HuffPost: The Insanity of Ayn Rand: The Fountain-Brain-Dead

[regnaD kciN]

For the many here who cannot tolerate the High Priestess of Selfishness, an hysterical review of the film version of The Fountainhead by HuffPost's tongue-in-cheek critic "Tallulah Morehead."

The movie was written by the novelist-nutball, Russian-American, writer-philosopher Ayn Rand. She promoted a form of highly-anti-communist philosophy called "Objectivism," probably because it is so objectionable.

Being virulently anti-Communism-and-Socialism, she believed that ownership and rights of property were sacrosant, although when Howard Roarke, her Ideal Man, blows up other people's property because he doesn't like it, it's a righteous act, not a violation of other people's rights of property. Ayn was a hypocrite.

Ayn is having a small vogue right now (very small, as the country is becoming far less happy with rightwing nutballs), because her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, an insane novel that makes The Lord of the Rings seem like a speedy short story, is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary just now. This means that the people who began reading it the day it came out, are nearly through it by now, those that haven't hanged themselves.

Have you ever seen a photograph of Ayn Rand? For a woman who wants strong muscular men to drill her like a jackhammer, Ayn went to a lot of trouble to look like a Bloomsbury literary Lesbian. In fact, she looked rather like a young Rosa Klebb, only not as sexy.

Ayn died the day after John Belushi died, although I don't think she did so to cheer us up again.

:rofl:

[tabatha]

1. Thanks for that - it was delicious.

[MADem]

2. I had never seen a photograph of Ayn Rand

[caseymoz]

11. Don't make fun of looks. When you read her sex scenes you'll realize that she's repulsive.

The "love scene" between Howard Roarke and Dominique violent rape. Then, at the end of the "date" Roarke just zips up his pants and leaves without a word, and Dominique looks in the mirror to see her face bruised. It was the most obscene, offensive, chillingly unerotic sex scene that was ever cluelessly written. At least the Marquis de Sade realized his sex scenes were vile. Even chauvinistic critics in 1943 pointed out that it was rape. Rand's unbelievably weird answer was "If it was rape, it was rape by engraved invitation." That's right, Dominique was really, really asking for it, and the ideal man captured her heart with the best date rape ever. You would think that any right-wingnut reading the book would come to that scene and realize Rand was one of those cousins mentioned in the "Addams Family." I gave up on the book at that point, though I read some on other pages to acquaint myself with the plot.

That wasn't the only scene of romantic date-rape that Rand wrote. Dagny Taggart, the female protagonist in "Atlas Shrugged" has an romantic date rape with Sam Rearden, who was as I remember, about twice her age.

It's apparent that Rand had little connection to the real world and was not mentally competent to come up with a world philosophy, much less understand economics, politics or history. It's unbelievable that she wrote her books without dying from accidental, self-inflicted wounds with her pen. It's more unbelievable that any publisher printed her books, and totally absurd that they aren't all forgotten in a landfill now.

[Chulanowa]

16. She sounds like a paleolithic slash writer

Selfishness is good, character development is evil, and rape is romantic.

I've sure that there's some Harry / Snape slash that would read just like Ayn Rand. Not that I would ever read that sort of stuff myself.

[Joe Chi Minh]

21. You're absolutely on the mark. When I saw references to her here -

or maybe on Salon before it was "bought" - I couldn't believe that Americans could have taken here at all seriously. I mean, to speak of her as a philosopher.... It's rather like Hitler being short-listed for the Nobel Peace Prize (the latter did happen); or classifying Milton Friedman as an economist; There seems to be absolutely no limit to extreme right-wing folly. I'm sure they would view Lucifer as their own Che Guevara.

[caseymoz]

37. To understand Rand, you and everyone here must see this link:

http://michaelprescott.net/hickman.htm

It describes what Rand's journal said, and her original inspiration for Howard Roarke: a child-killer.

It was MrP who put it up below. He didn't choose a good heading, though.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=453691&mesg_id=453703

However, the link is a real must-read that tells you everything you need to know about Ayn Rand and her "philosophy." It's what you need to know about Rand's inspiration for "The Fountainhead."

I thought the rape scenes indicated abnormal psychology, now there's proof. If Rand only had Howard Roarke dismember Dominique, the novel would have been just 300 pages long. Unfortunately, she had to make it at least twice that length.

[regnaD kciN]

49. Actually, Hickman wasn't the inspiration for Roarke...

He was the inspiration for another, similar "heroic rebel" in an earlier, unfinished novel.

Still, the fact that she could look at someone who kidnapped a 12-year-old girl, collected the ransom, then dumped the girl's mutilated body in front of her father as someone too "noble" for the vulgar herd of the common people tells you enough: the woman was a psycho.

The author of that article admits to being a former Rand-follower who grew to realize, long before finding those journal entries, that her ideas were of no use to anyone. (I don't have the link to that particular blog post, but I think you can find it at the link mentioned above.)

There's one area in which I strongly disagree with Mr. Prescott. He claims, in his earlier piece, that Rand was "the spokesperson for the left side of the brain" -- in other words, overly-logical and detached from emotion. Her flaw is not that she was wrong, per se, but that she was unbalanced between the two halves of the brain, and generally only appeals to similarly left-brained readers, making them even more narrow than before. Now, that may be true for some, but her lionizing of a kidnapper and child-murderer, simply because he was "brilliant" (debatable) and that he didn't play by the corrupted rules of collectivist, religious society, supports my earlier suspicion (formed in large part due to the importance of name-calling, ad hominem attacks and rhetorical rage in her presentation of her own philosophy, even as she denounces her opponents for stooping to ad hominem attacks instead of logical discourse!): Rand wasn't some high-priestess of rational thought, but was actually herself very emotionally-driven, to the point of being un-reasonable (and various other terms I'm sure you can throw in), not so much ultra-logical as motivated by anger at humanity as a whole for not recognizing and respecting her (alleged) genius and "specialness." Her life's work was actually a Herculean effort to construct a logical system that would validate and buttress the emotion-based beliefs that truly drove her. If she had been coming from a different emotional position, she could have easily developed a mirror-image philosophy based around altruism and communism...and insisted, with equal vehemence, that no one who wasn't fatally stupid, cowardly, and/or corrupt could fail to acknowledge the overwhelming truth of that philosophy of collectivism and self-sacrifice.

[caseymoz]

52. You've hit it on the head, till now I didn't understand what might have driven her.

She was no Vulcan, and she wasn't brilliant. I used to think she resorted in ad hominem attacks because she believed that emotion was a fair in the fight for right. I see now that I had it reversed, she was using logic to defend her emotions, which were totally self-centered. A is A-- loosely meaning, I am right and you are wrong.

She was a corrupting influence.

[Joe Chi Minh]

69. Thanks. I appreciate your intention, but she is already a weird Black Swan

to me, who receives utterly anomalous attention.

I can't imagine how a glaring, essential psychopath, who, moreover, was such a hapless, congenital nonentity, is even known by a public, however small. And yet, relatively speaking, it seems to be quite large in the US, whether she is loved or hated. That is some Black Swan. Even given the extreme pathology of your far right-wing plutocrats and their poultice on the M$M.

Frankly, she sounds like a Charles Manson manque. As though he changed his mind about that murder spree, learnt joined-up writing and, personifying narcissism, always banal, proceeded to portray it by scribbling his "ideas". She was to philosophy what doggerel is to poetry.

[caseymoz]

70. Ayn Rand was hardly anomalous. Alan Greenspan was her disciple.

He wrote for her magazine, "The Objectivist." His essays could be found in her book: "Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal" in which he takes the same caustic, rancorous tone as Rand's over opposing views and toward helping the poor. Nor did he reject her later: he was associated with her until her death in 1982. As Fed chair, he would have implemented the gold standard (one of Rand's main economic tenets), but his excuse to Rand's supporters was that in a democratic nation, he had to compromise.

I'll first go into some of his biography details to show how influential Rand's thinking was among Republicans and Conservatives. Then, I will show that her sway over our country is even greater than that.

Greenspan was appointed Chairman of Federal Reserve by none other than Ronald Reagan. Taken alone that shows how strong Rand's influence was with conservatives in Reagan's circle, and in the whole Republican Party.

Now, he also served as Nixon's Coordinator on Domestic Policy for his nomination campaign,
he served as Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors under Gerald Ford, and was Director on the Council on Foreign Relations from 1982 to 1988. Among private industry, Greenspan was corporate director of Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa); Automatic Data Processing, Inc.; Capital Cities/ABC, Inc.; General Foods, Inc.; J.P. Morgan & Co., Inc.; Morgan Guaranty Trust Company of New York; Mobil Corporation. Look at how many sectors of the economy that includes.

Furthermore, he was not some sort of covert operative for Rand. His association with her was never a secret. This means that if he was getting so many high government appointments, than many others in government thought her social and economic theories plausible and desirable. They must have created policies and laws accordingly. My guess is it was even worse than that. It is possible that, along with Milton Friedman, she highly influenced that odious University of Chicago School of Economics, which was radically conservative. Members of that school won a total of 5 Nobel prizes. That shows her philosophy at least indirectly had sway over the worldwide economy.

Moreover, I think that her hateful tone was the inspiration for conservatives talk radio and the rancorous state of political discussion now. You could somehow hear echos of John Galt's 76-page rancorous bombast repeated in every three hour episode of Limbaugh, not to mention Glen Beck and all the other conservative propagandist. When first I heard Limbaugh, I swear, I thought back on John Galt's arrogant talking-jag in Atlas Shrugged.

Even if she was an atheist, my guess is that her economic and social tenets spread second and third-hand to conservative Christians, who knew it from other conservatives, not knowing that the original source was Rand.

My conjectures aside, I think think it is irrefutable that Ayn Rand was not an anomaly or a fringe thinker. She had a greater, if far less acknowledged, influence over our political-economic system than Willian F. Buckley, Jr., about as much influence as Barry Goldwater. She is the dirty secret of Conservatism, because if this radicalism had been known, they never would have ascended politically. A book, if not a documentary, should be made about this.

[Joe Chi Minh]

74. You're impressed by Alan Greenspan? That's as far as I needed to read.

[caseymoz]

77. You got the very opposite idea about what I was saying. I hate Greenspan's actions and beliefs.

Don't you understand the difference between saying that he was important to our economy and saying I liked what he did. Hitler was important. He was also evil.

Again, nobody guided business and our economy in the late '80s and '90s like that Randite Greenspan did. That's a fact. It said nothing about my opinion, which is that he ultimately navigated the country right into the rocks. That means that Rand's economic theories ran the country's economy-- and ruined it.

Don't you understand I'm pointing out the power that he had, and not saying I thought he was anything good? He was terrible. So is his mentor, Ayn Rand.

I have to admit, I was appalled by how you missed the point of my post. Now, will you read it?

[Joe Chi Minh]

80. I'm afraid it is you who still miss the point, caseymoz. For one thing,

creating an enormous economic bubble which would eventually lead to a Black Swan economic catastrophe (as appears to be in the pipeline - insofar as it hasn't direly impacted a person's life, already) may be unparalleled, but you appear to invest that with a positive overtone, which is completely wrong. Such prosperity as the US enjoyed during that period was off the back of the "ordinary" Americans, whose incomes were remorselessly eroded. The consequent polarization of wealth was the hubris that has led to this nemesis.

I take your point about Greenspan's having been influenced by Rand - that he was given "cover" for the less than creditable desires I feel sure he would have shared, anyway. So, I don't find it remarkable that he used her nonsense as a "front. That he was able to do so, is another matter. That he was able to do was surely remarkable; that her lunacy was ever given the remotest currency, so that he could eventually find it useful to co-opt for his own purposes. In that, she was a Black Swan, to my way of thinking. As a matter of fact, it seems to me that she personified the spirit of your psychotic military-industrial complex, which has been remorselessly growing like a cancer, as foreseen so clearly by Eisenhower.

Yes, Hitler was a "great" man, in the sense that Lucifer was a great angel, before God fixed him. He affected the history of the 20th century enormously. But he was also the most pitiable weakling, literally beneath contempt, since his country was flattened and hundreds of thousands of his womenfolk in the East were routinely, repeatedly raped by the Russian troops over quite an extended period. All this, quite apart from the monstrous concentration camps, etc., in which tots were as brutally murdered as their parents.

Since the war, the Germans have struggled to live down what was essentially the fault of their monied classes and indeed our own leaders in the West, who were terrified of having to share any of their wealth, and saw Hitler as their bastion against Communism. After the unrealistically punitive Versailles Treaty, Hitler was simply an accident waiting to happen. In some ways, he was very insightful and intuitive, but in others - such as over-riding the advice of his generals - a complete half-wit; and I'm a afraid that combination is the most deadly one to a person's overall intelligence.

But Rand's acceptance by so many in the US is only understandable in the sorry context of the overall history of the US right up to the second half of the last century (notably, Operation Condor and the CIA's wider role in S. America), and indeed right up to the present day (Iraq and Afghanistan). Only a country in which even after WWII, the Senate didn't want to come down too hard on the lynchings of African Americans, in which apartheid was practised against African Americans in the South right up to the sixties, is at all explicable.

So, as a European, while Rand provided some kind of "front" for the far right (not, incidentally, necessary, as you seem to think, in the way that Hitler was to his initial puppeteers, for example), to me she remains an inexplicable Black Swan. Even after the Nazi regime in Germany, the apartheid regime in S. Africa, and in the light of the "for profit" prison gulag you have to this day in the US, we Europeans find it difficult to get our heads round the kind of wickedness perpetrated against the African Americans in the US, and against the people of South America and elsewhere in the world, now particularly Asia, of course.

I can see how you considered I'd missed your point, however. I just don't believe that, whatever Greenspan might say to the contrary, he needed one jot of her input to feed his misunderstanding. On the contrary, I believe such misunderstandings to be wilful, and shared in a seemingly quite homogeneous way, by people with a certain psychological profile. Notable, because as Tolstoy once observed: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Still, on the whole, I think people with that psychological profile tend to be much less vulnerable to the hurts that most people suffer.

I'm sorry I wasn't more patient and polite, but I don't think N N Taleb was using hyperbole when he said he said he wouldn't employ Paulsen or Bernanke to dive his car. I doubt he would use Greenspan to polish it. So I do get a bit testy to find that some congenital nonentity, such as Rand should have had the bizarre stroke of luck to be born into a society with precisely the kind of pathology that would lionize her.

[caseymoz]

84. I don't write of Greenspan with positive overtones, as you say I "appear" to.

I don't know what, in my post prior to previous, you are possibly referring to, nor why my then explicit renunciation of Greenspan in my last post went right by you. I appeared to invest that with a positive overtone? Appearances are deceiving. Something is getting lost in translation.

I don't know what part of Europe you are from, but there is a misunderstanding due to different terms and idioms. Such as, I didn't know what a "Black Swan" was. I looked it up on line and find that it has a different meaning from what I thought you were conveying. I'm thinking the misunderstanding works the other way, too.

No, it isn't that Randism was a front for the Right, it was the other way around; the Right was a front for Randism, which was too radical for public approval. Are you certain you don't mean that Randism was the rationalization of the right.

It's your opinion that Greenspan didn't need Rand to feed his "misunderstanding." I disagree very much. Perhaps he didn't need it for his beliefs, but I think Rand gave him something else extremely important to his rise to power: certainty, rectitude and zealousness. He was not only selfish and egoistic, he was committed to having others acting like that. He made Ayn Rand's tenets viral. It was the difference between just being sick and being sick and contagious.

Yes, the US has done some terrible things. However, most of it was done by deception and secrecy, most especially in Iraq. Few if any of the the crimes would have been committed if people were informed about them. There is now a serious political schism in the country caused by the Vietnam war and the Nixon administration. The divisions in the US right now make reform almost impossible. Till Conservatism and is marginalized, the country is frozen in its policies.

The liberals, by far the best faction, find that they can't elect a politician who doesn't stab them in the back. Obama hasn't stabbed, but he has slashed. We still have to hope.

Lynchings and racism are the US' disgrace. It is crime right now that Conservatives maintain that racism is over with and now historical. It isn't. We have a prison population that is overwhelmingly African-American. Every study has identified racism as the cause. Much more work needs to be done. Conservatives see racism as historical and a settled matter, though. It's impossible to motivate them to do anything about it.

However, Europeans have had their own crimes even leaving Hitler and Stalin out. Pogroms against the Jews in Russia stand out; King Leopold's genocide in Belgium Congo surpasses America's racism and lynchings by orders of magnitud; then there was that little matter of the British getting extremely wealthy by dealing drugs to the Chinese. The last one makes the drug problem in the look miniscule. It impoverished China and was every bit as racist as anything in the US. Most recently there was the racist war in Bosnia, and it was the US put a stop to it after years of Europe doing nothing about it. There was enslavement and genocide of the South American Natives by the Spanish and Portuguese. I could make a long list of crimes against humanity committed by Europeans.


I know that was defensive, but it had to be so I could keep up hope.

These crimes of the US and Europe, are heinous. Both our country and your continent are culpable. We should, in some way, stop the commission of further crimes; we can bring the responsible parties to justice and atone for it. However, every people, every nation-state on earth is bloodstained in some way. We finally have worldwide institutions in place that can be strengthened to prevent these crimes and bring them to justice, and when they're committed, it's now practically impossible to hide them.

[regnaD kciN]

48. Try being introduced to her by your college girlfriend...

...who decides to introduce me to "the greatest philosopher and novelist ever."

I assume you can guess what happened to that relationship.

[caseymoz]

50. Yes, I a friend from high school introduced me to her writing.

He told me she was so rational, and he turned out to be much more conservative than I expected. I found out that, apparently, that entire circle of friends read the book and thought it was really cool.

I read it and I didn't understand it, and he called me irrational.

And that was the generation who came of age just in time to vote for Reagan.

That is my observation of what was happening in my area at the time. Rand was very influential, then, among people who hadn't studied philosophy, history or economics to any degree. For the youths at the time, it was a rebellion against liberalism. For that sin, if we're not cursed onto the 6th generation, we'll get off lucky.

[Joe Chi Minh]

59. Let me think.... Kind of sad and a relief that they don't realise they're

drawing you a picture.

[Prophet 451]

22. *standing ovation*

Rand's novels, to my mind, consist of finding a vaguely moral excuse for glorifying the worst of human behaviours.

[MADem]

24. I wasn't. I stated a fact, found a few pictures, and put them up for the

edification and elucidation of all who have read the OP and want to see for themselves. I had never seen a photo of this person either.

Draw your own conclusions, against the backdrop of the OP. I'm not telling people what to think about her appearance.

I always thought her work, well....sucked. But that's me. I know some people found it philosophically deep or something, but from a fairly early age I found it to be shit, tripe and nonsense. Formulaic, predictable and tiresome. Stereotypical, too, while suggesting itself to be avant-garde. A good book to take camping, because it has lots of pages, and one always runs out of toilet paper...

[caseymoz]

36. I didn't mean you. The source article referred to her appearance.

I just thought there were better things that could have been gouged about Rand-- and they would have been more on the mark.

[MADem]

44. Ah, all well then. The only reason I went looking for pics is because the article mentioned

her appearance.

I don't think she looks awful at all, actually.

I do think her writing is utter crap, though!

[Tansy_Gold]

72. corrections

The "rape" scene in Atlas Shrugged is between Dagny Taggart and John Galt. They are only a few years apart in age. IIRC, Galt is the same age as Dagny's brother James, about two years older than she.

The "Rearden" you're referring to is Henry "Hank" Rearden, who is also roughly the same age as Galt and Dagny Taggart.

The scene is still more than a little disgusting.


As someone who used to write romance novels for a living, I have argued many many times over the the issue of "romance" -- or lack thereof -- in rape. Just because the author consents and/or thinks her readers would consent, that doesn't make it any less rape for the heroine. No means no. Period.



Tansy Gold, who has written rape scenes but never made them romantic

[caseymoz]

78. Thank you for the corrections.

Hank Rearden must have struck me as being older. I had a picture of him in my mind as much older. Maybe because his sitting in his office smoking a cigar and staring with smug satisfaction at the beautiful his steel mill was just seemed like the action of at least a middle-aged man.

You have to see, I didn't read the whole book. I read scenes.

[Dr.Phool]

27. She looks like Alan Greenspan in drag.

No wonder he loved her.

[MADem]

45. I don't think she looks dreadful. I think her writing is absolute garbage, though. nt

[kenfrequed]

39. Fortunately

She looks like a beauty queen when you compare her to the absolute ugliness of her ideas and the absurdity of her writing. Atlas shrugs has what amounts to an 80 page speech by Galt towards the end. I have read silver age comic books with a greater sense of realism.

[caseymoz]

41. Yes, and what an eighty pages that is.

By page one you know the guy is an asshole, and he just goes down from there. I could imagine him rehearsing and making corrections in front of the mirror, which is probably where he was for hundreds of pages before he made his appearance in the novel.

[MADem]

46. I think she looks all right. I think her work stinks on ice, though! nt

[colorado_ufo]

66. I once saw an interview with Ayn Rand

many years ago, when I was quite young. It was not my normal TV viewing, but since I had heard so much about her novels in school - and had gotten out of reading any of them - my curiosity got the better of me. So, I settled in for a while to see what all the hoopla was about.

I can't remember the news show that this was on, but I do remember that the interviewer looked at her with the type of look one gives a suspected space alien or serial killer. Polite, but waiting for her to pull a gun or phaser at any moment. Definitely with an arm's-length politeness.

She did present a pretty clear, concise explanation of her philosophy, but when asked by the interviewer about its inherent selfishness, she responded (paraphrasing) the the "way to be the most unselfish is to take care of one's self, so that others aren't obligated to care for you." And then, if you wanted, you could help someone else.

It occurred to me even at my quite naive age that she was trying to "make nice" for the interview and not come off looking like a total jerk, and that even Rand was conscious of not wanting to be totally rejected by society.

Years later, my kids were required to read "Atlas" and "Fountainhead" in high school. My distinction being that I raised two kids who were much better than myself, who actually did their assignments, I found the books lying around the house. Again, curiosity got the better of me, and I made it through the first page of each.

And congratulated myself: I had not missed a thing.

Concerning her looks, if memory serves, she appeared as she did in about the third picture down (the one in sepia tones).

Perhaps, with the 50th anniversary thingy, that interview might resurface on YouTube.

[caseymoz]

3. Somebody should write a book about this economic meltdown and call it . . .

Atlas Shirks.

[roguevalley]

33. Atlas ducked

[MADem]

47. Or call it "Atlas Had to POOP--He Dropped the Globe and Headed for the LOO!"

It would probably be a better read than her tripe!

:rofl:

The Sequel: Atlas Whines Under The Stall Door: Does Anyone Have Any Buttwipe? There's Only Two Squares In Here! Anyone? Hello?

[imdjh]

4. I all fairness, Roarke didn't destroy a stranger's property because he didn't like it

He destroyed a building that he had designed, ie the design was his idea and creation, that was ruined by the builder. The question of whether art may be altered isn't new, in fact we have had a major lawsuit about it fairly recently because the religious right (falwell perhaps) had misrepresented an artwork.

[imdjh]

5. The Fountainhead was a dull grind to read and the movie was worse.

The book was pedantic. The movie was terrible. A couple of my favorite stars were in that movie, presumably because they were under contract. The casting was unforgivable and the production quality was cheap.

[WCGreen]

26. Massey and Cooper were actually the thoughtful

conservatives in Hollywood and AR was actually held in high esteme not for her writing skills but because she came from Russia and was a voice to counteract the so-called Hollywood Reds made famous by Richard Nixon and of course, Gunner Joe.

Intresting, Cooper risked his career to get High Noon made because writer Carl Foreman was on the shortlist to be blacklisted. Coop, a true conservative, bucked John Wayne, a knee-jerk conservative at the risk of his status in Hollywood.

[Doctor_J]

30. I liked the moive - and all of the performances

The book was a lot rougher. Wynan asked Peter for Dominique after they were already married. Howard and Dominique's sex was rape. Wynan and Rourke were both assholes.

I loved Cooper, Massey, Neal, and Kent Smith was a perfect sniveling Peter.

[WCGreen]

35. He was the sniveler ever in Hollywood...

[Doctor_J]

63. Yes, his cringing coward act was world-class

he would have made a great Dick Cheney on film, except for his good looks

[rdmtimp]

86. Did you know that Michael Cimino wanted to remake The Fountainhead?

According to the late Steven Bach's book "Final Cut", before deciding to make "Heaven's Gate", Cimino pitched a "Fountainhead" remake to Bach (who was a United Artists exec at the time). Bach politely shot it down.

Bach may have summed up Rand best when he wrote "I hadn't read 'The Fountainhead' since adolescence, which may be the best time to read it."

[WCGreen]

6. Yea but he gave permission for Peter to use his ideas...

with conditions, of course...

But all that Bullshit about I love you so I can never be with you I will punish you, all that crap that appeals to teenage Idealist, pure pablum,

[regnaD kciN]

9. One of my favorite quotes...

...appropriately enough, considering Rand's egoism, from an anonymous source:

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

:rofl:

[caseymoz]

12. I thought John Galt was an orc.

All of Rand's characters make me want to heave. They are odious, loathsome people.

[imdjh]

14. fabulous nt

[hootinholler]

23. :D

:rofl:

-Hoot

[roguevalley]

34. awesome quote, regnaD. love it!

[colorado_ufo]

67. Priceless!

[kenfrequed]

68. Oh thats brilliant

I like that a lot. Very appropriate.

[imdjh]

13. A read something a 19 year old acquaintance had written on objectivism

"Objectivism is ruined because people believe in it."

That's a pretty close quote of what he said. I had to think about it for a second. I'm still not sure what it means, but it sounds deep doesn't it?

[WCGreen]

25. That is a pretty spot on....

[Doctor_J]

31. permission to use them IF THE BUILDING WAS BUILT TO HIS SPECS

that's all

[caseymoz]

38. Was that something that Peter realistically could have demanded?

Roarke was dumb to expect it.

[Doctor_J]

60. Probably not

Peter being who he was, and Roarke knowing all along that "No committee will ever approve of my work". But he wanted the housing units to be built.

[Doctor_J]

61. Roarke - "I don't build in order to have clients. I have clients in order to build"

The world would be a better place if everyone took this attitude toward his/her life's work.

[caseymoz]

71. It would be fair to infer that a person's career track indicates that attitude.

The problem is, you still have to make money. You have to get and keep clients or starve unless you go into your profession independently wealthy, and Roarke didn't. If he had continued to starve, he would have had all these blueprints and no buyers. His designs would have been a hobby, and he would have either worked in the quarry for the rest of his life, or more likely given his sociopathic personality, started robbing banks or have been convicted of rape.

Then, after dying in prison, maybe his work would have sold, posthumously, to some "second-hander" who bought them dirt cheap at an auction. Maybe somebody who would was wise enough to alter the work if a client demanded it.

However, Rand wouldn't have considered that plot line. Her philosophy, to her, was a formula for success that the collectivists, Atillas, Witch Doctors and Second-Handers were stupid not to adopt, and therefore, always obstructed the deserving people, unsuccessfully.

For her, only winners need apply. If you didn't win, it was a moral failure.

[Doctor_J]

73. People whose "careers" consist of trading commodities, or running

giant "health insurance" companies (I use the quotes because their actual business is DENYING health insurance) or brokering mortgages, or inciting brainwashed hordes by threatening the president, cannot think of their jobs that way, because they don't actually create anything. Pretty much all they can do at the end of the day to see what they have "accomplished" is count their money. They can't say "I taught my students about the Civil war" or "I helped make 10 cars" or "I fixed 2 cars" pr what have you. One of the reasons our country is in such bad shape is too many people make too much money just handling other people's money. If there were more jobs people could take pride in, and if more people took pride in their jobs, life would be better.

[MisterP]

7. good thing Mrs. ", do you know what a baby's saying when she reaches for a bottle? 'I am a leech'"

died before Richard Ramirez warmed up his average-person-shocking spree

[caseymoz]

15. That explains a whole lot about Ayn Rand.

And her weird sex scenes.

It also explains a lot about the nutcases who find her work so enlightening.

[regnaD kciN]

19. Jesus Christ on a pogo stick!!!

I thought she was loony before...but even I could never imagine her adoration of a child killer.

It's probably a good thing she stopped writing fiction after Atlas Shrugged...I could now imagine her writing a novel in the 1970s with the hero modeled after Ted Bundy. :puke:

[Berry Cool]

20. Or Charlie Manson.

She sounds like had she only been younger at the time, she would've made a great member of his "family." Or a terrific companion for Starkweather as he went on his rampage.

[caseymoz]

40. And to think conservatives and libertarians thought her works were profound!

They skipped over those sordid rape scenes and admired the philosophy that claimed psychopaths the model citizens and masters of progress! They admired it.

[DBoon]

8. obligatory floating head and bob the angry flower references

AND...


http://saintaardvarkthecarpeted.com/ayn_rand/

[regnaD kciN]

10. Wow! Is this my first time on the rec list???

:wow:

[struggle4progress]

17. If people understand Greenspan as Ayn's disciple, she'll be out of vogue for at least fifty years

[pnorman]

18. Ayn Rand was an ATHEIST!

More than a few who avow admiration for her, would be HORRIFIED to learn that. (they'd probably call it a 'commie falsehood')

pnorman

[nxylas]

28. Yep, I read a book by an RW fundie writer that tried to quote Rand and was denied permission

The writer then turned on Rand (Shorter version: "I thought she was SAAAAAAVED! because she loved America and hated Communism, but now I realise she was actually an evil witch who ate babies").

[caseymoz]

42. I think it's mostly economic conservatives who were influenced by her.

Not the social/religious conservatives. It doesn't matter. The damage she did to our system was bad enough.

[Dr.Phool]

29. I posted a link to this thread in the Stock Market Watch thread.

It will be appreciated over there as well.

[Tansy_Gold]

75. . . . .

:hi:

[freethought]

32. Why does this person keep coming up again and again

I have heard the name Ayn Rand many a time, especially on "FIXED NEWS". It does seem she holds some kind of weird reverence among the right. I have never read "The Fountainhead" or "Atlas Shrugged". My sister, a PHD in economics, told me not to bother reading either book saying that conservatives and predatory capitalists just use her writings to somehow justify bad/selfish behavior. Aside from that she described the books as "boring as hell".

Should I even bother reading these books? Why are some so entranced by this woman's work?
Excuse me for sounding naive but I'm kind of in the dark here.

Thanx

[caseymoz]

43. You hear about it because it's the basis for de-regulated capitalism.

I believe you could understand this economic melt-down and Michael Milken's influential statement "Greed is good," if you know it was Rand who was the source.

I don't suggest you read it. Just open the book at random about a dozen times and read a few pages. And look for the pages where her protagonists go on their talking jags. Read a page or two there. That's all you really have to do.

I read her non-fiction books about her philosophy, Objectivism, that lauded totally unregulated capitalism, and the people who would thrive under it. One of them is called "Capitalism: the unknown Ideal." Not all conservatives have read it, but they are influenced by it by those who have, and who have virally spread it into conservatism.

Rand was a natural tragedy. If we get time travel, I would shoot her, Stalin and Hitler.

[Joe Chi Minh]

65. When you compare - I won't say what she wrote, because I can't imagine anyone

reading anything she wrote, after the first page or two, judging just from the summary info you read on her, as I do - when you compare it with what the moral Philosopher, Adam Smith, wrote, it could not be clearer what utter lying, libellous fantasists they are. Adam Smith's words are almost as far from hers, as hers are from the teachings of Christ and the apostles in the New Testament.

Smith's point was simply to let grace build upon nature, since we are not pure spirits, but body and spirit, and the endeavours of the even most worldly rogues should be harnessed for the public good. And very tightly harnessed, at that. It most certainly was not to treat them as though we were cargo-cultists, and they were great Gods from the sky, to be endlessly appeased to our unrelenting impoverishment. An appropriate understanding and use of human resources would create what we call synergies: what he called an Invisible Hand.

[caseymoz]

76. Conservatives and Libertarians did read her. Definitely not her whole novels

The appeal of Ayn Rand, I think, first had to do with the Cold War. Marxism and socialism had very solid intellectually impressive philosophical work to support it. It challenged the very basis of capitalism, which had no answer to its criticisms. There was a demand for an answer to this challenge, no matter how shaky. Also, among early conservative leadership (who in the 1950s-1970s were in wealthy families, like Jack Abramoff) they had a need for a morality that justified their greed and their hatred for liberalism, which limited it. For them, Ayn Rand's absolute certainty of about capitalism, and total contempt for any opposition to it or liberalization of it was very appealing. In practice, she was a brand, they were her targeted market.

Second, compared to philosophers like Marx, Kant or Sartre her version of philosophy was accessible. She might have been a hard read due to her hateful tone, but she was easier to understand than any real philosophy. As long as her writing was, it was far shorter than Marx's works, and you could actually open her books to a page and immediately know what she was talking about. She didn't have enough work to be a full philosophy, and though she had logic, it was all a logical justification of her egoistic and selfish emotions and anybody who might feel the same way. Logic is only as good as the premises you put into it.

Third, she expressed complete contempt of other philosophers. She attacked them, wrote about them with strong disdain. This all but means that if you find her views appealing, you won't bother to delve into any real philosophy give it much credence if you do. Given the anti-intellectual leanings of early conservatives (which continues to this day), due mostly with Marx's intellectual creation of with support many of other intellectuals. They needed some simplified and accessible reasons for rejecting intellectualism.

Added to all of that, she had large appeal because she made capitalism and conservatism rebellious. Capitalism wasn't considered "the system" by young, wealthy Republicans in the in the '70s, liberal/collectivism was "the system" and they were rebelling against it.

If you read Thomas Frank's "The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule," you'll see that young conservatives, those who radicalized and shaped conservatism from the 1970s to the 1990s, all had a deep spite and hatred for liberalism. For them, all was fair in destroying it. They were really the power brokers behind it. Those like Jack Abramoff and Grover Norquist.

I have nothing that proves that Ayn Rand influenced them, but they certainly did act like they absorbed the pseudo-philosophy of Rand and lived it.

[Joe Chi Minh]

81. Thanks for that lucid and informative background. Ironical, isn't it?

In some ways, we're seeing a similar thing with the current Republicans. A desperation for any totem. Even trundling out the likes of Newt, the amphibious lizard, and "little Ronnie", as some of his fellow actors apparently used to call Reagan in Hollywood.

[Joe Chi Minh]

82. Well "amphibious lizard" is a very nasty remark, but what a strange name to give your kid, "Newt".

[Babel_17]

51. I hope someone talks sense into everyone thinking of acting in Atlas Shrugs

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0480239/news#ni0730326

I'm hoping that it will be realized that there is no longer a climate for this crap.

[caseymoz]

53. I'm thinking that focus groups will probably cause them to make heavy changes . . .

if Hollywood makes it at all. I mean look at what focus groups did to "Fatal Attraction."

If they want to get the story done in less than a trilogy, they'll have to cut out all the talking jags the characters go on. They'll have to make Dagny Taggart some kind of alien who doesn't understand anything human, otherwise people will walk out of the theaters in her first scene.

They'll have to make John Galt into some kind of alien villain who promises all the wealthiest people God-like powers, only to capture them for lifetime of anal probing. Meanwhile, the rest of us will fix the economy, establish universal health care, teach evolution in our schools, bring back our manufacturing give gays a full right to marriage, correct global warming, and establish the best education in the galaxy.

[Babel_17]

54. lol, thanks, I needed that chuckle! (nt)

[DBoon]

55. so it will end up reading like L Ron Hubbard?

which I'm afraid would be an improvement

[caseymoz]

56. The Randites and the Scientologists are both cults.

One didn't aid in poisoning the country's political system though. Not yet.

[DBoon]

62. Scientologists aren't very political

They are happy as long as they get your money. Every single last cent of it.

[regnaD kciN]

58. Aliens? Or "Randroids"...?

:rofl:

[regnaD kciN]

57. To be adapted and directed by Randall Wallace...why am I not surprised?

Wallace was the screenwriter of the Mel Gibson classic, Bray-fart (at least that's what I call it), and appears to be even farther to the right than Mad Mel.

[Baby Snooks]

64. Beware the gods and gurus...

The fifties introduced us to not only pop psychology but pop philosophy and the bottom line of Ayn Rand is summed up by her book "The Virtue of Selfishness" which was furthered by David Seabury and his book "The Art of Selfishness." Objectivism in the end is subjectivism and selfish subjectivism. The same selfish subjectivism is to be found in the "philosophies" of "legitimate" psychologists such as Erickson and Fromm and of course Jung although of course some question the legitimacy of Jung. Among other things, this "objectivism" has turned our society quite predatory. "There are no victims, only volunteers." That maxim alone sums up the predatory "ethics" of objectivism.

Money is all. "I have, therefore I am." That is why our society is collapsing. Money is not all.

[The Wizard]

79. From everything I've seen here

Ayn Rand was the ghost writer for Mein Kampf.

[PeteytehMawnstar]

83. Most of her fans don't know what they are talking about,

threatening to go galt in today's economy just proves the speaker doesn't know what the hell they are talking about. There is one thing i remember from her books that is right on, especially with today, "there are laws that you can't help but break," and that's how they get you.

[nealmhughes]

85. What was it that Hitchens said about her as a compliment, oh yes,

"Her only known redeeming quality was her strident atheism."

She held court on the Upper West Side where people took every aside as absolute gospel to be followed by the spirit and letter of the law. People who had never had a cigarette suddenly had one lit in their mouths every moment to follow La Rand. People fretted on how to make their Russian/Polish/German monikers more "heroic" and short like her invented name, she was nee Alisa Rosenbaum in Saint Petersburg to a pharmacy factory director who had been ennobled by the Czar. I believe that Papa made the the official Romanov anticlap potions for the court or else a tonic full of opiates, one is unsure due to the loss of records by the Red Terror.

What can one say about a person who told people what type of music to enjoy and what type not? What can one say about people who actually sold or burned or broke records because it was not Beethoven?