Ayn Rand Nation: The Hidden Struggle for America's Soul [Hardcover]

Gary Weiss (Author)

Book Description

Release date: February 28, 2012

Thirty years after her death in March 1982, Ayn Rand’s ideas have never been more important. Unfettered capitalism, unregulated business, bare-bones government providing no social services, glorification of selfishness, disdain for Judeo-Christian morality—these are the tenets of Rand’s harsh philosophy.

In Ayn Rand Nation, Gary Weiss explores the people and institutions that remain under the spell of the Russian-born novelist. He provides new insights into Rand’s inner circle in the last years of her life, with revelations of never-before-publicized predictions by Rand that still resonate today. Weiss charts Rand’s infiltration of the Tea Party and Libertarian movements, and provides an inside look at the radical belief system that has exerted a powerful influence on the Republican Party and its presidential candidates. It’s a fascinating cast of characters that ranges from Glenn Beck to Oliver Stone, and includes Rand’s most influential disciple, Alan Greenspan. Weiss describes in penetrating detail how Greenspan became a stalking horse for Rand—slashing and burning regulations with ideological zeal, and then seeking to conceal her influence on his life and thinking. Lastly, Weiss provides a strategy for a renewed national dialogue, an embrace of the nation’s core values that is needed to deal with Rand’s pervasive grip on society.

From The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged to Rand’s lesser-known and misunderstood nonfiction books, Gary Weiss examines the impact of Rand's thinking across our society.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Meticulously eye-opening... A scrupulous and sobering investigation, vital for our times." --Kirkus Reviews

"[A] riveting and disturbing inquiry into Ayn Rand's widespread influence on Amerocan economics and politics." --Publishers Weekly

"A lucid, thoroughly, and utterly terrifying investigation into the movement that is destroying America, bit by bit, in accordance with the vision of a woman who believed in nothing and no one except herself."--Daily Kos

"Unlike most books on Rand, which tend toward the hagiographic, this one takes a reality-based look at the consequences of her ideas. Weiss lands a few deserved punches in this quick, magazine article-like read."--Library Journal

"Thought provoking and more than a little ominous."--Booklist

“Gary Weiss brings his skeptical bent and sharp writing to a character who has inspired both fanatical belief and deep derision for decades: Ayn Rand. The book is a compelling journey of discovery about a woman who continues to exert a powerful hold over our society. Weiss shows how Rand is ultimately quite a bit more complicated than either her fans or her detractors would have it.”—Bethany McLean, New York Times bestselling author of The Smartest Guys in the Room and All the Devils Are Here

“Ayn Rand Nation is a fascinating exploration of one of the fastest-growing and most powerful coalitions in American politics. With an unerring eye for detail, Gary Weiss embarks on a journey of discovery that examines the emerging influence of the Tea Party and other political groups that proclaim themselves to be Rand’s intellectual progeny. Weiss explores this phenomenon with the evenhanded and objective techniques of a sociologist. If you want to understand the men and women whose vehement voices are reshaping American government, you must read this book.”—Kurt Eichenwald, New York Times bestselling author of The Informant and Conspiracy of Fools

“The timing of this book couldn’t be better for Americans who are trying to understand where in the hell the far-out right’s anti-worker, anti-egalitarian extremism is coming from. Ayn Rand Nation introduces us to the godmother of such Tea Party craziness as destroying Social Security and eliminating Wall Street regulation. Weiss writes with perception and wit.”—Jim Hightower, New York Times bestselling author of Thieves in High Places

“Think Ayn Rand is marginal? Think again! Gary Weiss’s powerful new history inscribes the libertarian firebrand at the very center of the American story of the past three decades.”—David Frum, New York Times bestselling author of The Right Man and Comeback

About the Author

Gary Weiss is a journalist and the author of two books probing the underside of finance, Wall Street Versus America and Born to Steal. He was an award-winning investigative reporter for BusinessWeek, and his articles have appeared in Condé Nast Portfolio, Parade magazine, Salon, and The New York Times, among other publications. He lives in New York City.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; 1St Edition edition (February 28, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312590733
• ISBN-13: 978-0312590734
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (47 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #684,165 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Gary Weiss has uncovered financial wrongdoing for almost a quarter of a century.

AYN RAND NATION (St. Martin's Press: Feb. 28, 2012), his third book, began as an exploration of the roots of the 2008 financial crisis. It soon became apparent that Ayn Rand's teachings were a decisive influence, and that her philosophy has come to pervade the national dialogue over the role of government, deficits, and "entitlements" such as Social Security and Medicare. Her teachings have been adopted in large measure by all of the Republican presidential candidates, have a strong influence on the libertarian movement and Tea Party, and pose a challenge to moderates and conservatives as well as the left.

It is a hidden battle for the soul of America - and Rand is winning.

Weiss was for years an investigative reporter at BusinessWeek magazine, where his award-winning cover story, "The Mob on Wall Street," exposed mob infiltration of the market for small-cap stocks. The article won praise from Louis Freeh, director of the FBI, for paving the way for federal prosecution of mob crimes in the stock market. He uncovered the Salomon Brothers bond-trading scandal, and authored some of the earliest coverage on the dangers posed by hedge funds, Internet fraud and out-of-control leverage.

He was a contributing editor at Conde Nast Porfolio, writing about the people most intimately involved in the financial crisis, from Timothy Geithner to Bernard Madoff. He also writes a regular column for TheStreet.com and is a freelance contributor to many periodicals.

His first book BORN to STEAL (Warner Books: 2003), described the Mafia's takeover of brokerage houses in the 1990s. WALL STREET VERSUS AMERICA (Portfolio: 2006) was a detailed account of investor rip-offs.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

113 of 143 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Detailed Answer to One Question: Who are These Guys? March 9, 2012

By Gordon Burkowski

Format:Hardcover

In "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid", the two are being tracked by a posse and Paul Newman asks Robert Redford: "Who are these guys?" The answer: a very formidable group whom they had fatally underestimated. Gary Weiss asks the same question about readers of Ayn Rand - and comes up with the same answer that is given in the movie.

Nearly 55 years after it first appeared, more than a half million new copies of Atlas Shrugged are being printed every year. A lot of these are freebies from the Ayn Rand Institute, but hundreds of thousands of them are not. Weiss asks the question: who are the men and women who are enthusiastic about Ayn Rand? And why?

Weiss seeks an answer by interviewing or writing about a very broad cross-section of Ayn Rand's admirers. He spoke to both Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute and David Kelley of the Atlas Society (given their mutual enmity, that's quite an achievement in itself). He also spoke to old guard Objectivists from the '50's and '60's, including well known figures like Nathaniel and Barbara Branden. Given Weiss's book on the 2008 economic meltdown, it is not surprising that he also gives considerable and highly critical attention to Alan Greenspan. Alan Greenspan's 50 year commitment to Rand's moral and economic precepts is by no means as well known as it should be; nor is it well known that Ayn Rand encouraged him to move into a position of power in government.

We also have a profile in Chapter 2 of Iris Belle, a lesser known figure from the 1960's. This chapter is required reading for anyone who follows the controversies surrounding the picture of Ayn Rand that emerges from the best known biographies. It provides further documentation of the ridiculous attempts by the Ayn Rand Institute to airbrush evidence regarding the near-totalitarian bent of Rand and her first adherents during the early 1960's.

However, Weiss's book is no historical study. His primary focus is on admirers of Ayn Rand from this generation - many of whom played a key role in the Republican landslide of 2010. Some are convinced Objectivists: people whose frame of reference is fully provided by Ayn Rand's novels and by her philosophy. But Weiss doesn't stop there. He also spoke to many people who wouldn't consider themselves Objectivists by any means, but who have been heavily influenced by Atlas Shrugged and to a lesser extent by Rand's other writings. And in Chapter 17, he interviews Oliver Stone (no kidding), who for years was planning a remake of The Fountainhead. (Warning to Objectivists: take a couple of tranquilizers before you read this chapter.)

Both the positive and negative reviews I have seen so far seem to me to give a quite erroneous impression of how Weiss profiles all of these people. He's a liberal and makes no bones about it; he's strongly opposed to Randian politics, ethics and philosophy; and he isn't shy about letting you know it. But he respects his interviewees and gives a good sense of why Rand has been such a huge influence in their lives. He says that he enjoys the company of Objectivists and I believe him. He's not presenting a gallery of caricatures: these are real and often extremely successful people. If you're looking for the frequently seen stereotype of the Ayn Rand fan - a teenage loner who becomes a fanatical Objectivist for ten years before finding a new fad - you're reading the wrong book.

Behind all these profiles are a few over-arching themes. First, Weiss shows that Atlas Shrugged exerts an influence over people who aren't Objectivist. Rand was an atheist who considered religious belief at least as dangerous and irrational as a commitment to Socialism: she would have been appalled to be linked in any way to someone like Glenn Beck. Yet Weiss spoke to lots of folk who had no hesitation about holding the Bible in one hand and Atlas Shrugged in the other. The answer he offers is that Ayn Rand's novels dramatically affirm a number of keystone American values: independence, creativity, self-reliance, and above all a permanent distrust of government and all its works. Many look no further - and don't check what else is in the package.

That leads to a second Weiss theme: that huge numbers of Tea Party adherents are angry at the way things are, but have no coherent intellectual framework to help them focus and justify their reactions. Objectivists do. They are the ideological part of the right wing and their clarity about what they believe gives them a power far out of proportion to their numbers. This approach is of course a right wing mirror image of the tactics used by Communists against Socialists in the 1920's and 1930's. In the 1936 edition of We the Living, a novel set in Soviet Russia, Ayn Rand's heroine says to a Communist: "I loathe your ideals; I admire your methods." Those at the cutting edge of Objectivism might claim to disagree with this; their actions say otherwise.

Finally and most importantly, Weiss makes clear what every Objectivist knows, but which few others seem to care about - that Rand is presenting a moral argument for laissez-faire capitalism: no Social Security or Medicare, no public road system, no fire departments, no parks, no building codes, no financial regulation - a government consisting of nothing but police, armies and law courts. Rand believes that a government which does more than these three functions is not simply impractical or too expensive: to use her exact word, it is evil. Weiss maintains that this moral argument has to be directly confronted - and defeated. It will be exhilarating to watch this moral debate if it ever takes place. But given the current state of political discussion in America, my answer would have to be: don't hang from a rope waiting for it to happen.

32 of 44 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Ayn Rand's influence on American politics April 20, 2012

By R. S. Wilkerson

Format:Hardcover

Weiss reports from the perspective of an investigative reporter on the critical problem of how those who advocate repressive social policies have been able to seize control of our political language. Whereas others see the discredited economic theories of Hayek and Friedman at the core of our economic woes, Weiss shows the bęte noir of Rand's specious fictions and how they have captured the imaginations of so many. He suggests that Rand's dogmas have become so prevalent that even Paul Ryan is a self-identified advocate of Rand's arguments against society, the very bedrock of civilization. He hints that Ryan's budgeting fiascos are nothing more than the anti-social imaginings of Randian fiction.

Weiss constructs this review of Randian fantasy by interviewing so called Objectivists, tea partiers, Randian enthusiasts, members of Randian societies, and politicians who have been seduced by Randian fictions or are controlled by the tea parties. They're good interviews, they're interesting, and they reveal a great deal about those who try to create a philosophy from Rand's specious writings and about the writings themselves. It's a very interesting book and Weiss is fair to the people and to the dogma; however, Weiss states unequivocally that we must restore society and the individual's role in society to the center of our political policies and regain control of the political discussion. Weiss believes we can only do so by showing the dark center of Rand's fictions and its appeal to the common man; he has achieved that goal in this work.

32 of 44 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An inclusive, up-to-date view of the Randian movement in our time March 19, 2012

By Gene H. Bell Villada

Format:Hardcover

Gary Weiss's important book is a necessary successor to Jeff Walker's 1999 volume, THE AYN RAND CULT, which I also recommend. Walker did an excellent job of tracing the literally "cultish" side of Randism, with its in-group thinking, its worship of Rand, its Stalinist-style control, its Moonie-like acolytes, its factionalisms and purges, and its sense of victimization.

In the past decade or so, however, Rand-speak and Randianism have moved from the cult fringes to the GOP itself as well as to the upper reaches of finance. And Weiss expertly demonstrates this via dozens of interviews with Rand faithful at various levels. One particularly depressing chapter reports on ardent Tea Partiers, ordinary folk whose "ideas" consist of total confusion, unlike those of the bedrock, Randroid true-believers, who are at least consistent. (E.g. The Tea Partiers he interviews are mad as hell about the 2008 Wall Street crash, yet they blame the government for it.) Another chapter focuses on Alan Greenspan's Rand discipleship and on the havoc he had played with the economy--yet he never really acknowledged Rand's role in shaping his policies, nor did he change his views (as the media somehow implied in the wake of his mildly recognizing some errors on his part).

Hedge funders ("hedgies") naturally LOVE La Rand! This comes through vividly in his narrative.

Weiss shows that Randianism has grown into a force to be reckoned with in our time. He doesn't like it--which of course is why the Randians are jumping on him with their nasty comments. Yet he grants that Rand and her true-believers have become a formidable presence in American life. His book is a must-read for any observer of the rise of far-right politics in this land.

P.S. I am editing this review, in the wake of Romney's having chosen Paul Ryan as his running mate. Ryan, of course, is a devotee of La Rand and makes his staffers read ATLAS SHRUGGED. It's one more step toward the U.S. becoming an "Ayn Rand Nation."