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Ayn Rand 11pp Handwritten Draft on Political Elections in 1962, For Her Column in the Los Angeles Times
Ayn Rand 11pp Handwritten Draft on Political Elections in 1962, For Her Column in the Los Angeles Times
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Description:

Ayn Rand
n.p., November 10, 1962
Ayn Rand 11pp Handwritten Draft on Political Elections in 1962, For Her Column in the Los Angeles Times
AMS
Ayn Rand (1905-1982). Autograph Manuscript Signed, in the heading of page one: "The Ayn Rand Column", November 10, 1962. Handwritten by Rand, with her extensive corrections and annotations in pencil, ink, and red pencil. Staple holes at top left with faint rust staining from same at first page. Creasing and a bit of edge wear. Expected stray ink spots. In fine condition. 11pp, 8.5" x 11", housed in an attractive custom presentation case measuring 9" x 11.75".

In 1962, Rand accepted an invitation to write a weekly column for the Los Angeles Times. The column covered a wide range of topics and became enormously popular. Despite this success, Rand found that she could not keep up with the demands of a weekly column and regretfully discontinued it after one year. The present manuscript is a draft of her column, "Post-Mortem, 1962", written for the November 18, 1962 edition of the newspaper.

In full, and separated by paragraphs for ease of reading:

"In the past decades, our elections have taken the following pattern: 1. during the campaign, both parties offer nothing but a package-deal of stale generalities, which can mean all things to all men, evading any discussion of basic principles or issues; 2. after the election, commentators and party leaders declare which basic principles and issues the people have endorsed.

This year, the dispirited grayness of our political atmosphere has thickened. The commentators are nervously cautious. Both parties claim victory in a perfunctory manner, offering tired rationalizations to support their claims. The truth is that there were no victories, since no goals or programs were at stake. Both parties lost - and, in most cases, the formal victories are not an indication of who the voters were for, but only of which particular candidate they were more strongly against.

The United States, at present, is a country without political ideology, without any intellectual movement, without direction or goal. We are paralyzed by the unadmitted knowledge that we are trapped in the crumbling structure of a 'mixed economy' - and, while the girders are cracking, under our feet, about to collapse, our political leaders are haggling over which rugs and drapes to loot from some rooms for the decoration of others.

The issue which neither camp dare identify is the fact that a 'mixed economy' is an unstable, untenable mixture of capitalism and socialism. Most Democrats do not want to establish socialism; most Republicans do not want to advocate capitalism. So both are reduced, by default, to the lowest of all common denominators: to the position of 'well-meaning statists,' which is a contradiction in terms.

There was only one political program offered to the voters: the status quo - and only two kinds of leadership: those who wish to leap or those who wish to crawl into the same abyss. Nothing can be learned from such an election about the political views of the people. But certain observations can be made. It is not the people, but their alleged leaders who are guilty of apathy. The people turned out in unusually large numbers, but were offered no unequivocal way to register their views. The ticket-splitting, the crossing of party lines, the upsets, the unexpected reversals of predictions seem to indicate that the people were groping for an ideological consistency which was not to be found.

Party labels mean nothing any longer. Nobody is fooled by the pretense that a vote for a Republican such as Governor Rockefeller is a vote for 'conservatism,' while a vote for a Democrat such as Senator Lausche of Ohio is a vote for 'liberalism.' It is significant that on the Federal level most incumbents were re-elected, in spite of President Kennedy's attacks on Congress. On the state level, where twelve governorships changed hands, the protest-voting was obvious: the protest was directed against whichever party happened to be in power. It is significant that so many contests were won by such narrow margins.

The country is as divided as it was in 1960 - and it is futile, or worse, to pretend that President Kennedy has gained in popularity. If a vote for the Democratic party means a vote for the New Frontier, then it is significant that the Democrats won in such states as Connecticut and Massachusetts, with a large population of suburban 'intellectuals,' but lost in such industrial states as Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania. It supports the claim that Welfare Statism is a product of suburbia and not of the industrial 'proletariat.'

Perhaps the least excusable attitude is that of many Republicans who assert dejectedly that the people should have voted against Mr. Kennedy's record even though no real criticism of that record had been voiced by Republican leaders. A party that expects the people to take the stand it lacks the courage to take, does not deserve a position of leadership. The most grotesque touch of the campaign was provided by the post-election comment of D. H. Jaquith, the gubernatorial candidate of a so-called 'Conservative Party' in New York state.

According to the New York Times, Mr. Jaquith 'regards himself as a middle-of-the-roader rather than a rightist' and is quoted as saying: 'I don't see any middle-of-the-roaders. Democracy is destroying itself when those who promise the most are elected.' If Mr. Jaquith did not see any middle-of-the-roaders in this election, one must wonder at what it was that he did see. And if such is the vision of men who posture as capitalism's or America's defenders, let no one say that capitalism was rejected or defeated by the blindness of the people."

Ayn Rand was a Russian-born American author and philosopher, known for her fiction and for developing a philosophical system she named Objectivism. Educated in Russia, she moved to the United States in 1926. After two early novels that were initially unsuccessful, Rand achieved fame with her 1943 novel "The Fountainhead". In 1957, she published her best-selling work, the novel "Atlas Shrugged". Later, she turned to non-fiction to promote her philosophy, advocating reason and rejecting faith and religion.

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

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