Posted on 10/31/2011 10:11:20 AM PDT by Para-Ord.45
Ayn Rand is being hailed a prophet. How could she have anticipated, more than 50 years ago, a United States spinning out of financial control, plagued by soaring spending and crippling
How, people wondered, could Rand have foreseen all this? Was she a prophet? No, she answered. She had simply identified the basic cause of why the country was veering from crisis to new crisis.
Was the solution to “go Galt” and quit society? No, Rand again answered. The solution was simultaneously much easier and much harder. “So long as we have not yet reached the state of censorship of ideas,” she once said, “one does not have to leave a society in the way the characters did in Atlas Shrugged. . . . But you know what one does have to do? One has to break relationships with the culture. . . . [D]iscard all the ideas—the entire cultural philosophy which is dominant today.”
"You have cried that man’s sins are destroying the world and you have cursed human nature for its unwillingness to practice the virtues you demanded,” the novel's hero John Galt declares to a country in crisis. “Since virtue, to you, consists of sacrifice, you have demanded more sacrifices at every successive disaster.”
He elaborates: “You have sacrificed justice to mercy.” (For example, calls to make homeownership “accessible” to those who could not afford it and then bailouts and foreclosure freezes to spare them when they couldn’t pay.)
“You have sacrificed reason to faith.” (For example, attempts to prevent stem cell research on Biblical grounds, or blind faith that Mr. Obama’s deliberately empty rhetoric about hope and change will magically produce prosperity.)
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
I think she finished the book in 1947. I think it was copyrighted & published in 1957, according to my copy of the book.
Yep, Mormon Cleon Skousen likely would have gotten his ideas for The Naked Communist from her, and not the other way round like the poster freeangel suggested.
If she was any good she would have anticipated immorality spinning out of control, too.
Strange. Ayn Rand must have been in the air because I thought of her and posted that thought last night. The eCAT meeting made me think of Project X in Atlas Shrugged. Rand was a libertarian and an atheist. That surely colored her philosophy or maybe the other way around. Whatever determined her philosophy, you have to admit that she hits the nail on the head concerning the end product of the societal projection.
Not kidding you. Objectivist philosophy is meaningless unless it is predicated upon absolute Truth, God.
Re: stem cell research.
Government should not be involved in funding any kind of research except defense.
The eternal face of MA: John Adams move over permanently.
Rand didn’t predict squat. She simply told a story based on man’s repeated tendency throughout history to abandon individualism and submit to tyranny.
Thank you for the ping.
And a Hugh BUMP!! to this article.
I hope this group can provide an answer for me.
I plan on buying copies of Atlas Shrugged, Part 1. The problem is there are four choices. Which one would be the best one? Atlas Society, Freedom Works, Reason and there’s the official, initial release.
If there are some Freepers who have suggestions I would appreciate learning them.
Thanks in advance.
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