In Ayn Rand’s view, America is no longer a capitalist country, but a mixed economy, i.e., “a mixture of capitalism and statism, of freedom and controls.” The danger of such a mixture is that government controls “create economic dislocations, hardships and problems, which — if the controls are not repealed — necessitate further controls.” A mixed economy, “ultimately, has to repeal the controls or collapse into dictatorship.”
The destructive nature and inner workings of a mixed economy are subjects that Rand discusses frequently in her nonfiction writing. A number of pieces she wrote for The Ayn Rand Letter look in detail at the “dislocations, hardships and problems” caused by government intervention in particular areas of the economy. One example is “The Energy Crisis,” which argues that the 1970s energy crisis — which is typically blamed on the OPEC oil embargo — was the result of decades of strangulation of the oil industry by government regulations.
Ayn Rand’s views on foreign policy are an application of her view of government: that its sole function is the protection of individual rights from the initiators of physical force. Thus, the sole purpose of a free nation’s military, and the basic goal of its foreign policy, is to protect the lives and freedom of its citizens. This means the rejection of such ideas as “nation-building” or “manifest destiny” or “making the world safe for democracy” or any form of international self-sacrifice.
A number of Rand’s important essays on foreign affairs were written for The Ayn Rand Letter. “The Lessons of Vietnam” discusses the intellectual bankruptcy behind America’s failure in Vietnam. “Hunger and Freedom” and “Cashing In on Hunger” discuss foreign aid. And “The Shanghai Gesture” argues that President Nixon’s historic visit to China — widely regarded today as a triumph of Nixon’s presidency — was, in fact, a failure of moral principle.
In Ayn Rand’s view, the 1972 presidential race between incumbent Richard Nixon and Senator George McGovern came down to “a single, fundamental issue: the imperative necessity to defeat George McGovern, i.e., statism.”
Rand wrote a number of articles for The Ayn Rand Letter covering the ’72 election. But the value today of these pieces (none of which are available elsewhere) is not primarily the journalistic coverage of the Nixon-McGovern contest, but the timeless issues of culture and political philosophy that Rand discusses in connection with the election.
Rand was no supporter of Nixon (she was an “Anti-Nixonite for Nixon”), but in her view, McGovern represented the essential principle of statism: “the principle that our lives belong to the state.” Thus, she saw it as crucial to vote, not for Nixon, but against McGovern.
Following the election, Rand discusses the meaning of McGovern’s landslide defeat and its implications for America’s future.
Today, it is usually taken as a compliment to call someone “pragmatic.” The implication is that the person is practical and realistic. But pragmatism is a philosophical notion (injected into American life by William James and John Dewey) that embodies a specific account of practicality. On this view, what it means to be practical is to be unhampered by “rigid” principles or ideals, with the implication that principles are impractical and ideals are unrealistic.
Ayn Rand opposes pragmatism and sees the destructive footprints of its rejection of principles all over American culture. She argues that the Watergate scandal, for instance, was a perfect expression of the results of acting “without goals, principles, or standards.” The Ayn Rand Letter essays “Brothers, You Asked for It” and “The Principals and the Principles” discuss Watergate and the Watergate hearings, which Rand views as a microcosm of the chaos inherent in America’s pragmatism-ruled mixed economy.
During its run from 1971 to 1976, The Ayn Rand Letter published a number of draft excerpts from The Ominous Parallels, a book-in-progress by contributing editor Leonard Peikoff. (Dr. Peikoff, a philosopher, was a student and close associate of Ayn Rand’s. Designated by Rand as her legal heir and literary executor, he has edited most of her posthumous books and was instrumental in the founding of the Ayn Rand Institute. Dr. Peikoff is the foremost interpreter of Ayn Rand’s ideas writing and lecturing today.)
The Ominous Parallels (which was published in 1982) applies the principles of Objectivism to explain the rise of Nazism in Germany — and observes how the same evil ideas behind that movement are at work in America. Ayn Rand’s introduction to the book praised it as offering “a truly revolutionary idea in the field of the philosophy of history.”
