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IT USUALLY BEGINS WITH AYN RAND 261
noted a new phenomenon, “the Anti-Randian Mentality,” or the growing
practice of libertarians “gaining apparent psychological enjoyment and
esteem from making publicly a disparaging snide or comical innuendo
about Ayn Rand or certain Objectivist jargon.” Although there indeed
might be “humorous aspects” to Objectivism, the newsletter declared
that it was harmful to single out Rand for ridicule since she remained
“the fountainhead” of libertarianism.
More substantively Rand’s patriotism and her reverence for the
Founding Fathers were controversial in a movement that considered the
Constitution a coercive document (because it claimed jurisdiction over
even those who had not signed). 41 Rand’s account of the Apollo 11 launch
crystallized this difference for many. In the Objectivist she described how
she had been invited to a VIP viewing of the rocket launch. Shepherded
past the masses to within three miles of the take-off, Rand was awestruck.
Apollo 11 was “the concretized abstraction of man’s greatness,”
and as she saw the rocket rise she had “a feeling that was not triumph:
but more: the feeling that that white object’s unobstructed streak of
motion was the only thing that mattered in the universe.” 42 It was a masterful
piece of writing that became one of Rand’s personal favorites.
Reading her account, Jerome Tuccille was incredulous. In The Rational
Individualist he asked, “Has Ayn Rand been co-opted into the system by
her new role as White House ‘parlor intellectual’?” To Tuccille NASA was
a bunch of “bandits operating with billions of dollars stolen from the
taxpayer—‘rational’ bandits, perhaps, achieving a superlative technological
feat—but bandits nevertheless.” 43 Libertarians might make peace
with Rand’s endorsement of limited government, but singing the praises
of NASA made Rand’s antistatism seem superfi cial, a belief to be cast
aside when convenient. Nor was the article an isolated incident. Apollo
11 became an encouraging sign of the times for Rand, who referred to
the launch repeatedly in the years that followed.
What libertarian critics of the “moon jaunt” missed was how Rand’s
appreciation of Apollo 11 was tied to her ever-present worry that the
United States was going backward, regressing to Petrograd circa 1920.
Her fears were stirred anew by the emergence of the environmental
movement, which she viewed as a virulent atavism that would drag
mankind back to primitive existence. In her 1970 lecture to the Ford
Hall Forum she attacked environmentalism as “the Anti-Industrial
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