03 April 2012

In her novel “We the Living,” Ayn Rand describes her disdain for the idea of equality.

The heroine, Kira, is speaking to a communist. The communist says “Don’t you know…that we can’t sacrifice millions for the sake of the few?”

Kira replies “Can you sacrifice the few? When those few are the best? Deny the best its right to the top—and you have no best left. What are your masses but millions of dull, shriveled, stagnant souls that have no thoughts of their own, no dreams of their own, no will of their own, who eat and sleep and chew helplessly the words others put into their brains? And for those you would sacrifice the few who know life, who are life? I loathe your ideals because I know no worse injustice than the giving of the undeserved. Because men are not equal in ability and one can’t treat them as if they were. And because I loathe most of them.”

Kira is Rand’s most autobiographical character. According to Rand, “The specific events of Kira’s life are not mine; her ideas, her convictions, her values were and are.” Kira despises the masses and believes in the innate supremacy of the wealthy. So, apparently, did Rand.

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