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Is Rand Relevant?
WSJ ^ | 3/14/2009 | YARON BROOK

Posted on 03/16/2009 6:21:45 AM PDT by shove_it

Ayn Rand died more than a quarter of a century ago, yet her name appears regularly in discussions of our current economic turmoil. Pundits including Rush Limbaugh and Rick Santelli urge listeners to read her books, and her magnum opus, "Atlas Shrugged," is selling at a faster rate today than at any time during its 51-year history.

There's a reason. In "Atlas," Rand tells the story of the U.S. economy crumbling under the weight of crushing government interventions and regulations. Meanwhile, blaming greed and the free market, Washington responds with more controls that only deepen the crisis. Sound familiar?

The novel's eerily prophetic nature is no coincidence. "If you understand the dominant philosophy of a society," Rand wrote elsewhere in "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal," "you can predict its course." Economic crises and runaway government power grabs don't just happen by themselves; they are the product of the philosophical ideas prevalent in a society -- particularly its dominant moral ideas.

[...]

(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Editorial; Government
KEYWORDS: atlasshrugged; aynrand; rand
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To: jonno
Thus the saying - it’s hard to account for taste.

Rand's style is appealing enough for those with teen-aged sensibilities -- teens are, after all, attracted by Rand's kind of breathless outrage, which matches their own.

As Whittaker Chambers so aptly put it:

Since a great many of us dislike much that Miss Rand dislikes, quite as heartily as she does, many incline to take her at her word. It is the more persuasive, in some quarters, because the author deals wholly in the blackest blacks and the whitest whites. In this fiction everything, everybody, is either all good or all bad, without any of those intermediate shades which, in life, complicate reality and perplex the eye that seeks to probe it truly. This kind of simplifying pattern, of course, gives charm to most primitive storyknown as: The War between the Children of Light and the Children of Darkness. In modern dress, it is a class war. Both sides to it are caricatures.

Rand is offensive to adult tastes, precisely because adults are not fooled by her strident emotional overtures. Adults have seen "those intermediate shades which, in life, complicate reality and perplex the eye that seeks to probe it truly." And they properly reject those who would have us pretend that those intermediate shades do not exist.

101 posted on 03/16/2009 8:08:42 AM PDT by r9etb
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To: Knitting A Conundrum

This book was a fad when I was in High School. Even then, in the late 50’s the teachers didn’t like to see us carry it and didn’t want book reports on it.
They disliked my John O’Hara books even more.


102 posted on 03/16/2009 8:11:22 AM PDT by Oldexpat
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To: demshateGod
But is her philosophy really all that great? Couldn’t we get all of her good ideas from other sources and skip out of reading her 37,000 page novels. There should be NO required reading, parents should decide what their kids read. Well maybe it should be required reading in the prisons.

"Required" reading is like the antithesis of Rand. lol. She would say "read it or dont. Just dont tell me what to read".

103 posted on 03/16/2009 8:11:46 AM PDT by smith288 (Americans suffer from Stockholm Syndrome with the government)
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To: shove_it

Dang... It was 59 last week....

It is screaming up the charts!!


104 posted on 03/16/2009 8:13:39 AM PDT by birddog (Hab 3:18)
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To: Weatherman Bill

Welcome to Free Republic.

Perhaps you would be happier at DU.


105 posted on 03/16/2009 8:14:59 AM PDT by sleepwalker (Palin 2012)
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To: Lurker

Wow - I forgot all about that story...

I read a lot of Vonnegut as a kid.


106 posted on 03/16/2009 8:15:21 AM PDT by birddog (Hab 3:18)
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To: KarlInOhio

Playboy used to publish anthologies of SF stories from time to time back then; wouldn’t be surprised if that’s where he and I read it. (These were just SF books, not adult entertainment.)


107 posted on 03/16/2009 8:15:55 AM PDT by Knitting A Conundrum (Incompetence mixed with bad ideology = change for the worst.)
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To: KarlInOhio
While tracking it down I saw it was originally published in Playboy, so I doubt you saw the original in school.

IIRC, the magazine was a compilation of fiction and non-fiction stories, it had movie information (Star Wars), and other stuff in it, as well. So it had to be late 70s. I got it in grade school. There were articles on the Concord and Space Shuttle (well, the design of it, anyway, since it didn't launch first until '81).

I wish I still had the magazines, the short stories in them were great.

108 posted on 03/16/2009 8:15:58 AM PDT by IYAS9YAS (Obama - what you get when you mix Affirmative Action with the Peter Principle.)
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To: Lets Be Frank

Go to Reply #60 and click the link.


109 posted on 03/16/2009 8:17:49 AM PDT by shove_it (and have a nice day)
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To: sleepwalker; Weatherman Bill
Welcome to Free Republic. Perhaps you would be happier at DU.

LOL! Do you have any idea how stupid that insult makes you look?

110 posted on 03/16/2009 8:18:08 AM PDT by r9etb
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To: Huck
Some of the businessmen like James Taggart are scabs/looters.

Interestingly all of the ‘trust fund babies’ in her book, except for Dagny and Fransisco, sounded like the spoiled brats of today. James Taggart had obviously gone to the correct colleges, as were the heirs to 20th Century Motors.

111 posted on 03/16/2009 8:22:13 AM PDT by sleepwalker (Palin 2012)
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To: sleepwalker

You can do better than that! Tell us why you think he would be happier at DU.


112 posted on 03/16/2009 8:23:50 AM PDT by CharacterCounts (November 4, 2008 - the day America drank the Kool-Aid)
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To: shove_it

FYI...the movie is set to star Angelina Jolie as Dagny.

sorry if this has been posted.


113 posted on 03/16/2009 8:24:11 AM PDT by Lets Be Frank
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To: r9etb

I am a sinner. Big time!

God loves me.

Why do you question?


114 posted on 03/16/2009 8:24:56 AM PDT by Weatherman Bill
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To: r9etb

“She’s relevant to the point of getting one thinking. However, her philosophy is both derivative and often irrational — and her writing style is just plain awful.”

I’m with you on that, although I think she contributes so much in her depiction of left wing thoughts/arguments and was so prophetic about the slow creep of socialism that I’m willing to overlook her faults.

Heck - writing is tough and no matter how good a book is there will always be “writing snobs” somewhere who bash it.

I appreciate her work and I’m glad she left all of us this book.


115 posted on 03/16/2009 8:25:59 AM PDT by Scotswife (GO ISRAEL!!!)
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To: Weatherman Bill

?


116 posted on 03/16/2009 8:26:58 AM PDT by r9etb
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To: shove_it

Ive been listening to it everyday while I work out.


117 posted on 03/16/2009 8:29:20 AM PDT by jprobst (Who is John Galt?)
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To: Mad Dawgg

It sure does seem to be that way.


118 posted on 03/16/2009 8:31:26 AM PDT by screaminsunshine (!!)
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To: screaminsunshine
Her fiction novel is now a non-fiction book.

I sometimes wish conservatives would stop writing books. They write them as a means of cautionary warnings. But I fear that the left are using them a script to destroy America. Orwell was spot on.

119 posted on 03/16/2009 9:37:21 AM PDT by usurper (Spelling or grammatical errors in this post can be attributed to the LA City School System)
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To: Weatherman Bill

-—”I’m sorry for not being too specific, Rand used men like sex toys and was an atheist.”

What does her personal life have to do with her superb writing?

Do you realize you’re sounding like a bigot who judges one’s accomplishments by their sexual/religious/racial attributes that have nothing to do with her accomplishments?


120 posted on 03/16/2009 9:46:40 AM PDT by AlanGreenSpam (Obama: The First 'American IDOL' President - sponsored by Chicago NeoCom Thugs)
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