MovieChat Forums > Atlas Shrugged: Part III (2014) Discussion > 2nd Amendment and Ayn Rand

2nd Amendment and Ayn Rand

posted 10 years ago by fox252
14 replies | jump to latest

Ayn Rand was kind of on the fence when it came to second amendment rights to my understanding (maybe leaning more pro). I was glad to see that the film had Dagny armed with a firearm. I believe she even used it to dispatch the guard. I was really surprised by this scene and I do not believe the book happens in the same way but could be wrong. It only makes sense in terms of her philosophy: You can’t protect yourself from unjust force (government or not) without access to an equal level of force.

[–] ejonconrad 10 years ago

Yes, that scene is more or less straight out of the book; that is, both have a high- security government detention facility guarded by a single, totally incompetent guard who is easily dispatched by one person with a handgun.

Rand was probably on the fence about guns because she didn't believe in taking things by force - except from indigenous people. That was totally cool with her.

[–] gabby_bm 10 years ago

...because she didn't believe in taking things by force - except from indigenous people. That was totally cool with her.

A fool and their land are lucky to get together in the first place. I think Rand's opinion was that if the indigenous people here weren't exploiting everything to their fullest exploitability, then they were wasting potential- something Rand certainly looked down upon.

It's kind of like the urban legend of the 120 mpg carburetor- to own the patent and the tested product, but to sit on it and let it go to waste.

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[–] ejonconrad 10 years ago

So to sum it up, Rand believed it's OK to take things by force if:
(a) You feel you are culturally superior, and
(b) You can.
That's hardly a unique point of view, historically speaking.

It wouldn't be such a big deal if she didn't say repeatedly and absolutely - like she said everything - "No man should ever take anything from another man by force."

[–] gabby_bm 10 years ago

I think she had a certain amount of flexibility as there wasn't any real establishment of ownership. No documents, registration and no recognized court system within which to settle claim disputes.

I can't verify this and maybe someone else can, but I get the impression she would be opposed to the U.S. reneging on the territorial settlements between the government and the natives regarding treaties, reservations and their boundaries consistently being "readjusted" (i.e. stolen) time and again - as those would be an establishment of ownership.

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[–] ejonconrad 10 years ago

"Documents of ownership" at that time came from European monarchs, so it's unlikely that the Indians would have had them. Ayn Rand was pretty categorical in her disdain for the Indians, and certainly never distinguished between reneging on treaties and taking the land in the first place. I think her only complaint about the treaties is that they were signed in the first place.

From her quotes it's clear that she got all her information about Indians from westerns (she basically said as much). Like Hollywood, she believed all Indians were nomadic plains Indians, and even those got short shrift. In fact, many Indian nations had fairly sophisticated government, trade, and land ownership agreements.

[–] gabby_bm 10 years ago

Would those be the Ford Westerns or the Westerns where Chuck Connors and William Shatner played native Americans? 🙈.

I think most people had a limited perspective of Native Americans up to and through the 70's, thanks to the Hollywood model. I certainly wouldn't expect Rand to be any better versed than John Ford was.

Her value system seemed to conflict with her perception of the Native Americans and as such, they would be looked upon disdainfully as primitive and unquestionably non-progressive.

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[–] ejonconrad 10 years ago

Your average man on the street at that time could be forgiven for viewing American Indians as a bunch of white guys with shoe polish on their faces getting savage and rapey all the time, but Rand at least presented herself as a "scholar", so it wouldn't have been too much to ask that she had done a teeny bit of homework before opening her mouth.

Her basic argument that "It was OK to take the land away because they weren't making the most of it" reduces to absurdity pretty quickly. By her logic, if a farmer is struggling growing crops, it's OK for me to take his land away and build a factory, because he's proven he really doesn't deserve it.

If you look at this story, Midas purchased the Gulch under US law, but these people have made a decision to live outside that law, so I see no particular reason why anyone else should acknowledge his ownership. If I round up a different group of supermen who feel they could make better use of it, we' be within our rights to take it. I think she'd have to get off the fence about guns pretty damn quick.

I'm not arguing to give America back to the Indians, I'm trying to show that Rand's (and her sycophants') absolutely black and white view of the world falls apart pretty quickly upon even the most cursory inspection. It's one thing to pragmatically say "Yup, we stole this land fair and square" and quite another to try to make a moral case for it (I'm talking philosophically, of course; I doubt the Indians really care which it was).

[–] gabby_bm 10 years ago

Loving semantics the way i do, I prefer the term "conquered the land (and its people) fair and square". I don't see it as stealing.

After all, the planet belongs to all of us and the only thing that really establishes ownership and borders (taking it down to the brass tacks of it all) is the effectiveness of power and weaponry to take it and/or defend it. It's what keeps me from commandeering my neighbor's house or establishing a homestead in aisle 7 at WalMart

One could say that the Chinese have as much right to North America as the Mexicans, Americans and the Canadians. It is simply our weapons that keep them from moving in.

ANd maybe their appreciation of Capitalist trade?

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[–] OffSpec 10 years ago

It's more of a guideline than a rule.

[–] BlackJAC 10 years ago

An episode of the X-Files spinoff The Lone Gunmen dealt with that a bit: the daughter of the inventor of a water-powered car wanted to destroy the prototype while Big Oil wanted to deploy it, because people would want to buy water-powered cars which would lead to more roads being constructed and maintained, which meant more oil would be needed to make the requisite asphalt and engine lubricant.

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[–] tyrshonor 10 years ago

It's kind of like the urban legend of the 120 mpg carburetor- to own the patent and the tested product, but to sit on it and let it go to waste.

Or the legend of a motor that powers itself with static from the air.

Or the magic apartment building that can house a hundred people in luxury for less than the monthly cost of a flop house.

Rand's fiction makes it pretty clear what her philosophy is on people deciding not to exploit what is theirs, and even people who violently stop others from using what is theirs without their permission. At least if they're white.

[–] BlackJAC 10 years ago

From the essay "Atlas Sucked" at https://sites.google.com/site/atlassucked/part-1:

There is a tremendous amount of hypocrisy in Rand's worldview, which is in full display on the issue of using force. John Galt tells us several times that using force to coerce someone is bad, and is very insistent during his 60-page soapbox speech that force should only ever be used in self-defense against someone who threatens you with force (I looked for the quote but it's impossible to find in all his rantings). And yet, one of the greatest of all men is Ragnar Danneskjold, "the great thinker" who, instead of thinking, uses guns to rob unarmed ships full of food bound for starving nations, and who destroys industrial facilities that he thinks are bad. The Dread Pirate Ragnar uses force against those who do not threaten force, and he tries to change social and political policy with violence and destruction. In other words, he's a terrorist, no different from Osama Bin Laden (who is likewise considered by his disciples as something of a philosopher).

Also, at the end of the book, as the superhero industrialists storm the State Science Institute to rescue Galt from the Pit of Despair, Dagny shoots and kills a soldier who is not actually threatening her with force, using murder when it suits her purposes and not thinking twice (or even once) about it. We even have the lovely story of railroad founder Nat Taggart, said to have murdered an elected official who would not give him a permit. All of this points to a central point of Rand's worldview: it's never okay for people like you to threaten people like me with force, but it's okay for me to use force against you – to threaten, to injure, or even to kill you – if I decide that it suits my self-interest. Any suggestion of hypocrisy, of course, it explained away by the fact that Rand's people are the "betters" of the rest of us, and therefore their self-interest trumps everything.

Translation: Randroids are just as despotic and power-hungry as anyone else.
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[–] gabby_bm 10 years ago

it's never okay for people like you to threaten people like me with force, but it's okay for me to use force against you – to threaten, to injure, or even to kill you – if I decide that it suits my self-interest. Any suggestion of hypocrisy, of course, it explained away by the fact that Rand's people are the "betters" of the rest of us, and therefore their self-interest trumps everything.

It's not really hypocrisy if one examines the motivation and methods of that force. I mean, she saw "people like me" to be liberators while "people like you" to be the oppressors of liberators.

It's why we can applaud a wife who kills her abusive husband while we condemn an abusive husband who kills his wife.

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[–] 10 years ago

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