Student misinterprets Ayn Rand

In Cody Baker’s flagrantly flawed letter on April 11, he chastises one of the most brilliant minds in the philosophical world today (‘Objectivist misrepresents Rand,’ pg. 9). Leonard Peikoff was Ayn Rand’s close friend for 30 years and her designated legal and intellectual heir. After her death in 1982, Dr. Peikoff emerged as the foremost authority on objectivism and has remained so for the past 21 years. It is thus rather presumptuous of Mr. Baker to arrogate himself as an expert on objectivism, when he obviously lacks expertise in the philosophy. Since he quoted Peikoff based on a semi-accurate article of April 8, I suspect he did not even attend his lecture on April 6 (anyone in attendance could pinpoint the glaring inconsistencies between Baker’s analysis and Peikoff’s speech) (‘Peikoff criticizes United States policy throughout war,’ pg. 4).

Firstly, Baker’s comments on World War II are factually incorrect. Women voluntarily joined the workforce when their husbands left and voluntarily returned to the home when their husbands resumed their roles as primary breadwinners. As for the detention of Japanese-Americans, the Roosevelt administration perceived a threat in a potential fifth-column of Japanese émigrés. When national security is seriously threatened, democratic governments often take temporary precautionary measures to ensure the safety of its citizens (as in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001 when the Justice Department justly detained Muslims suspected of terrorist activities).

Regarding your interpretation of objectivism, I encourage you to actually read a book or essay by Ms. Rand. You claim ‘the murdering of mass numbers of innocent people is not endorsed anywhere in objectivism.’ This is true, for a government and the people it represents. However, lecturing at the Ford Hall Forum in 1972, Ayn Rand commented on the deaths of innocents in war: ‘If by neglect, ignorance, or helplessness, they couldn’t overturn their bad government and choose a better one, then they have to pay the price for the sins of their government.’ The point Peikoff made was self-defense is impossible if we are to fight with regard for the lives of those who wish to destroy us. In war, the only concern is to annihilate the enemy at the lowest cost to oneself. This is unmistakably different from an attack on the civilians of a peaceful country.

Peikoff very straightforwardly addressed whose way of life U.S. soldiers are defending abroad: the American way of life. Mr. Baker’s inability to understand that suggests a further intellectual failure in comprehending objectivism. He supports his obscene denigration of the World War II generation with an irrelevant quote taken out of context. When Rand wrote in the journals to her novel The Fountainhead that ‘the thing most wrong with the world today is its absolute lack of positive values,’ she was referring to the proliferation of communism, cynicism and Christianity in the world which Americans promptly disregarded when Tokyo bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941.

These feminist, socialist, apologist and irrational views Mr. Baker espouses clearly reflect his own hypocrisy, ignorance and apparent moral bankruptcy. If moral insolvency and utter stupidity truly interest him, I would suggest he read Peter Myers’ pathetic column, ‘Indulgences in Self-pity,’ where such depravity is warranted. If he cares to truly enlighten himself in correct objectivist thought, I recommend Jacob Cote’s appropriately-labeled column ‘The John Galt Line’ or any of the works by Ayn Rand and her devotees. Dr. Peikoff vigorously maintains the intellectual integrity of objectivist philosophy and its author; Mr. Baker’s criticism is the real misrepresentation of Ayn Rand.