The only reason to say this is in response to people saying “A is NOT A”. Who were these people? Philosophically, I don’t know who she thought she was responding to, but psychologically I would submit that this was a response to her narcissistic mother.
Narcissists lie pathologically. They confuse the border between themselves and others. This is particularly damaging in the relationship between a mother and a child, particularly a daughter. They will feel something, and assume you are feeling it too, when you are not. This leads to all sorts of issues with emotional development. The child become unable to accurately label its own feelings, and tends to doubt their truth outright. They tend to avoid emotions.
This was certainly the case with Rand, who was obsessively, compulsively intellectual, spending many hours every day for many years talking in the abstract with her coterie of admirers. Her only genuine spontaneity seems to have come when she would celebrate something by breaking out records from her childhood and dancing to what she called “Tiddlywink” music, in what seems to have been a genuine but happy regression to some happy periods of her life.
To counter the ill effects of such a childhood, you have to develop a strong will, and the ability to enforce borders and boundaries. You have to be willing to call a lie a lie.
This is what Rand was doing, in my view. A is A means “I will not accept covert attacks on my personhood, and my understanding of truth which flows from it.” She was very dogmatic. On many occasions she banished those unwilling to meekly accept her version of truth. She was rigid, because becoming that way had been a requirement for her psychic survival.
Now, I have planned for some time a more comprehensive treatment of her ideas, but have not been successful in my time management to the extent I would have liked. I have been spending a lot of time trying to sort my own issues out. But I will read Galt’s speech, Rourke’s speech (sp?), and rescan her biography, and the plot synopses.
I am in no way trying to minimize the value of her contributions. For a period of time, hers was virtually the only voice speaking out against Collectivism.
And we need to be clear: Narcissism is a FOUNDATIONAL psychological element in socialism. It is the conceit that the needs of one person are equal to those of another. It is by definition a cultural blending that diminishes the individual both philosophically and practically. It is the creed of malignant mothers demonically feeding on their children. It is the creed of zombies and vampires. This is the heart, even if many nice people are fooled into thinking that their politics is a way of improving the world.