The Fountainhead 1

 

In this 1943 novel, Ayn Rand presents her hero, Howard Roark seems to be her ideal man and individual, an egoistic free spirit that thinks, socializes, works and lives only to please himself, and get him into plenty of trouble with joiners and collectivists, but he never waver or sells his independence or integrity, at great, great cost to him in terms of his personal life and his career.

 

On Page 101, we see the Dean booting Roark out of architectural college because he is too creative, too original, not willing to give the public what it wants. Sell out or be run out is the message sent to Roark, who refuses to submit so he is run out by the Dean.

 

On Page 109, Rand introduces us to Ellsworth Toohey, the socialist arch-villain that few hate and many admire; he preaches brotherhood and compassion, but he really wants pure power and control—he does not want money and position. He reminds me of the postmodernist giants (Foucault and Derrida, socialist masters of words that led the long walk through the institutions to convert America and the West to woke, DEI culture. These men are committed revolutionaries but never pick up a rifle, but their ideas are far more dangerous and frequently undetected. It is amazing that Rand knew this type by the 1940s when these deconstructionist radicals did not hit the scene big time until the 60s and 70s. She must have encountered their forebearers in New York in the 30s.

 

Here is Toohey speech on 109: “ . . . and so my friends, the voice was saying, “the lesson to be learned from our tragic struggle is the lesson of unity. We shall unite or we shall be defeated. Our will—the will of the disinherited, the forgotten, the oppressed—shall weld us together into a solid bulwark, with a common faith and a common goal. This is the time for every man to renounce the thoughts of his petty problems, of gain, of comfort, of self-gratification. This is the time to merge himself in a great current, in a rising tide which is approaching to sweep us all, willing or unwilling into the future. History, my friends, does not ask questions or acquiescence. It is irrevocable, as the voice of the masses that determine it. Let us listen to the call. Let us organize my brothers.”

 

Toohey is a wicked, wicked man who is regarded by most New Yorkers as a humanitarian. He is a bad shepherd leading the human flock astray.