Posted on 11/13/2009 12:51:44 PM PST by Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus
According to Politico.com, Ayn Rand — the subject of two new biographies, one of which is titled Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right — is “having a mainstream moment,” including among conservatives. (Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina wrote a piece in Newsweek on Rand, saying, “This is a very good time for a Rand resurgence. She’s more relevant than ever.”).
I hope the moment passes. Ms. Rand may have been a popular novelist, but her philosophy is deeply problematic and morally indefensible.....
(Excerpt) Read more at corner.nationalreview.com ...
Peter rhymes with Wehner. His parents named him aptly.
Now I am not a libertarian, but Ayn was a conservative who was IMO was right on with the notion of disallowing compassion to be brought into politics.
By band Anthem spent three weeks learning the live version. I became a much better drummer because of Neil Peart. Before that it was Cheap Trick and Cars. My Slingerlands are a copy of the set he used on Farewell To Kings, complete with Brass hardware. They go KA and Boom.
Contrast and compare those societies that uphold collectivist values and those that value the individual.
While I'm all for the individual, it's a historical untruth to characterise Greek society - even in the classical age - as anything even approximating the individualism that we're thinking of when we use the term.
That is seriously debateable.
It all depends on your underlying premises, most of which I reject.
The primary one is the notion that you may not steal from me, but it is a moral imperative for me to allow our government to steal from me on your behalf, with far superior weapons.
A corollary, of course, it that charity can be coerced. One must have a serious intellectual short circuit to even begin to use that as a rational argument.
Of course, presumably, we all agree that we are discussing a Free Society ruled by law and certain rights that NO ONE, even government, may encroach on...
Finally, I have no idea who the author of this piece is, but the "harpie" name-calling it induces in the clueless just points to intellectual poverty.
I don’t give a rat’s rear end what her philosophy of life and love and work was. She was anti-statist, anti-communist, and pro-capitalist.
True. Nobody really enjoys reading Atlas Shrugged. It's just something you have to work through to find the occasional nuggets of good, surrounded by the dreck.
I would characterise reading Atlas Shrugged as being similar to rescuing your wife's diamond wedding ring that the dog ate. It takes a long time to get what you want, very little of the mass is actually valuable, and oh, what you have to wade through to get it....
Whitaker Chambers?
That may impress the ignorant, but I'm not quite ready for the mandatory prior lobotomy...
This statement, in turn, is based upon the completely fallacious argument that disagreeing with Randian style "anti-statism" necessarily equals "supporting the government stealing from you." Sure. Try peddling that intellectual dreck to the Founding Fathers.
Try again.
I would recommend that your read Fountain Head first and then read Atlas Shrugged second. This allows the reader to be doubly wowed by the power of the author.
Depends on your grasp of the world. Remember, opinions are like ankles... everybody has one.
Wait...
Never mind.
It just doesn't happen. Other men are the fuel that is burned in the engines those that won't live their lives for other men power their lives with.
they're still preferable to the sanctimonious liberals who profit by distributing the wealth of others and claiming the moral high ground for their thievery and extortion, though.
Ayn Rand despised the National Review because it used religion as a base for morality. Ayn Rand believed that man’s nature was the basis of morality and that it an immoral trick to use the supernatural as a basis for morality.
Try cracking "The Virtue Of Selfishness" sometime or any of the inestimable Ms. Rands non-fiction work. "Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal" is another good one. Feel free to move your lips as your fingers trace her words. Sometimes that helps, I hear.
Frigging pretention newbies with their stupid Roman names....
L
That's a straw man argument.
All moral and ethical arguments can be pursued without relying on the crutch of religion.
I believe absolutely that the use of religion, in any form, is just a device to confound the issue.
Yes, I believe in God, and I am religious, but can argue from other sources when clarity demands setting aside dogmatic metaphysical arguments.
That's fine with me. I was a confirmed atheist when I discovered Ayn Rand during my college years in the late '60s. I discarded my atheism years ago, but I never forgot Rand's compelling and important lessons about the nature of the relationship between a government and its citizens.
She was the one who first got me to question liberal assumptions that I just more or less carried around like everyone else in my circles.
I stopped calling myself an objectivist in 1973, but I am eternally grateful to Ayn Rand for opening my eyes. I would never have come to conservative/libertarian politics without her.
She absolutely yanked libertarianism hard to the left, towards accepting far more government control.
And I don’t recall anything of value Peter Weener has ever written.
Actually, I think the reason Atlas Shrugged has become so popular is that you can read it while watching Glenn Beck and realize that what Rand wrote about in the 1950’s is happening right before our eyes. It is uncanny how closely today’s events parallel those in that novel.
On the other hand, when I talk about the book to someone who has not read it, I make sure to tell them to ignore everything she says about religion and relationships. She gets both wrong, especially religion and it’s emphasis in the founding documents of this (once) great country.
Indeed! I don’t know how anyone can honestly say that they enjoyed reading Atlas Shrugged.
I disagree, I loved reading Fountain Head and Atlas Shrugged. Anthem was a drudge. My wife, who hates to read, literally became immersed in both books and could not stop reading them. I think the real question is what books do you find readable? I found Rand to be as able a craftsman as Clavel, and like Kozinski and Conrad, she wrote in an adopted language, english not russian. Amazing. Each chapter was designed to impell the reader to begin the next. This is a writer as a craftsman. Couple that with her philosophy and you have a tour de force. You don’t have to agree with her philosophy to recognize her talents.
Read ATLAS SHRUGGED and come back and tell us again what you think. She accurately predicted the road the US is going down.
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