Barbara Branden - The Passion of Ayn Rand

A businessman began reading Atlas Shrugged, and "Within a few hundred pages I sensed clearly that I had ventured upon a lifetime of meaning. The philosophy of Ayn Rand nurtured growth, stability and integrity in my life. Her ideas permeated every aspect of my business, family and creative life." In 1973, in order to translate for his two young children the sense of life presented by Ayn Rand, O. Terry Nelson wrote The Girl Who Owned a City, an exciting story of a group of youngsters suddenly forced to survive in a world without adults; they are led by a heroic thirteen-year-old girl who organizes a new society based on reason and individualism. The novel has sold more than one hundred thousand copies, and is assigned to students in a number of schools across the country. The fountainhead is Ayn Rand.

A recent law school graduate read Atlas Shrugged and soon afterward met Ayn Rand, becoming her attorney for matters pertaining to Objectivism. "Dealing with Ayn Rand," he has said, "was like taking a post-doctoral course in mental functioning. The universe she created in her work holds out hope, and appeals to the best in man. Her lucidity and brilliance was a light so strong I don't think anything will ever be able to put it out." Today, Henry Mark Holzer is a constitutional lawyer and professor of law at Brooklyn Law School. He is the author of The Gold Clause, Government's Money Monopoly; and the recent Sweet Land of Liberty? The Supreme Court and Individual Rights, an examination of the Court's consistent violation of individual rights in both the economic and social spheres. He co-represented teenage Walter Polovchak, "the littlest defector," seeking to prevent his forcible return to the Soviet Union, and also the 1985 Ukrainian defector, seaman Minoslav Medvid. In 1968, he purchased the Italian film version of We the Living, which Ayn edited before her death, and a subtitled version will be released in 1986. The fountainhead is Ayn Rand.

A young economist met Ayn and became a member of her "class of '43." Today, Alan Greenspan is one of the country's most prominent economists, adviser to three presidential administrations, and a member of the board of directors of major American corporations. He said, "At the time I met Ayn Rand in my mid-twenties, I had already developed a strong admiration for the efficiency of free-market capitalist economics. She demonstrated to me, however, that not only was laissez-faire capitalism an efficient and productive system, but was also the only system consistent with political freedom. By confronting issues I had never previously encountered, a whole new view of society was opened to me. Ayn Rand was, therefore, instrumental in significantly broadening the scope of my thinking and was clearly a major contributor to my intellectual development, for which I remain profoundly grateful to this day."

It was in 1981 that the New York Times noted, "If there is a novelist with unusual appeal among the Reagan organization, it is Ayn Rand, proponent of enlightened self-interest. Some of Reagan's closest advisors, including his director of domestic policy, Martin Anderson, sat at her feet when they were fledgling disciples and a Reagan Presidency just a gleam in the eye of G.B. Theater's host." David R. Henderson, former senior economist on Reagan's Council of Economic Advisors, has said, "Ayn Rand got me thinking about what kind of political system is proper for an autonomous human being to live in, and my thinking about that led me to become an economist. She helped me, perhaps more than anyone else, to live my life." Another among the men and women influenced by Ayn Rand who serve in the Administration is Kathryn Eickhoff, a former student of Nathaniel Branden Institute and Associate Director of the Office of Management and Budget. The fountainhead is Ayn Rand.

A refugee from Budapest, Hungary, smuggled to freedom in 1953, ultimately made his way to the United States. He was introduced to Ayn Rand's work and later became a professor of philosophy at several American universities. Tibor Machan is one of the most dedicated of philosophical fighters for many of the ideas of Ayn Rand, most particularly in the areas of morality and political philosophy. He is senior editor of Reason, senior Fellow of the Reason Foundation, and has written for numerous philosophical journals, magazines and newspapers. He is the editor of The Libertarian Alternative, a book of essays by contemporary defenders of libertarianism containing a comprehensive overview of libertarian thought on freedom and justice; and is at present editing The Main Debate; Capitalism versus Communism, soon to be published by Random House. The fountainhead is Ayn Rand.

The publisher and editorial director of one of the nation's most respected and influential financial weeklies read Atlas Shrugged shortly after its publication. "I couldn't put it down," said Robert Bleiberg of Barron's. "It was filling in great gaps in my economic theories and presenting a totally new philosophy. I'm in very substantial agreement with Ayn Rand; all the years have done is to confirm the wisdom of her ideas." Robert Bleiberg became friendly with Ayn, and began the occasional publication of her articles in his magazine, as well as publication of articles and editorials by Alan Greenspan and many others who had been influenced by Objectivism, a practice which he continues to this day. In 1984, Barron's republished Ayn's article on "The Morality of Capitalism," which first appeared in The Objectivist Newsletter in 1965. "She has had an enormous influence on the country," Robert Bleiberg said. "She deserves a great deal of the credit for the fact that we are beginning to get out of the statist muddle of the last decades. The intellectual ferment among defenders of freedom and capitalism over the past ten years or so, the remarkable upsurge, in theory and in practice, of freedom-oriented ideas — the fact that we have a President who cares about the free market — are staggering, and much of it is owing to Ayn Rand. To have arrived at where we are today is an astonishing intellectual voyage — and we have not yet seen the end of it; her influence continues to grow."

On the bookshelves in Robert Bleiberg's office, beside bound volumes of The Wall Street Journal, stand bound volumes of The Objectivist. "To the extent that I have had an influence," he said, "then so has Ayn!" The fountainhead is Ayn Rand.

A homemaker, married and the mother of three children, read the works of Ayn Rand and decided to return to school and complete her education, despite she heavy responsibilities involved. "My own move toward independence and liberation," she wrote in the Journal of College English, in an article entitled "Ayn Rand and Feminism: An Unlikely Alliance," "had been inspired by a popular novel. Pre-Friedan and pre-Millet, nascent feminism had been nurtured by the reading of Atlas Shrugged... The neurotic, manipulated, or exploited female continues to be the mainstay of American fiction... [But Rand's] novel has a protagonist who is a good example of a woman who is active, assertive, successful, and still retains the love and sexual admiration of three heroic men." Today, Mimi Gladstein is a literature professor at the University of Texas at El Paso, and author of the recent The Ayn Rand Companion. She had an opportunity to witness the effects of the character of Dagny Taggart on the young women students in her course, "Women in Fiction." "The course was very well attended," Mimi said, "and very depressing. In the world's great literature, women are either virtuous — which means passive, uninteresting, and unmotivated — or they are immoral — which means active, colorful, passionate... and doomed to defeat. I saw that my students were becoming more and more upset by this view of women's two possibilities, an alternative that no modem young woman could find acceptable — but I had found no other to offer them. And then it occurred to me to assign and discuss the character of Dagny Taggart in Atlas Shrugged. My students were ecstatic. Here, at last, was a woman they could admire and emulate, a woman who was both immensely effective and successful in the world, and intensely feminine. They responded with an excitement and pleasure that was gratifying to see. I felt as if I'd given them a treasured gift."