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Author Flannery O'Connor wrote in a letter to a friend that "The fiction of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get re fiction. I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the nearest garbage pail."
On the 100th anniversary of Rand's birth in 2005, Edward Rothstein, writing for The New York Times, referred to her fictional writing as quaint utopian "retro fantasy" and programmatic neo-Romanticism of the misunderstood artist, while criticizing her characters' "isolated rejection of democratic society".[142] In 2007, book critic Leslie Clark described her fiction as "romance novels with a patina of pseudo-philosophy".[143] In 2009, GQ's critic columnist Tom Carson described her books as "capitalism's version of middlebrow religious novels" such as Ben-Hur and the Left Behind series
Bad Fiction? The FountainHead? Atlas Shrugged? Have you even read the Books? Shame on you. What did you think of 1984? Animal Farm? Future Shock? Soylent Green?
The one and only Rand book I read..was the Fountainhead. And I only got through 3/4 of it because I wanted to tear it to pieces.
But it was on loaner to me from a girl I was dating at the time who thought that I was alot like Howard Rourke.
Yeah, I get that.
To the unformed mind, she was interesting. To anyone able to think for themselves, she was anything but.
Funny how some idolize a pro-abortion, pro-nazi doofus.
But then, they hate a man who worked to make life better for children and women and men who were being worked to death by the 1% of his day. That would be, of course, Saul Alinsky.
I have to admit that I didn't know who Alinsky was until the R's went nuts against him. Turns out he was pretty much everything that America is about - all Americans should be able to vote - like Obama believes but the opposite of what some R's believe and work against. He was dead set against Communism - like Obama and he was anti-racism.
Being against him is truly anti-America. If he were alive today, he would still be fighting against voter suppression, just as did then. He would also be fighting against Newt Gingrich saying children should work.
I wonder if Ryan indicates she is some sort of deity by capitalizing the first letter of a pronoun that refers to her. As I understand it, he no longer requires his staff read her books. Nonetheless, he's a fruitcake for basing so much of his life on a writer of bad fiction.
Bad Fiction? The FountainHead? Atlas Shrugged? Have you even read the Books? Shame on you. What did you think of 1984? Animal Farm? Future Shock? Soylent Green?
The one and only Rand book I read..was the Fountainhead. And I only got through 3/4 of it because I wanted to tear it to pieces.
But it was on loaner to me from a girl I was dating at the time who thought that I was alot like Howard Rourke.
Interesting little factoid about Ayn Rand is that even when she got lung cancer, she threw out her opinions about government and got SS and Medicare under her married name. She also said she did not believe science was correct that cigarettes were a causative factor in illness. Her friends refused to take money from a system they hated but hypocrite Rand didn't hesitate.
Sound familiar?
She also idolized a serial killer and based some of her characters on him.
Anyone who wants to know more about the REAL Ayn Rand instead of the empty caricature we hear about, read 100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand, author McConnell. Much more interesting than her sophomoric books.
There is a distinct difference between you and me....
I don't make snap judgements or assumptions about others, particularly those I've not met [you and I would be a good example of that] nor do I allow others to form opinions for me.
The full character, the totality of a man is not based on a single element occurring withing that life. The reading of a single book no more defines Ryan than attending the church of Jeremiah Wright can fully define Obama.
We are influenced all thru life by an abundance of events and Ryan has stated that he was led to the study of economics while in college by Rand's economic principles, not her objectivism philosophy.
You are perfectly free, if you wish, to attempt to reduce Ryan to a single element within the narrowest of views.
I prefer a broader examination of the totality of the man.
But it appears the liberal attempt to find personal dirt on this man has left them with only this one very weak argument.
Supposedly the queen of the objectivists, Ayn Rand, was a big influence on Paul Ryan in college. He has since distanced himself from her thinking. Rand championed uber-individualism over collectivism (she was actually Alice Rosenthal or something, a Russian-born Jew, I believe).
Does Ayn Rand have anything to contribute to modern policy? Is "self" the ultimate temporal reality?
What does Rand's religion have to do with anything??
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmW19uoyuO8]Paul Ryan on Ayn Rand - YouTube[/ame]Ryan got his ass kicked regarding Ayn Rand a few months back. Listen to Ayn explain her feelings about abortion.
Ayn Rand on Abortion - YouTube
Then when called on this by the Catholic Bishops, said that he was an admirer St. Aguines. However, never has he required his staffers to read St. Aquinas as he has required them to read Ayn Rand. This is not a man I would want a heartbeat away from the Presidency.
Well, that is what he states. Does Ryan still require his staffers to read Rand? Bet that order still stands. A little information on Ayn Rand;
Romancing the Stone-Cold Killer: Ayn Rand and William Hickman | Michael Prescott
Personally Ayn Rand offers a view of existence so bleak and heartless one has to wonder at her popularity among many on the right. Whittaker Chambers sums her up in the link in the first URL below.
But the individual as the locus and lord of reality and modern life is a powerful meme in American thought. Only in America could a silly kind of Marxism Libertarianism exist. Americans exist in a sort of fantasy that says all this came about from me, Robinson Crusoe without Friday - without history. So yes, the nonsense Rand wrote serves to continue a myth of magic divorced from responsibility for each other. Odd in a nation that calls itself Christian. 'I got mine, tough for you.'
http://www.usmessageboard.com/clean...on-could-be-a-game-changer-2.html#post5810441
http://www.usmessageboard.com/politics/164072-ayn-rand-conservatives-tea-party-republicans.html
http://www.usmessageboard.com/gener...ult-of-selfishness-on-the-american-right.html
"I was raised to be ashamed of my ignorance, and to try to do something about it if at all possible. I carry that burden to this day, and have successfully passed it on to my children. I don’t believe I have the right to an opinion about something I know nothing about—constitutional law, for example, or sailing—a notion that puts me sadly out of step with a growing majority of my countrymen, many of whom may be unable to tell you anything at all about Islam, say, or socialism, or climate change, except that they hate it, are against it, don’t believe in it. Worse still (or more amusing, depending on the day) are those who can tell you, and then offer up a stew of New Age blather, right-wing rant, and bloggers’ speculation that’s so divorced from actual, demonstrable fact, that’s so not true, as the kids would say, that the mind goes numb with wonder. “Way I see it is,” a man in the Tulsa Motel 6 swimming pool told me last summer, “if English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it’s good enough for us.” Mark Slouka 'Harper's'
She's kind of like Rand Paul and Paul Ryan. All three taking government money and benefits while telling others it's evil because it steals from others.
Ayn Rand has nothing at all to offer. Her philosophy Objectivism is the celebration of the sociopath, nothing more. In the end, she was just like every other fool who proclaims boldly that everyone must fend for themselves or be labeled parasite, she took government assistance...to pay for her medical treatments...for lung cancer...because she smoked.
When Ayn was found out, her lawyer said:
Aint it great when the hypocrites are found out?
( and yes, I have read The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged and We, The Living. Ive read some of her non fiction as well as several books by her follower and one time lover, Nathaiel Branden.
Objectivism is a joke. )
It IS evil to steal from others.
Asking that others not steal from you is not.
Classically Liberal: Lying about Ayn Rand and Social Security
in 1966 Rand's Objectivist Newsletter said that not collecting from programs that one is forced to finance would be wrong. It said:
[B]...the victims, who opposed such laws, have a clear right to any refund of their own money—and they would not advance the cause of freedom if they left their money unclaimed, for the benefit of the welfare-state administration.[/B]
<<Amen>>
The AlterNet smear also claimed that Rand said that the link between smoking and cancer was a hoax. She actually never said that. She said she was not convinced that the case had been made, and at the time it hadn't been fully made. She never said it was a hoax and she stopped smoking instantly when her physician showed her a dark spot on her own lung's x-ray.
According to AlterNet one Evva Joan Pryor, "who had been a social worker in New Yorker" said that "I remember telling her that this was going to be difficult. For me to do my job she had to recognize that there were exceptions to her theory." What job was that? Well, if you believe AlterNet she was "social worker" during this period. The implication being that Rand had to seek out a social worker to help her. Some smear-mongers of Rand have argued with me that she died penniless as the result of the evils of capitalism and that was why she sought out this social worker.
Pryor was NOT a social worker. She worked for the law firm of Ernst, Crane Gitlin & Winick which handled all legal matters for Rand. Nor was Rand penniless or in need. She was penniless when she arrived in America but during this period she had cash reserves of a few hundred thousand dollars and a steady income from book royalties.
Rand had sufficient resources to cover the health issues she faced. In fact, she had sufficient funds to pay for heart surgery for her brother-in-law from Russia. Rand's estate had a substantial sum of cash at the time of Rand's death indicating that Pryor's concerns that health costs could "bankrupt" Rand never took place. And, since Pryor argued that Rand should have these things in case health care bankrupted her, it is entirely possible that Rand never got a cent. We just don't know. But if she did, there is nothing to attack her over either.
Rands popularity is really quite simple. Her entire philosphy is that of an adolesent. Selfish greed wedded to an overblown sense of worth. When I was a teen, I found Rands philosphy enthralling. I found it to be correct and exactly what this country needed.
And then I grew up and I put away childish things.
Bad Fiction? The FountainHead? Atlas Shrugged? Have you even read the Books? Shame on you. What did you think of 1984? Animal Farm? Future Shock? Soylent Green?
The one and only Rand book I read..was the Fountainhead. And I only got through 3/4 of it because I wanted to tear it to pieces.
But it was on loaner to me from a girl I was dating at the time who thought that I was alot like Howard Rourke.
i see you keep company with those of similar intelligence.....
Personally Ayn Rand offers a view of existence so bleak and heartless one has to wonder at her popularity among many on the right. Whittaker Chambers sums her up in the link in the first URL below.
But the individual as the locus and lord of reality and modern life is a powerful meme in American thought. Only in America could a silly kind of Marxism Libertarianism exist. Americans exist in a sort of fantasy that says all this came about from me, Robinson Crusoe without Friday - without history. So yes, the nonsense Rand wrote serves to continue a myth of magic divorced from responsibility for each other. Odd in a nation that calls itself Christian. 'I got mine, tough for you.'
http://www.usmessageboard.com/clean...on-could-be-a-game-changer-2.html#post5810441
http://www.usmessageboard.com/politics/164072-ayn-rand-conservatives-tea-party-republicans.html
http://www.usmessageboard.com/gener...ult-of-selfishness-on-the-american-right.html
"I was raised to be ashamed of my ignorance, and to try to do something about it if at all possible. I carry that burden to this day, and have successfully passed it on to my children. I dont believe I have the right to an opinion about something I know nothing aboutconstitutional law, for example, or sailinga notion that puts me sadly out of step with a growing majority of my countrymen, many of whom may be unable to tell you anything at all about Islam, say, or socialism, or climate change, except that they hate it, are against it, dont believe in it. Worse still (or more amusing, depending on the day) are those who can tell you, and then offer up a stew of New Age blather, right-wing rant, and bloggers speculation thats so divorced from actual, demonstrable fact, thats so not true, as the kids would say, that the mind goes numb with wonder. Way I see it is, a man in the Tulsa Motel 6 swimming pool told me last summer, if English was good enough for Jesus Christ, its good enough for us. Mark Slouka 'Harper's'
Rands popularity is really quite simple. Her entire philosphy is that of an adolesent. Selfish greed wedded to an overblown sense of worth. When I was a teen, I found Rands philosphy enthralling. I found it to be correct and exactly what this country needed.
And then I grew up and I put away childish things.
Paul Ryan on the other hand lives on the street he grew up on, his brother only a block away. After his father died, Ryan drew on his fathers social security to help put himself through college, where he double majored in Economics and Political Science. From college, he went straight to work in Washington.
Ryan went straight from his sheltered life in Janesville to work in government. He has never had a private sector job as his primary and only source of income ( he worked as a waiter and a fitness trainer to suppliment his income he recieved from the government. ) . In fact, as his double major indicates, his goal has always been government.
When the 2008 meltdown occured, Paul Ryan voted AGAINST the GM loan. That had consequences. GM closed the plant in his hometown of Janesville, WI. 3800 middle class jobs lost and Ryan did nothing. Though to his credit, Ryan did vote against the extention of unemployemnt benefits for those same 3800 workers.
In his 13 years in the House, Ryan has passed just two pieces of legislation. The first, in 2000, changed the name of a post office, the second, in 2008 while the country was in full on economic meltdown, changed the way an excise tax was levied on arrows.
At a salary of $174,000 a year, the American taxpayer has paid Paul Ryan 2.26 million dollars, or 1.13 million dollars per piece of legislation. At his current rate of production, if Paul Ryan stays in the House, we should expect to see his next great piece of legislation sometime in 2016.
Ryan, as a foloower of Rands philosophy, believes that a man should only be entitled to that which is produced by his own hand. What has Paul Ryans hand produced? Ryan has said that he believes that welfare, unemployment, social security, medicare are all things the governemnt should not be doing. All things that he wishes to privatize, because government is the problem, NOT the solution.
Yet, the government gave him his fathers social security money so Ryan could got to school. Ryan chose majors which would lead him directly into government. He has never had to rely on a private sector paycheck as his main source of income. And the sweat from Paul Ryans brow produced only 2 pieces of legistlation in 13 years.