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Post by beth on Oct 26, 2009 17:18:43 GMT
I saw this in Newsweek and thought some might enjoy reading it and further discussion of Rand and her books. As credited, this piece is written by Mark Sanford, beleaguered Governor of South Carolina, which should not matter whatsoever, except to understand he is, first and foremost, a politician and, as such, attempting to use Rand's philosophies to bolster his own, conservative, views.
Hopefully, this will serve as a start-up to bring in other material and express opinions about AR and her work that, whether one likes it particularly or not, is still influential. Is it also "more relevant than ever", as Sandford claims? To you .. Atlas Hugged Ayn Rand has drifted in and out of favor, but she may be more relevant today than ever before. By Mark Sanford | NEWSWEEK Published Oct 22, 2009 From the magazine issue dated Nov 2, 2009 In my experience, people who've read Ayn Rand's books either love them or hate them. I'm one of the few who fall somewhere in between. When I first read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged in the 1980s, I was blown away. Those books portray the power of the free individual in ways I had never thought about before. Since then, I've grown more critical of Rand's outlook because it doesn't include the human needs we have for grace, love, faith, or any form of social compact. Yet I still believe firmly that her books deserve attention, and in that regard, Anne Heller's Ayn Rand and the World She Made provides important and meaningful insight into the evolution of Rand's world view. The Fountainhead is a stunning evocation of the individual and what he can achieve when unhindered by government or society. Howard Roark is an architect who cares nothing about the world's approval; his only concerns are his integrity and the perfection of his designs. What strikes me as still relevant is its central insight—that it isn't "collective action" that makes this nation prosperous and secure; it's the initiative and creativity of the individual. The novel's "second-handers," as Rand called them—the opportunistic Peter Keating, who appropriates Roark's architectural talent for his own purposes, and Ellsworth Toohey, the journalist who doesn't know what to write until he knows what people want to hear—symbolize a mindset that's sadly familiar today. The Fountainhead makes that parasitic existence look contemptible. Near the end of the book, Roark is on trial for demolishing a building he had designed—he had insisted it be built exactly as drawn, but when some bureaucrats alter the structure, Roark feels he has no choice but to dynamite it. Representing himself, Roark pleads, in characteristically Randian terms: "I do not recognize anyone's right to one minute of my life. Nor to any part of my energy. Nor to any achievement of mine. No matter who makes the claim, how large their number or how great their need … I recognize no obligations toward men except one: to respect their freedom and to take no part in a slave society." Cold though they sound, these words contain two basic truths. First, an individual can achieve great things without governmental benevolence, and second, one man has no right to another's achievement. These are lessons we should all remember today, when each week is seemingly marked by another government program designed to fix society. After finishing The Fountainhead, Rand spent 14 years building a movement around what she called "objectivism" and composing the massive novel that would become Atlas Shrugged (1957). "Who is John Galt?" is the first line of Rand's 1,000-page book, and by the end it's clear she wants everyone to think, and act, as if they were him. Galt had been, as we discover only as the plot unfolds, head engineer at the Twentieth Century Motor Company, which had produced a motor powered by static electricity. His superiors, however, had decided to restructure the company along Marxist or "collectivist" lines, and Galt had left the company. He leads an effort to get the nation's greatest business leaders to go on a kind of strike. One by one, they disappear, making their way to a hidden valley in Colorado and leaving the now increasingly collectivist U.S. government to try and preserve the country on its own, with no help from these giants of industry. What happens, of course, is that the government collapses, and Galt emerges to reorder society along strictly free-market lines. Granted, the plot is farfetched, but that doesn't mean it's not enormously influential. Another new book, Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right by Jennifer Burns, examines Rand's natural attraction for conservatives—Alan Greenspan was a member of the Saturday-night salon she held in her New York apartment (though William F. Buckley called objectivism "stillborn" in a column he wrote when she died). All told, Atlas has sold more than 6 million copies since it was published just over 50 years ago. Why? I think at a fundamental level many people recognize Rand's essential truth—government doesn't know best. Those in power in Washington—or indeed in Columbia, S.C.—often lead themselves to believe that our prosperity depends on their wisdom. It doesn't. The prosperity and opportunity we enjoy comes ultimately from the creative energies of the country's businessmen, entrepreneurs, investors, marketers, and inventors. The longer it takes this country to reawaken to this reality, the worse we—and in turn, our children's standard of living—will be. When the economy took a nosedive a year ago—a series of events that arguably began when the government-sponsored corporations Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac went broke—many Americans, myself included, watched in disbelief as members of Congress placed blame on everyone and everything but government. This wasn't new in 2008. It's an act we've seen over and over since the beginning of the New Deal in 1933. For that reason, I think, those passages in Atlas Shrugged foreshadow what might happen to our country if there is no change in direction. As Rand shows in her book, when the government is deprived of the free market's best minds, it staggers toward collapse. ronically, as Heller's biography makes clear, while Rand's philosophy was based on the individual's absolute freedom, Rand herself exercised a dictatorial control over her followers. She would denounce anyone who expressed opinions even slightly diverging from her own. Her chief acolyte (and lover), Nathaniel Branden, once circulated a list of rules for Rand's inner circle to follow; one of them read, "Atlas Shrugged is the greatest human achievement in the history of the world"; another said, "Ayn Rand, by virtue of her philosophical genius, is the supreme arbiter in any issue pertaining to what is rational, moral, or appropriate to man's life on earth." For the leader of a group dedicated to human freedom, Rand didn't allow much of it around her. There is one more major flaw in Rand's thinking. She believed that man is perfectible—a view she shared with the Soviet collectivists she hated. The geniuses and industrial titans who retire to Galt's hidden valley create a perfect society based on reason and pure individualism; and Galt himself, in the 57-page speech near the book's end, explicitly denies the existence of original sin. The idea that man is perfectible has been disproved by 10,000 years of history. Men and women are imperfect, or "fallen," which is why I believe there is a role for limited government in making sure that my rights end where yours begin. There is a role for a limited government in thwarting man's more selfish instincts that might limit the freedoms or opportunities of others. But we need to remember the primacy of the individual, of his or her ability to make the world a better place. Over the past year, we've seen Washington try to solve all our problems—chiefly by borrowing billions from future generations—to little effect. In that sense, this is a very good time for a Rand resurgence. She's more relevant than ever.
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Post by beth on Nov 1, 2009 22:55:02 GMT
Here's an npr interview with Anne Heller, who has written a brand new book, Ayn Rand and the World She Made. It just came out today and the audio should be available in about one hour. www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=114373264 I was first introduced to Ayn Rand's writing in 1970. I was 16 and thought Atlas Shrugged was the greatest book I'd ever read. Without access to the information we can now pull up with a keystroke, I knew nothing about her philosophy/ideology so didn't look for hidden meanings, just took her characters and their beliefs at face value - individualism and exclusiveness seem pretty cool when you're 16 with a whole life to live and have never given a lot of thought to points of comparison. Now - well - all that seems long ago and far away. Rand's spat of popularity went downhill throughout the 70s and 80s - nobody much was asking, "Who is John Galt?". Time passed, the libertarians flirted around with her material, but few people were interested is dragging out the big tomes with the plodding plots that went on and on. Fewer wanted to get into cerebral debates about her aggrandizing of self-centered overachievers. So, Ayn Rand joined many of her contemporaries at the back of the stacks. Now, all these years later, the American conservatives are dredging up her ideology of Objectivism and turning on klieg lights with filters to give it a rosy glow. I have to wonder if they are people like me who read the novels and became inspired by the idea of a select few who took on the world and won. Maybe they never got over it. Anyway, this new book is out. I like the title - Ayn Rand and the World She Made - because her view of the world was not reality but a kind of alternate universe she created. I'll bet this book is not going to be a big best seller. Most of the readers will be people like me who remember when . . and the young Republicans, discovering her heady mix of objectivism and me-ism for the first time. Thoughts?
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Post by Liberator on Nov 1, 2009 23:55:48 GMT
I tried to read Atlas shrugged but found it as much pure propaganda set in a symbolic world as Pilgrim's Progress. It reminds me most of a strange deliberately bad pulp science-fiction novel called The Iron Swastika, by Adolf Hitler where the thesis is that after failing at art college, Hitler emigrated to New York and wrote novels of the Heroes against Evil Aliens kind similar to L.Ron Hubbard's outpourings. That this warped woman has been influential in justifying the evermore dehumanised world we live in while actually keeping an iron grip on her acolytes, I don't doubt for a moment. Prophets of freedom always know too well exactly what freedom is to allow their words to be questioned. Her message quite naturally appeals to the self-justification of all who imagine themselves a Master Race. It is a real irony that the kind of people forever finding Illuminati under the bed are just those who so often approve of her and see themselves as just such a superior group whose inhuman self-absorption would result in the ultimate humanitarianism of a perfect world for lesser beings. It has a lot in common with fascist ideology bewailing the lesser beings whose parasitic demands prevent their superiors from showing their true colours. Unfortunately 'The Triumph of the Will' is a better title already taken by a better craftswoman. It is also crap. Superior beings whose talents nobody recognises are rarely commercial successes. They will only flourish if they do not need to rely on those talents to make a living but have the time to exercise them. That either restricts them to a supported aristocracy or requires a socialistic state to provide for all to direct their abilities where they wish and not where they must. The anarchy of all-against-all and devil take the hindmost is nothing new: it is older than the human race going back to amoeba-swallow-amoeba. The whole of human history is a development away from aggressive individualism and towards cooperation. Always Rand followers meet the historical evidence that society as a whole has had to place restrictions on its members to allow the greatest liberty to the greatest number with the objection that it is those restrictions themselves that caused the problems they were brought in to solve. This is something like claiming that everybody stands a better chance in a fight without rules. Some do: most don't. But Rand doesn't care about most. It is easy to provide blueprints for perfection when you specify perfection to eliminate just about everything that for most people makes life worth living and for which they live that life. It is a nice observation (though I forget where I first saw it) that research shows people much more willing and determined to do a thorough job when asked a favour instead of offered pay. We like to be valued for ourselves more than in cash. Rand is essentially a fascist and appeals to exactly the same kind of failures who know themselves superior beings who would shine if only they had no inferiors tying them down with their petty rules intended to sponge off them. Her fascism is of a purely monetary kind but no less the creed of an aspirant Master Race in need of cleansing itself of lesser parasites. All those whose life holds values beyond the only ones she cares about are by nature a part of this inferior underclass. They are the monetary equivalent to those weaklings who feel sympathy for the cleansed Enemies of the Folk and so show themselves to be fellow-travelling Enemies of the Folk. www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=408138
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Post by ♫anna♫ on Nov 5, 2009 6:02:48 GMT
I read Ayn Rand's colume in US newspapers at times! I found her advice quite OK! Her sister Abby had/has? a popular colume too. The Dr. Laura radio program is pretty popular too. The only criticism i have is that they seem to assume that everyone can afford lawyers and psychiatrists.
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Post by ♫anna♫ on Nov 5, 2009 6:05:43 GMT
Rand is essentially a fascist and appeals to exactly the same kind of failures who know themselves superior beings who would shine if only they had no inferiors tying them down with their petty rules intended to sponge off them. Her fascism is of a purely monetary kind but no less the creed of an aspirant Master Race in need of cleansing itself of lesser parasites. All those whose life holds values beyond the only ones she cares about are by nature a part of this inferior underclass. They are the monetary equivalent to those weaklings who feel sympathy for the cleansed Enemies of the Folk and so show themselves to be fellow-travelling Enemies of the Folk. www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=408138So Ayn Rand's part of the conspiracy too. zzzzzz
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Post by Big Lin on Nov 5, 2009 12:07:20 GMT
Rand is essentially a fascist and appeals to exactly the same kind of failures who know themselves superior beings who would shine if only they had no inferiors tying them down with their petty rules intended to sponge off them. Her fascism is of a purely monetary kind but no less the creed of an aspirant Master Race in need of cleansing itself of lesser parasites. All those whose life holds values beyond the only ones she cares about are by nature a part of this inferior underclass. They are the monetary equivalent to those weaklings who feel sympathy for the cleansed Enemies of the Folk and so show themselves to be fellow-travelling Enemies of the Folk. www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=408138So Ayn Rand's part of the conspiracy too. zzzzzz Rand is a very complex thinker in many ways. She had a lot of good ideas as well as a lot of very silly ones but calling her a fascist is about as wide of the mark as calling, say, Gladstone one. She is basically a right-wing Sternerite anarchist and her view of what the government that she does allow should do is so minimalist that it's closer to a hippie commune than anything else. The trouble is, she confuses unregulated capitalism with political freedom and so didn't see that it inevitably leads to monopoly, oligopoly and corruption. She's also a bit wacky on several other issues (I remember reading her essay on 'racism' which started out moderately enough by pointing out the obvious stupidity of discriminating against people on the grounds of ethnicity or colour and then launched into a long rant about all sorts of irrelevant stuff from Communism to religious fundamentalists (Rand was a FIERCE atheist) and eventually became a random, rambling rant. A pity because the lady DID have a good brain but she didn't always use it!
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Post by beth on Nov 5, 2009 16:11:38 GMT
The trouble is, she confuses unregulated capitalism with political freedom and so didn't see that it inevitably leads to monopoly, oligopoly and corruption. Yes, well put. That's the way it seems to me. That and the belief in very minimal gov't (makes me think Grover Norquist must have been a disciple) endeared her to many libertarians in spite of some of the far-fetched views incorporated into her Objectivism ideology.
She's also a bit wacky on several other issues (I remember reading her essay on 'racism' which started out moderately enough by pointing out the obvious stupidity of discriminating against people on the grounds of ethnicity or colour and then launched into a long rant about all sorts of irrelevant stuff from Communism to religious fundamentalists (Rand was a FIERCE atheist) and eventually became a random, rambling rant. I haven't read that one. From your description I think I'll pass. Thanks for the warning. A pity because the lady DID have a good brain but she didn't always use it! She was smart enough, but seemed to become overly enamored with our brand of capitalism and tried to carve out her own niche in American culture. Trouble is (imo) she didn't refine it, just tossed out a jumble and left it to history and to chance. That means anyone can pick it up and twist and turn it to suit perceived needs - especially from a political standpoint.
I wholeheartedly agree with your post from the thread in The Pulpit in which you comment that in spite of not agreeing with the AR pov, it is much better than the U.S. far right ( with their deep social conservatism and no nothing attitude). Bad as that may seem from a distance - it's worse up close.
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Post by fretslider on Nov 5, 2009 18:42:28 GMT
I think my favourite Rand work has to be The Fountainhead.
Beth Did you know that Rand was Neil Peart's biggest influence?
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Post by beth on Nov 5, 2009 22:16:57 GMT
No I didn't, Fret. Is Peart (Rush drummer) a libertarian? If so, that would account for it, because she was/is an influence to those who lean to that philosophy. *** I admit, I can understand how it might be easy to get caught up in the Objectivism POV - especially if one is young and looking to find their way, or very idealistic with an inflated ego. Here is a definition for Objectivism. It's hard for me to understand how all this can be taken seriously. --- Objectivism is the philosophy developed by the Russian-American philosopher and novelist, Ayn Rand (1905–1982).[1] Objectivism holds that reality exists independent of consciousness; that individual persons are in direct contact with this reality through sensory perception; that human beings can gain objective knowledge from perception through the process of concept formation and inductive and deductive logic; that the proper moral purpose of one's life is the pursuit of one's own happiness or rational self-interest; that the only social system consistent with this morality is full respect for individual rights, embodied in pure laissez faire capitalism; and that the role of art in human life is to transform man's widest metaphysical ideas, by selective reproduction of reality, into a physical form—a work of art—that he can comprehend and to which he can respond emotionally. Rand originally expressed her philosophical ideas in her novels The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, and other works. She further elaborated on them in her magazines The Objectivist Newsletter, The Objectivist, and The Ayn Rand Letter, and in non-fiction books such as Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology and The Virtue of Selfishness.[2] The name "Objectivism" derives from the principle that human knowledge and values are objective: they are not created by the thoughts one has, but are determined by the nature of reality, to be discovered by man's mind.[3] Rand chose the name because her preferred term for a philosophy based on the primacy of existence, existentialism, had already been taken.[4] Lots More Here *** On a musical note I think the anthem for the Rand fans (all the bright young things) would probably be Carly Simon's Let the Rivers Run.
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Post by fretslider on Nov 5, 2009 23:35:30 GMT
I read her books some years ago, but I found it hard to imagine the world she painted- especially in Atlas Shrugged. I think a lot of it stems from her time in Russia, a kind of knee jerk reaction. I quite liked Ellsworth Toohey
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Post by beth on Nov 6, 2009 0:08:54 GMT
haha Toohey was one of those dreaded socialists. When I read the books (long time ago) I was firmly in Roark's corner. Atlas Shrugged was my favorite of the two big novels, though. I haven't heard anyone else say this, so I could be wrong, but think it's possible one of Rand's obsessions was the quest of the "hero" as portrayed in classic myth. You're probably right about the knee jerk over-reaction after coming to despise life in Russia.
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Post by Liberator on Nov 6, 2009 0:11:43 GMT
Beth, it's a cult. Your first paragraph defines it so because it is the direct opposite of the findings of physics since the 1920s, particularly the 'Copenhagen Convention'. There is no external 'reality' there is only probability. The material world is a subjective experience. Psychologically neither self-interest nor human beings as a whole are 'rational'. For one thing they never have access to access to enough information to make long-term rational assessments and in any case, rationality and life involve far more than logic. The appeal to 'reason' against 'wishy-washy sentiment' has been at the heart of every totalitarianism you care to name and is no more than a throw-back to a 'reptilian' level of mental deployment for purely personal ends disregarding all common links in a kind of glorified autism. It is the 'philosophy' of the teenager wailing 'snot fair whenever somebody prevents him/her from doing, or themselves refuses to do exactly what s/he wants. Which is just how she lived her life, expecting liaisons with any man willing to have her while as jealous as hell of any man who did the same, insisting on he right to dictate her beliefs while exploding at anyone who dared to advance their own. She was an autocrat and her philosophy is no more than an inversion of the way Marxist 'scientific materialism' was projected from socio-economics to try to apply as a universal scientific principle. She is Marx without his belief in the perfectability of the human soul and nobility of human spirit - neither of which he believed in, yet motivate his work, while hers reduces human existence to money. She is one of those who sneer at love when their is prostitution. Mostly one finds that such people are terrified of rejection; they believe themselves inadequate as people, so eliminate those emotional concerns they feel inadequate in from their definition of what it is to be human. I'm writing a story at the moment that involves an unlikely alliance of Randites with Christian fundamentalists - to both, money-making is their true creed.
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Post by beth on Nov 6, 2009 0:31:30 GMT
Ratarsed, I'll have to read up a bit more and get back with you on this one. I'm not as well versed on Marxism as you and had never really thought of Rand's world view in that way. Money isn't the only motivator of her protagonists, so I'll have to give it some thought. As far as a cult, it could be used that way, I guess - depending on who wanted what from it. I've never thought of libertarians as cultists. They tend to want less - not more - when it comes to government involvement in everything from business to personal life. I've never seen them in a negative light. In regard to the fundies ( not my favorite folk), they don't, for the most part, seem to be cerebral enough to wrap their minds around Objectivism or any other Ayn Rand related thought. I don't want to be overly inclusive on that one, but on Halloween, a little group of these people burned books that did not set well with their ideas. I have a feeling, if they had known Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead existed, those two would have been on top of the pile (shudder) . Promise - I will go read a bit and re-read your post with a better idea of whether we agree or not. Interesting ideas.
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Post by Liberator on Nov 6, 2009 0:54:56 GMT
I don't know that much about Rand because I'd never heard of her until the Net, and being at heart an Anarchist myself, followed some stuff up. But what I call Anarchism is absolutely the opposite of her ideas, much closer to Celtic Christian monastic villages all working together because it feels good to contribute to the common good. That is why I want to know more about Trotsky, though he died too early to comment on modern life and those who use his name seem to have no contact with the way most people feel and behave. All the same, reading him shows me that what I'd thought out for myself, he had pretty much anticipated. So did either Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson in believing that there must exist a sense of permanent revolution, that there is always somewhere further to go, whatever system we need to guide today may become a hindrance we need to remove tomorrow.
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Post by ♫anna♫ on Nov 6, 2009 5:44:40 GMT
I don't know that much about Rand because I'd never heard of her until the Net, . Really now retarsed you denounced Rand as a fascist and now you admit you don't know much about her! You hurt your credibility with these rants. I guess it's "in" now to denounce people, who don't follow the party line as fascists, nazis, Hitlers, etc.. It's a pity that you can't refrain from following this ugly modern trend!
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Post by beth on Nov 6, 2009 17:53:02 GMT
Ratarsed, why don't you read one of the novels? They're long, but easy reading. It would help you get an idea of her POV through the main characters. I'd like to read your opinion. If you decide to, post which one (Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead) and I'll pick up a copy and follow along. Maybe others would also be interested.
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Post by Big Lin on Nov 6, 2009 21:04:10 GMT
I've only read Rand's non-fiction books. (not all of them, either!)
Her basic philosophy is (OK, I guess I'll need to get Mike to put it in more technical terms) that the whole basis of a good life is the following things:
1 The use of reason 2 Rejection of religion 3 The government should do almost nothing or at least as little as is possible beyond protecting the citizens 4 America was founded on the ideals of the Enlightenment and any attempt to create a society based on religious values is not only irrational but almost certain to end in dictatorship 5 The greatest possible individual freedom, to the point where her 'egoism' - which she seriously argues is a moral 'good' as opposed to 'altruism' which she claims is evil - is more or less indistinguishable from personal selfishness and any attempts by government to regulate that should ONLY be made if and ONLY if one person's rights intrude upon those of other people.
I basically agree with point 1 and partly with points 3 and 4.
Point 2 depends on your attitude towards religion (Rand described it as 'mystic fantasy') and point 5 is not only crazy but completely at odds with almost every moral philosophy that has ever existed.
She has a lot of good ideas but she suffers from two fatal flaws.
In the first place, she can't see that the individual can't be the supreme and sovereign unit unless you're living on a desert island or something like that. As long as people live in societies where they have to interact, there has to be mutual give and take and any attempt at an egoistic philosophy only leads to the likes of Richard Ramirez taking control.
Secondly, she can't see that individuals - even acting together collectively - aren't generally strong enough to stop corporations and similar bodies from oppressing them which is where it's the job of government to step in and 'hold the ring.'
In many ways she has a lot of virtues. She quite rightly, for instance, draws attention to the fact that Herbert Hoover began the public works programmes that laid the foundations of the slow US economic recovery for which Roosevelt's New Deal is always given credit. Unfortunately, in her eyes that makes Hoover a socialist and his programmes bad ideas.
In mine it makes him a pioneer of modern economics and one of the most underrated Republican Presidents of all time.
Whatever else she is, Rand is NOT remotely near the same kind of ideology as Fascism, Nazism or Communism. She is basically a right-wing anarchist who hasn't quite got the courage of her convictions or perhaps the intellectual consistency to take the final step and BE a full-blown Stirnerite anarchist.
She would also hate, despise and campaign like mad AGAINST the lunatic neo-cons who are ruining the Republican Party. It's hard to believe that the party of Lincoln, Grant, McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, Hoover, Dewey, Goldwater and Ford (also a very underrated President) has deteriorated into a theatre group straight out of a lunatic asylum.
McCain was so much better than the idiots he was forced to appease at the convention.
Goldwater, by the way, was probably the only Presidential nominee who tried to campaign on pretty much a Randist-type of programme.
Like Dewey, he would have been a very good (possibly even great) President.
Ayn Rand is full of challenging ideas and often makes you at least LOOK at the alternatives to your beliefs because she IS a good critic most of the time.
There's far more substance to her (and to the completely different but equally intellectual conservatives Russell Kirk and Peter Viereck. Both men are different class from William Buckley though even he is preferable to the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Glen Beck!) than she's been given credit for.
People who only know her by her novels are missing out on one of the most interesting and original thinkers of the last fifty or sixty years.
Am I a fan? Not exactly, but I do think she's well worth a read, if only to challenge my own prejudices.
At least you can take her seriously which is more than you can say for Limbaugh, Coulter and Beck.
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Post by beth on Nov 7, 2009 22:48:29 GMT
I'm going to add this in case others might like to join the discussion. Some of the posts, back up-thread, may lead to confusion about the subject. ______________________________________________________________________ About Ayn Rand Novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand was born Alissa Rosenbaum on February 2, 1905 in St. Petersburg, Russia. Her family lived in a large, comfortable apartment above the chemist shop owned by her father. From her earliest years, the girl felt alienated from the dark, brooding atmosphere of Russia, but loved the bright world projected in stories appearing in foreign magazines. At age nine she made the conscious decision to become a writer. In her teens, she discovered the works of great romantic writers such as Victor Hugo and Edmond Rostand. But as her private vision of human potential expanded, the social horizons of human possibility were shrinking around her. In February 1917 she witnessed the first shots of the Russian Revolution from her balcony. Soon, a communist gang nationalized her father’s shop. Almost overnight, her family was reduced to crushing poverty. Against the growing squalor of Soviet life, the young woman nurtured a burning desire to abandon Russia for the West. She obtained a passport to visit relatives in Chicago, and left Russia and her family in January 1926, never to return. She arrived in New York City weeks later, with only $50 in her purse. After a brief stay with her Chicago relatives – where she selected the pen name of Ayn Rand – she moved to Hollywood. The day after she arrived, she was given a car ride, and a job as a movie extra, by film director Cecil B. DeMille. Soon after, on the set of DeMille’s film King of Kings, she literally stumbled into the actor who would eventually become her husband, Frank O’Connor. Over the next decade, Rand worked at odd jobs. In her spare time she mastered English, and churned out screenplays, short stories, and a novel. Her extraordinary perseverance and talent eventually paid off with two Broadway plays, and publication of her first novel, We The Living. But the book that made her famous was The Fountainhead. Published in 1943, this great novel of American individualism presented Rand’s mature portrait of “Man as hero,” in the character of architect Howard Roark. Roark demands the right to design and build loyal only to his own ideals and principles. In his long struggle to succeed – a struggle not unlike Rand’s own – he eventually triumphs over every form of spiritual collectivism. This novel first presented Rand’s provocative morality of rational egoism, and later became a film starring Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal. It has remained a bestseller for over half a century, selling millions of copies. If The Fountainhead created controversy, Atlas Shrugged fomented a furor. In this gigantic Romantic epic, Rand dramatized the major elements of her challenging new philosophy of “reason, individualism, and capitalism,” which she called “Objectivism.” This novel was to be the capstone of her literary and philosophic career. After publication of Atlas Shrugged in 1957, Rand turned to nonfiction, elaborating her philosophy in many essays, columns, and public appearances. Her colorful and tumultuous life ended on March 6, 1982 at her New York apartment. But in the years since her death, interest in her ideas has only increased. Today, she and her philosophy are the focus of books, film documentaries, magazine and newspaper articles, and a growing intellectual movement of scholars, organizations, and publications. __________________________________________________________________
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Post by beth on Nov 7, 2009 23:29:39 GMT
That's a good summary, Lin and Mike. It's been a long time since I've read her books and other material. The one novel I haven't read is Anthem, though it might possibly be the most interesting. Trying to remember what about her ideas appealed to me so much, I suspect it was the glorification of individual accomplishment as opposed to productivity for the common good. That part was very easy to grasp; after all, it was a major part of the American ideal at the time (late '60s, early '70s), and it was certainly in opposition to the Russian way - from all as they can, to all as they need - it must have seemed rather wonderful to her. Isn't this the same as the old, familiar, merit system, I doubt she saw it as greed and selfishness at all.
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Post by Big Lin on Nov 11, 2009 17:05:36 GMT
If she'd just been a total lunatic she wouldn't have had the influence she did.
In a way, when the so-called American right is dominated by intolerant fundamentalists from the Bible Belt who want to create a mirror image of the regimes in Iran and Somalia from a so-called Christian perspective, at least Rand needs respect for her fierce committment to reason, to freedom of speech and her total opposition to any element of religion being involved in the legal framework of the US.
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