Posted on 03/06/2002 5:16:05 PM PST by jennyp
Edited on 09/03/2002 4:50:01 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Ayn Rand wrote the book on the chasm between personal happiness and a heavy-handed government. Leonard Peikoff illustrated it.
That's how Rand fans say the empty picture frame on Peikoff's wall figures into the fight over two pages of her original handwritten manuscript of "The Fountainhead."
Federal officials seized the pages after Peikoff joked that he "stole" them from the Library of Congress. Peikoff, a writer and philosopher, was a lifelong friend of Rand and is an expert on her philosophy of objectivism, which teaches that individuals--not the government--are the key to the development of a healthy society. He inherited the scrawled first drafts of "The Fountainhead," "Atlas Shrugged" and two other books when she died in 1982.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Aye, there's the rub!
Being captured by one's metaphors is the perennial problem faced by all thinkers, however profound.
Troped in our own snare, so to speak. ;^)
Nope, it's fully formed when Mr. Sperm penetrates Ms. Egg. Madness.
Who said fully formed? No one is that dumb. What a ludicrous accusation in a serious debate. However, the genetic material for one complete individual human being is fully contained in that growing living zygote. At what point is anyone "fully formed"?
Who said anything about genetic material ? No one is that dumb. What a ludicrous accusation in a serious debate.
The legal point is, - when a "fully formed" infant is viable it can live seperated from its mother , and can be considered a legal 'person' protected by law.
Prior to viablity, any legal rights belong to the potential childs mother as they are inseparable in fact.
Why you abortion fanatics argue about this simple constitutional legal point is beyond all reason. -- Learn to live with it, for the republics sake.
No wonder Alice Rosenbaum wasn't returning my phone calls.
I guess that's it for the fondue pot I loaned her, too.
Where would I be without FR?!
Some jokes are not funny.
Rand understood and made clear that socialism was not only a poor economic system, leading to poverty, but that it was immoral--based on envy and on forcing someone to work for another. Orwell pointed out that in the 1920s in England, even the capitalists thought that socialism was more moral and probably likely to triumph eventually. Von Mises, Hayek, and Rand did more than anyone else to change that feeling. Further, her defense of capitalism was more moral than economic.
She also understood the creeping socialism that we actually face and the logic of the government bureaucrats in ways that reveals their corruption. Her villains are much better drawn than her heroes.
No one has ever made more concrete the seemy side of government compassion. Others have questioned the motives of those who push government compassion as opportunistic, but no one has made these views look horrible and disgusting to the extent that Rand does.
The primary problem with Rand's main characters are that they are Supermen or Superwomen. Even when they are flawed, the flaws don't seem very human. The extreme libertarians that I know are much more complex people than Rand's characters. So Rand understood the human effects of collectivism and conveys them well, but she does a poor job of painting the inner life of her heroes, who look somewhat cartoonish in their heroism. Real people, even extreme principled libertarians, are far more complex than Rand's heroes.
Also, the long speeches are so tedious that the books come to a screeching halt, rather than being the clear brilliant statements they are intended to be. The rape-based sex and submission sex are creepy too.
Was there a real John Galt? Who is John Galt?
There was a real Howard Rourke--Frank Lloyd Wright. Wright was short and built houses with low ceilings because they were for normal sized people. Rourke, as I recall, was tall and handsome.
Oh, and by the way, the rape/sex scenes are indeed creepy, and even more than that they hint at an affinity for clearly defined male/female roles, which seem at great variance with Ayn's persona. Creepy and odd.
Thanks again Hagrid, you'd make a great teacher.
Man is not a commidity. Libertarians are not conservatives and never will be.
L
I just came upon this thread...lots of nasty people posting.
Interesting...I did not know that some had that opinion. I think it was Barbara Brandon's book that mentioned her long time use of amphetamines for weight control. I wondered at the time who her physician was since amphetamines loose their weight control effect with chronic use and she was on them for years, according to the writer.
No question, on the other hand, that chronic amphetamine use has some potential adverse effects on mood, etc. Add that to the fact that her reported depression and most 'bizarre' behaviour occurred in her perimenopausal and menopausal years, when we know that some women have adverse mood effects presumably due to the drop in estrogen levels, and you have a rational, physical basis for her personal actions that some have criticized.
She remains for me a heroine and extraordinary person.
Click here and read for a few hours.
Then come back and try again.
We now return to our regularly scheduled program.
L
Semantics and euphamism intended to hide the fact that abortion is murder. If you've read her non-fiction works, then it would be quite clear that she was very pro-abortion.
Who in their right mind would WANT to have an abortion, if they could avoid it?
Apparently there are quite a large number of women who WANT to have abortions. After all, nobody is dragging them into the clinics to have their children ripped out of the womb.
To my knowledge, she never had an abortion.
As I said, it is mere speculation on my part.
(If she had, I'm sure one of her critics would have brought it out by now.) During her child-bearing years, abortions were illegal and quite dangerous. I imagine she did what other intelligent women did -- use birth control.
Using birth control is certainly preferable to child murder.
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