FReeper Book Club: Atlas Shrugged, White Blackmail

A Publius Essay | 11 April 2009 | Publius

[gracie1]

Yeah, I agree, she did have a hugh ego, so much so AS suffered for it. The one thing this book needed was AN EDITOR!

[Publius]

The one thing this book needed was AN EDITOR!

Billthedrill and I said that to each other just last week. She could have cut the book by a third.

[Publius]

Add to that the invisible line that separates government from certain investment banks (or doesn’t). “Government Sachs” comes to mind.

[Publius]

If the story line was true (an affair with a much younger married man while she herself was married) this was one weird, self-absorbed chick.

Oh, it was true, all right. And she even lets slip some of her fetishes in the book.

[Publius]

You’re going to be a happy camper in the next few weeks as Rand explores precisely those ideas.

[Billthedrill]

His name was Nathaniel Branden. Interesting fellow - the affair was supposedly going on while she was writing AS. He's the reason Dagny's heroic forbear was named "Nat" Taggart. The Passion of Ayn Rand was written by his ex-wife Barbara.

[MrsPatriot]

We are going to have a lot of rebuilding to do once this administration is gone.

[MayflowerMadam]

Thanks for the info. I was going to do more research about it. The movie was narrated from the perspective of Nathaniel’s ex. I watched it in the middle of the night during a rare insomniac episode, so it’s a bit hazy. I’ll be sure to see it again when alert.

Per the movie, it seemed that most of “Atlas Shrugged” was written during the affair. Rand and Branden were stunningly arrogant.

I’m planning to read the book soon.

[Still Thinking]

Yep. You can read up on current events months in advance by reading Atlas Shrugged.

Yeah, it's good to get a jump on the suicidal depression.

[TASMANIANRED]

The more I read the more I think she was a prophet instead of a novelist.

[Publius]

Yeah, it's good to get a jump on the suicidal depression.

Think of it as the Great Disintegration. Forewarned is forearmed.

[Still Thinking]

These are manly men I’m speaking of, naturally, men with stubble and sweat-stained shirts gazing unflinchingly into the maw of a superheated blast furnace, their bulging pectorals glistening…stop it.

Oh, Bill! ;-) Someone insert pic of Zero ravishing Chrissie Matthews.

[Publius]

I think Rand might have bridled at the word “prophet” because of its religious overtones, but she understood just how an economic system disintegrates.

[Still Thinking]

A girder as a moral statement? Yes. What Francisco meant by it is that the girder is a product that is designed in accordance with the laws of the universe – the laws of gravity, of material science, of tensile strength and chemical formulation, of the mathematics of the distribution of forces, and it is the recognition of those laws by men that make the girder possible. They are not opinions, they are not negotiable. They simply are, and to Rand, and to Aristotle, to acknowledge that is the first act of philosophical clarity and to deny it, intellectual death. A Dr. Ferris, for whom no knowledge is possible, could not have made the girder.

Exactly. That's why math and science were my favorite subjects. They're not subject to opinion like they try to make literature and "social science". There's no politics; doesn't matter if the instructor likes you or not or anything else. If you're right, you're right, demonstrably, and that's that.

[TASMANIANRED]

Farseeing doesn’t carry the same weight.

Having lived through the Russian Revolution, having seen her fathers business confiscated and her college professors purged..she just translated trends/movement to their logical conclusions.

[bert]

bump

[Still Thinking]

Aristotle’s is not, actually, the proof of the existence of God – if it were, God’s existence would be contingent on a system of reason. In my personal view it’s the other way around – reason is the gift of God, God is not the gift of reason.

I don't quite agree. Perhaps you'd find it more palatable to say Aristotle's is A proof of the existence of God.

But in order to dispense with God you have to dispense with the logical system under which His existence is a necessary consequence. It can be done, of course.

That's more or less the crux of my last statement. That to deny the existence of a Supreme Being leads to more difficult logical positions, therefore God must exist. You are correct to say that God gave us logic and not the other way round, but that doesn't mean that logic cannot demonstrate the truth of God's existence.

[Still Thinking]

Billthedrill and I said that to each other just last week. She could have cut the book by a third.

And her writing and especially the dialog can be absolutely dense in places. Ugh.

[Still Thinking]

Think of it as the Great Disintegration. Forewarned is forearmed.

Or maybe the basic premise of AS is true and it has to get this bad in order to get better. That concept is why my interest in the plot got much greater about halfway through the book.

[Cymbaline]

“There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.”

Every American needs to read that sentence. Put it on the Good Year Blimp and fly it over every city in America.