LATEST POLL: ATLAS SHRUGGED READ BY 8.1%

Freestar Media ^ | November 3, 2008 | Logan Darrow Clements

[Emperor Palpatine]

Along with "The Fountainhead"

[Tijeras_Slim]

It's a great polemic for describing the problem, however, it does NOTHING to show how its solutions work.

Sure it does... First invent an engine that gives you something for nothing...

[JackOfVA]

Should be mandatory reading in high school at the minimum.

I would go further - high schools should have a mandatory one year course centered around Atlas Shrugged, The Gulag Archipelago and Darkness at Noon. These books would lead into a study of economics, human nature and the desire of a non-trivial part of the population to exchange freedom for "free stuff" and how the exchange has always wound up with the population in chains, serving their masters. Part of the economics section of the course would involve the students running a fictional business, with guest lectures by local lawyers and accountants on all the regulatory hoops their businesses will have to comply with.

Jack

[Perfesser]

I read it in my early twenties and have reread it several times, learning more each time. She agonized over every sentence and every sentence is worth reading. It’s true that you have to get into it in order to get into it, but worth it.

[Squawk 8888]

It’s been “coming out next year as a movie/miniseries” since the early 1980s.

[MrB]

Reading closer on that site, I’m still not convinced that it actually is working toward release.

[Mr. Jeeves]

This country has a strong libertarian streak. Just look at Perot’s margins during the 90’s. Many western and southern republicans are pretty much libertarians in practice if not in name (Ron Paul for example).

And this is why Republicans aren't competitive in California any more. When the national GOP made a conscious decision to kick out libertarian-minded Western economic conservatives in favor of big government Southern social conservatives, they allowed the Democrats (ludicrously) to paint themselves as the party that cares more about individual liberty. You will find millions of successful, high-income, productive Californians - a natural Republican constituency - who now equate the GOP with Big Brother and think Democrats are true the guardians of freedom.

[Squawk 8888]

An excellent (but unauthorized by Rand) film version of We the Living was produced in Italy during WWII. The producers thought it would be effective anti-Soviet propaganda, but the Germans realized it would be equally effective anti-Nazi propaganda and banned it.

[Infidel Puppy]

So 91.9 percent of the populace should have no vote, period.
Conversely, 8.1 percent of us should be exempt from income taxation.

[LizardQueen]

I’ve been thinking of buying Atlas Shrugged by the case and handing it out on street corners. I’ve already pummeled my friends and family with multiple copies.

If I can name one book that completely altered my view on things it was this one (sorry Christians, I was raised Lutheran and the Bible didn’t blow the top of my head off nearly as much as A.S. did).

LQ

[Roccus]

... First invent an engine that gives you something for nothing...

That would be the American taxpayer.

[Emperor Palpatine]

One of both Cooper’s and Massey’s finest performances. Also one of Vidor’s better films, too.

Its also amazing who shows up in secondary and bit roles, too. Ray Collins, (Lt. Tragg on “Perry Mason”) is terrific as Roger Enright, Kent Smith as the suitably befuddled and incompetent Peter Keating, Robert Douglass as the suavely evil Ellsworth Toohey, and Henry Hull as the once-great but now forgotten Henry Cameron.

FYI, it was Patricia Neal’s very first film and rumor has it she and Gary Cooper had a torrid affair while it was filmed.

Oh, Max Steiner’s score is magnificent.

[Jacquerie]

IMO the companion book is Hayek's The Road to Serfdom.

Socialism leads to tyranny.

[Mount Athos]

I have some libertarian attitudes and sympathies, but atlas shrugged is terribly written and painful to read.

The author was an ardent atheist who in the end went totally insane

[Truthsearcher]

The real question is how many of the 8.1% actually finished it.

[Lx]

First invent an engine that gives you something for nothing...

And then leave it and its paperwork almost intact on the completely deserted and picked over factory floor for Dagney and Reardon to find...

Talk about a MacGuffin...

[r9etb]

Did you all know that Alan Greenspan and Ayn Rand were good friends, back in both their early NYC days. I just find that fact interested, thought I would throw it out there.

And she excommunicated him over a disagreement concerning monetary policy.

Ayn Rand eventually excommunicated those who disagreed with her on one thing or another. She was left with a clutch of toadying disciples who hung on her every word.

In the end, Rand turned out to be little better than one of the "mystics of mind" whom she claimed to despise.

[JackOfVA]

If I can name one book that completely altered my view on things it was this one.

I completely agree - seldom have I read a book that was so indisputably right and it crystallized my then inchoate libertarian/conservative views.

Another book with the same power is Milton and Rose Friedman's "Free to Choose." If you have not read it, by all means locate a copy and do so.

Jack

[frankenMonkey]

Try Anthem, a much easier introduction to Rand. My son enjoyed it.

[Perfesser]

Atlas Shrugged was not “about” the thirties. It’s genius is that it is about every generation since then, becoming more and more pertinent as time goes by. Look around. Whats happening now was described in great detail in the book.