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LEGACIES
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arms control, for she believed the USSR could never be trusted. In other
appearances she attacked Native Americans as savages, arguing that
European colonists had a right to seize their land because native tribes
did not recognize individual rights. She extended this reasoning to the
Israel-Palestine confl ict, arguing that Palestinians had no rights and that
it was moral to support Israel, the sole outpost of civilization in a region
ruled by barbarism. Rand revealed that Israel was the fi rst public cause
to which she had donated money. And she continued to fl ay anarchists
and libertarians as “worse than anything the New Left has proposed.” 55
Without NBI or signifi cant new publications, Rand had nothing positive
to offer that could offset her negativity or support her sweeping
judgments on current events.
By the end of 1972, even SIL had had enough. On the front page of
SIL News the directors announced, “We are not in sympathy with or
identifi ed with all of the political applications that Ayn Rand cares to
make based on her philosophy of Objectivism,” citing her positions
on draft resistance, the Vietnam War, the space program, civil liberties,
amnesty for draft evaders, and support for collectivist politicians. “The
basic works of Rand continue to be the most powerful infl uence on our
membership,” the directors admitted. “However, moral men cannot
stand quiet.” 56 Only a year earlier SIL had published an article defending
Rand against the “anti-Rand mentality.” Now they too wished to draw
a distinction between Rand’s beliefs and their own. As Rand became
ever more jingoistic, libertarians remained deeply suspicious of all state
action. They were also sympathetic to the cultural changes sweeping the
nation that Rand found so alarming. The political spectrum was shifting,
and Rand was moving to the conservative side of the right.
The real rift between Rand and the libertarians came with the founding
of the Libertarian Party in 1971. The party’s founder, David Nolan,
was an MIT graduate and Rand fan. He was galvanized to action by
Nixon’s announcement of wage and price controls, intended to curb
infl ation. (By contrast Rand endorsed Nixon twice, regarding him as
the lesser of two evils.) Nolan and a few friends announced plans for a
libertarian national convention, held in Denver the following year. At
the convention libertarians organized themselves into a loose network
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