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Substitute "who is John Galt" for "Let's Go Brandon".

Rand's biggest fault is her extreme atheism.

Much of our societies accomplishments are directly attributable to Christian ethics, which Rand takes for granted, as obvious.

They are not obvious. Most of history is littered with societies which were brutal, grim, with no concern for anyone else. They do not become Randian paradises.

Christian capitalism does this.

Rand's biggest fault is her extreme atheism.

Yes.

Rand has been very influential and for the most part, in a good way. But she is flawed. Her atheism detracts, IMO. Also, she needed an editor who could tighten her writing, but I suspect she rejected any such notion.

Her core concepts of hard work, market economics, and limited government could have made Atlas Shrugged into the great American novel. But the flaws have reduced the scope of her influence. But it's a worthwhile read.

I think most of us agree (including those of us who are fans of her works) that Ayn Rand has her shortcomings (her atheism, extreme wordiness, etc) but I don't see the issue with her overall message that she tries to convey about human nature.

When you see things coming to light today like the "For The People" act and see the conduct of the NIH, CDC, FDA, and NIAID and compare those to legislation and government organs Rand wrote about such as The 'Equalization of Opportunity Bill", the "Anti-Dog-Eat-Dog Bill" and "The State Science Institute", it is difficult to define her as anything but prescient. She has been nauseatingly spot on. And as time goes on, even more so. Alas, if there were only somewhere like Galt's Gulch...(I guess Texas and Florida are the closest things we have)

I had written a post back in July of 2020 on a Atlas Shrugged thread about the movies and who I would cast in the various parts, and wanted to convey that to someone on a thread the other day LINK TO POST HERE and if you are familiar with the book, look at who I pegged for Dr. Floyd Ferris:

Funny thing was, in July 2020, at that time I had not come all the way around to who Fauci really was (the abject snake he really is) and the fact that I had him cast as the character Dr. Floyd Ferris in Atlas Shrugged, especially what many of us have woken up to about this man.

I recall at the time telling someone there was something about that man (who I knew very little about back then) that rubbed me the wrong way. Something fake. Something deceitful. Something bad. Now we know.

Atlas Shrugged was one of the most influential political books I have read in my life, and I rate it in one of my top books, which my wife painted for me some years ago when she was just learning how to paint and needed a subject to practice on:

It grieves me to see it coming true. Didn't think I would see it in my life.

Rand was a genius in identifying and illustrating the faults of the leftist/”progressive” approach to governing. But when it came to providing a viable alternative, all she had was pure selfishness, which just isn’t a good way to build a viable society.

The founders built on the tradition of Christian Western civilization, which recognized humans as fallen creatures who needed the guardrails of separate branches of government in competition to reign in the power the Lefties so greedily pursue - but Rand would have nothing that smacked of God in her philosophy.

And as the founders realized, one needs a God-fearing populace to make such a system work - as we’ve drifted from that, we’ve given the Pelosi’s and Schumer’s and Fauci’s and Soros’s of the world all the opening they need.

Rand's biggest fault is her extreme atheism.

That, and her "A is A" analogy in support of abortion. To her, she saw fetal cells as just a clump of tissue--not fully a person--therefore, "fetal tissue isn't the same as a fully-developed human," and does not enjoy the same right to life.

That said, I'm a fan of her story-telling and many aspects of her objectivist outlook.