This is John Galt Speaking

[eagleseven]

The beginning of one of the most reviled and hated speeches of this past century in America.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOt6rUkU5xY]YouTube - "This is John Galt Speaking" #1[/ame]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luKo_w-EVmU&feature=fvw]YouTube - "This is John Galt Speaking" #2[/ame]

If you wish to understand Ayn Rand's brand of philosophy, there is no clearer explanation than this. Love it or hate it.

 

[Oddball]

The best part of the doorstop that is "Atlas Shrugged".

 

[jillian]

Atlas Shrugged is a great book.

But if you're going to create a separate thread for every paragraph of the book, this is going to get old quickly.

 

[Oddball]

Save for about 50 pages, "Atlas Shrugged" is the most boring piece of crap I've ever read.

It put me off of reading fiction forever.

 

[eagleseven]

Atlas Shrugged is a great book.

But if you're going to create a separate thread for every paragraph of the book, this is going to get old quickly.

This is the meat of the book. All the rest is fluff.

She's a philosopher, not a novelist. But watching these videos is far easier than reading [ame="http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Objectivist-Epistemology-Expanded-Second/dp/0452010306"]An Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.[/ame]

 

[Amanda]

Who is John Galt?



Sorry, couldn't help myself.

 

[eagleseven]

Who is John Galt?



Sorry, couldn't help myself.

 

[Amanda]

Save for about 50 pages, "Atlas Shrugged" is the most boring piece of crap I've ever read.

It put me off of reading fiction forever.

I like some of her ideas, but yeah, AS was difficult to get through.

 

[jillian]

Atlas Shrugged is a great book.

But if you're going to create a separate thread for every paragraph of the book, this is going to get old quickly.

This is the meat of the book. All the rest is fluff.

She's a philosopher, not a novelist. But watching these videos is far easier than reading [ame="http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Objectivist-Epistemology-Expanded-Second/dp/0452010306"]An Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.[/ame]

As I said, I don't get youtube at work.

And I guess we have a difference of opinion because I think as a philosopher and social theorist, Ayn Rand is a terrific novelist.

 

[manifold]

Save for about 50 pages, "Atlas Shrugged" is the most boring piece of crap I've ever read.

It put me off of reading fiction forever.

Based on what I could stomach of The Fountainhead, I have to agree with you 100% on Rand. As I've said before, it's a glorified romance novel masquerading as political philosophy.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Save for about 50 pages, "Atlas Shrugged" is the most boring piece of crap I've ever read.

It put me off of reading fiction forever.

At the risk of sounding like a geek, I have to say that I really like Atlas Shrugged.

But if you don't like fiction, you might be interested in a piece that paints FDR as the anti-John Galt, in that he believed that the great rugged individualists were the cause of the Depression, no longer necessary, and had to be restrained in the interests of 'fairness.'

"Roosevelt calculatedly used the Depression as an occasion to remake society in accordance with his own vision of “social justice”… FDR believed that the time of the rugged individual, the titan of business was over. He felt that the Depression was a time of too many good and services, and that forced down prices and wages: “It is the soberer, less dramatic business of administering resources and plants already in hand, . . . of distributing wealth and products more equitably.” Progress no longer needs the entrepreneur.

And while both FDR and La Guardia were extraordinary visionaries with sincere sympathy for ordinary people, theirs was not a democratic vision. They demanded for government the power to define and create “fairness,” power beyond checks and balances."
The Obsolete New York Model by Myron Magnet, City Journal 16 July 2009

 

[Oddball]

Thanks, PC.

I'll give Rand her props in one area, though...Even though her protagonists were just toooooo Johnny Wholesome and Jane Straightlace for belief, she had the petty and malignant mindsets of her antagonists nailed.