Anthony Daniels (também conhecido como Theodore Dalrymple) fala o- que-todos-sabem-sobre-Ayn-Rand-mas-tinham-medo-de-pensar:
Rand’s virtues were as follows: she was highly intelligent; she was brave and uncompromising in defense of her ideas; she had a kind of iron integrity; and, though a fierce defender of capitalism, she was by no means avid for money herself. The propagation of truth as she saw it was far more important to her than her own material ease. Her vices, of course, were the mirror-image of her virtues, but, in my opinion, the mirror was a magnifying one. Her intelligence was narrow rather than broad. Though in theory a defender of freedom of thought and action, she was dogmatic, inflexible, and intolerant, not only in opinion but in behavior, and it led her to personal cruelty. In the name of her ideas, she was prepared to be deeply unpleasant. She hardened her ideas into ideology. Her integrity led to a lack of self-criticism; she frequently wrote twenty thou- sand words where one would do.
Rand believed all people to be possessed of equal rights, but she found relations of equality with others insupportable. Though she could be charming, it was not something she could keep up for long. She was deeply ungrateful to those who had helped her and many of her friendships ended in acrimony. Her biographer tells us that she sometimes told jokes, but, in the absence of any supportive evidence, I treat reports of her sense of humor much as I treat reports of sightings of the Loch Ness monster: apocryphal at best.
A passionate hater of religion, Rand founded a cult around her own person, complete with rituals of excommunication; a passionate believer in rationality and logic, she was incapable of seeing the contradictions in her own work. She was a rationalist who was not entirely rational; she could not distinguish between rationalism and rationality. Of narrow aesthetic sympathies, she laid down the law in matters of artistic judgment like a panjandrum; a believer in honesty, she was adept at self-deception and special pleading.
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Um texto bom, mas com algumas falhas.
O único mérito que ele reconhece nela é ser anti-racista e ver os perigos do Estado assistencialista.
E sobre o principal foco de seu pensamento, a luta entre altruísmo e (o que ela chamava de) egoísmo na alma do homem e na sociedade? E o personagem Ellsworth Toohey, o grande vilão do The Fountainhead? Para mim, era o ponto alto do livro; um ser realmente desprezível como poucos que já vi. Faltou, no mínimo, mencionar.
Mas sim, muitas das críticas dele são no ponto. Ela foi alguém com algumas idéias ótimas, e um super intelecto, mas outras idéias profundamente erradas, o que acabou levando à completa ruína pessoal.
Agora, tirania, não, sinto muito Martim, mas não dá para qualificá-la de tirana. De extremamente moralista sim: alguém que acha que até questões de gosto pessoal (fumar ou não fumar) revelam virtudes e defeitos seríssimos (no caso do cigarro, era uma virtude, pois ele representava o fogo da mente, as idéias – quem não fumava era automaticamente suspeito de ser anti-racional – pelo menos é o que conta o Murray Rothbard, que pertenceu ao círculo dela por um tempo até ser “excomungado” – num tribunal ao qual ele nem compareceu).