Continuing her disdain for anything that’s not as white and Western as she is, Alexandra York began her June 20 column this way:
Brave and far-sighted men — Meriwether Lewis and William Clark (1804–1806), Kit Carson (1820s-1850s), John Fremont (1840s), and more — pushed west across America’s vast frontier and opened the way for the physical expansion of a liberty-loving country.
Today, brave and far-sighted men and women must look back to another “West,” this time to the Euro-American enlightenmentvalues that literally created the United States as the first consciously-rationally created nation in history.
The current mission is to forge ahead by establishing a new frontier for those values to flourish again not only to chart a philosophical path to an expanded future but also to save what is left of a culturally shrinking Western civilization. The journey now must be guided not by exploring new land but by exploring renewed ideas.
After name-checking folks like Aristotle and John Locke, York got to her apparent avatar of Western thought — Ayn Rand:
Russian-born Alisa Rosenbaum (1905-1982), after emigrating to America in 1926 to become the novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand, was deeply influenced by these same ideas and philosophers — Aristotle specifically and Locke obliquely.
Rand lived and suffered personally through the Russian Revolution, so she knew firsthand the real-life evils of collectivism and totalitarianism under Bolshevik rule.
Unlike most academically trained philosophers, she chose to introduce her philosophy which she named “Objectivism” via novels: The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957), the first revolving around an uncompromising architect and championing individualism over collectivism, and the second dramatizing her philosophy explicitly through a dystopian story of industrious individuals withdrawing their productivity from a society that exploits rather than values them.
She later published “The Objectivist” newsletter outlining her philosophy in detail, relating it to other philosophies and current events, and doing much public speaking along with countless TV interviews.
So, although reading her work directly is best, what here canexplicate her “new frontier” philosophy in a nutshell? Once, when challenged to sum up her philosophy “while standing on one foot,” she answered:
“Metaphysics: Reality; Epistemology: Reason; Ethics: Self-interest; Politics: Capitalism.”
York is clearly not going to acknowledge any criticism of Rand, such as that her emphasis on self-interest trumps any sort of altruism. Instead, she concludes with a dire-sounding warning:
Western civilization is not only surrendering sovereignty by accepting inhumane, divisive ideas, it also is caught in a hard place between militant Muslims and internationally united autocratic elites, the first wishing to replace us and the second wishing to rule us.
The future, if there is to be one, now lies in the rational and freedom-loving minds and action-oriented readiness of an American populace that must put differences — usually artificially created by those who would rule or ruin us — aside.
We must form grassroots citizen teams local or large to rescue our country (inspiring other Western-minded peoples to do likewise) in order to defeat elitist tyrants who would rob us of our liberty and chain us all to their will or others who chant “Death to America” and mean it.
Time is fleeting and the expiry toll by internal suicide, elite suppression, or Islamic supremacy chimes loudly.
She didn’t mention that the country’s death by selfish and autocratic leaders is arguably a more likely possibility.