This split is arguably at the core of our culture wars. One side -- represented in spades by Rand at West Point -- believes with certainty it's right and is willing to support that rightness with the use of force and violence. Meanwhile, the other side sees the range of possibilities (what some damn as "relativism") and, accordingly, emphasizes knowledge, humility and compassion as the means for success in the world.
Unfortunately, violence wins most struggles in the short run.
Coda of an Astronaut Lost In Space
Rand opened her speech to the West Point cadets by telling them a little story. "You are an astronaut whose spaceship gets out of control and crashes on an unknown planet." She mocks what she sees as the Kantian, relativist mental weaknesses of the age and describes the lost astronaut as unable to decide what to do. "You turn to your instruments. ... But you stop, struck by a sudden fear: how can you trust these instruments? How can you be sure they won't mislead you?"
So the astronaut does nothing. "It seems so much safer just to wait for something to turn up." He sees two-legged figures approaching him from a distance. "They, you decide, will tell you what to do."
The astronaut is never heard from again.
Rand's point is that a smart astronaut -- or Army officer -- would have acted differently. Most people, she says, act like the passive astronaut, evading three questions: "Where am I? How do I know it? What should I do?"
While she didn't spell it out, there's an implication in her story that a smart astronaut would have concluded (as her story implies was the case) the approaching figures were hostile and would have gunned them down preemptively.
Rand doesn't discuss the other possibility, that the approaching figures were friendly and ready to help the lost astronaut -- like Native Americans in the Thanksgiving story. In that case -- a circumstance the United States Army is very familiar with -- the gunned down figures would be tragic casualties of the fog of war.
But don't fret. Public affairs officers would be sent to the planet later to pay the families an appropriate sum for the loss of their loved ones.
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