When I was a child, my sister and I frequently participated in statewide church talent competitions: kids would compete in areas like choir, solos, puppet routines, and other artistic endeavors. We trained for months in Bible quizzing: learning verses, trying to see the book as a whole, understanding context. To put it bluntly, we were good at it: we often took the top prizes in our divisions at the state competition. One year, the trophies for the top places were quite large. I was so excited to receive my trophy. I’d worked for months to compete, and felt that I’d certainly earned it.
As our group packed up to go home, I saw another girl from my church walk by, carrying one of the large trophies. She hadn’t won any of the top spots, and I wondered how she had ended up with one of the grand trophies. I found out later that there were some trophies left over after the award ceremony, and her mother had bought her a trophy so she wouldn’t feel left out. I realized that while she and I would always know which one of us had excelled, no one who saw our trophies on a shelf would know that one of them was empty.
This incident, and others like it, continued to bother me throughout my childhood and high school years. I was irritated when my own efforts at excellence were not rewarded, but was also one of the first to shout “unfair!” when excellence was noted in others. I had great visions of what I might do in the future, ways in which I might “change the world,” as I and my peers had so often been told we would. I had no particular plans as to how I should educate myself to make this grand impact, nor any notion that this kind of excellence would involve any particular self-discipline on my own part. Surely someone would soon discover my phenomenal intellect and set me loose in the world!
My generation has been one of the most privileged in history, and, without a doubt, one of the most coddled. Most of us, from the time we were very young, have been told that we could do anything we wanted: become pilots, professional ball players, even presidents. Regardless of outcome, we have been given gold stars and applause for every tiny effort. We were often reminded that sportsmanship mattered more than winning, and that everyone was special. I cannot count the number of times I have heard the phrase “All that matters is that you tried.” Surely effort matters a great deal, but for a significant portion of the American public, effort has become the very measure of success. To our great disadvantage, we have generally been made to believe that we were the most talented and skilled individuals ever to grace the planet.
Some of this is due to a change in the perception of rights. The Declaration of Independence states that we are “endowed by [the] Creator with certain inalienable rights.” Whether one believes that rights originate from a creator or from natural law, the difference between the contrasting views of our society is that conservatives at least agree that rights are a reflection of essential human nature. One can be secure in his own personhood, while still feeling the spur of pride goading him onward to better performance. If rights are innate, then failure is an acceptable risk, since it doesn’t affect the nature of the person who has failed. The more progressive view, on the other hand, insists that human nature is always in flux and can be fundamentally reshaped by education and training. In this view, rights are not innate to human nature (since there is no constant human nature), but are granted by the state, and are enacted with a view toward a measurable equality of outcome.
This latter view is currently the more prevalent, and has had a disastrous effect on an entire generation. If rights are merely granted as a measure of equality, and someone has a less than equal outcome, it must be because they have not been granted their full rights. Every effort must be counted as a success, or the person risks being seen as less than equal. Failure is not an option, in this case, because to fail means to become less than human. Therefore, if someone tells you that you have failed or somehow not measured up to the expected standard, it is a personal attack on one’s equality rather than a simple evaluation of behavior and skill.
This attitude is on display on nearly every reality TV show. When a contestant, often in his mid-twenties, is kicked off a show for failing to display the necessary level of skill, he protests, “You just don’t understand me, I’m better than everyone here!” Though the viewers mock the presumptuousness of the youth, this delusion should not come as a surprise. Most people under the age of thirty have been inundated with the notion that their self-esteem is the primary concern of everyone around them, and no one else has the right to tamper with this esteem. Self-esteem is promoted as one of the modern cardinal virtues, self-esteem unlinked from any drive for excellence or necessity to achieve.
This attitude eliminates the need for personal ambition and drive, not to mention the discipline and patience to achieve one’s dreams. All that matters is that each person learns to “believe in himself.” Personal achievement is measured in terms of how one feels about himself, rather than any knowledge gained, skills mastered, or wealth created.
So how does someone raised to believe that she was exceptional, that she would change the world just by being herself, finally come to appreciate the necessity of hard work, the uneven distribution of talent, and find the ability to risk failure? Many young conservatives have come to this point through other ways, but for me, it began when I discovered the novels of Ayn Rand.
I first picked up Atlas Shrugged in high school, after becoming entranced with the Rush album 2112 and being informed that it was based on the writings of Rand. The book made a profound impact on me, though not for the reasons that many others in previous generations found her philosophy attractive.
Dagny Taggart and Hank Reardon immediately captured my imagination. I had never read a book with characters who acted and spoke like they did. (It is likely that this is because no one actually talks like Ayn Rand characters except Ayn Rand fans, but that is a topic for another time.) The sheer force of Dagny Taggart’s will to succeed, even as the “moochers” gained ever more control over her circumstances, was fascinating—I read the story ravenously, wondering if she would finally triumph over the forces of the unexceptional that surrounded her.
But even more than the characters, I found myself engrossed in the scenes set among the “men in Washington,” the string-pullers who orchestrated deals to keep various companies from failing while placing heavier restrictions on the few real producers left in the nation. Who were these people, I wondered, who couldn’t see that these companies couldn’t produce and should be left to bear the consequences? Who were these people so determined to wipe out any sign of excellence, to the point of destroying any individual who showed any signs of being exceptional? Worse yet, why had I heard some of their arguments coming out of my own mouth?
Discovering Rand’s writing is a common experience for many conservatives, but the reasons behind Rand’s influence may be different for the upcoming generation of thinkers. For many in earlier generations, Rand’s defense of the free market was the charm that drew them into conservatism. But I had been raised in a very conservative home, working part-time from my early childhood all the way through high school, raising my own money for many of my activities and hobbies. I was never drawn toward socialism, and though I appreciated Rand’s capitalism, it wasn’t what made the greatest impact on me. Nor did her sexual and social morality attract me. I have always been a social conservative, and her ideal interaction between men and women in society left me cold. There was no draw for me in that.
So what was it about Rand that set my mind on fire and changed my path in life? It was her valuation, one might even say worship, of excellence. This was something I had not encountered in such a pure form before. I had become lured into the mind-set of my generation, that everyone was equally special in the same way, and that if someone excelled, it was due to better conditions, or luck, or some other circumstance. I was firmly convinced that others succeeded in life because they had better conditions than I did, and that if I simply had what they had, I could do what they did.
Rand shattered that illusion, and revealed the streak of envy that was embedded in my own heart, and the hearts of most of my generation. We do not strive for excellence—after all, haven’t our teachers and parents told us we are perfect just the way we are?—but we desire to have the benefits of excellence, in the name of “fairness.” My generation is accustomed to getting a gold star for any amount of effort, and to being told that participation is more important than winning. Our teachers may have meant well, but the lesson most of us learned was to despise and distrust excellence. Rand’s stories were something of a shock to my system, revealing the nature of my dislike of those who were more successful than I. Ayn Rand provided the antidote to the poison of a coddling, “self-esteem”-centered culture, and this may prove to be her main value to young conservatives.
Learning to admire excellence was not easy. I had to keep a close watch on my mind, and take note every time I began to think, “They’re not so special. If I just had that money, or that job, or that education, I could do everything they do.” But, of course, I was reluctant to truly excel, because I had become afraid to risk failure and thus afraid to truly succeed. After all, there can be no excellence without the risk of failure, as Rand showed in her fictional corporations, sheltered from the results of their own inefficiency and lack of skill.
Unfortunately, young conservatives are not immune from this poisonous attitude, despite other indicated leanings toward free-market capitalism, personal responsibility, and other more traditionally conservative ideals. Many a social network and action group has been formed by individuals eager to make a name for themselves and reluctant to lend their skills to an existing group. Internecine fighting has split many a promising group as egos battled to be recognized as the Next Big Thing among young conservatives.
One of the greatest rights has been essentially denied to my generation: the right to fail. We have been coddled and insulated, given a gold star for every project, and never allowed to really fall flat on our faces. Failure is one of the most effective teachers in life; I never understood how to write until I wrote a great many things that simply did not work. I had to be willing to write unreadable pieces for years, and to acknowledge that such efforts were unreadable, before I learned enough to produce something that might be worth reading. Those years of failure and frustration were the best writing teacher I could have asked for. But during that time, and even now, there are those who have insisted on seeing my writing as remarkable and exceptional, and have encouraged me to join in those judgments, even when I knew them to be untrue. When I decline to see my work in quite such a favorable light, they become even more adamant, as if to see my work as less than stellar would be in some way a reflection on my own personal worth.
It is an odd thing, to have to fight to fail, but it is necessary for those who grew up with the constant mantra of “you are special, you are perfect the way you are, always be true to yourself.” Failure is an important part of life. Failure teaches us where we are weak, where we are ignorant, where we simply did not try as hard as we might have. To deny someone the right to fail is to deny him the experience of picking himself up and trying again, and finally fighting through to success. Even then, effort and discipline do not guarantee a spot at the top—too few people even in the conservative tradition are willing to play second fiddle to anyone else. The work is no longer seen as the important thing; instead, everyone struggles to become the recognizable face of some new movement or action group. Too many prefer to see themselves as the next Dagny Taggart, instead of taking a clear look at their actual efforts and talents. Everyone wants to be John Galt and no one is willing to be the faithful right-hand man Eddie Willers. Many times during the course of the novel, Dagny expresses her frustration on no longer being able to find good, reliable men to work the everyday jobs that keep her railway running. Those unglamorous jobs are crucial to the success of any endeavor, but too few modern activists are willing to take them on. If they cannot be the pinnacle of excellence themselves, they do not wish to acknowledge it in anyone else, or subject themselves to the vision of another.
The right to fail is an essential part of the fundamental conservative principle and basic human nature that tells us every man has the right and duty to make his own way in the world without depending on anyone else—be it a parent, a teacher, or the state—to smooth his way from cradle to grave. If we do not have the right to fail, then the state is justified in swooping in to “fix” any life that has hit a bumpy patch in the road.
Reading Rand was a hard lesson in learning to recognize the areas of my life in which I had failed to succeed, but it set me on the path of learning to love excellence. It was not pleasant to see myself in the faces of the “moochers,” decrying excellence in the name of a false equality, but doing so was the only way to begin to leave that worldview behind, and start learning to make my own way. Failure is no more avoidable than gravity: one does not fly by denying gravity but by acknowledging its existence, and learning the laws that allow one to rise above it.