Many fundamental pillars of American society seem to be crumbling right before our eyes, weakened by an erosive array of social, economic, and political forces.
The deterioration of traditional cultural norms and the ensuing social upheaval, from the living room to the classroom to the boardroom, is no surprise to Ayn Rand scholars.
The famous Russian-born American author and philosopher predicted with disturbing accuracy many of the nation’s current crises.
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Among his observations: the government would encroach on parents’ rights, stifle academic and scientific research, and feed a dangerous mentality of victimhood.
“She understood that history is driven by ideas and if you have rotten ideas, you have rotten results,” Yaron Brook, president of the Ayn Rand Institute in California, told Fox News Digital.
Russian-born American author and philosopher Ayn Rand in 1957 smiles and stands outdoors with her arms crossed in front of the Grand Central building in midtown Manhattan in New York. (New York Times Co./Getty Images)
“She understood that culture, society and politics are shaped by philosophy and when she saw the philosophical trends of the 1940s and 1950s she knew where it would lead.”
That he saw a troubled future amid the euphoric glow of post-World War II US global hegemony makes his vision all the more remarkable.
“She understood that history is driven by ideas and if you have rotten ideas, you have rotten results” – Yaron Brook
The innovative thinker was born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1905.
He was only 12 years old when Russia erupted in the Marxist revolution.
She moved to the United States at the age of 21, founded the philosophy of Objectivism, wrote groundbreaking books such as “Atlas Shrugged” in 1957, and today is a powerful defender of individual freedom and the fundamental ideal of America.
Even his biggest fans might be surprised by his prescient insight into the state of America today.
1. Rand foresaw America’s tragic failures in education
Centralized education bureaucracy has reached deep into local education in recent decades, to the quantifiable detriment of the system and the nation’s schoolchildren.
The creation of the federal Department of Education in 1979, to cite one example, has been followed by a massive reduction in the number of local school districts and local power over education.
Students and parents gather at the Ohio Statehouse to support potential changes that would increase eligibility for taxpayer-funded school vouchers for K-12 students statewide on May 17, 2023, in Columbus, Ohio. Advocates applaud the changes as an expansion of school choice, but opponents say such programs divert funding from public schools and violate the Ohio constitution. (AP Photo/Samantha Hendrickson)
The promise of centralized education took money away from local communities, funded a massive bureaucracy, and put pennies on the dollar, but with the authority to influence local politics through federal coins.
“Everybody knows that America’s schools are failing, that they can’t even teach kids to read,” Brook said.
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“No wonder children grow up anxious, helpless and acting out, and parents frustrated. The problem goes back more than a century to the injection of a corrupt philosophical approach to education, and Ayn Rand exposed this problem long ago.”
2. Rand warned against government intrusion into parents’ rights and authority
Government has intervened between parents and children in ways that Americans until recently never dreamed possible.
“The government has no right to interfere in the education of a child, which is entirely the responsibility and right of the parents.” — Ayn Rand
School boards and bureaucrats openly silence parents who try to maintain a voice in public education.
Lawmakers are actively working to prevent parents from making life-altering medical decisions for their children.
Parents across the country have protested the inclusion of gender ideology in schools. (iStock)
“Since the child depends for its survival on the parents, the government can see to it that the life of the child is safe,” Rand said on “Ayn Rand on Campus” in 1962.
“But this does not extend to intellectual problems,” he added.
“The government has no right to interfere in the education of a child, which is entirely the responsibility and right of the parents.”
3. Rand predicted the intellectual dangers of victimhood
American culture once valued the universality of potential: anyone can succeed regardless of identity.
The disparities in outcomes are undeniable, but the successes of maximized opportunity for everyone in America are also undeniable.
Russian-born American writer Ayn Rand (1905-1982) on the set of NBC’s “The Today Show,” New York, New York, March 23, 1961. Behind her is a quote from her 1961 book, “For the New Intellectual.” (Raimondo Borea/Photo Researchers History/Getty Images)
People of all races, creeds and colors flooded into the world’s largest immigrant nation in search of opportunities they didn’t have at home, and still do today.
The rise of the culture of victimhood has erased that opportunity for millions of Americans.
They are convinced that society is hopelessly against them, effort is futile and dependence is freedom.
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“The academic-jet set coalition is trying to tame the American character by deliberately breeding helplessness and resignation, in those incubators of lethargy known as ‘progressive’ schools,” Rand wrote in an essay appearing in her 1971 anthology, “The New Left: The Anti-American Revolution.”
On Sept. 22, 2022, Los Angeles resident Walter Foster, 80, holds a sign as the repair task force meets to hear public input on repairs at the California Science Center in Los Angeles. (Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
These schools, he noted, “are engaged in the task of arresting a child’s mind by arresting his cognitive development.”
Brook said: “Equality of outcome is a bad idea. It’s a metaphysically impossible idea.” He wrote on the subject in his 2016 book, “Equality Is Unfair: America’s Misguided Fight Against Income Inequality.”
4. Rand warned that ever-larger government would stifle intellectual freedom
Science, academia and the arts have become increasingly dependent on government largesse in recent decades.
The intellectual and creative freedom that made America the world leader in research and popular culture has been replaced by conformity.
Stanford professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya appeared on Fox News. (Fox News)
“Government subsidies to the arts are a horror. They make things difficult for artists who have no political drive and do not share contemporary aesthetic tastes,” Rand said at a 1976 conference.
“No caprice is more ugly and disgusting than the aesthetic caprice of some bureaucrat. The only thing an artist can do in this context is to be a spiritual slipper.”
The danger to science is something else again.
“The government has created a situation where there is little private industry research … so scientists have no choice but to apply for government grants.”
The dangers of government-controlled research apparently turned brutal during the COVID-19 pandemic, when lives and careers were destroyed simply for challenging politically motivated policies that were passed off as science.
“Psychologically, this is the cultural atmosphere of a society that lives under censorship,” Brook said.
5. Rand argued that capitalism would lose in a society cowed by the culture of cancellation
American-style capitalism produced wealth and opportunity never imagined in human history.
Rand argued that leftists of her day were morally corrupt for advocating utopian philosophies and pushing America toward statism.
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But she was even more critical of conservatives and traditionalists who did not fight back.
He seemed to predict that they would be intimidated by public pressure or what we now call cancellation culture.
“Capitalism is what ‘conservatives’ dare not defend or defend,” he said.
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“They are paralyzed by the profound conflict between capitalism and the moral code that dominates our culture: the morality of altruism.”
The power of political altruism, the belief that government can provide happiness, has only grown in the decades since.
Riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin in 2020 following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. On the right, Ayn Rand, who in the 1940s and 1950s predicted many of America’s current crises. (Getty Images)
“Altruism holds that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification for his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest duty, virtue, and moral value.”
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He sensed that the struggle between capitalism and altruism could tear the nation apart.
“Capitalism and altruism are incompatible… They cannot coexist in the same man or in the same society,” he said.
Kerry J. Byrne is a lifestyle reporter at Fox News Digital.
