By Carl Milsted, Jr.

“Welcome to Founders College. You will be happy here! This logically follows from the fact that you followed your rational self-interest in choosing our institution. Before you begin, please review some of the rules which make our college special.

“You will note that your parents did not send us a lump sum check to pay for your classes and other services. Such an approach creates the false illusion that classes are free, or that you are entitled to an education. Instead, you shall pay for classes, office hours and other services as you use them, as a reminder that to receive value, you must provide value. (Scholar athletes who play for the Greedy Wealthmongers will be given vouchers to supplement their cash, based on ticket sales and performance on the field.)

“Since the shareholders and staff have no desire to associate with mystical moochers, the following classes are required for all students: Philosophy 101, Introduction to Objective Reality; Philosophy 102, Introduction to Proof by Definition; Economics 103, The Inherent Contradictions of Socialist Thought; Ethics 104, The Virtue of Selfishness; and Music 115, Numerical Methods of Music Appreciation.”

OK, I made all that up. I doubt that Founders College will be quite as silly as I implied above. But it is possible. As a longtime libertarian activist, I know quite a few Objectivists, and some of them can get really silly on occasion – in a pointy-eared Vulcan sort of way.

In all fairness there is much to like in Ayn Rand’s writings. Capitalism desperately needed a moral defense, and she provided one. The world is polluted by bad philosophy and she did a masterful job of tearing apart some of the worst. Her writings sparkle with acidic wit, and she could deftly take a socialist cliché down to its logical insane conclusions.

On the down side, she introduced the meme that liberty requires that the population adopt a limited axiomatic philosophy – an idea that has crippled much of the libertarian movement. Furthermore, she pushed the idea that all morality should be based solely on rational self-interest, an idea that contradicts the ideal of truly free-market capitalism.

(In an ideal market economy, rational self-interest leads to people helping each other through trade, a point famously made by Adam Smith. However, there are important exceptions, as spammers point out to me every time I check my email. More importantly, in the political realm, rational self interest leads to bigger government: more subsidies, trade restrictions, pork barrel projects, special tax breaks, etc. – in other words, the policies of the Bush Administration. A libertarian government requires a considerable amount of altruism on the part of the governors.)

Rand was at least somewhat aware of this contradiction. In order to get around this problem she and her followers adopted some rather tortured ideas as to what constitutes rational self-interest. (Note how the main heroes in Atlas Shrugged undergo great personal sacrifice for the cause of Self Interest. Brilliant inventor John Galt took on low paying blue collar jobs. Multi-millionaire Francisco D’Anconia blew the family fortune on Hugh Hefner style parties – without getting laid.) As part of the project of distinguishing rational self-interest from selfish whim, Rand attempted to develop an objective theory of aesthetics, the application of which turned the theoretically freedom-loving Objectivist movement into a heavily conformist cult.

Despite these flaws, a liberal arts college rooted in Objectivism should be no worse than other liberal arts schools. While I have much against Ayn Rand, she was definitely no worse than the “great thinkers” taught at typical liberal arts colleges: Plato (totalitarianism rocks!), Rousseau (how to raise children to be amoral barbarians), Kant (a self-sacrificing Nazi is more moral than a profit-making vaccine developer), Hegel (world history is a conscious living organism), Freud (everything you can possibly dream is a sex organ in disguise) or Sartre (how to feel miserable in 500 difficult lessons).

Hmmm, on second thought Ayn Rand is quite a step up from these wackos.

And there are some areas where we can expect an Objectivist based college to excel. Advanced kindergarten level art will be out. An Objectivist artist must actually be able to draw. And Objectivist music must have melody, harmony and rhythm – the random screeches that constitute “modern” classical music will be definitely out. And the English department might actually teach the students to write well. Freudian psychobabble and deconstructivist nonsense would give way to classical rhetoric. (I recommend Rand’s The Romantic Manifesto to anyone who wants to write better.)

So, who knows, Founders College could turn out to be a great advance in college education.

Carl Milsted is a senior editor with The Free Liberal.