For me, Dorothy Parker summed up everything that needs to be said about Ayn Rand’s tribute to greed, Atlas Shrugged:
“This is not a book that should be set aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”
Atlas Shrugged is a fantasy of what Rand thought would happen if the “creative elite” (i.e., privileged industrialists, businessmen, etc.) abandoned the sissified, liberal proles and went off to form their own society in a canyon in Colorado. The media has been making a big deal over the 50th anniversary of its publication, and not without good reason — it’s been very influential in the intellectual development (such as it is) of the conservatives that run the Republican party nowadays. The message of Rand’s Objectivist philosophy is that the ultimate social virtue is selfishness, which weeds out the weak and allows the strong to rise to the top of society. In other words, it’s not just acceptable to fuck over your fellow human being; it’s a moral duty. Rand’s children have given us New Orleans and Iraq, two open petri dishes for the theory of eliminating governmental regulation and infrastructure in favor of the genius of private enterprise.
The Carpetbagger Report has more to say on the topic of Rand and her legacies, and Bob the Angry Flower gives us the sequel to her masterwork.
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Now playing: Blondie – Hanging On The Telephone
Wow. You really don’t know what you are talking about at all, do you?
“Republican party,” “weeds out the week [sic] and allows the strong to rise to the top of society,” “to fuck over your fellow human being; it’s a moral duty,” “New Orleans and Iraq.” What the hell are you talking about? Have you ever heard of research or do you just make crazy emotional assumptions and call it good enough?
If you want to accuse me of making crazy, irrational arguments, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t engage in same yourself. Frankly, I’m not even entirely clear on what you’re specifically objecting to here, because you’ve just thrown a cluster of my own phrases back at me.
But essentially, what I’m criticizing is this: for the last twenty years, the Republican Party has been given virtually carte blanche to enact an agenda of radical privatization and social darwinism. Where there once was a sense of noblesse oblige from the upper classes, the ethic promoted since the Reagan era is that all we need is to allow corporations to indulge their self-interest at its most ruthless and unfettered, and the invisible hand of the free market will take care of us all.
But we’ve seen that this is a fairy tale of grotesque proportions. It’s produced a widening gap in both economic and political power between classes in America, and it’s been even more disastrous in Iraq, where they first had their entire bureaucracy and infrastructure leveled, then had the country used as a blank slate upon which to practice privatized nation-building.
If there’s one thing that the Republicans leave behind that is truly foul, beyond all the other foul things that they’ve done, it’s this: they’ve destroyed the idea of citizenship, so essential for a democracy, and replaced it with consumership. The conservative agenda has promoted a worldview where we are not interconnected members of a community who each have some responsibility for each other, but as atomized individuals who each purchase our own education, protection, and rights. This is the fundamental difference between World War II, when we responded not only by taking arms, but by volunteering for civil defense, recycling, and rationing; and 9/11, when we were asked to respond by going shopping.
And yes, I’ll give you the typo. A bad thing for someone who makes his living doing proofreading, but also the result of typing this stuff up a at work, keeping one eye watching over my shoulder for the boss.
I didn’t call them arguments. You aren’t saying anything really it just a butch of words thrown together. It’s like your brain got to drunk and vomited on my screen. It’s all disconnected stuff and your mind has, by some massive confusion, somehow tried to weld it all together.
Ayn Rand was not a conservative she was a Capitalist. They aren’t at all the same. Most republicans hate her as much as the leftists. She isn’t even on your right/left spectrum.
Objectivism is not egoism. Egoism is a part of Objectivism and the egoism of Objectivism is not anything like what you think it is. Nothing. Seriously read her book on ethics or even just look up something by her online about it.It’s not hard.
New Orleans and Iraq are just so far disconnected that I don’t know how you could have possibly landed there. Why not blame her for all earthquakes, snake bites and prison rape too? Let’s throw in Nazism while were at it.
If by Iraq you mean Blackwater; Ayn Rand held war to be the proper domain of the government.
I don’t know what you think she has to do with New Orleans but I’m sure it’s just as stupid and ignorant.
Go read up on things before you write about them or someone who knows what they are talking about may find you and amuse themselves by tearing apart your nonsense and laughing at how crazy you are. Will me and everyone in my living room.
After your last comment, I don’t feel quite so bad about my typo. 😉
But as for the rest, this in particular is wrong:
Rand is very popular among many prominent figures on the right; most lefties are more likely to agree with Gore Vidal’s description of Atlas Shrugged as “nearly perfect in its immorality.”
All of the articles about the 50th Anniversary of Atlas Shrugged have noted how a novel that’s so regularly dismissed in literary circles has become an ideological inspiration among fiscal conservatives. Alan Greenspan is a famous fan, as are Clarence Thomas and John Stossel. Rand herself described the heart of Objectivism as being “the virtue of selfishness.” I know of no better way to describe the underpinnings of modern conservatism.
She still wasn’t a conservative. And you still don’t know what her selfishness means.
You’re welcome to educate me, Blaw.
If you actually want to know that’s admirable. If you honestly care about the facts but are merely confused I retract most of my insults. I will put effort into this so I hope you pursue it.
The best thing you can do to learn about the ethics is read this one:
http://tinyurl.com/2o3ekz
It is a the most comprehensive and well written book on egoism you can get.
There’s a really short one that I think a 12 year old could read easily:
http://tinyurl.com/2mhxeq
Not the best one though but it’s not awful.
There is also a book about meta-ethics:
http://tinyurl.com/2lz39s
It’s the study of the foundations of ethics. If you want to know not just what egoism is but the facts behind it. It also refutes all of the most conventional ethical theories.
There is also Ayn Rands book on ethics, but it’s only a collection of essays and it’s not as detailed and the first one I gave. The plus is that it’s only $8 new.
http://tinyurl.com/2psbb4
And if you want the whole philosophy in a condensed and not too expensive systematic presentation:
http://tinyurl.com/2vz5st
For politics there is here $8 book on it:
http://tinyurl.com/2rf7zc
Essay collection.
And then there’s the comprehensive book on Capitalism:
http://tinyurl.com/33rb23
I don’t know which are the best for you because I don’t know how big and complex of a book you want to read or how much money you care to spend. Most of them you can get used pretty cheap though.
There you go.
Most of them? Gee, thanks.
Blaw, or “Not as blaw,” or whatever you want to be known as: I have read Rand. Among other things, one of her books (“Anthem”) was required reading in high school. Even then, I found her unreadable and morally void, especially when compared against the other dystopian literature (e.g., Brave New World, Farenheit 451, Animal Farm) that impressed me so much at the time. I’ve also read essays by Rand and her followers and tried (god help me, I’ve tried), to slog through John Galt’s lecture from Atlas Shrugged.
I’m not interested in a reading list. I was asking you to offer some argument other than merely insulting me and telling me how ignorant I am.
Oh, so you have read Anthem and tried to read the Galt speech? I guess you’re not ignorant after all. Oh wait; none of the things you have listed are actually enough to understand her to an extent to justify you.
I don’t care to argue with crazy people. I give a great deal of my time to helping honest interested people understand things. If I question is asked of my that seems honest I answer it or if I do not know the answer I learn it. I don’t know that you are either honest or interested. If you were you’d do well to read something actually containing information. Anthem does not count, nor do essays applying some of her ideas or failed attempts to read Galt.
I never claimed to have presented an argument anyway. I just thought it would be a good idea to point out for the sake of someone honest that may read your post that it isn’t accurate. And you are very ignorant. I’d think someone in such a condition would want to fix it but it’s really your own loss if you want to remain that way.
I suggest you read this one at least:
http://tinyurl.com/2vz5st
Then you may honestly say that you know something about what you are talking about. As it stands now you do not.
Please excuse grammatical errors. I have not slept in four nights.
I myself HAVE read all of Ayn Rand’s writings. Every single last one of them, as far as I’m aware, though not perhaps some shorter things she might have written in journals or places like that.
I was once, in fact, very convinced by what she wrote, and did what I could to live by Objectivist ideas.
In recent years, what has astonished me is that everything she predicted that the left-wingers would do, in books like The Fountainhead or (my favorite) Atlas Shrugged, has in fact been implemented by the RIGHT-wingers, by the neo-Con-infested Republicans in your country.
Rather than go over old ground again, since Blaw really likes to link people to other writings, I’ll just link to my two original posts on the subject, which I called “Ayn Rand Got it Right, but Got it Wrong.”
Part One: Ayn Rand Got it Right, in which I summarize what I think were a lot of her correct beliefs about how people discard rationality and politically manipulate people.
Part Two: Ayn Rand Got it Wrong, in which I show that today’s neo-Con Republicans stick to an ideology against all reason and evidence; I show how the “Patriot” [sic] act is today’s supreme example of Rand’s “Argument From Intimidation;” show how people like Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and Bill O’Reilly are perfect examples of people without a SELF, who would vanish in a puff of rationality if they did have all their followers gazing at them and endowing them with being; how the Death Wish is at the VERY CORE of what these people do and preach at society.
The last people on EARTH who should be listened to, given any credence, or allowed any power, are the neo-Con Republicans. Death Wish City, man!
I agree that the right is currently the main enemy of reason currently.I don’t see how that counts as Rand getting it wrong but I’ll read your posts.
Ok. First off she wasn’t against just the left as such. She was against statism. She had very little to say about the right that was every good. And the right that exist today was only on it’s way in when she was still living as the old right was on it’s way out.
Political parts shift their identities all the time. It isn’t the label that matters it’s the content of the ideas that are essential to the political party, when and if it has any ideas. The right was bankrupt intellectually for a long time and stood for nothing. They went from kind of defending capitalism (badly) to being for ridiculous stuff like “fatherhood” and now they seem to be theocratic.
It doesn’t matter what side of this false dichotomy has evolved into something that is more of a threat now. They are both embodiments of statism; as they stand now. It’s a good thing that we don’t have to be one or the other. Ayn Rand wasn’t either nor am I. Ayn Rand was not a republican and she was not a democrat; she was a Capitalist. A word that has lost all meaning in most people’s minds.
The things you mentioned were not really fundamental to Objectivism. And there are a few other inaccuracies also but they were not as essential as the one handled here.
Thanks for the Dorothy Parker quote. Says it all.