what would you surmise about the subject's sexual orientation?
Posted on 02/02/2005 10:51:31 AM PST by Borges
What did Ayn Rand want?
Today is the centennial of her birth, and while newsletters and Web sites devoted to her continue to proliferate, and while little about her private life or public influence remains unplumbed, it is still easier to understand what she didn't want than what she did. Her scorn was unmistakable in her two novel-manifestos, "The Fountainhead" (1943), about a brilliant architect who stands proud against collective tastes and egalitarian sentimentality, and "Atlas Shrugged" (1957), about brilliant industrialists who stand proud against government bureaucrats and socialized mediocrity. It is still possible, more than 20 years after her death, to find readers choosing sides: those who see her as a subtle philosopher pitted against those who see her as a pulp novelist with pretensions.
She divided her world - and her characters - in similarly stark fashion into what she wanted and what she didn't want. Here is what she didn't want: Ellsworth M. Toohey, "second-handers," Wesley Mouch, looters, relativists, collectivists, altruists. Here is what she did want: Howard Roark, John Galt, individualism, selfishness, capitalism, creation.
But her villains have the best names, the most memorable quirks, the whiniest or most insinuating voices. At times, Rand even grants them a bit of compassion. Toohey, the Mephistophelean architecture critic in "The Fountainhead," could be her finest creation. And when she argued against collectivism, her cynicism had some foundation in experience: she was born in czarist Russia in 1905, witnessed the revolutions of 1917 from her St. Petersburg apartment and managed to get to the United States in 1926. Her sharpest satire can be found in some of her caricatures of collectivity.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Ayn Rand was a vicious bytch who had no understanding of either conservatism or humanity. She hated the communists, sure. So did Hitler.
In 1965 I had a cat I named Dagny!
Thats funny my cat was born in 1965
Wow! That's one old cat! On the 9th life, I presume?
One thing Rand knew was how Communism gets a foot hold in a country - having lived the Bolshevik years and escaped as a young girl.
Not many years later, she was working as a screen writer in Hollywood - and a contemporary of Reagan, than a young star - and not a right-wing ideologue, but a lib-dem!
But, He came to realize that the film industry was being swallowed up with the evil of Marxist communism> and the libDem closeness to it - and became a conservative republican,
Rand, I believe, was an expert tutor in the machinations and dangers of Communism.
Reagan, to stop this take over of films, accepted the position as Pres. of the Screen Actors Guild and spearheaded the fight to stop it. He and Rand both testified in the House Un-American Investigations, so vilified by the successful smearing of the left. Reagan had many threats on his life and he had to start carrying a gun - indeed, as I remember, he had a Molotov cocktail or some such lobbed thru' the window of his home (when married to Jane Wyman and with a baby in rehouse.)
Since "The Wall" came down, KGB and Soviet archives, give evidence that the commission was right...that Soviet infiltration was permeated into all aspects of American life. .
Reagan's last year as Pres. of the Guild was 1960 - it didn't take long for the communists in Hollywood to regroup!
But I often ponder the phrase " the Lord moves in mysterious ways..." Was it more than 'luck' that a young girl who escaped from Russia during the revolution ended up a peer of Reagan's and worked with (educated?) him to stop the encroachment of communism - which eventually resulted in the collapse of the U.S.S.R and the fall of the wall?
I actually believed this when I first started reading your post. Consider yourself smacked.
absolutely right.
Over the decades I have learned to use, as a litmus test of people to steer clear versus becoming a friend with -
Can this person enjoy a good belly laugh at life - including on themselves? and
Does this person listen as well as talk and do they look you IN THE EYE when talking?
If the answers come up "no", I give them a wide birth.
Just look at the faces and screaming demeanors of the scary lefties! - versus the smiling, laughing - even when laying someone out in lavender - conservatives...
Have you ever considered that, maybe, just maybe, Ayn Rand's novels were truly great literature?
Oh. But of course you haven't.
Never mind.
what would you surmise about the subject's sexual orientation?
Thanks for the ping.
"Atlas Shrugged" - One of my all time favorite books.
When Hollywood "adapts words to the screen," that's when all the trouble starts.
Anyway, if you want to see a movie of an Ayn Rand novel that was extremely close to how it was written (and Ayn not even on the set) look for a copy of the Italian film Noi Vivi, the adaptation of he r novel We the Living.
I'll drink to that!
Fair enough, but I hope you're aware that Rand hated all religion, and said so.
I don't remember her using the words hate, hated or hating or any other variation of that word in regards to religion. If you can give us the source for your allegation, I would appreciate (and probably could use) the edification. Or were you just being a little (forgivably) flippant?
Rand did sometimes speak of religion in somewhat semi-respectful terms from time to time, as in this quote:
As to Kant's version of the altruist morality, he claimed that it was derived from "pure reason," not from revelation -- except that it rested on a special instinct for duty, a "categorical imperative" which one "just knows." His version of morality makes the Christian one sound like a healthy, cheerful, benevolent code of selfishness. Christianity merely told man to love his neighbor as himself; that's not exactly rational -- but at least it does not forbid man to love himself.Whatever, I AM aware of Rand's antipathy to religion in general, her lack of appreciation of how prayer feels good and can be healing, how religion helps build communities, etc., but for me that doesn't diminish the valuable concepts she did have to teach. My favorite authors and teachers have ALL had their quirks and their flaws, but I'm not one to disregard EVERYTHING because of them.
-- from this lecture
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