Objectivists Divide Over Trump

As early as middle school and certainly by high school, I noticed I’d have these gut feelings and anger well up inside of me when certain teachers taught. But at that time, I couldn’t always put my finger on why. I’d often overhear Michael Savage’s voice on the radio while my dad was cooking dinner, explaining current events. Then I remember listening attentively to my dad’s interpretation of what my teachers said at the dinner table. Finally, after discovering Ayn Rand and her work, I had answers to all my gut feelings. I found the individual, the “I” that was me, and the liberal ideology that possessed many of my teachers.

Objectivism gave me the oxygen I needed amidst the barrage of confusion, trolley problems, anti-reality, magical, supernatural, illogical thinking washing over me from all sides of my higher education. She showed me that life doesn’t have to be complicated, with one tragedy inevitably following another because man has original sin. She revealed that focusing on reality and the truth will allow me to create the life I want to live, one that increases my happiness.

I truly wish that Ayn Rand was still alive today because I’m having that same gut feeling again without the answers and it is all over: Donald Trump. There is this growing rift between what seems to be the scholars at the Ayn Rand Institute and other outside Objectivists. The scholars seem to hate Trump while the outsiders tend to love him. It’s like watching my parents divorce all over again. Most of my close family and friends love Trump. But every time I listen to another ARI podcast or see a post on X from someone heavily involved in ARI, all I hear are negatives about him and my stomach squirms.

I should note, however, that endorsing a specific political candidate does not make you an Objectivist or not. It is when you agree with her four basic pillars of Objectivism and its overall goal that makes you one, so really this should not give people a reason to drop a philosophical label that they want to carry.

If Ayn Rand was here today, I believe that she would surprise the people at ARI and give a clarifying answer as to why Trump is not Hitler but now an American icon. I say this with the deep conviction that the only person left on this earth to have spent the most time with her when she was alive and named him her intellectual heir, Leonard Peikoff, stated at the end of a video in 2020 that “I wanna add one sentence: I am voting for Trump. That’s it. Okay. […] I’m not arguing, but I heard somebody say, ‘No Objectivist would vote for Trump.’ And I’m still steaming over that, so I’m tryin’ to publicize the fact that whoever said that is crazy.” Please read the comments to this video that I’ll link below to read who may have been the one to say that if you’re curious. I will not be bringing in any ARI-related people’s names into this video. However, I believe that ARI cut the end of this video section off. Now, I understand that they as a nonprofit cannot and will not endorse a particular candidate, but they could have left Peikoff’s commentary in. To me, it is a huge slap in the face to the creator of the Institute itself. He’s not old and losing his mind, like Biden.

Not to mention that Peikoff is the very man who wrote the DIM Hypothesis, which sends out the warning call about our country falling into religious totalitarianism and, yet, he does not view Trump as that exact type of threat that the Democrats are pointing to. That should tell Objectivists something. Trump has never seemed that religious, which is precisely why he chose Pence as his vice president back in 2016 in order to win the vote of the evangelical Christians. Now, if this was all about Pence running, who talked about god every time he opened his mouth, then I’d be more worried.

I think that Ayn Rand is much more conservative, at least morally, than many modern-day Objectivist intellectuals are acknowledging. Remember her scenes in Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, where the male lead is always sexually dominant over the submissive female? Remember how she said that no woman would even want to be president because she wouldn’t have a man to look up to? Remember how she had a distaste for feminists even back then? Rand certainly has articles or statements about the border and immigration and abortion that are considered anti-conservative stances today, and she makes that known, but to talk about those topics constantly as if those political policies made up the entire system is foolish. The same goes for placing a spotlight on sexism and racism. Ayn Rand wrote one essay on the topic and moved on. She is not like the tribal leftists of today who are making those topics the central theme of their entire lives, a religion. Conservatives do not want the propaganda shoved down their throats anymore.

In a recent ARI podcast, the hosts do not call this a right or left issue but a pro-Enlightenment versus an anti-Enlightenment one. While I believe that is true, I also can see how the right tends to be more pro-reality than the anti-reality liberals in this day and age. As long as the religious right is able to keep their god in the sky and not affect those of us on earth, I see no real threat from that side. Whereas, the liberals are actively attempting to change our language, utterly obscuring it with made-up terms and pulling statistics out of nothing in order to alter what is right in front of them: reality. For example, they refuse to acknowledge that a child with XY chromosomes is a man and XX chromosomes is a woman. They refuse to admit that communism in any form will never work based simply on human nature. They refuse to see that the nuclear family is the best way to raise children. I do not get these ideas from god but from observing other people and animals. Nature guided Darwin just as well back then as today. There are natural laws set in place, and the only way to ever attain true happiness is to adhere to those laws. That’s why we exercise, eat a healthy diet, brush our teeth to avoid decay. Therefore, I see the left as a much larger threat than the right.

Sure, when you just watch the news, you see tribalistic and often idiotic things said from both sides, but they are anchors breaking real time news with very little time to think or a long time to elaborate, that’s how you get sound bites. There has always been this kind of “yellow journalism” or bickering in politics—that’s just the nature of the game. But if you talk to the men and women who are not in the spotlight, they all are bringing more than just “tribalistic views” to the table. I have seen people talking about what our founding fathers wanted for this country and others who still take the time to reread the Declaration of Independence—true patriots are to be found in this country and they hate to see the American culture damaged by anti-reality groups. It is these patriots who are bringing their morals with them to vote for Trump—you will just not hear it on the news. I think many scholars are simplifying the real cultural issues at stake here, perhaps because they are surrounded by an echo chamber of their friends and not out in the middle of the noise like I am. There is a way of life that many Americans feel they must protect. I’ve seen the “trad wives” on social media and the conservative men who just want to live out in the prairie in peace—without any news or politicians in sight. There is a culture of family first still left in America, of parents responsibly shaping the next generation, which is being incessantly chiseled away at by the left. That is the threat. Trump may be their antidote to the “woke virus.”

ARI always points out that we can’t be proponents of a negative, such as atheism. And yet, all I’ve heard are negatives on the state of the world and the people running it from the Institute lately. What happened to that moral spirit that Ayn Rand could conjure up and lighten an entire room with? Unfortunately, one thing that scholars do to language is beat it to death and then suck out every last ounce of emotion left for the reader or listener. It is also very easy to stay morally “pure” as a scholar in their tower while a presidential candidate is meant to represent the voice of an entire nation. Trump must be open to hearing and helping all different kinds of people.

Yes, I think the first election cycle around, he was on the defensive and his method was to resort to childish name-calling. I don’t think his speeches were focused enough and they did sound very pragmatic, as if he had no philosophical stance. However, even an older man can learn. I, along with the world, have watched Trump learn, mature, and grow into the leader we see today. That was proven on July 13, 2024, when the twenty-year-old loner, who probably was just severely depressed and not particularly politically motivated, got up on that roof and took a shot at the former president.

If that were me up on that stage I would have screamed, peed myself, and cried running off with my Secret Service agents (and, yes, I will grant you that I am a woman who is currently pregnant), but still I would have been petrified. Instead, here we see a man raise himself up with a sense of defiance and anger written all over his face. This was not a “marketing moment” as someone (who shall not be named) said about him. This was the face of a man asking openly, “How dare you try to extinguish my life? A life that I have made and poured all my values into it. I will fight, fight, fight for my right to live.” He was a man in those first shocking moments, not just a presidential candidate. And I do believe that Ayn Rand would have seen that heroic picture of the blood on his face and the flag waving proudly behind him with a tear in her eye. I do not believe that she would have skeptically rolled her eyes, called him a narcissist, and yawned about how he is so lost in himself that he knew this would become a historic picture moment for himself. It’s that kind of attempt at character assassination that makes my gut hurt (and, again, not just because I’m pregnant).

In the days following, Trump has not taken the time to even digest what happened, but the look on his face at the Republican National Convention was different. Being directly shot at and nearly killed, and acknowledging that fact, changes a man. You could see it on his face. There is trauma there. But the liberals will call him “weak” and “elderly looking” and “tired.” No, he is a man with growing pains, a man beginning to understand that people believe in him, a man who cannot let them down no matter what.

Trump is coming out as more moderate too these days. Supposedly, he has left abortion out of his conservative party stance. Now, perhaps this, again, shows that he is a pragmatist or “has no ideas,” but he may also just be listening to the middle of his base. Trump wants to unify the American people together, as long as we are all moving in the right direction, toward reality and not away from it. One president is not going to be able to turn all of America into Galt’s Gulch overnight. That’s a fantasy.

Go with me for a moment on a trip to the future. Perhaps borders are still needed right now until we all become one global country, essentially. I see it already happening with all our translation apps and social media since I can easily communicate now with people from all over the world regardless of the language barrier. Foreign nations have been for a while now learning English as their second language, and I foresee that everyone will because it is a mongrel language anyway, with many of its roots coming from other cultures.

The news is international at this point and there will be no stopping it now. The longer we have the Internet, the more integrated everyone will be on this planet. Someday, I think we will all simply become the human race with the individual as truly the smallest minority. Cultures will become a thing that historians study and people engage in just for fun and entertainment. The further along science gets to answering our deepest questions, the more religion will atrophy, and nations will become less and less dissimilar.

A free market working on an international scale would bring all of us up and perhaps Bryan Johnson’s message of “Don’t Die” might finally be the only mission we all have. But until then, there are terrorists and criminals and even cultural differences that still make borders something that every nation desires. Until new generations are raised in similar environments, we cannot have the free-for-all that we in the West, at least, desire. Religion (the kind found on both the right and the left) has, can, and does still kill.

This brings me closer to one of my final points: I think it’s absolutely offensive that people are calling it “an act of god” that Trump survived when a rally attendant was shot to death just behind him and two others severely injured. Was Corey’s life less worthy of living? Would his daughters rather have kept their dad alive or Trump? Did god ignore Corey to shine his light on Trump? No, this was pure luck.

Let’s say I took Pascal’s wager seriously, which allow me to remind my audience is “the argument that it is in one’s own best interest to behave as if God exists, since the possibility of eternal punishment in hell outweighs any advantage in believing otherwise.” Let’s say I was wrong. Then I’d be banished to hell, along with all the other wonderful people who have walked this earth and questioned and maintained their goodness, like Ayn Rand herself and, yes, even Donald Trump.

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Links: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phxhzlWsl0o&ab_channel=AdamSmasher; https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100308948#:~:text=Pascal’s%20wager%20the%20argument%20that,any%20advantage%20in%20believing%20otherwise.; https://www.radiohalloffame.com/michael-savage; https://theobjectivestandard.com/2016/11/ayn-rands-intellectual-development/;
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Donald-Trump/images-videos; https://courses.aynrand.org/people/leonard-peikoff/; https://aynrand.org/novels/; https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/new-ideal-from-the-ayn-rand-institute/id1515023771; https://www.vox.com/culture/360711/trump-fist-pump-photo-explained-expert-media-savvy-politics; https://abc7.com/live-updates/rnc-2024-donald-trump-makes-appearance-on-day-1-of-the-republican-national-convention-in-milwaukee/15060290/; https://x.com/bryan_johnson/status/1788256385224024236; https://conflictedcollegechristians.wordpress.com/2013/01/22/pascals-wager/

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Views Expressed Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the postings, strategies, or opinions of American Wordsmith, LLC. Please also know that while I consider myself an Objectivist and my work is inspired by Objectivism, it is not nor should it be considered Objectivist since I am not the creator of the philosophy. For more information about Ayn Rand’s philosophy visit: aynrand.org.