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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 19, 2022

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It’s Christmas Eve, and over-the-air TV stations around the country are playing Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life. Meanwhile, a thread on Reddit’s Movies sub is having an actual rational discussion of the film’s exploration of economics after the OP identifies it as socialist propaganda.

Of course, the OP is not alone. Ayn Rand herself is said to have identified IAWL as a vehicle for socialist thought, specifically a class war between unrepentant valueless rapacious businessmen versus class heroes of the working class, written by Communist sympathizers and socialists within the movie industry.

Or did she?

An article from The Atlas Society reveals she said nothing about IAWL, and despised the House Un-American Activities Committee as publicity-seeking partisans:

For the record, while Rand did testify at the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings in 1947 as a Friendly Witness, she did so under subpoena. She seems to have considered the appearance a formality, and she scheduled her testimony to take place during a business trip, sandwiching her HUAC appearance between research for Atlas Shrugged and over a dozen interviews with journalists from major media outlets to discuss her own writing. The only movies that she discussed in front of the committee were The Song of Russia, which she considered such blatant Soviet propaganda that it was hardly worth mentioning, and The Best Years of Our Lives. The latter film she criticized because the banker, Al Stevenson, played by Frederic March, is praised for lending without collateral. It is interesting to think about Al Stevenson in relation to the fictional Eugene Lawson, one of Rand’s characters from Atlas Shrugged, whose humanitarianism bankrupted the Community National Bank in Wisconsin.

While Rand-haters like to claim that she took offense at the depiction of Mr. Potter, played by Lionel Barrymore, in It’s a Wonderful Life, there is no evidence that she was concerned for the reputation of the miserly banker, and it is difficult to believe that she would have defended him. On the contrary Potter bears a resemblance to Mayor Bascom of Rome, Wisconsin, a chiseler of Rand’s own creation, again from Atlas Shrugged, for whom she really did have contempt.

In any case, as an Objectivist-influenced thinker, it’s great for me to be able to point at It’s A Wonderful Life as an example of the paradox of Randian selfishness. It was selfish for George Bailey to save his brother from the pond at risk of his own life: he wanted a world where his brother was alive, and selfishly didn’t care if his parents lost both boys if he failed. He selfishly put off his honeymoon when the market crashed to save the family business he inherited.

In each case, his choices added the kind of irreplaceable value to the life he wanted, despite costing him his dreams of going to big places and making big things for big people to admire. If those big dreams were genuinely his values, he’d have worked for them with his whole heart instead; he’d have selfishly spent time and money to headhunt a like-minded soul to run the S&L, sell the business, and go to architect school next to Howard Roark.

I hope that each and every one of you have a merry Christmas, without resentments, without loss or pain, because I value each of you for daring to selfishly stand up for your highest values: truth, purpose, and communication between minds, with the intent to make the world you want.

I'm surprised people think it's socialist, the hero is a literal banker and it makes the case for loans very clearly positive. I don't know how you can build a leftist worldview on such a foundation unless leftism includes free markets and capital investment.

Yeah it always seemed like a pro new deal if anything. The S&L would have been struggle free in a world where Fannie Mae and the FHLB provided liquidity.