A Comment on Ayn Rand and Evil Socrates
My confirmed habit in my writing my evil doers usually have an evil philosophy which motivates them, and usually I give them the floor to make a speech about it.
One author who is particularly good at portraying Evil Socrates, and this is an author whose real talent as an author is overlooked both by her detractors and her idolaters (neither of whom sees her in a true light, but for opposite reasons) is Ayn Rand. Her characterization of men like Ellsworth Toohey or Robert Stadler is crisp, concise, and perfect.
Now, there are those who say these villains are cardboard, two dimensional, and unrealistic: but I have met too many Tooheys and Stadlers in real life, or read their words, men who talked and thought just like them. Keynes the fake economist is one; so is Peter Singer, fake ethicist; so is Noam Chomsky, who practices the same “White Blackmail” Rand frequently describes, where a victim is held hostage not for his flaws, but for his virtues. If America were half the evil things Chomsky claimed we were, none of us would care a tuppence whether the claims were true.
Evil Socrates is actually one of my favorite villains, up there with Magneto or Milton’s Lucifer.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
