Rand, Anthem, and Genocide

Posted on April 15, 2011 in Morals & Ethics Reading Scoundrels Stigma

[[Ayn Rand]]’s Anthem is included in many summer reading programs these days. It tells a story of a young man who is trapped in a world where there is only “We”. He escapes and finds an ancient library where the books are filled with this wonderful new word whose concept he embraces passionately: “I”. It was, for the teenager that I was, a heady perusal. All my life I had felt locked into what was “good for the family”. Rand offered a way out of this, but I did not see the future and the full implications of Anthem.

One thing that her hero declares his independence from are “the halt and the lame”. Now I realize that he meant people like me — someone who lives with [[bipolar disorder]]. I can only ask just what did Rand want to do with all the people who didn’t measure up to her “heroic” ideal? ((Never mind the heroism that it takes to live every day with this disease.)) I hear here an echo of the [[Nazis]], who took people like me and, first, sterilized them, then “euthanized” them to cleanse the gene pool. When I see Rand devotee [[Paul Ryan]] promulgating a Medicare/Medicaid scheme that will leave the disabled with precious little insurance, I can only recall Rand’s paean to selfishness. Despite my education and my intelligence, I am one of her “halt and lame”.

This “I” feels life. But the years and the illness have taught me a larger lesson: that “we” is also essential because we do not exist alone. I see a language without either first person pronoun desolate and untrue. I see a nation unwilling to cherish its people regardless of their infirmities doomed to incompleteness.