Ayn Rand's Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World Revisited

The modern world can survive. I choose to believe it will survive. I make this choice on the basis of what I see and not on the basis of blind faith in an idea.

Many seem to believe in various fundamentalist prophecies. Some believe in fundamentalist religion, others believe in fundamentalist materialism. Both groups seem to have an absolute faith in their own "rightness," but they only threaten the modern world when they resort to force. The recourse to violence by the state, and the armed prophets in our midst are the "destroyers of the modern world."

I am not one of Ayn Rand's "followers." Her economic and historical perspectives were highly flawed, and many of her ideas seem hopelessly naive to me, in the context of today's world. However her championship of reason, science, and intellectual freedom stands on its own merits, and remains as relevant as ever.

Was Ayn Rand a fundamentalist materialist? I don't think so. She was actually a romantic, an idealist, and a true advocate of all the best qualities of individual human beings. She defined morality as a necessity for survival while others defined capitalism as being "amoral," usually to justify their lack of morality. Contrary to what many seem to believe, she defined intellect as the highest form of wealth, the one currency from which all other honestly gained wealth came.

Reason and Science

War, disease, and starvation have been with the human race from the start. However humankind's ability to overcome these things is greater now than it ever has been due to technological and sociological progress. Yet this same progress has also brought with it a potential for destruction unequaled by anything in history. The rejection of reason and science by those in search of "purity" and "perfection" religiously or politically is what will bring us ultimately to a global catastrophe. I would not dispute with my Christian friends the idea that we could be in "the end times." What I would dispute is why. Is it predestined that the "world as we know it" will soon come to an end? Absolutely not; if the end comes it will be because we brought it on ourselves with our choices, and our failures to choose.

".... reason and freedom -- are corollaries, and their relationship is reciprocal: when men are rational, freedom wins; when men are free, reason wins." -Ayn Rand

Those who wish to turn back history to medieval times, and reject reason and science will try to reach this impossible goal with modern weapons, taking some of the less desirable fruits of the intellect and using them completely without reason. They cannot win; the physical reversal of time and history is entirely impossible, and attempts to regress religion and ideology succeed only in the short term. However, faith and force can create much misery in the course of this futile struggle, and in fact they do have the potential to destroy the modern world. Some even seem to believe that the apocalypse is not only inevitable, but desirable and wish to hasten its approach with their actions.

Faith and Force

Fundamentalist materialist views can be found in various ideologies. Market fundamentalism, corporatism/fascism, and authoritarian socialist doctrines of Leninist/Stalinist/Maoist variety are all forms of fundamentalist materialism.

The authoritarians of the far left and the far right seem to be in complete agreement on one issue; that "those who do not work, will not eat." One obvious problem with this is the glaring fact that most of the people not working and not eating have no choice in the matter. The work, and therefore the food simply are not there. Sometimes people work, and starve anyway, in impoverished nations and in slave labor camps. If anyone can prove that any of the various third-world populations dying from starvation are actually uninterested in gainful employment, I'll gladly examine their evidence. To blame capitalism or for that matter communism, neither of which have ever existed in pure form anyway, is not the point. Always present where corruption, tribal and religious warfare, and greed keep the food from ever reaching the hungry, are faith and force. The fundamentalist materialism of the communist dictator and the corporatist warlord, both reduce individual human lives to units of production. Individuals in these systems, who are unable or unwilling to produce and obey those in control, may be summarily eliminated. Individuals, classes, and races may also be eliminated simply on the basis of political expediency, or for any other reason the dictator may have including personal whims. The feudalistic monarch believes in a divinely ordained right to torture and kill, for any reason he may choose. Ayn Rand correctly defined one major similarity between religiously justified feudalism and totalitarianism:

"....The basic principle was the same: the right to enforce at the point of a gun the moral doctrines of whoever happens to seize control of the machinery of government."

Fundamentalism devalues the intellect, reason, and science and replaces them with faith in a dogma. Sometimes this dogma is a religious one, and sometimes it is a political one. For the fundamentalist there is no need to search for answers when they have been provided through scripture or doctrine. Knowing what to do and who to kill is made simple. Fundamentalist Islam commands its follower to execute non-believers. The Bible is filled with incidents of God commanding the Israelites to annihilate other tribes. People complain about the violence of that state of Israel, with some leftists even siding with the neo-feudalists and fundamentalists among Israel's enemies. Certainly, Israel's behavior is that of a state at war. To some degree, in times of war the term "terrorist state" is a redundancy; war brutalizes all of its participants, and war crimes are not unique to any religion or ideology. However, it is the fundamentalists who unapologetically sanction and command the perpetration of war crimes most consistently. The practice of sending the youngest, strongest, and often the most idealistic men and women of a society to their deaths in the name of a cause, while remaining as far from the front lines as possible is the practice of old and cowardly authoritarians. Whether these actions are obtained through lies about martyrdom and paradise, or lies about imminent threats and weapons of mass destruction, the end result is the same. To their credit, modern Christians, Muslims, and Jews have renounced the entitlement to lethal force in the name of religion. The fanatics are still quite powerful however. For this renunciation of violence and their attempts to apply reason and generally accepted ethical principles to violent affairs of state, moderates are often persecuted and killed by fundamentalists of their own faith. The murder of Benazir Bhutto, an advocate of peace and reconciliation, by Islamic fundamentalists, and the murder of Yitzakh Shamir by a Jewish fundamentalist are but two major and recent examples of this phenomenon. Many capitalists, communists, and fascists have at times shared the belief that their secular belief systems entitled them to the initiation of deadly force, internationally and domestically against dissidents. The belief that conflicts between ideas can be disputed solely in the realm of the intellect is ridiculed by the fundamentalists. The advocates "faith and force," and all who have faith in force continue to be the destroyers of the modern world

When George W. Bush said "They hate our freedoms -- our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other," his speech writers were right about that much anyway. "They," -the fundamentalists- do hate our freedoms. They would like to wipe out all dissent, all "deviant" lifestyles, and all thought that is not directed by their sacred doctrines. It would be a lot easier if "they" were all in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and the other Islamic theocracies. It would be easier if statism and fundamentalist-materialist repression of unauthorized religion were unique to the People's Republic of China. Unfortunately, the larger danger is that "they" are us: Cross Burners, Witch Hunters, Queer Bashers, Nazis, Corporatists masquerading as "conservatives" and "liberals" and most dangerous of all, the cult of the state itself. "They" also hate our sexual freedom, our artistic freedom, and the popular culture that has evolved, both at its best and worst from these freedoms, practiced in a relatively free market. Sexual and artistic repression is omnipresent in cultures dominated by fundamentalist religion, or fundamentalist materialism.

The Real War

I'm entirely in favor of a war against terrorists. Those who mass-murder, maim and terrorize civilians are terrorists, regardless of their religious and political rationalizations. Those who produce death as a by-product of their greed and hunger for power are terrorists. Are we to view old, wealthy western practitioners and profiteers of long-distance remote control murder with more tolerance than we view a master of assassins like Osama bin Laden? Dropping cluster bombs into civilian areas and maiming children is terrorism too. Those who simply labor and survive under these systems, and carry no weapons are not legitimate targets for any form of violence. Leftists such as Ward Churchill who try to justify in political and economic terms 9-11, a classic act of right wing religious terrorism are as severely deluded as those who actually believe the lies of the war profiteers in America, with their justifications for the maiming and killing of children. Everyone has an inherent right to self-defense, using whatever levels of violence the situation demands. However, physical self-defense alone does not suffice in this kind of a war; the struggle against terrorism and totalitarianism is ultimately a war of ideas, to be fought in our minds, and in the forums of what remains of the uncensored media (such as this one). The sensation of terror quite often cannot be remedied by the removal of an immediate physical threat, as any PTSD sufferer can tell you. The "war on terror" is something each of us fights in the confines of our own being too. The use of terror to encourage us to surrender our basic rights and accept a society that is authoritarian at its base and permissive to the point of absurdity to its highest authorities is terrorism. Terror negates reason and causes the surrender of free will and individual rights to rulers who are in no way superior to the ruled, and who have gained their power through fraud and violence.

It's fairly dangerous to oversimplify the national and global predicament we now face. The idea that that the assault of faith and force on the modern world can be defeated by faith and force, is dangerous and delusional. A mindless pacifism practiced by a world under attack is equally unrealistic. For any lasting victory to be achieved, the intellect is the only weapon that has a chance of ultimately prevailing. Without intellectual and political freedom there can be no solution. People still have a right to their beliefs, however extreme they may seem to others. This right only ends when force is used on those who may disagree. Faith alone is often harmless, and force is often necessary. When combined, faith and force are in fact the destroyers of the modern world.

References:

Ayn Rand
Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World
freedomkeys.com/faithandforce.htm

Speech Given by George W. Bush on 9-20-2001
Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010920-8.html