OBJECTIVISM IS OPPRESSIVE

OBJECTIVISM IS OPPRESSIVE

1. RAND’S CALCULUS IS SUBJECTIVE AND DENIES THE HUMANITY OF OUTSIDERS

John W. Robbins, Ph.D in political philosophy at Johns Hopkins University, ANSWER TO AYN RAND, 1974, p.109

How did the argument move from physical survival as the ethical standard to "man qua man," i.e., to a "standard" already bristling with value judgments? By this substitution Rand may attack an action which leads to survival as "evil" because it does not lead to the kind of survival she has implicitly selected as proper for man." Rand smuggles ethics into her system by the backdoor: she switches the standard from survival to a certain kind of survival. (Perhaps it is best to emphasize here that the physical survival of man is the survival of man qua man. After all, man has not become a plant or an animal simply because he wants to survive at any price: he has merely become a coward, or a dictator.) Rand's subtle substitution points up the centrality of what might be called the doctrine of forfeiture in her ethics and politics: the doctrine consists in the notion that men who act in a certain way or ways forfeit their humanity.

John W. Robbins, Ph.D in political philosophy at Johns Hopkins University, ANSWER TO AYN RAND, 1974, p.119

If the proper function of government is "to secure these rights” then does it not follow that it is the proper function of government to see that every man uses his mind, his free judgment, and forces him to work and to keep the product of his work, i.e., to do those things that Objectivism says are right? If one finds these consequences distasteful, one should re-read the argument and find where the train of thought has derailed. Petulance is not an argument. In short, if the source of man's "rights" is himself, then he also becomes the source of violations of those "rights." "Rights" may 'then be violated by a Robinson Crusoe—his own—simply because he may act against his own best interests.
3. OBJECTIVISM INEVITABLY LEADS TO ANARCHY

John W. Robbins, Ph.D in political philosophy at Johns Hopkins University, ANSWER TO AYN RAND, 1974, p.125

Objectivism leads logically to anarchy, because if the individual is sovereign, he may not properly be forced to "delegate" his rights to the state or government. The Sovereign Individual has every right to refuse to pay taxes, ignore subpoenas, refuse to serve in the armed forces, ignore courts of law, avoid jury duty, retaliate against the police force, and take all measures necessary to the preservation of his rights, including, one supposes, since government is entirely derivative, issuing subpoenas, forming his own armies, and establishing his own courts and judicial procedures.
4. RAND LEGITIMIZES GENOCIDE AGAINST THOSE WHO DON’T EXERCISE REASON

John W. Robbins, Ph.D in political philosophy at Johns Hopkins University, ANSWER TO AYN RAND, 1974, p. np.

Since infants, as well as unborn children are not human by Rand's definition, there would be no immorality in infanticide. To my knowledge Rand has not publicly endorsed that position, but on pain of inconsistency, she must. For the same reason, her philosophy leads logically to the approbation of euthanasia. In fact, because men make themselves, some are better made than others, who are rather poorly made. Logically, then, Rand will be forced to approve the liquidation of imbeciles, morons, idiots, the retarded, and mediocre who don't think, the men who “. . . do not choose to think, but survive by imitating and repeating, like trained animals, the routine of sounds and motions they learned from others, never making an effort to understand their own work, . . . mental parasites. . . “ etc., until the small group known as Objectivists is all that is left. By that time, however, her following will have increased greatly, as people seek to prove their humanity to that most human animal of all, Ayn Rand. To those of you who recoil in disgust, horror, or petulance from such a conclusion, I say: that is where the argument leads; if you do not like the conclusion, check the premises'" Do not substitute rhetoric for logic and harangues for argumentation. If Aristotle and Rand are wrong in drawing conclusions' from their premises, demonstrate it; but do not refuse the conclusions and accept the premises.

OBJECTIVISM IS HOMOPHOBIC AND SEXIST

1. OBJECTIVISM CONDEMNS HOMOSEXUALITY

Jeff Walker, Carleton University, THE AYN RAND CULT, 1999, p.118

Are homosexual feelings—as Branden implies in The Psychology of Self-Esteem (1969)—neurotic, unhealthy, and so non-integral to anyone experiencing them that one should be able to put some distance between those feelings and the core self, as a first step toward identifying and eradicating the thoughts that generated them? He implies that adolescents flee into homosexuality because they are taught that sex is evil. Here, changing ones sexual orientation from homosexual to heterosexual is just another psychological problem to target and resolve. It is likely that Branden's view of homosexuality had repercussions. Former colleagues recall Branden's policy during his New York City days of changing his seat in a restaurant if an evidently gay man sat down at the next table. That aversion was unfortunate given the disproportionate number of gays among political libertarians, many out-of-the-closet, and within the Objectivist movement, all very much closeted. Gay libertarian Roy Childs went to Branden as a client in 1971. By that time, recalled Childs, Branden was no longer blatantly homophobic, but was still of the opinion that homosexuality resulted from some sort of neurotic turn in the personality and could be corrected. In 1971 Branden told the libertarian magazine Reason that it remained his view that homosexuality was not a valid option. This would have been a source of distress for homo- sexual Objectivists. As Branden himself wrote in 1994, "When we behave in ways that conflict with our judgment of what is appropriate, we lose face in our own eyes." At her Ford Hall appearance in 1971 Rand was asked whether she considered homosexuality immoral and if so, why. She blurted, "Because it involves psychological flaws, corruptions, errors, or unfortunate premises, but there is a psychological immorality at the root of homosexuality. Therefore I regard it as immoral. . . . Its proper among consenting adults, . . legally. Morally, it is immoral. And more than that, if you want my really sincere opinion, it’s disgusting." In Rand's view then, five percent of U.S. males should dis-esteem themselves for having engaged in at least one such disgusting, inhuman, immoral, and irrational behavior. Whereas Rand regarded homosexuality as consciously chosen behavior contrary to man's nature, New Zealand's leading neo-Objectivist Lindsay Perigo, himself gay, offers: "From introspection and observation, I don't believe volition plays a part in sexual orientation at all."

Jeff Walker, Carleton University, THE AYN RAND CULT, 1999, p.115

The American popular culture which greeted Rand on her arrival in 1926 offered a 'modern' and 'emancipated' model for women. Henceforth women were to wear pants, smoke cigarettes, look like men, and think like men. The chain-smoking, cape-swirling Rand, with her independent females as fictional heroines, may seem at first to fit this picture. Rand announced that women were the equals of men and, in general, she said she was all for women pursuing the same careers as men. But as so often with Rand, on this issue she seems to have been overwhelmed by her own blind emotions, and then to have rationalized these as the voice of Reason. The movie ‘Female’, which Rand, at that time a passionate movie fan, may well have watched shortly after its release in 1933, has a Dagny-type heroine successfully running the car factory she had inherited from her father (but unable to find a man who will dominate her romantically, while letting her dominate in business). All of Rand's major fictional heroines are eager to be possessed and treated roughly by their ideal man. They are all sexually submissive borderline masochists. They all experience rapes or near-rapes, which, naturally, they really want all along. When Rand was in her mid-thirties, she depicted Roark’s quasi-rape of actress Vesta Dunning in a chapter of The Fountainhead later deleted: "What she saw in his face terrified her: it was cold, bare, raw cruelty. . . . When he threw her down on the bed, she thought that the sole thing existing, the substance of all reality for her and for everyone, was only to do what he wanted." And even thereafter, Roark’s love for Dominique, Rand wrote in the planning stages of the novel, will be "merely the pride of a possessor." In ‘Atlas Shrugged’ Rand tells us that the diamond band on Dagny’s naked wrist "gave her the most feminine of all aspects: the look of being chained."