Do Not Let It Go

One of the last things Ayn Rand worked on before her death was planning a collection of essays that would be published as Philosophy: Who Needs It.  The collection begins with her address to the graduating class at West Point in 1974, and ends with her 1971 essay “Don’t Let It Go.”  This final essay attempted to predict Americas future based upon an assessment of its present course of action, conscious convictions, and sense of life.  This essay concludes:

Can this country achieve a peaceful rebirth in the foreseeable future?  By all precedents, it is not likely.  But America is an unprecedented phenomenon.  In the past, American perseverance became, on occasion, too long-bearing a patience.  But when Americans turned, they turned.  What may happen to the welfare state is what happened to the Prohibition Amendment.

Is there enough of the American sense of life left in people under the constant pressure of the cultural-political efforts to obliterate it?  It is impossible to tell.  But those of us who hold it, must fight for it.  We have no alternative:  we cannot surrender this country to a zero—to men whose battle cry is mindlessness.

We cannot fight against collectivism, unless we fight against its moral base:  altruism.  We cannot fight against altruism, unless we fight against its epistemological base:  irrationalism.  We cannot fight against anything, unless we fight for something—and what we must fight for is the supremacy of reason, and a view of man as a rational being.

These are philosophical issues.  The philosophy we need is a conceptual equivalent of America’s sense of life.  To propagate it, would require the hardest intellectual battle.  But isn’t that a magnificent goal to fight for?  [A. Rand, “Don’t Let It Go,” Philosophy: Who Needs It (New York: New American Library, 1982), p. 214-215.]

The blog will engage that fight.

Image Source: Ayn Rand Bookstore

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