Light On Dark Water

The Hand of Rand

A discussion
on Dawn Eden’s blog
the other day about the
problem of sex-selection abortion struck a note that I
haven’t heard before. The intial post was a story about the
prevalence of this practice in India, and a challenge to
the refusal of pro-choice feminists to condemn it. In
response, one of them attempted to explain that the refusal to
“condemn…the choices women in countries like India
and China have made” is a recognition of the fact that the
choice to abort female babies is, in a society which devalues
women, “rational.” The conditions which lead to that
calculation are deplorable, but not the decision itself, which is
a reasonable response to the conditions.

I was more than a bit shocked at that. To excuse
a wrong as having been done out of desperation is not
the same thing as to call it rational. And this
“rational” choice was contrasted with the
“sexist” choice which the same act on the part of an
American would constitute, and which would be worthy of
condemnation. At first glance the capriciousness of this view is
striking: a woman who decides to abort her female child for
economic reasons is not to be condemned, but a woman who does the
same because she would prefer for some personal reason to have a
male child is guilty of sexism and has done something deplorable.
If the woman’s choice is sovereign in any case, as the
feminists in the discussion all seem to agree, what difference do
her motives make, and what right does anyone else have to judge
them?

More important, though, is the implicit definition of
“rational”: not “in accord with right
reason” but “in accord with material
self-interest.” It was surprising to me to hear this coming
from the political and cultural left. It’s the sort of
thing that one expects from the libertarian right, and
specifically from those influenced by Ayn Rand. I don’t
know that the commenter had Rand’s concept of
“rational self-interest” in mind, but his or her use
of the term “rational” is certainly reminiscent of
it.

I’ve suspected for a long time that the influence of Ayn
Rand on American life and thought is far greater than is
generally acknowledged or understood. Most intellectuals
don’t like her, don’t take her very seriously, and
find her more than a bit ridiculous. Leftists have obvious and
immediate reasons to hate her gospel of self-interested
capitalism, and National Review (or at least Whittaker
Chambers) attempted to excommunicate her from the conservative
movement in the 1950s, although her anti-Communism as well as the
conservative alliance with libertarianism kept that effort from
really sticking.

But somebody reads her. In 1991 a survey conducted by the
Library of Congress and the Book of the Month club found Atlas
Shrugged to be second in influence only to the Bible in the
U.S. As of this writing paperback editions of both The
Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged are in the top 1000
sellers at Amazon.com (at #585 and #644 respectively, with other
editions selling respectably). The Penguin edition of War and
Peace—I picked it thinking its sales are less likely to
be affected by movie tie-ins and mandatory student
purchases—is currently at #5,750.

It’s hard to imagine a neater and quicker summation of
the confused currents of thought running through the popular mind
(the American mind, anyway). One wonders how many of those
surveyed put both books near the top.

My wife’s brother has been in the hospital for the past
two weeks, perhaps terminally ill, almost helpless, disoriented,
and depressed. His life ceased to be materially productive some
years ago and he has not made a great deal of effort to resist
and counter the effects of the type 1 diabetes that has dogged
his life since he was four and is causing his slow physical
deterioration. It’s hard to say whether he has even been
enjoying his existence for the past couple of years. He has no
wife or children; his only living relatives are three siblings
and several cousins. He has few interests. He is costing himself,
the government (Medicaid), the electrician’s union (a
pension from his working days), and, indirectly, his siblings a
considerable amount of money.

My wife is running herself ragged trying to do whatever she
can for him while still taking care of all her other obligations.
She spends several hours a day at the hospital, trying to
encourage him and make him comfortable, talking to the doctors
and nurses about his condition in search of anything that might
help him improve. He is only alive today because she donated a
kidney to him ten years ago. He doesn’t seem terribly
appreciative of any of this.

Material self-interest plays no part whatever in her actions.
I don’t think she has in fact given her reasons a great
deal of thought: she is simply doing what she believes one should
do in this circumstance, and her conscience would let her do no less.
To paraphrase Sam Spade’s famous speech from The Maltese
Falcon, when your brother is sick you’re
supposed to take care of him.

Rational self-interest would offer a simple solution to this
problem: it would instruct her either to abandon her brother or
arrange for what is probably the process of his dying to proceed
more speedily to its goal. God save both her and her brother from
rational self-interest, and God save the U.S.A.