Posted March 23rd, 2008 at 11:41 AM by Jeff A. Taylor
I’ll have more — much more — on this later, but for now recall that Phil Dubois has no business acting shocked over what the BB&T gift entailed. At its core was a moral defense of capitalism. If that doesn’t tell you that you are going to be teaching Ayn Rand, I don’t know what does.
Oh, and I think we’ve set a record on scooping the Uptown paper of record — two years, seven months.
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March 23rd, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Well, there’s always Michael Novak if Ayn Rand makes one squeamish.
March 23rd, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Like John Allison, I too am an avid reader of Ayn Rand’s work and I consider myself an Objectivist. (Unlike John Allison, I am not the CEO of a major bank, and never will be.)
But what the some of the academics at UNCC and those other schools obviously just don’t get, because of their natural inclination away from Objectivism and toward altruism, is that Allison’s proposal (i.e., I will give you money that you want if you give me something that I want, specifically for Ayn Rand’s work to be taught at your school) goes to the very heart of Objectivism: Two rational people are always capable of coming to a mutually-beneficial arrangement.
So now they want Allison to reconsider his side of the deal. My response, were I John Allison: “Sure, we can renegotiate. You don’t want to teach Ayn Rand’s work as we agreed you would, fine; just give me all of my money back and we’ll both walk away.” For them to try to weasel out of their end of the deal demonstrates the character of these people; they will make a promise in order to get your money away from you, and then they’ll try to screw you out of what they owe you. The real conflict here is not between John Allison and the schools who are raising a fuss over the terms of his deal; it’s between the school administrators, who more often than not are pragmatists who will take money from anywhere they can get it as long as the conditions are not too extreme, and the ivory tower academics who like to rule their classrooms like little tinpot dictators. The schools themselves are obviously OK with the deal, or they’d not have it in the first place. (Unless, of course, it was their intention all along to take his money and then try to screw him.)
If schools want “true academic freedom”, where they can teach whatever they want without anyone telling them what to teach, then I suggest they stop taking money from people like John Allison. The main reason, I think, that these lefty academics are squawking loudly about “academic freedom” is that they disapprove of Ayn Rand; if Allison’s proposal came with the requirement that Marx’ Communist Manifesto be taught, I doubt we’d hear a peep from these people.
March 23rd, 2008 at 3:04 pm
John Allison will be the headline lunch speaker on April 19th at Civitas’ 3rd Annual Conservative Leadership Conference in Greensboro.
More info at http://www.clc08.com
March 23rd, 2008 at 6:56 pm
Well, I’m not an Objectivist, though I love Atlas Shrugged. I also agree in the moral superiority of laissez-faire capitalism. As has already been mentioned, capitalism involves only the voluntary exchange of values, leaving both parties better off than when they started. However, you gotta acknowledge Allison’s hypocrisy here. The American banking system is one of the most government-dependent industries in the country. If Allison wants to be such a champion of capitalism, I would like to hear him talk about how to eliminate the Federal Reserve. See for example http://www.mises.org/story/1480 .
March 23rd, 2008 at 10:09 pm
I’ve never considered myself an objectivist either, but this does call to mind one of Rand’s more insightful remarks. She once said that there’s really no such thing as “public property” in the sense in which it’s usually sold to the voters – something that everyone owns equally and has enforceable access to. Instead, what it’s just things that are to be at the disposal and for the benefit of the elites while everyone else is made to pay for it.
There’s more than a little of that going on here.
March 24th, 2008 at 10:05 am
Chris Cole’s comment was a cheap shot and totally uncalled for, especially directed against someone like John Allison who is doing so much for the cause of capitalism.
A banker, however regulated his industry, isn’t anymore disqualified to uphold capitalism than a physician would be who opposes socialized medicine or a teacher public education.
John Allison’s consistency – and integrity – can hardly be questioned when his is the only bank of which I am aware that will not loan money for any project involving the use of eminent domain.
I don’t know his views on the Federal Reserve, but I assume as an Objectivist and laissez-faire capitalist, he opposes it. Why would someone assume otherwise merely because his bank is regulated by the Federal Reserve and other gov’t agencies? Does he have any choice in the matter?
March 24th, 2008 at 10:19 am
I don’t think it was a cheap shot — perhaps just a very, very high standard. Which brings up an interesting question — just at what point does one go Howard Roark or John Galt on a corrupt and oppressive system?
Or as HL Mencken put it, raise the black flag and start slitting throats?
March 24th, 2008 at 10:42 am
…at what point does one go Howard Roark or John Galt on a corrupt and oppressive system?
Well, part of the problem with that question is that Rand’s scenarios, especially in Atlas Shrugged, depended largely on two assumptions:
1. That the rest of the world, beyond the US, was lost to free will and capitalism.
2. That there was some refuge within the US where the men of the mind (Galt, Wyatt, Rearden, etc.) could escape to and not be found, thus depriving the world of their talent.
Obviously (1) is not the case. Even if the top minds in the US said “to heck with it” and went on strike, the fact is that there are plenty of people in India, China, Japan, and other non-Muslim Asian nations who’d be happy to pick up where we left off. Those nations are in a mindset that the US was last in back in the late 1800s, where they are flexing their industrial muscles and beginning to reach their true potential… and they are not similarly burdened with the apparent self-loathing that we have so much of here in the US. So even if our top talent simply quit, they’d still be around to keep things going.
As far as (2) goes, there simply isn’t such a place as Galt’s Gulch in the real world.
I guess the only way a person in the US could “go John Galt” at this point would be to make their billion dollars, cash out, and shut their company down for good. I don’t know about you, but if I somehow found myself with a net worth of a few hundred million dollars, I would retire for good and then do research/whatever only for my own entertainment.
March 24th, 2008 at 11:35 am
Hey, they can always talk about Ayn Rand in the Women’s Studies courses, right?
Right?
March 24th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
When Charlotte has embarked on Smart Growth/ Central Planning/ Socialism, the study of capitalism is history! Socialism has become popular trend, without the consent of the governed.
March 24th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
Here I go forgetting what I wrote again —
Allison has had BB&T fairly pro-active in terms of property rights and non-fascist development support…
http://www.reason.com/news/show/34161.html
March 24th, 2008 at 8:41 pm
Thanks for the link, Jeff. Yes, precisely my point.
However, also keep in mind that while BB&T is headquartered in N. Carolina, it has offices throughout much of the south and its decision in regard to eminent domain extends to those as well.
Btw, the philosophy dept at the Univ. of Texas – Austin has just accepted a $2million grant from BB&T for the establishment of a chair for the study of Objectivism. The first recipient will be Objectivist scholar and author, Tara Smith, who teaches at UT.
So, for this and many other reasons, there is sufficient basis for hope that a fundamental cultural shift is possible. It will of course take time. But so long as the direction is generally positive, even allowing for setbacks, there is no basis for giving up the fight. While the danger is always present, I think we are still a long way from dictatorship. Therefore, as long as we have ample room for intellectual action we should continue to take advantage of it.
March 25th, 2008 at 7:50 am
[...] Via the John Locke Foundation. [...]
March 25th, 2008 at 11:25 pm
From my experience within the Belk graduate program, Atlas Shrugged is a free gift to all MBA students but contrary to what the Observer states, is not required reading. Moral Intelligence, which is completely unrelated to Objectivism, is required reading.
June 9th, 2009 at 8:04 am
[...] Queens University will take $500K from John Allison’s BB&T charity arm to study the works of Ayn Rand. The horror. [...]