"...bloody f#@in' greed...."

At 10:51:16 am, on 11/22/2004 I wrote to an author of an essay on greed:

Dear Mr Edney,

I just read your essay, "Greed." I printed it and will reread it several times. I thought it excellent.

It's hard for me to understand, though, how any essay concerning greed could omit the contributions Ayn Rand made to greed with her campus crusades of the mid 1960's.

Today's business leaders were her listeners in college. I have had several financial message participants say, "Ayn Rand changed my life." Rush Limbaugh symbolizes her when he says, "Keep your money in your own pocket, the government doesn't deserve any of it." Her book, "Atlas Shrugged" sits with dozens of turned down page corners in personal libraries across this financially unequal land.

Perhaps she was a logical conclusion of Adam Smith and the British Utilitarians, but she raised the middle finger of the invisible hand and flipped a bird at the poor as if to warn them of the complete disregard the next few decades would show for them.

If I were younger than 75, I would attempt to chronicle her influence, convinced as I am of its complete lack of moral considerations except those she believes entail logically from her thesis.

I am curious as to why you made no mention of her. Is it because you would consider her simply a footnote to Adam Smith and Johnn Stuart Mill, the latter, incidentally, whose essay on Liberty, second chapter on Freedom of Thought and Discussion I consider one of man's greatest contributions to freedom of discussion?

Kindest regards and congratulations on a superb essay.

Heathcliffe.

At 4:53:40 pm, on 11/22/2004 I received Mr Edney's response:

"Heathcliffe, Thanks for your feedback and comments on the greed essay.

Actually it's not that I am purposely disregarding Ayn Rand, it's that the topic is greed has its roots in so many social thinkers that I made a priority judgement who to include. I am now writing a sequel (due to strong responses from many readers pro-and-con) and Rand will probably not be included in it either. Von Mises, Hayek, Rand - these are not major thinkers in their cause, though Rand is the best known, but I believe Adam Smith said what was to be said on that side. I'm 60, and was a student in the 60's, and I read Atlas shrugged, and I was impressed. But I was more impressed with Catcher in the Rye, and by Vance Packard's The Status Seekers, The Hidden Persuaders, (the latter now out of print). But those times were still virulently anti-commumist and I think Rand rode that sentiment to popularity.

Not just ignored; the poor have been successfully demonized, and it will be very difficult to change that.

We live in unbalanced times; I sometimes shrink from infringing on the rights of all those global capitalists, but somebody's got to say something. I hope you will write of these topics (maybe you are already).

JE"

I turned away from the subject, filed these letters, and his Greed essay, and didn't see them again until we recently moved and I revisited several manuscripts and letters I had forgotten about.

Suffice it to say, I was delighted when I learned that Edney had two years later written an essay on Ayn Rand. I regret I hadn't folloiwed up and kept track of his writings all along.

Here is his essay on Ayn Rand: http://www.onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_448.shtml

I've never learned how to paste more than one item, but Julian Edney has a website as well. He did indeed write that second essay he mentioned, then moved on to Ayn Rand, herself.

And look at the devastation that's happened since then.

I've written on this board before that I thought she provided the philosophical permission for the plundering Wall Street engaged in.

I still do.