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How I Came To Hate Liberals (Nov. 4, 2003)

My readers often ask me, "Ayn, most real Americans don't like liberals' absurd ideas, but don't actually loathe liberals themselves with your intensity. How did you come to hate them so much?" Well, I burn for the far right because the left-leaning glaciers nearby must be boiled away.

As for how I got here, because I am so busy working on my next book, Jaywalking, I can't take time now to describe my exemplary intellectual development further myself. But my many fans should not despair, because I do have a special treat for you meanwhile.

Fortunately in my research I have found another person's description of how he came to hate a different group just as much as I do liberals. Actually he was best known for speaking, not writing, but clearly describes similar processes happening to him. With changes of only a few words, these excerpts from his book depict quite well how my own feelings grew.

Furthermore, I am sure that today he would share my antipathy to liberals, if he had not been driven to suicide many years ago by the communist conquest of his country, collaborated in by a vile Democratic regime. As Tolstoy might have said, all hatreds of groups resemble one another, each love of a group loves in its own way.

In the amended version of the author's text below, I used boldface for words which I substituted for his original ones, including of course "liberal". For instance, I inserted "New York" instead of the city he wrote about. Everything else he wrote remains unchanged, including "Democratic" three times, and even two uses of "liberal".

Note that only one word had to be substituted in his entire brilliant paragraph about media love for France. As those appeasers of terrorism say, "Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose."

(His original text is available on the web, and is easily found by a simple search for many of the phrases he uses here. The portion below is from the last part of Chapter 2 of Volume One of his magnum opus.)

"Today it is difficult, if not impossible, for me to say when the word 'liberal' first gave me ground for special thoughts. At home I do not remember having heard the word during my father's lifetime. ...

"Then I came to New York. ...

"But what sometimes repelled me was the undignified fashion in which this press curried favor with the Clintons. There was scarcely an event in the White House which was not imparted to the readers either with raptures of enthusiasm or plaintive emotion, and all this to-do, particularly when it dealt with the 'wisest President' of all time, almost reminded me of the mating cry of a mountain cock.

"To me the whole thing seemed artificial. In my eyes it was a blemish upon liberal democracy. To curry favor with this administration and in such indecent forms was to sacrifice the dignity of the nation. This was the first shadow to darken my intellectual relationship with the 'big' New York press. ...

"Another thing that got on my nerves was the loathsome cult for France which the big press, even then, carried on. A man couldn't help feeling ashamed to be an American when he saw these saccharine hymns of praise to the 'great cultural nation.' This wretched licking of France's boots more than once made me throw down one of these 'world newspapers.' ...

"At all events, these occasions slowly made me acquainted with the man and the movement, which in those days guided America's destinies: George W. Bush and the Republican Party.

"When I arrived in New York, I was hostile to both of them. The man and the movement seemed 'reactionary' in my eyes.

"My common sense of justice, however, forced me to change this judgment in proportion as I had occasion to become acquainted with the man and his work; and slowly my fair judgment turned to unconcealed admiration. Today, more than ever, I regard this man as the greatest American President of all times.

"How many of my basic principles were upset by this change in my attitude toward the conservative movement! My views with regard to anti-liberalism thus succumbed to the passage of time, and this was my greatest transformation of all. ...

"Once, as I was strolling through the Inner City, I suddenly encountered an apparition in ... dread locks. Is this a liberal? was my first thought. ...

"I observed the man furtively and cautiously, but the longer I stared at this liberal face, scrutinizing feature for feature, the more my first question assumed a new form:

"Is this an American? ...

"The cleanliness of liberals, moral and otherwise, I must say, is a point in itself. By their very exterior you could tell that these were no lovers of water, and, to your distress, you often knew it with your eyes closed. ...

"What had to be reckoned heavily against the liberals in my eyes was when I became acquainted with their activity in the press, art, literature, and the theater. ...

"I now saw the liberal attitude of this press in a different light; the lofty tone in which it answered attacks and its method of killing them with silence now revealed itself to me as a trick as clever as it was treacherous; the transfigured raptures of their theatrical critics were always directed at liberal writers, and their disapproval never struck anyone but conservatives. ...

"The relation of the liberals to prostitution and, even more, to the white-slave traffic, could be studied in New York as perhaps in no other city ... with the possible exception of San Francisco. ...

"I gradually became aware that the ... Democratic press was directed predominantly by liberals. ...

"From the publisher down, they were all liberals.

"I took all the ... Democratic pamphlets I could lay hands on and sought the names of their authors: liberals. ... One thing had grown clear to me: the party with whose petty representatives I had been carrying on the most violent struggle for months was, as to leadership, almost exclusively in the hands of a foreign ideology; for, to my deep and joyful satisfaction, I had at last come to the conclusion that the liberal was no American. ...

"But a liberal could never be parted from his opinions.

"At that time I was still childish enough to try to make the madness of their doctrine clear to them; in my little circle I talked my tongue sore and my throat hoarse, thinking I would inevitably succeed in convincing them how ruinous their Marxist madness was; but what I accomplished was often the opposite. It seemed as though their increased understanding of the destructive effects of ... Democratic theories and their results only reinforced their determination. ...

"Whenever you tried to attack one of these apostles, your hand closed on a jelly-like slime which divided up and poured through your fingers, but in the next moment collected again. But if you really struck one of these fellows so telling a blow that, observed by the audience, he couldn't help but agree, and if you believed that this had taken you at least one step forward, your amazement was great the next day. The liberal had not the slightest recollection of the day before, he rattled off his same old nonsense as though nothing at all had happened, and, if indignantly challenged, affected amazement; he couldn't remember a thing, except that he had proved the correctness of his assertions the previous day.

"Sometimes I stood there thunderstruck. I didn't know what to be more amazed at: the agility of their tongues or their virtuosity at lying. Gradually I began to hate them. ...

"The liberal doctrine of Marxism rejects the aristocratic principle of Nature and replaces the eternal privilege of power and strength by the mass of numbers and their dead weight. ...

"If, with the help of his Marxist creed, the liberal is victorious over the other peoples of the world, his crown will be the funeral wreath of humanity and this planet will, as it did thousands of years ago, move through the ether devoid of men. ...

"Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the liberals, I am fighting for the work of the Lord."

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