Preserving the Fountainhead

Leonard Peikoff clears his throat. With a neat stack of books by the late philosopher and writer Ayn Rand on his desk, Peikoff launches into his weekly radio show, “Philosophy: Who Needs It?” Outside his Irvine office window it’s a brilliant Sunday, but all this Rand disciple sees in the newspaper clippings he flips through is darkness: Success is scorned, mediocrity esteemed, irrationalism glorified, selfishness considered a sin, sacrifice a virtue.

Consider, he says, Bill Gates.

The gall rising in his voice, Peikoff reads aloud the details of the richest man in the country’s march toward Calvary: The mega-billionaire has prostrated himself before Congress, virtually apologizing for the success of Microsoft Corp. that inspired a federal antitrust investigation--one of this era’s great creators of wealth and jobs and technology forced to beg for forgiveness from the American public like a mass murderer at a parole hearing.

“Has America reached the stage that to become a lovable character you can’t be loved or admired or valued because of your creativity or achievements?” says Peikoff, the 64-year-old executor of Rand’s estate and a lifelong friend whose voice is going out to a dozen radio stations across the country, including KIEV 870 AM in Los Angeles. “If this man will do this to himself he doesn’t have any dignity at all. If he doesn’t have any dignity or pride, I’m sorry to say he deserves what he has coming to him. Do you think that’s going to deflect the Feds?”

If Gates were a hero in a Rand novel, of course, he would have thumbed his nose at Congress and used the occasion to give a spellbinding, hours-long speech defending his moral right to make more money than anyone else in the country.

Preposterous? Perhaps. But then, for most people, Rand’s philosophy has always hovered somewhere between naive narcissism and suicidally noble idealism. Yet 16 years after her death, this poetess/philosopher of freedom, capitalism and the individual is still inspiring millions of Americans. Her novels, especially “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged,” have fascinated readers for a half century and continue to sell more than 350,000 copies a year. Last fall, freshmen at UC Berkeley voted “The Fountainhead” the most important book they had read, while a Library of Congress/Book of the Month Club survey in 1991 found “Atlas Shrugged” trailing only the Bible as the most influential book in people’s lives.

Rand’s most ardent admirers spend their summer vacations cruising the Greek isles together and listening to shipboard lectures on her philosophy. They take graduate-level, although unaccredited, courses in her beliefs. They get together at monthly dinner meetings and annual conferences to discuss her books. They name their children after her fictional characters. They even sign their e-mail “Good premises,” aping Rand’s odd way of saying goodbye.

Rand lived in Chatsworth for years and today Southern California remains a hotbed of her devotees. It is here that her unconventional beliefs continue to be nurtured, largely under the auspices of the Ayn Rand Institute. To this small but devoted band, Rand’s books are absolute truth and a guide to living, and Rand’s philosophy of rational egoism is a virtual secular religion.

“Nobody has ever really tried to change the intellectual foundations of a culture before,” Michael Berliner, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, explains as the sun hovers over the Pacific outside the organization’s suite of offices in Marina del Rey. “We’re really trying to do that.”

Rand believed that ideas matter--and that for most of human history the wrong ideas have prevailed. In her view, the Judeo-Christian ideal of self-sacrifice and putting the collective ahead of the individual was not just wrong, but evil, logically and inexorably leading to the genocidal horrors of Communism and Nazism.

In contrast, Rand created a philosophy, which she called Objectivism, that placed the highest moral purpose on development of the individual, whose actions, guided by reason and enlightened self-interest, were the only way to create a just and flourishing society. Unfettered by the state, man will create the art of Michelangelo or an economic powerhouse like Microsoft; shackled to the ideal of self-sacrifice, he will create the Holocaust.

Last year, when President Clinton launched his community service drive with a volunteerism summit in Philadelphia, Objectivists greeted what would seem like the least objectionable idea imaginable with picket signs and petitions in opposition to the drive. “Everyone else was dripping with honey,” Berliner recalls. “This is a moral obscenity.” To Randians, as her followers are sometimes known, the idea of preaching the virtues of sacrifice at the birthplace of the Constitution--which for the first time in history founded a nation in the name of liberty and the pursuit of happiness--was akin to holding a birthday celebration for Hitler in a synagogue.

Volunteerism to Randians is a form of altruism, of living for someone else, which ultimately not only stifles the human spirit but also erodes the foundation of egoism necessary for all great creations of art, business and science. Rand believed that dictatorships, for example, are based on altruism, in which people do not exist for their own purposes but merely exist for the good of the state. In the view of Rand’s followers today, those who, like Bill Gates, refuse to mount a principled defense of their accomplishments are digging their own graves. “Businessmen are the symbol of a free society--the symbol of America,” Rand wrote. “If and when they perish, civilization will perish.”

*

Lisa Vandamme is leading her class through a vocabulary lesson. “O-di-ous,” she says slowly to five children sitting before her at desks in a mirrored and carpeted rec room in Newport Beach. VanDamme asks her students--refugees from the mixed premises and ethical bankruptcy of public and private school systems--to make sentences with the new word. One of the most eager is Kira Peikoff, named after the heroine in Rand’s first novel, “We the Living,” by her father, Leonard.

“Odious,” the 13-year-old repeats. “Because we believe modern art is odious to the eye, we had an unsuccessful experience at the Orange County Art Museum.”

The home school was founded two years ago by Peter LePort, a Fountain Valley surgeon, and a few other Objectivist parents who wanted their children to receive a rigorous education untainted by the solvents of multiculturalism, moral relativity and environmental

propaganda. LePort first discovered Rand in medical school. He named his son Francisco after a character in “Atlas Shrugged.” And his soaring, light-filled house was designed by an architect whose career choice was inspired by “The Fountainhead.”

“It’s not a program to teach Objectivism or indoctrinate,” LePort says. “It’s teaching them how to think.”

Betsy Speicher’s license plate says it all: READ AYN. And people do. They wave copies of “The Fountainhead” at her on the freeway, wait for her to come out of stores to chat about their favorite author, or peruse the Objectivist newsletter she sends out by e-mail. But Rand’s presence in Speicher’s life is actually more subtle and indelible, sort of a philosophical cruise control that allows her to steer a rational course to her self-interest. “It just gives me a framework in which to make decisions,” she says. There was a time in my life when I had to think things through, what each little thing meant. After a while, it’s more or less automated. But I see the difference between my way of doing things and other people’s.”

Speicher, a computer consultant in Thousand Oaks, credits Rand with inspiring her in high school to defy her mother’s wish that she go into public relations and bucking her father’s advice to get married instead of going to college. “Basically, Ayn Rand gave me the kick in the tush and said, ‘Don’t live for them. You can’t fake reality. You have to live for yourself,’ ” she says.

And to stand up for what you believe, which is why Speicher joined a new Objectivist group called the Committee for the Moral Defense of Microsoft, which has launched a battle on behalf of Gates. Speicher and other Objectivists believe the principle is vital. “If their freedom goes, everybody’s goes. Being a coward when it comes to fighting for my values is just stupid. I’m not going to give up my values for anything. I see other people wrecking their lives by sacrificing their values.”

On the second Wednesday of every month, a group of Objectivists gathers for a philosophical supper at Marie Callender’s in Glendale. Speicher hands me the program from the annual Objectivist Conference in Irvine last year--an event sanctioned by Peikoff and run by Lyceum International, which organizes various Objectivist seminars and tour outings. More than 300 people attended lectures on topics as diverse as little-known fiction that Rand admired and psychotherapy from a Randian perspective. Or they relaxed at the Ayn Rand picnic, which featured foods prepared from Rand’s personal recipe collection. In the back are biographies submitted by many of the attendees: “My special interests are metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of science, economics, geography, applying Objectivism to high school debate.” More than a few seem to be seeking soul mates. “Fondest Hope: Meet/fall in love with beautiful passionate Objectivist woman (preferably a soprano).”

On my other side is Jonathan Rosman, a psychiatrist in Pasadena who read “Anthem” at 14. His parents were Orthodox Jews and his atheism almost got him disowned. “Objectivism influences everything I do in my life: my choice of profession, my romantic partner, how I conduct my work, the kind of art I like,” Rosman says.

“I don’t spout Objectivism to patients unless they bring it up. I’m not out there to sell a philosophy, but I will teach them principles of thinking and using their mind that are in line with Objectivism. I teach people to be more selfish, to look at themselves better, to take care of themselves better. I’m combating people’s altruism.” Eventually Rosman got his dad to read Rand and it changed his life, too. “He was a businessman and always felt guilty about making money,” Rosman says. “He shed this huge burden of guilt.”

“You’ve done good,” Speicher says.

*

Ayn Rand was born Alice Rosenbaum in St. Petersburg in 1905. She watched from her balcony as the Russian Revolution broke out in 1917. Man must live for the state, the triumphant Bolsheviks declared. The young girl, who had already decided to become a writer, now found the thing she would spend her life fighting: totalitarianism in all its forms. Life was usually that simple for her. As a teenager she decided to become an atheist because the idea of God was demeaning to man, and she vowed never to have children because they took too much time. Victor Hugo was the single writer who influenced her, Aristotle the only philosopher she learned anything from.

“My philosophical views are not part of the history of philosophy yet,” she lectured one of her professors at the University of Petrograd. “But they will be.”

At 21, with a fractured command of English, she arrived in the United States, took the name Ayn Rand, a combo of a Finnish name she fancied and the Remington-Rand typewriter she had lugged over from Russia. She went to Hollywood to write scripts. In 1936, Rand published her first novel, a bleak story about the horrors of life in the Soviet Union, “We the Living,” which immediately sank from sight. She couldn’t find a U.S. publisher for a second anti-totalitarian novel, “Anthem.” Finally, after a dozen rejection slips, Rand hit pay dirt when “The Fountainhead” came out in 1943. Over the next 40 years the book sold some 4 million copies and made Rand famous.

She spent 14 years working on her next book, “Atlas Shrugged,” a 1,000-page allegory of the world falling apart after its great industrialists and inventors go on strike and retreat to a hideaway in the Rockies. The hero is John Galt, whose 60-page speech proclaiming Rand’s philosophy would make Bill Gates’ PR advisors run screaming from the room.

On the surface, it might seem that the Objectivists’ time has finally come. Almost a decade after the end of the Cold War, communism is virtually dead and capitalism is breaking out across the globe, while at home, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are celebrated as heroes and Wall Street is more popular than at any time since the Great Depression.

And yet Rand’s cardinal virtues--selfishness, egoism and individualism--are still seen as vices.

College students might love Rand’s books, but few will ever stumble across her on a syllabus. Academic philosophers don’t acknowledge that she ever existed. Even those who love Rand’s books tend to dismiss her most loyal followers as crackpots. “I’ve read ‘Atlas Shrugged’ a half-dozen times; a great book, just terrific,” says Michael Shermer, who publishes Skeptic magazine from his house in Altadena and who wrote a chapter, “The Unlikeliest Cult,” on Rand’s die-hard followers in his book “Why People Believe Weird Things.”

“I love that black-and-white world view, heroes and villains,” Shermer says. “But as a scientific tool to model the world, it doesn’t work. People are not all good or all bad; they’re complicated. The Randian world is black and white. It’s fantasy. How can they hope to appeal to mainstream America with their philosophy when they have these weirdos who project it?”

Peikoff and other Randians don’t want to appeal to mainstream American if they have to compromise. Their role model, after all, is Howard Roark, the brilliant architect-philosopher of “The Fountainhead,” who blows up his own building rather than see his design debased.

As Berliner explains: “Orthodox objectivism is a redundancy. It’s just Objectivism. Some people like to have Objectivism and at the same time indulge their whims. What it holds, it holds as an absolute. A lot of people are psychologically uncomfortable with that. They want to water it down, compromise it, add their own stuff, and think that they’re still Objectivist.”

In 1985, three years after Rand’s death, Berliner sent out a fund-raising letter on behalf of the newborn Ayn Rand Institute. Then Berliner, chairman of the philosophy of education department at Cal State Northridge, went off on a European vacation. When he came back two weeks later, the office was overflowing with mail, including 900 checks, one for $5,000. Today the institute has a budget of almost $2 million a year, paid for by individual contributions. Rand’s sturdy writing desk greets visitors near the door; pictures and letters from her line the walls.

The institute houses Rand’s papers, which Peikoff owns and is considering opening to scholars. An oral history project about Rand is in the works and most of the institute’s initiatives are similarly low-key: Last year 6,500 high school students wrote essays about Rand’s books hoping to win a top prize of $10,000, while college students at scores of campus clubs gathered to discuss her philosophy.

“We just try to find people who are unaware of Ayn Rand and introduce her to them, and provide opportunities for them to learn more about her until the day comes when she’s taught in universities,” Berliner says. “But at the rate universities are going, I’m not optimistic.”

*

In 1951, Leonard Peikoff was planning to go to medical school. Then he met Ayn Rand. She was already a famous novelist, but the short and stout Russian immigrant with a thick Slavic accent, a pageboy haircut and saucer-like eyes that glowed with preternatural passion, spent five hours talking philosophy with the skinny 17-year-old Canadian. In an instant, Peikoff could feel the tectonic plates of his life shift. “From the time I first met her there was only one thing that counts in life to me,” Peikoff says over lunch after the radio show, “and that was to understand what she is saying.”

So began a 31-year friendship. After getting his PhD from New York University, Peikoff longed for an academic career, which sputtered out in 1973 when he failed to make tenure at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, a trade school where had been teaching philosophy out of the English department. Now he writes and lectures, and as executor of Rand’s estate, Peikoff reaps a yearly six-figure income from book royalties.

As a youth, Peikoff once gave Rand a good laugh. It was 1951, and he had just read parts of the manuscript for “Atlas Shrugged,” which would be published in 1957. He threw up his hands, declaring that the struggle was over, that once people read this book, with its iron logic and bulldozer cogency, a new age of laissez-faire individualism would dawn on the world. Rand responded by telling Peikoff that he was crazy. Her books, however, did wind up paying the mortgage on a house that looks like a shrine, stuffed as it is with Rand memorabilia, photos and the Michelangelo reproductions that embodied her ideal of masculine potency. So it’s not surprising to find Peikoff’s office displaying some of Rand’s longhand “Fountainhead” scribblings: “Howard Roark laughed,” the book famously begins. “The manuscript was sent to the Library of Congress at her instructions,” Peikoff says. “But I stole the first and last pages.”

Some people accuse Peikoff of trying to steal Rand’s philosophy as well. In 1990, David Kelley, an Objectivist who taught philosophy at Vassar College, formed a rival think tank, challenging Peikoff’s monopoly on all things Randian. The Institute for Objectivist Studies, which is about half the size of Peikoff’s institute, advocates more of a big tent, inclusive version of Objectivism. “Peikoff has said that people who don’t get it are evil,” Kelley says. “I don’t think he’s either thinking or practicing the philosophy. He’s taking Objectivism as a kind of religion and is reacting to the fact that he cannot dictate what to believe.”

Peikoff is unfazed. Picking over the blackened red snapper on his plate, he could well be poking at the bones of what he sees as a decaying society that desperately needs Objectivism. “Everything in one sense is lower and worse,” he says ruefully. “Politically, educationally, multiculturalism, feministic interpretation of Shakespeare, the wave of egalitarianism, the exaltation of disabilities--all that is in the last decade. The intellectuals are worse, the colleges are worse, the entertainment industry is worse. The only thing people think is the alternative is the return to religion . . . We’re still in a pre-rational age. We’re engulfed in mysticism and fundamentalism of every kind.”

Yet Peikoff agrees that Rand’s views have seeped into the culture a bit. “The same viewpoint that was considered monstrous is now considered impractical idealism, which is a great forward step,” he says. “I’m completely convinced that ultimately--but ultimately can be a very long time--Rand’s going to win out. I really do think at some point her ideas will be the foundation of a renaissance and a whole new direction in Western civilization.”