Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (58 page)

19
. Ed Barthelmes to Bob Parker, Time, Inc., mimeographed stringer report, February 18, 1960, Box 6, Isabel Paterson Papers, Hoover Presidential Library, West Branch, IA.

20
. Some examples of Rand’s influence on college syllabi: Rand’s essay “Faith and Force” was reprinted in William M. Jones,
Stages of Composition: A College Reader
(Boston: D. C. Heath, 1964); see Eleanor Morris to AR, May 15, 1964, ARP 001–04A.
Atlas Shrugged
was assigned as a term paper topic in Rhetoric 102 at the University of Illinois at Navy Pier, spring 1960, syllabus, Rhetoric 102, ARP 006–02E. Her work was assigned in social and political philosophy classes at the University of Colorado in 1964; see John Nelson to AR, April 2, 1964, ARP 100–13B. In 1965 Leonard Peikoff conducted a graduate seminar at the University of Denver, “The Objectivist Theory of Knowledge.”

21
. Karen Reedstrom, “Interview with Murray Franck,”
Full Context
, June 1992, 3; Whit Hancock to AR, April 9, 1966, ARP 040–07C; Karen Reedstrom, “Interview with Walter Donway,”
Full Context
, May 1992, 3.

22
. See Hilary Putnam, “A Half Century of Philosophy,” and Alexander Nehamas, “Trends in Recent American Philosophy,” in
American Academic Culture in Transformation: Fifty Years, Four Disciplines
, ed. Thomas Bender and Carl E. Schorske (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997). Rand’s willingness to address a general audience and popularize her concerns marked a return to an earlier ideal of the discipline, what Bruce Kucklick calls “American public philosophy.” Kucklick,
The Rise of American Philosophy
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977), xxiii.

23
. Karen Minto and David Oyerly, “Interview with Tom Bethell,”
Full Context
, January/February 1999, 1.

24
. Michael McElwee to AR, August 24, 1965, ARP 039–07A.

25
. Ayn Rand, “The Girl Hunters,”
The Objectivist Newsletter
1, no. 10 (1962), 42. This article also ran as a column in the
Los Angeles Times
.

26
.
Karen Reedstrom, “Interview with Mark Scott,”
Full Context
, March 1990, 3; Robert L. White, “Ayn Rand—Hipster on the Right,”
New University Thought
, August 1962, 65.

27
. Joe E. Prewitt to AR, May 31, 1967, ARP 005–18A; John Gelski to AR, September 8, 1964, ARP 039–06C; Sharon Presley quoted in Klatch,
A Generation Divided
, 70.

28
. Arthur Koestler,
chapter 1
in Richard Crossman, Louis Fischer, Andre Gide, Arthur Koestler, Silone Ignazio, Stephen Spender, and Richard Wright,
The God That Failed: Six Studies in Communism
(London: Hamish Hamilton, 1950), 32; Charlotte Hering to AR, July 27, 1964, ARP 039–06D.

29
. Edward Cain,
They’d Rather Be Right: Youth and the Conservative Movement
(New York: Macmillan, 1963), 48.

30
. Reedstrom, “Interview with Walter Donway,” 3.

31
. Michael McElwee to AR, August 24, 1965, ARP 039–07A.

32
. Nathaniel Branden, “Report to Our Readers,”
The Objectivist Newsletter
2, no. 12. (1963): 48; Nora Ephron, “A Strange Kind of Simplicity,”
New York Times Book Review
, May 5, 1968, 8; Lilo K. Luxembourg to Sidney Hook, April 9, 1961, Sidney Hook Papers, Box 154, “Ayn Rand,” Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University.

33
. White, “Ayn Rand—Hipster on the Right,” 71.

34
. “A Survey of the Political and Religious Attitudes of American College Students,”
National Review
, October 8, 1963, special supplement. There are no extant studies of Objectivist youth, but it is likely they shared some characteristics with conservative youth more broadly, who have been identi. ed as being slightly below the norm for income of college students as a whole, with a signi. cant gap between them and students on the left, who tend to come from more af. uent backgrounds. See Riley Dunlap, “Radical and Conservative Student Activists: A Comparison of Family Background,”
Pacific Sociological Review
, 13 (summer 1970): 171–80; David Westby and Richard Braungart, “Class and Politics in the Family Backgrounds of Student Political Activists,”
American Sociological Review
31 (1996): 690–92. Religious upbringing and family background were the most important factors in determining political orientation, researchers have found. Klatch,
A Generation Divided;
Margaret M. Braungart and Richard Braungart, “The Life Course Development of Left and Right Wing Student Activist Leaders for the 1960s,”
Political Psychology
2 (1990): 243–82.

35
. For Rand’s influence on YAF, see Andrew,
The Other Side of the ‘60s
, 61–62, 106–7; Schneider,
Cadres for Conservatism
, 156. Robert Schuchman to AR, October 15, 1959, ARP 105–12D.

36
. Karl Hess,
Mostly on the Edge: An Autobiography
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1999), 207; Tibor Machan to AR, undated letter circa 1962, ARP 020–02A. In addition to publishing widely on libertarianism, Machan later became one of the founding partners of
Reason
magazine. His involvement with Rand is described in Machan,
The Man without a Hobby: Adventures of a Gregarious Egoist
(Lanham, MD: Hamilton Books, 2004). Craig Howell to AR, March 26, 1966, ARP 040–07D.

37
. Goldwater’s campaign is now recognized as a formative moment in the history of the conservative movement. See Perlstein,
Before the Storm;
Lisa McGirr,
Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 2001); Brian Doherty,
Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement
(New York: Public Affairs, 2007).

38
. Ayn Rand, “A Suggestion,”
The Objectivist Newsletter
2, no. 10 (1963): 40. On Rand’s hopes for involvement with the campaign in both 1960 and 1964, see Muriel Hall to Nathaniel Branden, June 11, 1960, ARP 040–07D; Barry Goldwater to Herbert Baus, August 14, 1964, ARP 044–05D.

39
. Elayne Kalberman to AR, May 7, 1964, ARP 060–17x; Nathaniel Branden, “A Report to Our Readers,”
The Objectivist Newsletter
3, no. 12 (1964): 51.

40
. Goldwater quoted in Perlstein,
Before the Storm
, 234. Washington Draft Goldwater committee, chairman, Luke Williams, November 4, 1963, to Signet Books, ARP 043–05A.

41
. Jerome Tuccille,
It Usually Begins with Ayn Rand
(New York: Stein and Day, 1971), 39, 37; William Minto and Karen Minto, “Interview with Robert Poole,”
Full Context
, May/June 1999, 1; Paul Richard, “Writer Rests His Pen, Turns to Blowtorch,” Washington Post, November 21, 1967, B3; “Echoes and Choices,”
Washington Star
, September 3, 1964, A10.

42
. Ayn Rand, “Check Your Premises: Racism,”
The Objectivist Newsletter
2, no. 9 (1963), 35. Rand’s views may be taken as an early iteration of a race-neutral discourse about individual rights that nonetheless had important consequences for federal and state racial policy, particularly in suburbia. Books that explore the discourse surrounding racial issues include Matthew Lassiter,
The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006); Kevin Kruse,
White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007); Donald T. Critchlow and Nancy MacLean,
Debating the American Conservative Movement: 1945 to the Present
(New York: Rowman and Little. eld, 2009).

43
. For details on the JBS, see Donald T. Critchlow,
The Conservative Ascendancy: How the GOP Right Made Political History
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 56–59; Jonathan M. Schoenwald,
A Time for Choosing: The Rise of Modern American Conservatism
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), especially 78–93; Eckard V. Toy Jr., “The Right Side of the 1960s: The Origins of the John Birch Society in the Paci. c Northwest,”
Oregon Historical Quarterly
105, no. 2 (2004), 260–283.

44
. Ayn Rand, “ ‘Extremism’ or the Art of Smearing,”
The Objectivist Newsletter
3, no. 9 (1964): 38; D. A. Waite to Mrs. Theodore J. Truske, April 30, 1964, box 7, folder “64,” JBS Files John Hay Library, Brown University.

45
. Rand, “Extremism,” 37.

46
. Rand’s postmortem of the campaign is in Ayn Rand, “It Is Earlier Than You Think,”
The Objectivist Newsletter
3, no. 12 (1964): 50. Rand’s warning about Goldwater’s loss is found in Ayn Rand, “Special Note,”
The Objectivist Newsletter
3, no. 10 (1964), 44. Rand sent her speech to Michael D. Gill of Citizens for Goldwater-Miller, with the instruction that either Goldwater or Eisenhower could use it. AR to Michael D. Gill, October 28, 1964, ARP 043–05A.

47
. Goldwater’s success was once understood to have inspired Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy, . first articulated in Kevin Phillips,
The Emerging Republican Majority
(New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1969), but the importance of the Southern Strategy
has been questioned by Matthew Lassiter, who suggests it is better understood as a suburban strategy (Lassiter,
The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South
). Byron Schafer and Richard Johnston,
The End of Southern Exceptionalism: Class, Race, and Partisan Change in the Postwar South
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), make a similar argument. Other books that engage this critical question include Kruse,
White Flight
, 252–55; Thomas B. Edsell and Mary Edsell,
Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics
(New York: Norton, 1991); Jason Sokol,
There Goes My Everything: White Southerners in the Age of Civil Rights 1945–1975
(New York: Knopf, 2006), 272–75; Dan Carter,
The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, The Origins of the New Conservatism, and The Transformation of American Politics
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000); Michael Flamm,
Law and Order: Street Crime, Civil Unrest, and the Crisis of Liberalism in the 1960s
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2005); Joseph Lowndes,
From the New Deal to the New Right: Race and the Southern Origins of Modern Conservatism
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008); Joseph Crespino,
In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and Conservative Counterrevolution
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007); Rick Perlstein,
Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America
(New York: Scribner, 2008).

48
. Murray Seeger, “Hope Still Found for Conservatism,”
New York Times
, November 5, 1964, 20.

49
. Barry Goldwater, “For a Free Society,”
Herald Tribune
, June 20, 1965, 8. This reference is from Rand, “It Is Earlier Than You Think.”

50
. Rand, “It Is Earlier Than You Think,” 50.

51
. Michael P. Lecovk to AR, February 7, 1965, ARP 040–07F.

52
. Milton Friedman with Rose Friedman,
Capitalism and Freedom
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), 1.

53
. See Bennett Cerf to AR, October 18, 1963, AR to Bennett Cerf, October 30, 1963, Bennett Cerf to AR November 1, 1963, November 22, 1963, and February 7, 1964, ARP 131–10B. Bennett Cerf to Elayne Kalberman, January 14, 1966, ARP 131–10C. Cerf described his relationship with Rand in
At Random: The Reminiscences of Bennett Cerf
(New York: Random House, 1977).

54
. Ayn Rand, “The Objectivist Ethics,” speech delivered to University of Wisconsin Symposium, “Ethics in Our Time,” January 9, 1961, reprinted in
The Virtue Of Sel. selfishness
(New York: Signet, 1964), 34.

55
. Rand, Virtue of selfishness, 114.

56
. Rand, “For the New Intellectual,” in
For the New Intellectual
, 55.

57
. See, for example, Ayn Rand,
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
(New York: Penguin, 1967), 48, 216; Rand,
For the New Intellectual
, 43. “At the point of a gun” was a favorite libertarian catchphrase. Ludwig von Mises used it to describe collective bargaining. Mises quoted in Kimberly Phillips-Fein,
Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan
(New York: Norton, 2009), 105. It is unclear if Mises and Rand arrived at the phrase independently or if one learned it from the other.

58
. Rand,
The Virtue of Selfishness
, 137, 131.

59
. “Objectivist Calendar,”
The Objectivist Newsletter
, April 1965, 18. Hessen, interview with author, December 11, 2007.

Chapter 8

1
. Adriana Slifka, “Ayn Rand Pulls TV Mail,”
Youngstown Vindicator
, December 19, 1967, ARP 006–4A; Edward Kuhn, New American Library, to AR, February 28, 1968, ARP 088–02A.

2
. Turner Advertising Company erected the billboards in January 1967 in seven major southern cities: Atlanta (80 billboards), Covington, Kentucky (20), Charleston (24), Chattanooga (32), Richmond (40), and Roanoke (20). The cost was approximately eight thousand dollars, paid by Turner himself. “It’s Message in Question on Rebirth of Man’s Spirit,”
Atlanta Journal Constitution
, February 5, 1967, 21; Ted Turner to Paul Gitlin, March 1, 1967, ARP 003–07x.

3
. Although NBI does not appear to have kept exact numbers of students enrolled, based on the figures for these two years a conservative estimate would put the total number of students in the range of at least ten thousand (an average of two thousand students over at least five years; NBI existed from 1958 to 1968). The institute claimed a mailing list of forty thousand people.