Posted on 11/03/2009 12:13:51 AM PST by Tempest
Ayn Rand is one of America's great mysteries. She was an amphetamine-addicted author of sub-Dan Brown potboilers, who in her spare time wrote lavish torrents of praise for serial killers and the Bernie Madoff-style embezzlers of her day. She opposed democracy on the grounds that "the masses"—her readers—were "lice" and "parasites" who scarcely deserved to live. Yet she remains one of the most popular writers in the United States, still selling 800,000 books a year from beyond the grave. She regularly tops any list of books that Americans say have most influenced them. Since the great crash of 2008, her writing has had another Benzedrine rush, as Rush Limbaugh hails her as a prophetess. With her assertions that government is "evil" and selfishness is "the only virtue," she is the patron saint of the tea-partiers and the death panel doomsters. So how did this little Russian bomb of pure immorality in a black wig become an American icon?
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
I totally agree. I guess that’s why God took away one of that David guys sons from him when he did that...
It is very easy for many of us to discern the value of Rand’s insights concerning the gross evil of the taxpayer-consuming, all-dominating, and suffocating nanny state while rejecting her oddball atheistic excesses on other matters. To hate and reject the state as Rand brilliantly identified and marked it does not mean that we are less compassionate, but that we are able to be more truly compassionate with our own money according to our own God-given judgment.
I traded the Virgin Mary for Dagney Taggert many years ago, and have NO regrets.
As it says on my favorite t-shirt "Jesus Saves, Moses Invests!"
“Only capitalists who offer honest value for honest value are heroic in her world.”
My favorite Rand quote -
“My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.”
- Ayn Rand
Your use of the word "diagnosis" is a straw man - one could just as easily ask where Rand purported to be, as you put it, a "medical expert." The "human condition" that Dostoevsky and Hemingway describe is that of the individual fighting against personal cowardice and relying on their own integrity rather than giving in to coercion and fear. Dostoevsky, especially, pits people against these things as represented by government tyranny. These "human conditions" are identical with ALL of the focus of Rand's work. To separate Rand - to separate The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and the singular focus of Objectivism to protect against collectivist tyranny - from the "human condition," is not only absurd, but deliberately disingenuous.
And here I thought I was holding him up as an example of an incredibly valuable writer who exemplified the highest ideals of humanity, despite whatever personal problems he had - and all the while I was spreading Soviet lies!
Drats - foiled again by those damn sneaky Russkies.
Ayn Rand is like Barbra Streisand: Has a certain talent and the rest is not so good. There are some great tenets in atlas shrugged, but the foundation of humanism in the book tends to spoil it.
Her private life was a mess and nothing to respect.
You may find that many of those that have an adoration of Rand in reality just appreciate some of the concepts she espoused in her books.
Key word: Some
However, ultimately her “godless capitalism” would be just about the harshest world one could imagine.
I don't think this problem is unique to Rand - there is a seeming philosophical paradox at the root of the human condition that philosophers have been struggling with forever. Freeper carcraft nailed it at post #59 when he said: "Man can not survive as an individual but society cannot progress with out individualism! I think God loves irony!"
Political philosophy basically squares off between these two positions - "man cannot survive as an individual" (left wing argument), versus "society cannot progress with out individualism" (right wing argument). The problem is in their separation - it's like listening to bones and flesh arguing whether the whole body should be one or the other. Rand noted, however, that the argument for bones to be turned into flesh was becoming extremely appealing. So, she emphasized the other side as hard as she could to fight the rise of collectivist power.
So I feel it's a matter of context - if your boat has a hole in it, nothing matters as much as fixing the hole. But once that's done, there are many other considerations. Rand was focused on a hole that people were (and still are) refusing to acknowledge as dangerous. So did (in his own way) Dostoyevsky and certainly Solzhenitsyn. Ultimately, fighting communism isn't the point of life. But if igorance about the deadliness of collectivism is still a threat, it's the hole in the boat that will sink you before you can get to anything else.
Ah, a little soul bruising only adds character to a ripe peach.
That post should have come with a “SKANK WARNING”!
“The only difference was that Lenin thought the parasites to be stomped on were the rich, while Rand thought they were the poor.”
It has been a long time since I read Atlas Shrugged - and I’ve been meaning to read it again, and/or some of her other stuff.
But from what I recall it was the “poor” masses that were rallying for the government to “DO Something” against the rich that she had a problem with in Atlas Shrugged. I would equate the poor masses in the book to the masses of today that follow the playbook provided to them by ACORN or the SEIU. They are just little Lenins.
Of course that is just what I remembered from the book - I don’t know her entire worldview. I did know that she was an atheist, which is clear in Atlas Shrugged. Even way back then I was able to discern the good from the bad, and take some and leave some. Just like with anything.
OK I appreciate the distinction - but do you appreciate the danger this approach offers? It lies in who defines and who decides who has “no value of any kind”? The answer is “the helper”, which might seem logical, but that means that you as an individual are making value judgements of someones worth - and which of us can really see into someones heart, or not allow our own personal prejudices from influencing such a decision?
Your example makes it easy - obviously you support the one who is going to use the help to drag himself out of the situation rather than the one who will wallow in it. But supposing theyve both worked hard, but one is an engineer and one is a painter. Supposing they both work but ones an old man and the other is a pretty woman. Suppose they both try but ones a christian and one is a moslem. Values of the “appreciation of other peoples values” sounds very fine, but our appreciation of what is value varies, and is never an absolute.
Oh I see what you are getting at. Ok, that makes sense.
Ah but the point is that Ayn Rand’s philosophy does not allow you to say “I agree with this part, but not that bit”. According to her, you have to accept it all, and any deviation from that makes you “anti-life” or a fool.
This author may use hyperbole to make his points, but he writes with considerably less bile than Rand herself did.
God loves irony but fanatics such as Ayn Rand hate it. The world isn't a cartoon land of pure good and evil, of heroes and looters. The real world doesn't operate that way. Also, It's funny how some are willing to forgive an Ayn Rand for her personal shortcomings but are harsh and unyielding when it comes to the weaknesses of those they consider to be parasites.
It's a shame that the ridiculous rantings of Ayn Rand have become the voice of conservatism for many. We need to offer a message of hope and opportunity for all, not just self proclaimed Atlases.
They make my heart cry.
It would be hilarious if it wasn't so pathetic, but some seem to regard Atlas Shrugged as equal to the Bible.
It's a shame that so many impressionable young people are seduced by the message of Rand. It's a greater shame that so many are unable to outgrow Randism as they get older. If people are so much into Atlas, they would be better served to study the Dynamic Tension of Charles Atlas. At least that would impress the babes on the beach.
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