I'm wondering if Ayn Rand wasn't a prophet or scapegoat, but maybe a blueprint?
Posted on 12/13/2009 1:02:29 PM PST by rface
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Ayn Rand is back. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the long-dead novelist and philosopher has become prophet and a scapegoat. Liberals blame her for the economic collapse, citing the influence of her most famous acolyte, Alan Greenspan. Conservatives hail her as a visionary who saw it all coming. Love her or hate her, Rand's ideas have become fundamental to how Americans understand capitalism.
The liberal case against Rand rests on her relationship with Alan Greenspan, the long-term head of the Federal Reserve Bank. In his youth, Greenspan was part of "The Collective," a small group of students who gathered around Rand in the 1950s and 1960s in New York City. A regular visitor to Rand's Saturday night salon, he read the first drafts of Rand's most famous novel, "Atlas Shrugged," as they came off her typewriter. He quickly mastered the fundamentals of Objectivism, her individualistic philosophy. Rand taught that reality is objective, reason rules supreme, selfishness is a virtue, and laissez-faire capitalism is the only moral and practical social system.
In a series of articles written for Rand's Objectivist Newsletter, Greenspan applied these ideas to current politics. .......
[ snip ]
The record-breaking sales of Rand's books in the last year suggest her influence may be just beginning. Many readers are turning to Rand to understand our past - but she may be a better guide to our future.
(Excerpt) Read more at mcclatchydc.com ...
The Historic Significance of Atlas Shrugged By Robert Tracinski
Atlas Shrugged was written in an age of creeping global socialism. Extrapolating from the trends of the day, Ayn Rand projected a future in which most of the world’s nations are collapsing into the poverty and oppression of socialist “people’s states,” while America itself is collapsing under the weight of an increasing government takeover of the economy.
She saw the dramatic potential in asking a single question: what would happen if the innovative entrepreneurs and businessmen—after decades of being vilified and regulated—started to disappear? The disappearance of the world’s productive geniuses provides the novel’s central mystery, both factually and intellectually....
Ayn Rand’s detractors sometimes dismiss her novels as “unrealistic,” but it is today’s mainstream intellectuals who frequently seem as if they are wandering around in a fog of unreality, missing the monumental lessons of two centuries of history. The era of encroaching global socialism has since given way to an era of global capitalism, which is beginning to transform the lives of billions of people across the globe, from Eastern Europe to India to China. But there is no one to help them understand what capitalism is, its deepest personal meaning for their lives and values, and why it is good.
No one, that is, except Ayn Rand. And that is why Atlas Shrugged is even more relevant and necessary today than it was when it was first published five decades ago. Cont......
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/10/the_historic_significance_of_a.html
LOL I’ve seen such fawning of Ayn Rand on some threads that I felt somehow deprived in not knowing what others knew about her. In fairness to the posters, the characters, more so than the author, got most of the attention in said threads. ;o)
I'm wondering if Ayn Rand wasn't a prophet or scapegoat, but maybe a blueprint?
The left wing "business people" who are waiting in the wings will take over, along with people from India, Brazil and China. Not to mention Russians who think we are all nuts to let our country go socialist.
This is all old outdated baloney. The US is not an island.
I think she was ahead of her time. I also think she could write an ‘allegory’ pretty well. Her ‘fiction’ was ahead of it’s time.
You don’t know that till it happens.
Or like the old song ... you don’t know it till its gone. (Something like that, I paraphrase)
Hindsight is always better than fore-sight. Take Tuesday morning after Monday Night Football for example.
She was certainly correct when she said that eventually government would pass enough laws that all of the citizenry would be criminals. How many of us speed, work under the table, or gamble? Wait until not having health care is a crime...
She was certainly correct when she said that eventually government would pass enough laws that all of the citizenry would be criminals. How many of us speed, work under the table, or gamble? Wait until not having health care is a crime...
From another poster: “There were “capitalists” in Atlas Shrugged who also cooperated in the destruction of free trade, and it would be a mistake to consider them pro-capitalist or even on the political right/libertarian. These people are the classic “2nd handers” that Rand talks about. They may be presidents and ceo’s but they create nothing; they work harder to undermine their competition and get freebies from the government. Our system in the US has bred a lot of these sycophantic capitalists, who want power and influence, but don’t want to earn it and work to have it legislated for them. They are the reason why many think fascism is a politically rightist ideology—it is not.”
I have to agree she is no Jessica Alba but she is also not Helen Thomas.
Thanks for the link to the review. I cherry picked a few of the paragraphs just now, and saved the page for a later read.
Yeah.
One is wearing grandma's undies and smelling like mothballs.
There are too many loopholes in the Rand fantasy and much too narrow and outdated a view of the world for it to make for a logical persons blueprint for anyone today.
She was an intellectual. One of her bestest buddies was Greenspan. She was, well, better than the rest of us.
Yet another poster who betrays the fact that he's never read the book. Francisco D'Anconia anyone?
These Rand threads are always a hoot. Her influence is proven by the number of people who complain about her books and her philosophy but know next to nothing about it.
A judicious and careful reading of her work will benefit most people. She has a lot more to offer than most people who write on economics.
But, as I said, imperfect.
I thought her book was like reading a capitalist fantasy book, complete with unreal open ending. It's actually a hoot that so many people can be so gullible as long as their ego can be massaged into thinking they are not replaceable.
I’ll take the one on the right. The one on the left doesn’t do anything for me at all.
I read ‘Atlas’ the month it first came out, 50 years ago.
I have been waiting ever since for the movie.
I listened to it online - audio - this year. It's been ‘due out’ every year for the past several years.
I wish it would come out next year as was last years announcements. If enough people read this before the 2010 election - that could go a long ways toward turning the tide.
I wonder if it never made the 2008 deadline because it has the capacity to wake up so many people - and now, with the 2010 election looking bad for the Rats, if they haven't pulled the 2010 release back, to get safely beyond the election?
Angelina, who has long wanted to play the part of Dagney - and who has considerable control over the movie, I believe, although currently upset with Obummer, (over Dafur), is not of the same staunch conservatism as her dad.
LOL
I posted this on the other Rand link.
"I suspicion that a lot of what doomed her personal life to failure was that, inward, she perceived herself a tall, stunning, blond heroine - i.e. a Dagney - but the mirror reflected a short, dumpy, not attractive, dark haired woman. She was Dagney trapped in an alien body. (her hairdo didn't help any.)
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