Posted on 10/31/2009 10:28:46 AM PDT by nickcarraway
AYN RAND AND THE WORLD SHE MADE
By Anne C. Heller
Illustrated. 567 pp. Nan A. Talese/Doubleday. $35
A specter is haunting the Republican Party — the specter of John Galt. In Ayn Rand’s libertarian epic “Atlas Shrugged,” Galt, an inventor disgusted by creeping American collectivism, leads the country’s capitalists on a retributive strike. “We have granted you everything you demanded of us, we who had always been the givers, but have only now understood it,” Galt lectures the “looters” and “moochers” who make up the populace. “We have no demands to present you, no terms to bargain about, no compromise to reach. You have nothing to offer us. We do not need you.”
“Atlas Shrugged” was published 52 years ago, but in the Obama era, Rand’s angry message is more resonant than ever before. Sales of the book have reportedly spiked. At “tea parties” and other conservative protests, alongside the Obama-as-Joker signs, you will find placards reading “Atlas Shrugs” and “Ayn Rand Was Right.” Not long after the inauguration, as right-wing pundits like Glenn Beck were invoking Rand and issuing warnings of incipient socialism, Representative John Campbell, Republican of California, told a reporter that the prospect of rising taxes and government regulation meant “people are starting to feel like we’re living through the scenario that happened in ‘Atlas Shrugged.’ ”
Rand’s style of vehement individualism has never been universally popular among conservatives — back in 1957, Whittaker Chambers denounced the “wickedness” of “Atlas Shrugged” in National Review — and Rand still has her critics on the right today.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
That one sentence made me laugh out loud!
Ping!
Fascinating article! Thanks for posting.
“...young people, that they could be geniuses without being in any concrete way distinguished.”
Nobel prize anyone?
People who, for whatever reason, can’t read the whole thing, should read just the chapter where the tramp recalls the Twentieth Century Motor Co. and the Starnes heirs.
Rand was NOT a libertarian....in fact, she despised the term........
Rand did not make this world, I can assure you. It would be completely different if she had.
True. I keep trying to get my daughter to read “Atlas Shrugged”, but she is more worried about Jon & Kate.........
put me on the Atlas Ping list, please.........
bookmark
I hate liberals. They equate banksters and wall-street children with businessmen.
I think this writer misunderstands John Galt. It is not accurate to call John Galt the leader of a capitalist strike. Quite to the contrary, Galt’s strategy was simply to give the socialists what they wanted, and then watch them flail about helplessly when they had it.
“Rand was NOT a libertarian....in fact, she despised the term........”
That may be true, but Atlas Shrugged is an unabashedly libertartian novel.
Republicans often still don’t really grasp “liberty” as a concept.
or personal freedom............
“It is becoming apparent that the teachings of Ayn Rand is much stronger than the antics used by these followers of Saul Alinsky. I truely belive taht the Alinsky collectivist stooges can not handle a million individuals nor could they ever understand them. The libs used those tactics to get in power but cannot govern for their lives. It will be the Conservatives who will have to clean up after their mess...again.”
These 60’s Radicals were living off the family wealth and coddled by the media and subsidized by the government. They have never dealt with the real world. Their efforts are doomed. We need to be careful to reinstate the Republic when it’s time to rebuild and pick up the pieces.
Anti-Ayn Rand ping:
http://aynrandcontrahumannature.blogspot.com/
parsy, who thinks Atlas Shrugged is for teeny-boppers
No, republicans don’t grasp “humanity” as a concept. I blame this on the libertarians and Ayn Rand. LICE, I call them. (Libertarians Infiltrating Conservative Entities)
parsy, who makes razzing noises at Ayn Rand
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