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To: buwaya
Rand is best appreciated as a political philosopher, not a personal guru. She had interesting and useful (and prophetic) things to say.

She is also best dismissed as a political philosopher. As a means of shocking people into seeing the existence of bad guys her books do provide a valuable service. She was neither the first, nor the best, at describing those folks, but she was able to reach a wide audience.

But aside from the "raw power" of her novelistic introduction to a certain class of people (of which every single one of us is a member at some level), Chambers absolutely nails the problems with her political philosophy. It is noxious when put into practice, for the reasons he sketches out.

The reason for its toxicity as a political philosophy, is that it is based on Ms. Rand's Objectivism -- and for that, a bit of rudimentary reasoning reveals it to be a fundamentally irrational philosophy. One simply cannot look at the real world, and come up with the allegedly "absolute" principles she claims to have discovered.

109 posted on 01/05/2005 2:02:55 PM PST by r9etb
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To: r9etb

Her political philosophy was a distilled essence of modern libertarianism, and it did not rest, or need to rest, on Objectivism.

Objectivism itself is much more forgettable than her works.


112 posted on 01/05/2005 2:12:26 PM PST by buwaya
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To: r9etb
The reason for its toxicity as a political philosophy, is that it is based on Ms. Rand's Objectivism -- and for that, a bit of rudimentary reasoning reveals it to be a fundamentally irrational philosophy.

You can at least argue the point, though - not very successfully, of course, but you can formulate something resembling an argument in its favor. Not a particularly good argument, but an argument nonetheless.

What is inarguable, IMO, is Rand's execrable writing "style". The dialogue is stilted, stiff, and unnatural - rigor mortis sets in within the first 50 pages or so. The plot manages to be simultaneously leaden, yet ludicrous, as Rand v e r y s l o w l y introduces a series of increasingly improbable and ridiculous plot points over the course of 1100 pages. The characters have all the depth and dimension of paper cutouts, where cartoonish heroes resembling extremely vanilla versions of Mighty Mouse battle with exceptionally banal villains, who spend most of the book rubbing their hands in glee and twirling their handlebar moustaches in the very best Snidely Whiplash tradition.

And, best of all, it all culminates in a truly absurd ending, where the protagonists retire to the Elysian fields of Galt's Gulch, complete, we assume, with a full cadre of Epsilon-Minuses to handle the nitty-gritty details of daily life. Because, let's be honest - you can't even imagine Dagny taking a dump, let alone wielding a plumber's helper, can you? No, I think not. Hell, you can't imagine any of those clowns doing anything so plebeian as, say, their own laundry, but somehow they're going to emerge and run the world. Right.

Literary value: nil.

147 posted on 01/05/2005 7:01:19 PM PST by general_re (How come so many of the VKs have been here six months or less?)
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To: r9etb
I read Shrugged as a teen ager many years ago and enjoyed it. If I hadn't read it then, and came across it as an adult, it would have struck me as tedious, relentlessly dogmatic, and childishly crafted propaganda wothy of any leftist's attempt.

This doen't mean that I didn't benefit from exposure to it as a kid, but it certainly isn't on any book list of mine.

228 posted on 01/06/2005 12:02:36 PM PST by KC Burke (Men of intemperate minds can never be free....)
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