Posted on 01/30/2005 3:14:41 PM PST by beavus
Has Ayn Rand gone mainstream? The radical champion of individualism and capitalism, who died in 1982, is no longer an exotic taste. Her image has adorned a U.S. postage stamp. Her ideas have been detected in a new mass-market animated comedy film, "The Incredibles." And Wednesday, on the 100th anniversary of her birth, there will be a Rand commemoration at the Library of Congress--an odd site for a ceremony honoring a fierce anti-statist. In her day, Rand was at odds with almost every prevailing attitude in American society. She infuriated liberals by preaching economic laissez-faire and lionizing titans of business. She appalled conservatives by rejecting religion in any form while celebrating, in her words, "sexual enjoyment as an end in itself."
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
What I was hinting at was that she influenced a number of individuals such as Goldwater and Reagan and eventually brought the fall of the Soviet Union even if she doesn't often get credit.
You're only encouraging them.
One of the quickest reads I've ever had. The book looks thick, but it goes by fast.
Good point.
She sat listening to the music. It was a symphony of triumph. The notes flowed up, they spoke of rising and they were the rising itself, they were the essence and the form of upward motion, they seemed to embody every human act and thought that had ascent as its motive. It was a sunburst of sound, breaking out of hiding and spreading open. It had the freedom of release and the tension of purpose. It swept space clean, and left nothing but the joy of an unobstructed effort. Only a faint echo within the sounds spoke of that from which the music had escaped, but spoke in laughing astonishment at the discovery that there was no ugliness or pain, and there never had had to be. It was the song of an immense deliverance.
Absolutely.
I'll bet it's been 10 years since I read it, but now that you mention it, it brings me right back. I remember that passage as if I read it yesterday. It was at about the same time that I discovered Mendelssohn and Wagner. I'll bet I listened to the Scottish & Italian symphonies, Hebrides overture and the Gotterdammerung trauermarsch & Seigfrieds Rheinfahrt 100 times back then. They would put me in the very state of mind that that passage describes.
Thank you for that. It's a pleasant recollection.
"Ayn rhymes with rain"
NO, it rhymes with MINE.
Oh yes, Thomas Sowell's "Vision of the Annointed" and "The Quest for Cosmic Justice" are two of my all time favorites...Actually they are the top two on my all time non fiction list. Must reads.
Yep, them be the ones!
STARSHIP TROOPTERS, excellent book...the movie, its' ok. :)
its' a quick book, has hard sections, like the "John Galt's TV speech"
Yeah, you read the whole fricken book thinking you're going to be picking up her philosophy, and then she summarizes it all in the last 50 pages!
Ron Paul is foursquare against our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, while Ayn Rand championed our military strength and our soldiers. Rand was a Taft Republican, not a libertarian in any sense, as she made it plain during her life.
I loved the Fountainhead. I enjoyed Atlas Shrugged also.
I was referring to domestic policies.
As for foreign policy, I agree with the Libertarian party, concerning Govt. snooping post-911 (Homeland Security measures), and I approve open borders (fluid labor markets), unlike many Republicans.
Not sure how Ayn would side on these things....
For a REAL Randian hero, check out The Aviator.
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