Over at Catholic and Enjoying It I expressed some exasperation last week about Glenn Beck’s ignorant smear of Dorothy Day, about whom Beck freely confessed knowing absolutely nothing before likening her to Stalin.  Round about the same time, I remarked that I have always regarded Objectivist philosopher and screechy novelist Ayn Rand as a sort of photo negative of Stalin.

A reader writes:

Love the blog.

Your post pointing out Glenn Beck’s comparison of Dorothy Day to Stalin was the most damning thing I have seen about him (or perhaps I should say, Beck’s own worst self-indictment).

But scrolling down I saw your own not totally dissimilar comment on Ayn Rand:

“I’ve always thought of Ayn Rand as a sort of photo negative of Stalin: just as evil and selfish, but not as powerful. She couldn’t kill as many people as he could, but her philosophy is just as capable of sending a soul to hell as Stalin’s was.”

Hmmm.

OK, I have not read Atlas Shrugged (the Chambers link was fascinating, by the way).  I know approximately the same amount about Ayn Rand that I do about Dorothy Day, and prefer the latter to the former.  Nevertheless, your quip struck me as unfortunate and, if I may say so . . . Beckian?  For all I know, you may come out with an excellent critique of Rand and Libertarianism some day, but if you do, I hope you can do better than that. 

In the meantime, I’ll cut you a lot of slack.  But that means I have to cut Beck at least a little slack on the Dorothy Day howler, too!

I’m glad you like the blog!  Nice to meet you.  I don’t think I said the same as Beck.  I actually know something about Rand; he knows nothing of Day.  Rand’s attitude toward the weak is, as Chambers pointed out, “To a gas chamber—go!”  Day’s is nothing but compassion for the downtrodden.  And I do most firmly believe that Rand’s philosophy is quite capable of damning a soul to hell.  She is radically selfish and filled with pride, the sin that made the devil the devil.  She merely chooses to enact her selfishness in ways that do not organize civilizations into vast killing machines.  I do her justice in noting that fact.  Beck does Day no justice because he does not bother to note any facts at all about her.  As to Rand, “not being a mass murderer”, while commendable, is not something that did the Rich Man a lot of good when he found himself in hell in Jesus’ parable.  Rand’s philosophy is radically opposed to the gospel of Christ, as is Stalin’s.  At the end of the day, one racked up a higher body count in terms of public violence, but both are capable of killing souls (and bodies if you count her zeal for abortion) with great alacrity.  Indeed, it could well be argued that the gospel of selfishness Rand preached is capable of doing more damage than communism did.  As Jesus remarked, “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” (Matthew 10:28).  What 70 years of persecution by Commies could not achieve is now being achieved in post-Commie countries that are embracing Rand’s Most Holy Sign of the Dollar and becoming good post-Christian consumerist cultures with liberal abortion laws.  Rand’s contempt for children (surely the weakest among us) and her zeal for sterile sex is echoed in our culture, which has already racked up a body count far greater than Stalin’s—and one which implicates, not just a few hundred thousand troops acting under orders, but millions and millions of private citizens acting of their own free will.  Day loathed all this stuff and worked against it till her dying breath.

So I think I’m being quite fair.

For further consideration of the spiritual dangers of Communism and post-Christian Western consumerist culture, I recommend Neil Postman’s insightful and disturbing analysis about the immense spiritual danger we in the West have barely begun to comprehend in our back-slapping since the fall of Communism:

We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn’t, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.

But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell’s dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions”. In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

Thanks for writing!