choose to distort, what Rand said.

It was clear enough to me that, forty years later, I have no trouble remembering what Ayn Rand said. Rand's "selfishness" had nothing to do with "greed," but with an inviolable claim to the true value one created. Neither was the book about a strike by the rich against the poor.

By "selfishness," Rand meant that each person owned themselves, and was not inherently obligated to others. This did not mean that she did not acknowledge obligation. In fact, her ideas required people to greatly respect each other, and themselves.

Unfortunately, people on both "sides" of the argument don't understand the book. I regret that those who have read the book either don't understand it themselves (Alan Greenspan, most notoriously.), don't defend the ideas of the book (The book itself does not need defending. It exists, and can defend itself, or not, with those who read it. Non-readers' opinions are what they are, but don't matter.), or like the "expert" you quote, frankly do a poor job of defending the ideas.

[bigsexyshaq]

I know this may seem obvious, but it seems like THEY'RE the ones fighting a straw man. Colbert Report is on a channel called "Comedy Central" and Stephen Colbert has an almost universal reputation as someone not to take seriously. Are libertarians really that out of touch?

[mtnrunner2]

Colbert's spot is an example of a typical unknowledgeable smear of Rand.

A big red flag is tossing around the word "selfish" as an insult, and as synonymous with exploiting those around you. This means he does not understand Rand's usage of the term at all.

The entire point of the novel is that self-interest consists of the exact opposite, because using your mind requires that you interact with others on level ground, as equals, and *convince* them of the value of what you have to offer them. That is the essential nature of trade. It is precisely Rand's account of rational selfishness that *rules out* the kind of brutish master/slave relationship that Colbert alludes to and Rand's so-called critics love to hate (I say "so-called" because they are not actually criticizing Rand's views). In other words, Colbert misses the point by exactly 180 degrees.

As for those who look down their noses at Atlas Shrugged as literature, I can only say that they also miss the point, and that I totally disagree. It's a work of romantic school of fiction, a highly stylized vision of the world meant to emphasize a highly abstract theme (as Onkar Ghate mentions above). If critics cannot grasp the central ideas that pervade every page, I can hardly be surprised when they don't grasp its literary merit.

[Rachel Wright]

And you, my friend, have by 150 degrees missed the point of Stephen Colbert.

I am quite confident that Colbert understands this book, but his job, his on screen persona, is that of a super right wing pundit who understands nothing, and this is where his comments on Ms Rand's work come from. His aim is to exaggerate the stupidity of his character to make plain the stupidity of others like it.

However there will alwys be some so-called critics, who are not actually criticizing his work but misunderstanding it.

[Aramingo]

(Shaking my head, sadly)

[RealistDem]

Atlas Shrugged represent the unholy alliance of the modern republican party. The greed, laize faire wall street types who have nothing in common with the religous right or the teachings a Jesus Christ. When I meet some religous conservative, who loves Ayn Rand, I love telling them how Rand was an athiest, who equated religion with mysticism and was pro-choice. Suddenly their opinion of her changes on the spot.

[MajorKong]

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged.

One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world.

The other, of course, involves orcs.

[proveit2me]

Bravo.

[noamjunior]

Literary merits aside, using a work of fiction as a philosophical guide is problematic at best. Rather than explaining how the philosophical outlook explains reality or how it would guide an actual person in reality, the fiction author merely has to create a fictional circumstance in which their philosophy seems plausible.

Ghate comment that - "Detractors almost always misrepresent the book's ideas because they are unable or unwilling to mount an argument against what Rand actually says"- shows the one of the problems with mistake a work of literature with a work of philosophy.

[Aramingo]

Great Literature my ass. There's one point in the book where Galt tells someone - I forget who - to "Step aside, you fool!". I expect those words from a Lex Luthor type.

That aside, I agree with Colbert's assertion that the book is a ode to selfishness. I also agreed with Dorothy Parker's review of the book: "This is not a book to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force."

[TheUndercurrent]

Thank you for your article.

If this debate about Atlas is really about its artistic merits, then a useful perspective, not given much coverage, is the fact that most literary criticism of Rand presupposes an underlying conception of esthetic judgment at odds with Rand's explicitly stated conception (See her work, "The Romantic Manifesto"). Critics do not seem to be distinguishing between poorly written literature and literature that adopts a different esthetic approach. To say that Rand's characters are "caricatures", for example, ignores the fact that her esthetic approach, romantic realism, holds that characters ought to be stylized not naturalistic, that heroes should be presented as larger than life, that villains can properly be presented as "cartoonish" (i.e. impotent rather than efficacious in action), and that art should not strive to reproduce the mundane and/or inconsistent aspects of everyday life.

Many of the criticisms launched against Rand could be launched against classical Greek literature, or 1940s movies, or operas. Those criticisms are not against Rand's merit as an author, but against a certain approach to art that clashes with the modern approach.

Critics should not hesitate to make criticisms--that's their job, and it's an important one. What they should do is acknowledge that Rand's work is an exemplar of certain esthetic standards, and then go ahead and attack those standards. That would be valuable and objective literary analysis.

This article makes a similar point: http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=3251

The Undercurrent,
www.the-undercurrent.com

[Richter]

Bad writing is not an "aesthetic approach." And that' the problem with Ayn Rand's writing -- not that it's stylized but that it stinks.

[noamjunior]

the person making the argument in the link is clearly a Rand follower- and his argument comparing Rand favorably to Joyce wouldn'nt merit a C+ in a 200 level college lit class

[WilliamProc]

Atlas Shrugged is an example of what Stephen King calls(in reference to his own novel "IT") -literary elephantitis. A novel so bloated with plot points, expositional rants, and useless characters, that it suffers to collaspse under its own weight.

AS and the equally dunder-headed "The Fountainhead", both want the reader to believe that the main characters are exceptional beings whose selfishness is thinly veiled altruism. Rand wants the readers to think that striking against the world, or destroying housing for the poor is acceptable behavior because you think people don't hold your talents in the same esteem as yourself , is frankly BS.

Ayn Rand was so stuck on her own perception of her writing skills and the fact that she was a woman ilking out a niche' in a man's world circa 1950, that she created these two beer coasters as examples of her theory of objectivism. The great minds should be able to do whatever they want as long as they are expressing themselves. It doesn't matter if you hurt someone along the way.

Pure Crap!

[LucyJH]

Thanks, Juliette, for giving Dr. Ghate a chance to talk about Atlas Shrugged. Atlas is a great book, full of drama and excitement as well as radical new ideas. It is *not* the boring literary duty that many other so-called classics are. The characters are intense and stylized, but they are not at all caricatures. They have real depth, and Rand reveals the psychological motivations of both good guys and bad guys. The plot is incredible; I discovered this as a teenager, and it would keep me up until all hours because I just couldn't stop reading... Since then, I've learned more about the philosophy, and I've come to appreciate what an amazing achievement it is - reason, rational self-inter­est...othe­r virtues such as independence, integrity, justice, honesty, productive­ness...the importance of happiness, the vital role of individual rights.... it's a totally pro-life philosophy­--pro-life in the proper sense, where a proper human life is recognized as the standard for all other human values. How one can argue against thest things is beyond me.

[bingvangorden]

"Rational Self Interest"
Among you, who knows many "rational people" that can handle juggling their own self interest with the needs of others? Even the most rational among us do not remain so all the time. It's called being human. If the world were populated by Vulcans, Rand's whacky theories might be worth considering. You know what a group of people is called that clings to a "radical new moral theory" as if it was something new and wonderful but is really old and deeply flawed? A freaking cult. The God in this case is money, greed is virtuous and only people willing to risk capital are worth a damn.

[bingvangorden]

Egad, why do people cling so tightly to such a warped and flawed piece of badly written fiction? The reason it and it's followers are mocked is in part due to this perverted relationship between people who hold this book up to some high regard.
Yippee, it "challenged" blah blah blah, so did Marx at least he didn't hide behind fiction. Were the points, the questions relevant or worth pondering? Maybe on some level but it doesn't take a genius to figure out where Rand was coming from having fled soviet control, seeing her father's business confiscated etc. But the bottom line, it's fiction set in a fictitious set of circumstances with a ridiculous and also fictitious conclusion. We've lived as close as we're going to get to the Objectivist wet dream, we stared into the abyss and we realized once again, greed and selfishness will not sustain a healthy a society.
"Oh but you just don't understand how goooooooooooooood the boook is!!!!" But I do. I just understand it's also FICTION!!!­!!!!!!!!!!­!!!

[ramblin jack]

The book sucked when it came out and sucks today and that segment you just quoted sure sounds like what Colbert asserted is right on. Ariel A get a mind that works

[subgeniuszero]

I'll make this easy.

I'm an English major -- specifically a Writing major with a minor in Literature. And, I am here to tell you something.

"Atlas Shrugged" is a poorly-written, simplistic work. I have nothing against its "moral philosophy" as you call it, aside from the fact that it deeply influenced a bunch of people who have, with no qualms whatsoever, thrown us into a global financial meltdown. That's actually beside my point.

My point is that "Atlas Shrugged" is poorly written and ill-conceived piece of literature: Its prose is wooden and always rings hollow. Furthermore, her characters aren't very believable. Folks, people just don't TALK like this. People don't walk into a party and immediately commence a lecture on whether or not money is evil. They also don't lecture one another before having sex. They don't then go on to base their sexual liaison on pure philosophical ideals, and to think about them _while doing it_. Rand also stinks at plotting; s times it's like reading a cold engine as it turns over; you can see all the parts moving, but where's the spark of life?

And I could go on. But I won't. It's too easy. When I look for character, complexity, plotting, and story in, say, a Stephen King or Ray Bradury or Robert A. Heinelin novel, they don't disappoint. They deliver in droves. But Ayn Rand? Dunno. She must've sold her talent for gold to use in that Rocky Mountain hideaway of hers.

[docwindprod]

A side comment: Heinlein did write at least two novels in which his characters DID "talk like this".

The first, "Stranger In A Strange Land" (very much a cultural icon for the budding hippy movement, of which I, for better or worse, was a part), did so in a balanced-enough way that he was able to keep a pretty lively story rolling while allowing bursts of philosophical soliloquy. Full disclosure: I loved that story still the last time I read it (in the 80's).
The other -- I believe the next of his novels that I read, and I confess to being unsure of its title -- "Time Enough To Love", perhaps? -- allowed the soliloquy to overwhelm its narrative in the sort of Randian excess discussed here, and I found it almost unreadable.
I read later than both of these novels were written during his struggle with illness (I believe he had a brain tumor or other neurological malady)... I've always believed that "Stranger" was written at the onset of this illness and that "Time" was, however well-received, more of an overt symptom of his illness than a conscious stylistic choice.

[woodsywizz]

"Stranger in a Strange Land" is much more readable in the recent edition. It was heavily edited in the 60's; the original text has been published and is livelier.

[madinirose]

Hallejulah! Eureka! And other other superlative you can find!

I don't care how much you agree with Rand's philosophy - her fictional novels are crap! She did a much better job of writing her philosophy plainly rather than through fiction.