I have never understood the appeal of Rand, she seems to me a pathological, pretend to be political philosopher, who led a wacky life, and wrote ideological, boring, hero books, in which the hero is a soulless materialist. I have tried to read her and find the experience torture. The stuff sucks. But maybe I am missing the key here. Superman appeals to all boys and girls, and fantasy of the hero overcoming great odds are ideas that seem to be part of the human angst. One only has to watch the constant shows on TV and movies to see the hero rebelling against some unjust system, and against all odds achieving justice. It must be written in our genes.
I guess that is the appeal I miss when I look too closely at her hero books. Superman lives on, only now as a justification for a dislike of the common (wo)man of which all of us are, but which we hope to rise above. No wonder everyone except us is a freeloader, after all we did it all on our own, Ayn by our side, her books as our bible. http://www.usmessageboard.com/economy/50564-libertarianism-in-a-nutshell-ii.html
"...[T]he basic inverted Marxism at the heart of her ideology has become the central focus of both modern conservative thought and Republican policy-making. (That ideology holds that the world is fundamentally divided between virtuous creators of wealth and lazy parasites, the identity of whom is the reverse of what Marx believed.)" Ayn Rand And Conservatism | The New Republic
And imagine helping children, how can one then be a hero? Believe or die. Remind you of anyone.
"One of the many sins of the villain of her other famous novel, The Fountainhead, is that he turns what ought to be an architectural work of art into a care center for subnormal children. Rand writes how evil it was that art was wasted on these unworthy sub-lives as she describes their eyes staring vacantly, the stare of death before which no world existed."
"While Whittaker Chambers famous 1957 condemnation of Rand may sound over-torqued half a century later: From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: To a gas chamber go! It remains true that Ayn Rand seems to revel in the death and destruction that follows by disregarding her philosophy: most famously in the ghoulish scene in Atlas Shrugged where Rand details the suffocation of the passengers on a train as it enters a tunnel. Rand explains how everyone on the train deserved to die because they held incorrect ideas: "It is said that catastrophes are a matter of pure chance, and there were those who would have said that the passengers of the Comet were not guilty or responsible for the thing that happened to them.""
"Rands popularity tells us two things about the state of modern conservatism...First, it suggests that Rands atheism and permissive social views are no longer deal-breakers among conservative thought leaders....Beck and Limbaugh can use the parts of Rand they want to use and not engage the rest. Tea Party Embraces Ayn Rand | FrumForum
http://www.usmessageboard.com/writing/50820-atlas-panted.html
"If any civilization is to survive, it is the morality of altruism that men have to reject." Ayn Rand
I guess that is the appeal I miss when I look too closely at her hero books. Superman lives on, only now as a justification for a dislike of the common (wo)man of which all of us are, but which we hope to rise above. No wonder everyone except us is a freeloader, after all we did it all on our own, Ayn by our side, her books as our bible. http://www.usmessageboard.com/economy/50564-libertarianism-in-a-nutshell-ii.html
"...[T]he basic inverted Marxism at the heart of her ideology has become the central focus of both modern conservative thought and Republican policy-making. (That ideology holds that the world is fundamentally divided between virtuous creators of wealth and lazy parasites, the identity of whom is the reverse of what Marx believed.)" Ayn Rand And Conservatism | The New Republic
And imagine helping children, how can one then be a hero? Believe or die. Remind you of anyone.
"One of the many sins of the villain of her other famous novel, The Fountainhead, is that he turns what ought to be an architectural work of art into a care center for subnormal children. Rand writes how evil it was that art was wasted on these unworthy sub-lives as she describes their eyes staring vacantly, the stare of death before which no world existed."
"While Whittaker Chambers famous 1957 condemnation of Rand may sound over-torqued half a century later: From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: To a gas chamber go! It remains true that Ayn Rand seems to revel in the death and destruction that follows by disregarding her philosophy: most famously in the ghoulish scene in Atlas Shrugged where Rand details the suffocation of the passengers on a train as it enters a tunnel. Rand explains how everyone on the train deserved to die because they held incorrect ideas: "It is said that catastrophes are a matter of pure chance, and there were those who would have said that the passengers of the Comet were not guilty or responsible for the thing that happened to them.""
"Rands popularity tells us two things about the state of modern conservatism...First, it suggests that Rands atheism and permissive social views are no longer deal-breakers among conservative thought leaders....Beck and Limbaugh can use the parts of Rand they want to use and not engage the rest. Tea Party Embraces Ayn Rand | FrumForum
http://www.usmessageboard.com/writing/50820-atlas-panted.html
"If any civilization is to survive, it is the morality of altruism that men have to reject." Ayn Rand
