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FROM NOVELIST TO PHILOSOPHER, 1944–1957
the principles she held dear. He did more damage than any Democrat
possibly could, for his nomination “destroyed the possibility of an
opposition” and meant “the end of any even semi-plausible or semiconsistent
opposition to the welfare state.” Rand was not alone in her
reaction. Even the new religious conservatives she hated were tepid
about the nonideological Eisenhower. In 1956 Buckley’s National Review
would offer a famously lukewarm endorsement: “We prefer Ike.” 32 But
now, to her dismay, most of Rand’s New York friends swallowed their
reservations and climbed aboard the Eisenhower bandwagon. Twenty
years of Democratic rule had made them desperate for any Republican
president. This struck Rand as foolish compromise and unforgiveable
inconsistency. She realized, “[T]hey were not for free enterprise, that
was not an absolute in their minds in the sense of real laissez faire capitalism.
I knew then that there is nothing that I can do with it and no help
that I can expect from any of them.” 33 After a string of disappointments,
she was ready to turn her back on conservatives altogether.
It was Nathan, stepping forward into a new role of advisor, who gently
nudged Rand to this conclusion. The conservatives were not really “our
side,” he told Rand. “We have really nothing philosophically in common
with them.” Boldly he informed Rand that she was making “a great
mistake” to ally herself with Republicans, conservatives, or libertarians.
Rand was intrigued and relieved at Nathan’s formulation, the last premise
that she needed to clarify her thinking. Looking back a decade later,
she remembered, “[F]rom that time on . . . I decided that the conservatives
as such are not my side, that I might be interested in individuals
or have something in common on particular occasions, but that
I have no side at all, that I’m standing totally alone and have to create my
own side.” 34 Implicit in Nathan’s words was the promise that he and the
Collective could take the place of the allies Rand had forsaken.
The 1953 marriage of Nathan and Barbara accelerated Rand’s move
away from the broader libertarian community. She and Frank presided
as matron of honor and best man at the wedding, a union Rand had
done much to encourage. In California Barbara Wiedman had confessed
to Rand her uncertainty about the relationship, but found the
older woman unable to understand her hesitancy. Nathan was clearly an
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