12/9/21

I am by and large an admirer of Rand's writing and philosophy--it was literally life-changing. The relatively low rating simply represents the fairly low place of this book among the works by her I've read--by the time I got to this collection of essays, little in it represented anything new. That said, I can see its influence in my thinking--and there are a couple of gems in here I still remember vividly decades after first reading them--in particular, "Apollo and Dionysus" and "The Comprachicos." Anyone who reads the last and doesn't believe Rand felt compassion for her fellow human beings is willfully misunderstanding her. Mind you, she could be obstreperous--and often what comes across is the outrage towards those she feels do harm, then that compassion for the harmed--but it's there. ( )

It's been a while since I read a Rand book. This is a collection of essays she wrote, most in the last 60's and early 70's in response to hippie movements and Progressive education. Her comment on the sit-in's at Berkley: "Rule by pressure groups is merely the prelude, the social conditioning for mob rule. Once a country has accepted the obliteration of moral principles, of individual rights, of objectivity, of justice, of reason, and has submitted to the rule of legalized brute force, - the elimination of the concept "legalizes" does not take long to follow. Who is to resist it - and in the name of what?" In "The Comprachicos" she compares the effect and motives of Progressive education to the physical processes employed by comprachicos and in other cultures. Children are reared to follow the group and not to experience any connection between independent thought and success. Eventually they stop trying to see this connection and live a life without purpose, unable even to see the paradigm into which they've been molded. ( )

In the original edition, Ayn Rand named the intellectual roots of the New Left. Her articles ranged from a discussion of the fundamental goals of the student "rebellion," to an examination of egalitarianism in our "age of envy," to a dissection of the evils of "Progressive" education.

This new edition underscores the continuing relevance of Ayn Rand's analysis of the period. Now, Mr. Schwartz writes, "The trappings of the New Left are gone, but its substance has endured." The same "anti-industrial revolution" is being waged today—primarily in the form of two powerful movements: environmentalism and multiculturalism, which "are scions of the New Left, zealously carrying on its campaign of sacrificing progress to primitivism." Mr. Schwartz develops this theme of primitivism in each of his three essays: "The Philosophy of Privation," "Multicultural Nihilism" and "Gender Tribalism."

Read this book and discover how our culture is being slowly dragged back to the age of primitivism—and what needs to be done to establish the opposite: an age of reason, individualism and progress.

Ayn Rand at her finest. ( )