Posted on 11/03/2008 12:14:37 PM PST by Freestar
(Los Angeles) Barak Obama and John McCain should take note of a Zogby poll released today that found that 8.1 percent of American adults have read the book Atlas Shrugged by pro-freedom philosopher Ayn Rand. This result matches the 8.1 percent result from the 2007 Atlas Shrugged survey. This poll illuminates a large segment of the American public that favors minimum government.
Atlas Shrugged chronicles an America where government has taken control of nearly all aspects of life. As society collapses the heroine follows a trail of clues surrounding the disappearance of innovators and the rise of a mysterious phrase "Who is John Galt?" A 1991 poll by the Library of Congress and The Book of the Month Club found that Atlas Shrugged was the second most influential book after the Bible.
The poll of 1,338 adults was conducted by Zogby International in October 2008 at the request of Freestar Media, LLC. The margin of error of the poll is +/- 2.7 percentage points. More information on the poll and what it discovered about Atlas Shrugged readers can be found at: http://www.freestarmedia.com
Freestar Media, LLC and its sister company Freestar Movie, LLC are currently producing a documentary movie about the health care crisis that exposes the disaster of socialized medicine and offers free-market solutions to lower costs. The movie entitled "Sick and Sicker" will be released in the fall of 2009.
Logan Darrow Clements, Freestar's president, decided to release the Zogby poll results today, the day before the election, to remind voters of the importance of protecting freedom from further encroachment by government.
Freestar Media, LLC was created by Logan Darrow Clements to produce media applying Ayn Rand's philosophy of reason, individual rights and laissez-faire capitalism to current events. The company's most popular project was The Lost Liberty Hotel, a rebellion against eminent domain abuse that involved applying the Supreme Court's Kelo vs. City of New London ruling to one of the justices who voted in favor of it.
website: http://www.freestarmedia.com
According to a poll jointly conducted by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club some years ago, Atlas Shrugged is the second most influential book after the Bible. Some of the people whose opinions I most respect list it as one of the books that had the greatest influence on them, among them Rush Limbaugh.
Rand completely missed the fact that the tenets of The Bible are the indispensable elements that PREVENT self-interest from becoming greedy. Our entire economic system; the "invisible hand" of the Free Market requires self-interest to function, BUT if we would have it not merely function, but soar free of the detrimental friction that is corruption, then that self-interest MUST be tempered with Biblical principles that enable the soul to see, think, and feel beyond self to the needs and interests of others.
Call it "godly self-interest", but it suffuses the quest to provide for self and immediate family, with that peculiarly Biblical "Good Samaritan" awareness that empowers us to discern when to subjugate our plan to meet the needs of self to a plan that addresses the more urgent needs of someone else, and enlivens us to do it NOT because we HAVE TO, but because we — out of gratefulness to The Almighty for His grace upon our own lives — truly WANT to bless Him, by our acts of selfLESSness.
btt
I’m beginning to feel like I’m John Galt. We’ll see how I feel tomorrow morning.
The cornerstone of Objectivism isn’t greed; it is rational self-interest. Add to that the individual freedom to achieve without exploitation, and you have two of the most powerful facets of the philosophy.
Rand did not have a “hatred” of God, either. What she had was a hatred towards what she called “mysticism”, or the abandonment of reason for religion when it came to governing societies or economies.
Dont believe it. I work with 40 professionals (sales) more then half have a degree and not one has read Atlas Shrugged.
Well Ive read it twice.
I’ve tried really hard to read it twice and never made it 1/3 the way through.
I am a “John Galt”. Absolutely appropriate now. Before I read this post my
determination was set in stone tonight.
I am. I Shrugged two years ago, walked out of a Fortune 500, and am running my own business.
I'll spare you the other sixteen pages! :-)
I was required to read "Anthem" by the oh-so-wonderful Ayn Rand in my senior of year of High School (and I went to a public school)
I found it mind-numbingly boring and stupid.
No wonder. Bombastic prose is unreadable!
I was required to read “Catcher in the Rye” AND “The Sun Also Rises” in HS.
I found both mind-numbingly boring and stupid.......
I’m halfway through it, and I’m just floored. I feel like I have a much clearer, deeper understanding of the nature of liberalism, the mindset that creates it, and the evil it represents. I’m beginning to believe that the best service we could do would be to give a copy to at least one friend.
I’m beginning to believe that the best service we could do would be to give a copy to at least one friend.
And get the book into libraries.
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