Culture War Now Has Three Sides: Left, Right and Rand's Objectivists

Salt Lake Tribune, Opinion, 11/06/98

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- America is in the midst of a culture war. But the sides don't line up as you might expect.

We are used to thinking of modern political enemies as the far left and the far right -- Pat Robertson vs. Jesse Jackson, Pat Buchanan vs. Dick Gephardt, Robert Bork vs. Catharine MacKinnon -- but there is a third group of combatants. The culture of individualism known as "objectivism" doesn't fit into either conventional political camp, and followers of this philosophy are fighting a two-front culture war. Objectivism, a philosophy grounded in the writings of 20th-centure author-philosopher Ayn Rand, is an ideology that exalts reedom and reason. It exhorts men and women to "live by the code of the free individual: self-reliance, integrity, rationality, productive effort."

As David Kelley, executive director of the Poughkeepsie, N.Y.-based Institute for Objectivist Studies, explains, objectivists believe that the fundamental thing in life is for "individuals to pursue their own happiness," and that people should be constrained by government only when they intrude on the rights of others. According to Kelley, the advances that have bettered our lives in technology, medicine, and objective law are the fruits of reason. Only when we are unshackled from the institutions that have traditionally tried to control our lives -- government and religion -- are men and women free to follow their instincts for reason, inquiry and progress.

Tha American Revolution was the first war fought for these principles. Our founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, were men of the Enlightenment. They understood the value of the human spirit and incorporated respect for the individual self into all aspects of the system they formed. The Bill of Rights, representational democracy and capitalism are all a natural outgrowth of these humanist values. Both the political left and right are enemies to these ideas. They don't want man to be free to pursue his own happiness because it doesn't comport with their view of life's purpose. These political movements seek to overlay a series of controls on man's freedom because their world view wouldn't win out without them.

The political right believes that life is about "duty and restraint." Because people are naturally selfish and not generally inclined to devote themselves to duty, an outside force like the government has to be enlisted. If people are not willing to abide by religious strictures, like regular prayer, heterosexuality and belief in creationism, conservatives call for the government, through its schools or laws, to force it on the populace.

"It's as if our lives are franchise operations in which we have been appointed managers," says Kelley. "As managers, we are responsible to the real owners -- our families, our society, God -- for achieving the ends they specify and following the rules they stipulate."

The political left, Kelley notes, is equally repressive. it believes that life is about living in an egalitarian community. The left posits that people are by their nature racist, sexist and elitist; therefore government must intervene to force equality. Policies such as welfare, college speech codes and affirmative action are ways the political left uses government power to redistribute resources and opportunities.

Contrast these views with objectivism, which believes human beings should be freed from governmental restraints and granted full freedom of conscience. Ideas should be tested through logic, not through a biblically -- or politically -- correct litmus test. And individuals should not be tethered to superficial indentities like their heritage or class, but open to achieve as much as their talents allow. The corollary to that is that individuals also must take responsibility for their failures. That means not only do objectivists reject welfare, Medicaid and public housing, but corporate welfare, government subsidies for farms and bailing out hedge funds.

Their purism offers something for everyone to hate, but there is no denying that such consistency is powerfully rational.

Similarly, on social issues, the world views of the political left and right invite controls that objectivists would reject. On homosexuality, Pat Robertson and his ilk want laws against sodomy and seek to prevent homosexuals from marrying or adopting children. They see antagonism to gays as a biblical injunction and want the government to codify it by making homosexual acts illegal. Alternatively, liberal gay advocacy groups want the government to grant them special status. They lobby for hate-crime laws to punish crimes against gays more severely than crimes against heterosexuals, and they want the government to tell empoloyers to provide domestic partnership benefits.

The liberal and conservative may seek different ends, but the means is the same: using government power to force a social agenda. Objectivists answer that government's only obligation to any identifiable group is strict neutrality. Any inequities for gays and lesbians written into law should be stripped out, and they should be given the right to marry and adopt, but the law should not be used to arm-twist those who despise homosexuality into embracing it.

Most people see today's political and ideological landscape as a straight-line continuum, with the far left and far right representing polar opposites. Objectivists see that line bent into a circle, with the political right and left nearly touching. At the circle's opposite point are those who "live by the judgment of their own minds, and are willing to stand alone against tradition and popular opinion."

But that can only happen if the government gets out of the way.

Robyn Blumner, St. Petersburg Times