Speak for Yourself: Letters, April 2006 TNI

 Robert, I just want to try and communicate my regard to you for your handling of The New Individualist. The range of subjects, the quality of content, the lucidity, the layout, the professionalism, and above all, the dissemination of certain concepts. First-rate. And courageous.

I am also impressed that there is no sense of dogma, which can be a true turn-off, but there is a sense of principle and well-integrated ideas. And frequently, an excellent examination of both sides of the coin. The New Individualist is an oasis of impassioned reason in a desert of prejudice and hidden agendas.

I want to compliment you and to tell you that I hope the subscription rate hits millions. With you at the helm, it’s certainly worthy. All my best wishes.

Darlene Lofgren

Many thanks, Darlene.—RJB  

Fall 2005 TNI

I was pleased to find a copy of your magazine, The New Individualist, in my doctor’s office waiting room last week. In my college days I was an admirer of Ayn Rand’s novels and during that time attended some taped courses of hers and Nathaniel Branden’s lectures on philosophy.

In reading the magazine I was pleased to feel the same kind excitement I knew in my younger years in some of the articles. Scott Bullock’s article on the Kelo eminent domain decision really hit home with me, as I live in New England, and we are following its impact in New London and also the efforts of a group that wants to teach Justice Souter a lesson by trying to use the decision to find a more profitable use for his family’s house in Weare, NH.

I also thoroughly enjoyed Robert Jones’s article “Raising the Standards.” His commentary on many of the great “Rat Pack” songs I grew up with brought back forme the “benevolent universe” atmosphere of what attracted me to Ayn Rand’s philosophy in the first place, before it became mired in turf wars and personality conflicts. Mr. Jones’s reviews of recent recordings have inspired me to dust off some of my old vinyl, and to look up some of the newer artists’ CDs on Amazon.com.

Kudos on a great magazine. I look forward to reading more.

Mark Vipitano

Portland, Maine

Mark, I’m glad you found us. Ironically, a few days ago I visited my chiropractor, and there on the magazine rack in the waiting room were the past three issues of TNI. I can’t tell you how gratifying it is to know that the magazine is making its way into doctors’ offices, where it will reach many more readers.  -RJB

ALTRUISM BY INSTINCT?

I don’t know exactly what “evolutionary psychology” is [“How Individualist Is Human Nature?,” Winter 2006], but author Roger Donway is quite right: altruism is philosophy based on the Stone Age tribal mentality. The prehistoric man, being half-animal, needed his tribe to survive. But even during the Stone Age, the people who discovered the use of fire, and invented the wheel, axe, spear, and bow, weren’t altruists. Those discoveries were made not by the tribe, but by individuals who used their independent minds and judgment.

We have come a long way since then. As Ayn Rand pointed out: Progress is a process that set men free from men.

 There’s no such thing as instinct in humans. We don’t have inherited innate traits of behavior. It’s not natural selection we have to blame for altruism, but 2000 years of indoctrination by Judeo-Christian morality, which was secularized and endorsed by Comte and Kant. Since nobody can practice this morality in full, most people are living with the feeling of guilt for not being selfless enough. So to alleviate this guilt, they donate blood, work in Rwanda, or give indiscriminately to charity.

To call this “pleasure” is like calling a masochist a hedonist, simply because he enjoys pain and humiliation. Selfless selfishness is worse than a contradiction in terms: it’s perversion.

Leonid Fainberg, M.D

Johannesburg, South Africa

THAT “BRANGELINA” COVER

Robert, congrats on the cover and article for the January-February issue of The New Individualist! It’s really funny and imaginative...and we Objectivists certainly need more of this. I loved the article on Tracey Ross—we need more of this, too: more connections to the world of people out there who “get it” and live it, making a success of their lives in their chosen professions in the real world. Nice job!

Reena Kapoor

Redwood City, California

My first reaction to the cover was: this junk got sent to the wrong address. Of course, the second reaction, when I actually read the title of the issue, was gut-busting laughter. But the wife is worried that you’re just out of control.

Brilliant job, Robert! You’ve really livened up the place. I’m very excited about each issue of The New Individualist, and definitely think you’re striking the right tone and taking things in the right direction. Did the recent attention from Instapundit make for a noticeable bump in subscriptions? Just curious.

But there’s just one problem. You see, normally I like to carry TNI around with me to read while carting the kids around to McDonald’s, karate, school, or wherever. Part of the fun, especially with the Muhammad cartoon cover [Winter 2006], is leaving it conspicuously on the counter or table while I fiddle with the kids to see the quizzical or aghast reactions of passers-by. (Admittedly, this is less fun now in generally conservative and laid-back Utah than it was in stridently left-wing and high-strung Massachusetts, but life is full of little trade-offs.)

But I can’t be leaving this “Brangelina” cover out on counters! It’s embarrassing! People will think I’m reading, well, People! Now I have to carry it around folded inside out, which ruins the spine—and I collect these things, you know.

So while this cover is truly brilliant, next month I want my crazed provocative TNI cover again. I dunno, maybe something like Ronald Reagan dressed up as Muhammad proclaiming the virtue of selfishness.

Chris Brown

North Ogden, Utah

Thanks, Chris. Much to the alarm of the staff here, your wife is right: I am completely out of control! But on the upside, new subscriptions are pouring in, so everyone humors me. As for wild and crazy covers, I hope our March issue, with its giant ants and flying saucers, met all your lurid expectations. We aim to please.—RJB

Robert, I love the January-February issue, both visually and in content! All the articles are fascinating, and very encouraging. I was especially edified by your musings on William Buckley’s attacks against Rand [“Ayn Rand Lives!”]. Did you know that in the early ’80s, he told me he’d never read Atlas, and that he might have read The Fountainhead in college, but he wasn’t certain? That hasn’t stopped him from conducting a decades-long vendetta against these books and their author.

I also very much enjoyed Roger Donway’s review of Ayn Rand Answers. I agree that it’s a pleasure to read—and also that one must be wary of it because its editor saw fit to edit Rand. (It’s just as well that there’s no life after death, or she would return to smite him.)

I shall keep this and the Muhammad-as-terrorist editions of The New Individualist for a long time to come—and I hope soon to see future editions on newsstands.

Barbara Branden

Los Angeles, California

Let me start off by thanking you for the magazine. I love it. I especially like the new title and your choice to expand the pool of writers and journalists you accept submissions from. By finding like-minded, if somewhat inconsistent, support from a variety of sources, you greatly increase the sphere of influence of The New Individualist.

But the reason for this particular letter is to tell you how much I enjoyed the article on “Celebrity Rand Fans.” And I completely agree with you that, although most of these public figures probably have limited and inconsistent knowledge of the “total Rand,” this “mainstreaming,” as you put it, is a good thing—promising, and long overdue as well, I might add.

Keep up the good work!

R. A. Trussell

www.railroadsblog.com

Melbourne, Florida

I loved your “Celebrity Rand Fans” article, and I loved the whole January/February 2006 “Special Issue.” Please consider selling extra copies of this, and I’ll buy them by the dozens. Hundreds, even. I hope the rest of your readers join me in this enthusiasm. It ought to be a continual seller for years, and should help to kindle interest in Ayn Rand for many people who are not yet aware of her and her writings.

By the way, in 1965 I corresponded with Ronald Reagan, complaining about the direction Hollywood and the music industry seemed to be going in. He wrote me back, obviously typing his letter himself. Then I wrote him again, urging him to get into politics. I included a copy of The Objectivist Newsletter and underlined in red ink the part where Ayn Rand wrote that if Goldwater’s speeches had been like Reagan’s, “I think hewould have won.” I believe he knew Ayn Rand, since they had fought the Communists in Hollywood together and testified about that fight before Congress together, starting in the 1940’s. I bet she clued him in on what life under Russian Communism, which she escaped from, was really like.

For what it’s worth, in 1977 I sent a copy of The Romantic Manifesto to George Lucas, in my gratitude for his making Star Wars. He didn’t write me back, but I caught a televised interview in the early ’90s in which he told the interviewer that he tried to make movies about life not as it is, but as “it could be and ought to be.”

You should know that National Review columnist, blogger, and financial guru Donald Luskin (http://www.poorandstupid.com/chronicle.asp ) is an Ayn Rand fan, and Glenn Beck is yet another nationally-syndicated radio talk show host who has urged his listeners to read Atlas from time to time.

I certainly cringe at the idea of committed collectivists having anything to do with movies based on Rand’s books. They certainly would make poor spokesmen for the movies, if not bad example-setters. Not just Oliver Stone, but Mark Cuban and Steven Spielberg are multi-millionaire split personalities believing in personal responsibility andcollectivist public policy simultaneously. And good-looking actors like Rob Lowe and the ultra-despicable and cold-hearted (to me) Sharon Stone are committed Democrats, to the best of my knowledge. Lowe actually attended a Democratic National Convention, and even may have been a delegate.

Rick Gaber

Orlando, Florida

Rick, it could well be that your efforts to correspond with celebrities such as Reagan and Lucas had an influence on them. As for Hollywood figures, it’s absolutely true that most who proclaim their love for Rand’s fiction are inconsistent in their understanding or acceptance of her ideas. The most we can hope from them is that, in translating her fiction to the screen, they will behave as professionals, and try to render Rand’s ideas with a sense of fidelity to the source material. After all, that’s why we call them “actors.”

Thanks to you and to the other correspondents this month for your enthusiastic compliments. Still, they’re a bit disquieting: I have never seen the word “love” used so promiscuously by Objectivists. Are you people becoming rank emotionalists, or what?—RJB