Posted on 04/12/2011 4:56:36 PM PDT by Kaslin
Individualists and money grubbers of the world, unite; you have nothing to lose but your servility and confiscatory tax rates.
After all these increasingly collectivized decades, "Atlas Shrugged, Part I" the movie, is finally coming to town. It opens nationwide, appropriately, this Friday — Tax Day. Check your local listings for the time and place.
"Atlas Shrugged," Ayn Rand's legendary novel, was published in 1957. Instead of focusing on the old tale of victimized workers and greedy owners, the story turns the tables and shows what happens to the world when the innovators and producers go on strike, when the capitalists and owners turn out the lights and disappear.
The question has been asked on billboards, T-shirts and bumper stickers for half a century: "Who is John Galt?" In "Atlas Shrugged," he's the man who initiates and leads the strike of the producers.
"There is only one kind of men who have never been on strike in human history," states Galt in the novel. "Every other kind and class have stopped, when they so wished, and have presented demands to the world, claiming to be indispensable — except the men who have carried the world on their shoulders, have kept it alive, have endured torture as sole payment, but have never walked out on the human race.
"Well, their turn has come. Let the world discover who they are, what they do and what happens when they refuse to function. This is the strike of the men of the mind."
The shrugging comes when men of achievement refuse to accept their unearned guilt, refuse to have their strengths and accomplishments turned into weaknesses and sins.
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
This is not a review of the movie, but an exhortation to see it. I would have been happier if IBD did an actual review.
How many days does Part I last?
I began reading Atlas Shrugged in 1997. I only have 500 pages to go.
FReeper Book Club: Introduction to Atlas Shrugged
Part I, Chapter I: The Theme
Part I, Chapter II: The Chain
Part I, Chapter III: The Top and the Bottom
Part I, Chapter IV: The Immovable Movers
Part I, Chapter V: The Climax of the d’Anconias
Part I, Chapter VI: The Non-Commercial
Part I, Chapter VII: The Exploiters and the Exploited
Part I, Chapter VIII: The John Galt Line
Part I, Chapter IX: The Sacred and the Profane
Part I, Chapter X: Wyatt’s Torch
Part II, Chapter I: The Man Who Belonged on Earth
Part II, Chapter II: The Aristocracy of Pull
Part II, Chapter III: White Blackmail
Part II, Chapter IV: The Sanction of the Victim
Part II, Chapter V: Account Overdrawn
Part II, Chapter VI: Miracle Metal
Part II, Chapter VII: The Moratorium on Brains
Part II, Chapter VIII: By Our Love
Part II, Chapter IX: The Face Without Pain or Fear or Guilt
Part II, Chapter X: The Sign of the Dollar
Part III, Chapter I: Atlantis
Part III, Chapter II: The Utopia of Greed
Part III, Chapter III: Anti-Greed
Part III, Chapter IV: Anti-Life
Part III, Chapter V: Their Brothers’ Keepers
Part III, Chapter VI: The Concerto of Deliverance
Part III, Chapter VII: “This is John Galt Speaking”
Part III, Chapter VIII: The Egoist
Part III, Chapter IX: The Generator
Part III, Chapter X: In the Name of the Best Within Us
Coda: Ten Years After
Afterword and Suggested Reading
You have to chain-smoke cigarettes to fall in sync with the author. Then it only takes you a couple of days to read! ;)
I will probably see the movie and I enjoyed (parts) of the book, but I really enjoyed Whittaker Chambers’ review, including this gem, “From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: ‘To a gas chamber — go!’”
Thanks for posting. HOORAY Ralph R. Reiland!...and thanks for your OUTSTANDING work, Publius.
Life, liberty and the pursuit and destruction of totalitarians.
The Harry potter of economics.
As a former hard-line loyalist spy for the CP, when Stalin’s mass murders were at their height, Chambers should know a lot about gas chambers.
Whittaker Chambers was mad because Ayn Rand disliked religion and was an atheist.
That comment is really unfair and just represents Mr. Chambers being pissed off.
You’re very welcome
From her writings, she does strike me as a complete materialist. In many ways she is a product of early Soviet times.
Rand always had a Hollywood view of America. It’s the Hank Hill types, not the Hank Reardens, who made this country great.
sounds like a good movie.
I began reading Atlas Shrugged in 1997. I only have 500 pages to go.
*****************************************************
You have my permission to skip part3 ch#7 ...
I posted this on a similar thread the other night...it is interesting for me, because two of the most influential books in my life are “Atlas Shrugged” and “Witness” (followed closely by “The Road to Serfdom”) I have been aware of Whittaker Chambers scathing review of “Atlas Shrugged”, and I find the irony fascinating because it is 100% obvious to me that both Whittaker Chambers and Ayn Rand attack the same thing, just from different directions.
I know that sounds like a real contradiction, given that Whitaker Chambers was a devoutly religious man and Ayn Rand was the complete and polar opposite in that respect.
But I think that one can make the argument that in both cases, the enemy is liberalism. In Whittaker Chambers book “Witness” his enemy is, ironically enough, atheism as expressed by communism. (Man substituting himself for God…)
In Ayn Rand’s book “Atlas Shrugged”, her enemy is clearly the overarching and statist government, or, at a more fundamental level, the idea that the fruits of a man’s labor do not accrue to him.
In either case, I think that Ayn Rand would be able to view the situation that Whittaker Chambers writes about and see the very reflection of her issue, and vice versa for Whittaker Chambers.
Fascinating stuff, but now more than ever, it is more than just food for thought. In both of these cases, our very future now depends on us understanding these threats and coming to grips with them.
LOL...too funny!
But true...:)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.