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
Ayn Rand seemed to have a thinly disguised hatred of people.
Her only admiration are reserved for power. All her heroes are Neitzchian Übermensch types.
8.1% really? That's too high. It's true that some people may have said “yes” just out of familiarity with the book although they didn't read it, or for some other reason. However, I've done the Atlas Shrugged poll two years in a row and received the exact same number. I'm not a statistician but I think this (having a sample twice as large) would help shrink my margin of error significantly.
My website being old. Sorry it's not a blog. I update it when I can but this is news on my site that is fresh as of today.
Handing out copies of Atlas Shrugged: I know a guy in Hollywood that bought 5,000 copies of the book and will give you a couple hundred to hand out if you promise to distribute them to people free of charge. (no making a profit—very ironic I guess).
Please tell Republicans, libertarians and conservatives about the philosophy of Objectivism. Freedom activists should upgrade to Objectivism the most advanced and powerful ideological weaponry to fight statism.
The claim of regulatory government is risk management. There are libertarian risk management architectures that can work. Rand had no clue how to explain them. In that respect, she failed.
Nice story with a serious warning, but no meat.
I am very pleased to be part of this minority...
$
I’m a heavy reader - the type that can’t trade or throw a book away. I felt War and Peace was an easier read - though not as pleasurable. The 50 page speech by Galt at the end nearly made me give up despite being so close to the end.
I imagine it is similar to War and Peace and DeTocqvilles Democracy in America (ibid)everyone claims to have read them, but few really have. I’ve started DIA twice, but haven’t managed to push through the way I did the other two.
You are clearly WAY oversampling Republicans.
I loved AS but it takes a measure of discipline to read it through.
I agree there is a timelessness to the ideas, as is usually the case with literature. But the world in which those ideas were presented was one that in many ways seemed “past” when the book was published.
Who needs to read it? We are about to LIVE it.
I believe that we're already living it.
Who is John Galt?
I’ve not only read it, we live on Galts Gulch. Long driveways around here are named.
The person you are referring to was Murray Rothbard not Alan Greenspan, and it was about another issue unrelated to economics.
Ever meet an objectivist high school math teacher? Pretty cool. Our march through the institutions is already underway.
The Randian utopia at the end of Atlas Shrugged is every bit as unworkable as any of the “Worker’s Paradises” that the Marxists she despised fantasized about.
In the end, Rand wanted to offer humanity another version of utopia without God, and ultimately they all lead to the only place of refuge from God, hell.
Pinging Cooper.
I agree. With the high school drop out rate in virtually all of our big cities about 50%--there is no way that number is accurate.
P.S. Yes, I have read it. Outstanding book!
Scientology for right wingers.
"..that McCain was trying to make a virtue out of selfishness..."
I don't think that even Rand foresaw a radical, liberal extremist, racist and far-left, big government crusader like Hussein taking power.
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