From 2005, a contemplation for Rand’s 100th birthday.

One hundred years really isn’t a long time. Certainly life is fleeting, brief, a wisp in the winds of eternity. As one ages that becomes clearer every day. And now we approach the 100th anniversary of the birth of an amazing, frustrating, brilliant, and sometimes belligerent woman: Ayn Rand.

She was born in Czarist Russia on February 2nd, 1905. And she literally changed the world. And don’t think for a moment she’s finished with it.

It’s hard to write about Ayn without being personal. I couldn’t extricate her from my life if I wanted to — and I don’t. She frustrated me, angered me, amazed me, impressed me, informed me, and much more. I’ve spent countless hours contemplating her, her life, her ideas, her books, her influence, and her prospects.

Regardless of where I am or what I’m doing I know that just below the surface is Ayn Rand waiting to bubble up again. And she does. All the time. Even when I least expect it.

A young Oriental woman walked past my bookshop and saw a book on Frank Lloyd Wright. She came in and looked through it. She looked around for a second and stops dead still. “You have every book I’ve been looking for,” she said. And she meant it. She had found our Rand section. To prove her interest she pulled a book out of her purse on Rand she had just checked out of the library.

She purchased Barbara Branden’s majestic Rand biography, rented some Rand videos and picked up The Romantic Manifesto. She already knew a lot about Rand from her own efforts. I was amused. With a pierced chin and tongue I wondered what Ayn would think of her. Not much I suspect, at least not much because of the piercings. But what’s the woman to do? Rand’s influence, her impact, is far beyond her ability to control. It was so during her life and more so now that she’s dead.

Rand escaped the communist domination of Soviet Russia and made her way to the United States. She was a fervent American patriot and had been one long before she first set foot on American soil. The cinema was her eye on the world and she would watch the same film over and over just to get a glimpse of that new American phenomenon — the skyscraper.

She loved what those buildings represented — the ability and mind of man. No wonder one of her most enduring novels is the story of an architect. The Fountainhead is a qutessential American novel. But I’m sure it’s conception was in the darkened seats of a Russian cinema.

Ayn Rand witnessed the birth of communism first hand. She saw the Revolution. She was educated in a Soviet university where the first stultifying forces of political correctness dominated. While Western intellectuals were glorifying Lenin she was living the reality.

She knew the slogans were lies. She knew more than that. Many critics of socialism argued that the moral ideal of the Left was noble but the implementation was evil. Rand saw beyond that. The ideal was evil and the implementation was the inevitable consequence.

And that made Ayn Rand unique. I don’t mean just her critique of socialism. I speak of her ability to see farther and deeper than most. She could see the future ramifications of an idea. She was like a chess master who could imagine the game dozens of moves into the future. She saw checkmate while others were looking no further than the next move.

That ability meant two things. First, she was able to instruct with a unique ability. An idea presented by a curious student was understood. She could answer it. She could also anticipate the response and answer that before it was asked. That impressed a lot of people and rightfully so. Strangers who had just meet her and entered into a “brief” conservation would walk away stunned after hours of deep reflections. Many said: “She knows me better than I know myself.”

Because Rand took ideas seriously and because she looked at the long term consequences she often lost her temper. What appeared to be an innocent statement was judged by her, not on the innocence of the statement itself, but on the long-term consequences. It was as if while the world was looking at the Weimar Republic she was seeing Auschwitz.

No doubt this helps explain her famous temper. Oddly the aspects of Rand most often discussed are relatively unimportant except to those who knew her. What did or didn’t happen among her circle of friends is unimportant to the grand scheme of things. It’s the ideas, the words she wrote, the concepts she understood and conveyed to others, that are really important.

Ayn Rand knew she was challenging conventional Western thinking. She said so many times. When many, especially moribund conservative intellectuals, saw the world conflict as a battle between communism and Christianity she stood in-between the two and cursed them both. She argued both views demanded that man sacrifice himself. Both held up the moral ideal that man had no right to live for his own sake.

It’s no wonder that the rotund “former” communist Whitaker Chambers used the pages of William Buckley’s National Review to viciously distort and attack Rand’s magnum opus Atlas Shrugged. Chambers, the former Soviet spy, was like Buckley firmly entrenched within the Catholic Church. The Chambers “conversion” from socialism to Catholicism was seen by many as a total change of views. Rand saw it as tinkering with nonessentials while holding the same premises. Chambers knew this. So did Buckley and they were determined to get even.

In his review Chambers claimed: “From almost any page of “Atlas Shrugged,” a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: ‘To a gas chamber-go!’ “ What could be more of a distortion of Rand’s view? What could be more offensive to a woman who escaped Communist totalitarianism, who was of Jewish descent, and who had family members die during World War II? When Ayn herself died Buckley published an obituary that seemed gleeful, almost triumphant. It was as if he relished her death as some sort of vindication for himself.

Oddly it was not Ayn’s enemies who did her the most harm. It was her friends.

More damage has been done to Rand become some people find justification for being cruel, viscous, unpleasant, and bitchy in her novels. They attempt to mimic Rand without having the intellect to do so. Where Rand would see chess moves far in advance they would pretend they could and merely attack others without evidence.

Rand faced many obstacles in life and overcame them. But many of her own personal battles and pains scared her later in life. She was betrayed, lied about, insulted and disappointed. The withering effects of time devastated her life. She lost her beloved Frank after years of mental decay on his part. The cats she cherished died. She grew weary, bitter and angry. Who can blame her?

But some admirers of Rand have taken this bitterness and anger and turned it into a lifestyle. If Rand was bitter they would be brutal and ascorbic, virulent and harsh. If Rand was angry they would be choleric, always on the verge of fury, indignant at the world and never shy to express their tantrums in public. Worse yet they see this as a virtue making it impossible for them to learn basic civility.

In many ways we are still too close to Ayn Rand to accurately see what is important and what is unimportant. Her friends and opponents, many of them, are still with us. The bitter personality conflicts still survive. It’s still very personal. This gives far too much weight to the inconsequential. Ask Ayn and she’d tell you that ideas matter. It was those ideas that will last long after the conflicts are forgotten.

Objectivism, Rand’s philosophy, is seen as splintered. The Ayn Rand Institute, lead by Leonard Peikoff, Rand’s heir is in one corner. David Kelley and his Objectivist Center is in the other corner. Scattered about are a dozens of scholars who fit in no one’s corner.

Some seem to want a “centrally planned” Objectivism where all are unified in purpose and presentation. Yet no successful market works that way. There is innovation, entrepreneurship and variety in the market. Rand’s strength will come because hundreds of scholars will debate her ideas among themselves.

In 1968 Ayn Rand had a bitter conflict with her primary advocate Nathaniel Branden. They split in a rancourous personal dispute. And even now many of the today’s conflicts within Objectivism can be traced to that split. But so what? How important will that split be in 50 years or another 100 years? Will people in 2200 be debating whether or not this Objectivist treated that Objectivist decently or not? I doubt it.

The personal will fade and the philosophical will dominate. The “splits” will be irrelevant. There will be thousands of philosophers teaching Rand’s ideas and disagreeing with one another the way thousands today teach Aristotle and disagree with one another. When that happens Ayn Rand will have entered the mainstream.

That Rand lived matters. That she wrote matters. That she was angry doesn’t matter. It mattered to her. It mattered to those with whom she fought. It matters not to the many who found inspiration in her words.

I can not help but think of Rand’s farewell party — her funeral. In many ways what happened during the wake that day is indicative of the future of Rand’s ideas.

I was standing outside the Frank E. Campbell funeral home waiting for the doors to open. A man beside me starting talking. He had flown across the country to be there. He had picked up his newspaper and seen that Ayn Rand had died. He had to be there. I understood.

He asked me: “What did she mean to you?” I told him. Others joined in. Each had a story of what they found. No one talked about the split, the “excommunications” or the fights. No one cared. If there was anger in that room I didn’t see it. Their was appreciation for this small Russian woman who changed their lives.

It became difficult to move around. More and more people arrived. No one wanted to leave. The air danced with Ayn’s “tiddlywink” music. It was light, joyful, frivilous. People talked. Some wandered from group to group exchanging their stories. A few years ago I wrote of that day and I want to repeat a small part of what I said then:

“I especially remember how that room filled with mourners was alive with music and flowers and the voice of reason spoken by many different people from many different places.

Each lived a unique life. Each came from a different background and had a different story. But for each there was one common denominator. For each there was Ayn Rand — and the words, those incredible words, that she wrote. She brought us into her universe through those words. And that evening we had the chance to come and say good bye and thank you.

In The Fountainhead there is a scene where Howard Roark is standing outside a resort he built. A boy on a bicycle comes by and is awe struck by the resort. At first he doesn’t see Roark but when he does he goes to him:

‘That isn’t real, is it?’ the boy asked, pointing down.

It’s not a movie set or a trick of some kind?

No. It’s a summer resort. It’s just been completed. It will be opened in a few weeks.

Who built it?

I did.

What’s your name?

Howard Roark.

Thank you,’ said the boy.

He knew that the steady eyes looking at him understood everything these two words had to cover. Howard Roark inclined his head, in acknowledgment.

Wheeling his bicycle by his side, the boy took the narrow path down the slope of the hill to the valley and the houses below, Roark looked after him. He had never seen that boy before and he would never see him again.

He did not know that he had given someone the courage to face a lifetime.”

“For the last two decades, on more than one occasion, I have remembered what Ayn Rand did for me.”

“And still, often in moments of solitary reflection, I repeat those words.”

“I whisper them to someone who is no longer with us because I must. I simply whisper: ‘Thank you.’”

“She never knew that she had given me the courage to face a lifetime.”

Since that wake almost 30 years have passed. Years pass so much more quickly these days. But I still have to say Thank you.”

While I have become more frustrated by those who claim to continue Rand’s work I have grown more and more fond of the woman herself.

Maybe it’s age. Maybe it’s just the result of years of contemplation. But I’ve see more of her accomplishments and less of her frailities. That she was human and made mistakes is less and less important to me as time goes by. My appreciation for the vision she gave me grows however.

She spoke of the “best that is within us” and I believe that it is the best that was within her that will continue to live on. The rest is just minutiae.

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