Way back, I was really into the writings of Ayn Rand. She pointed up a lot of the demands that society makes on individuals that really are a bit over the top and said that "selfishness" is not necessarily a dirty word. She had a point. After all, if you don't take care of yourself first (i.e., make sure that your own needs are met), then how are you going to be able to contribute to society rather than take from it? If you feel that friends or family or society in general are making unreasonable demands on you, you need to assert yourself for the sake of your own preservation. And her brief for artistic integrity (one of a number of things she articulated in The Fountainhead)—staying true to your own vision rather than catering to the whims and pressures of fashion and "trendiness"—and being willing to stand or fall on that, I agree with wholeheartedly. In fact, fulfilling yourself by insisting that you be allowed to do the best work you can do, is your finest contribution to society.

I'm good with that. In fact, I encountered her writings at a time in my life when I needed to determine my own goals rather than what others thought I should do, and decide how I should best go about achieving those goals. I needed to hear what she was saying.

But unfortunately, where Ayn Rand goes from there—delving into the realms of economics and politics—reflects a certain painfully naïve idealism on her part. Despite her fierce advocacy of acknowledging the nature of reality and of thinking rationally rather than simply going on emotions, the world is simply not the way she saw it. Hank Readon, a person of impeccable honesty and integrity, was a fictional character, as were her other ideal heroes. Viewing her own fictional heroes as real models, she trusted in the honesty and integrity of the vast majority of businessmen. And in the corporate world, there are, indeed, some genuinely honest businessmen. But sad to say, they seem to be in the minority. You just don't find very many Hank Reardons out there. The melancholy fact is that for every Hank Reardon, you find a couple of hundred Kenneth Lays.

In one of her books, Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal, she fiercely advocates unbridled capitalism as the perfect economic system. She claims that it's never really been tried. Well, I'm sorry, but that's not true. That was the system that led to starvation wages, child labor, company towns, company stores—a sort of modern-day feudal system—the abuses of which led, in turn, to the emergence of the labor movement as a reaction to those abuses. And capitalism's reactions to the labor movement were things like the Ludlow massacre and the Everett massacre. And lack of oversight and regulation led to the Great Depression. Had it not been for the "socialist" reforms and regulations instituted by FDR (hated and reviled by capitalists and conservatives), and the reining in of the capitalist orgy of greed that was destroying the country, we could very well have had a communist revolution here, not unlike the one that spawned the Soviet Union.

Yes, unregulated capitalism was tried, and it failed.

This is not to say that capitalism should be abandoned entirely. The profit motive that drives it is an excellent stimulus for the development of new products and services that (one hopes) improve all our lives. It has a great deal going for it. But—it needs to be controlled and regulated for reasons far too numerous to go into here, and which you all know:   first, the prevention of the abuses of former eras, then decent living wages and benefits, safe and healthy work environments being paramount among them.

Where Ayn Rand really blew it with me was when she started trashing the environmental movement, especially the movement's criticism of industrial pollution. She said that, rather than criticizing and calling for laws and regulations, the tree-hugging eco-freaks should get down on their knees and give thanks for the dirtiest smoke-stacks they can find for the benefits that modern industry has given them.

Interesting woman. She saw what she wanted to see. And she refused to see what she didn't want to see. Unfortunately, she was not the best example of her own philosophy, Objectivism.

Don Firth