"Atlas Shrugged" was made especially haunting when put in perspective of the Clinton administration and its star characters (there is even a person in the book that says things much like Robert Reich with a similar position).
The National Review has helped encourage conservatism for years. Let's keep their work alive.
If Chambers had lived until now, he could have found several more to rival it.
Not to mention the miasmatic monologues of the MSM, which are much worse than in his day (and they were bad enough then!)
I first read Atlas Shrugged in 1968 at about the age of 17. This is probably the most common age of someone's becoming a dedicated and committed Randian. But the Rand-Branden split occurred at about this time, so my enthusiasm was somewhat muted.
At any rate, through Rand I become interested in philosophy, politics and economics, so on the whole I would regard her influence as having been beneficial.
I recently read a book on the Great Depression and the New Deal. The setting of Atlas Shrugged reads like it came out of the pages of the early part of the New Deal. It had the same vile little bureaucrats trying to control their sections of a sinking ship, oxymoronic names for government offices, the same friends and friends of friends of the President being put in charge of things they had no knowledge of and a general direction of poisoning anything which could have cured the problem. Atlas Shrugged wasn't set in the future from the 1950s. Its setting was the early 1930s.
By the time I read "Atlas Shrugged", I was already a conservative and thus, found the book to be dull and repetitive (since I already agreed with many of Rand's premises).
I disagreed with her blind assertion that taxation isn't necessary. Given the times we live in (and her too), to think that a nation's military can survive without tax dollars is foolhardy at best. I for one am glad that a large portion of my tax dollars goes toward creation and maintenance of the world's greatest military force.
ping
interesting, thanks.
i began my journey from the democrat party when a doctoral candidate in our philosophy program said that i should not be seen with a book that i'd just purchased at the campus bookstore:
the new left: the anti-industrial revolution, by ayn rand.
since his father was a big shot in philosophy across the united states, i couldn't wait to get home and read the book banned on a state university campus by an "intellectual".
the new left's a collection of her essays of the 60's, and boy, did rand have today's left pegged.
btttttt
Her fiction, on the other hand, is awful.
Ayn Rand was an atheist. I knew that when I read the book.
You don't have to be an atheist to agree with some of her boldly (or somewhat exaggerated [or not]) caricatures of relgulators.
Ayn Rand WAS tyrannical, unbending and DID use Atlas Shrugged to shout her message of materialism, acchievement and anti-bureacrat philosophy. It was written in stark contrasts.
It IS a hard read for some people. But it should be read by everyone.
I've read it twice, and just this Christmas put the book in three stockings for my son, and two sons-in laws to read.
I wanted them to know "who is John Galt?"
Ayn Rand was an atheist. I knew that when I read the book.
You don't have to be an atheist to agree with some of her boldly (or somewhat exaggerated [or not]) caricatures of relgulators.
Ayn Rand WAS tyrannical, unbending and DID use Atlas Shrugged to shout her message of materialism, acchievement and anti-bureacrat philosophy. It was written in stark contrasts.
It IS a hard read for some people. But it should be read by everyone.
I've read it twice, and just this Christmas put the book in three stockings for my son, and two sons-in laws to read.
I wanted them to know "who is John Galt?"
ping
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"Festival of Rand-haters" ping
Well, I guess Chambers wasn't big on Rigoletto. But folks will be singing La donna e mobile many years after Chambers has vanished completely from human memory. Operatic caricature works.
As for Atlas Shrugged, it is a remarkable book. It is remarkable more for its Children of Darkness, the Wesley Mooches, than its Children of Light; but the Children of Darkness do need their foils. The book is remarkable for its insights. Written in 1957 (or so - I'm not looking at at copy) it talks about the debasement of the currency (no inflation in 1957 that I recall); it talks about socialized medicine (almost no one had any medical insurance in 1957, let alone government insurance); it talks about "equalization of opportunity" bills (no affirmative action in 1957); it talks about the proliferation of so many laws that everyone is in violation of one or another, so that the political class can pick on anyone they might choose. And it talks about a lot of other stuff too.
Chambers missed it all.
ML/NJ
Thanks, I'm working my way through a series of books that I wanted to read before I die (hopefully many, many years from now), and my daughter bought me "Atlas Shrugged" and an Aldous Huxley book "Point, Counterpoint" for Christmas.
I'm about a fifth of the way through "Atlas", and I find it to be harshly polemical, and somewhat of a caricature of the thirties gangster movies. The best analogy of it so far is "Dick Tracy" of recent memory, with Warren Beatty (of "Reds" fame, or infamy).
The philosophy promoted in the book seems, thus far, to be fairly superficial, dealing with life on a primal basis, incorporating few, if any, of the deeper things.
But, then, I am only part way through it, so, who knows? It may get better. As an avowed believer, however, I doubt that I'll any more appreciate her blatant atheism by the time I'm at the end of the book than I have at the beginning.
LOL!!! There's a reason why this is a classic review.
ping later