Fore more urdu books visit www.4Urdu.com

More oxford books @ www.OxfordeBook.comFore more urdu books visit www.4Urdu.com74THE EDUCATION OF AYN RAND, 1905–1943polemics in an earlier age of state expansion, fit easily with vehementdistaste for the New Deal. Both sets of thinkers had similar ground tocover. To argue convincingly against government action it was necessaryto prove that government was incompetent, unfair, or both. Lackingextensive evidence about the ultimate success or failure of New Dealreforms, writers in the 1940s turned eagerly to theoretical and historicalarguments articulated at an earlier time. These older thinkers lent an airof timeless wisdom to their critique of the state.If Rand’s associates replicated the arguments of nineteenth-centurylaissez-faire in many ways, they were noticeably circumspect aboutevolutionary theory, which had played such a dominant role in thethought of Spencer and Sumner. The earlier generation of capitalistboosters had based their arguments largely on evolutionary scienceand the corresponding idea that natural laws were at work in humansocieties. From this basis they argued that government interference inthe economy was doomed to failure. Some of these arguments cameclose to the infamous social Darwinist position, in that they suggestedgovernment support for the poor might retard the evolution of thespecies. 16Vestiges of this scientific background still remained in 1940. On hiscross-country speaking tour Channing Pollock came close to attackingNew Deal relief programs in the old terms, arguing, “We can’t afford asocial order of the unfit, by the unfit, for the unfit.” 17 Ruth Alexanderreferred to herself half-jokingly in a letter to Rand as a “bad jungle sister,who believes in survival of the fittest.” Nock’s receptivity to pseudoscience,such as his interest in the architect Ralph Adams Cram’s theorythat most people were not “psychically” human, also hinted at this earlierlegacy. Rand too shared Cram’s elitist affectation, a residue of herreadings in Nietzsche. In a 1932 note about We the Living she remarked,“I do give a good deal about human beings. No, not all of them. Onlythose worthy of the name.” But now Rand was beginning to drift awayfrom this perspective. The campaign had been a taste of how a broaderaudience could actually appreciate her ideas. And in Nock and his fellowsshe saw how libertarian superiority could shade off into a debilitatingpessimism.As it turned out the only person who did not disappoint Rand wasone who didn’t even join the group: Isabel Paterson, a well-known