Replies

Who is John Galt? Who cares. Ayn Rand was a militant atheist, btw. . . .

__________________________________________________________

You are correct that She was an atheist. But because a persons religion or lack of it is not yours is not a good reason to completely dismiss their philosophy. Ayn Rand wrote her book several decades ago. It has been close to a half century since the first time I read it. I have re-read it a few times. It’s prophecy of our cultural decline is amazingly accurate. Her depiction of what goes on in our government is right on. Her understanding of “progressives”, is what it is.

While I loved President Reagan it was not because of his religion. President Reagan seldom attended church even though he supported one financially most of his adult life. Reagan’s religious ideas are not what brought me to love him. He was an honest man. He was a lover of liberty and freedom. He believed in God. He may not have had the same relationship I have with God but that has nothing to do with why I voted for him and wept at his death.

Atlas Shrugged was a fairy tale, but then again so was Gulliver’s Travels, both are political commentaries. You don’t have to believe in fairies to understand the moral of the story.

Atlas Shrugged should be required for every student before graduating from high school. It was in many ways a great book. Even though I thought the “liberated woman” model she presented was silly, most of the book tells a story that needs to be told.

Galt’s Gulch will never exist but there will always be enclaves where business can succeed, like the oil fields in the Dakota’s, like the Cuban sector in Southern Florida and in at least a few other places. As long as there is still the chance to earn a profit there will be men willing to work harder than others in order to make more money than they could working for somebody else.

I read We The Living, and thought she showed promise, and appreciated her first-hand view of post-revolutionary Russia. Then I read Atlas Shrugged. While I did like her descriptions of PoMo pseudo-intellectuals, at some point the novel simply fell apart, and her exposition of her philosophy along with it, and huge vistas of ignorance opened up in the ever-expanding bad prose and weak characterisation. I read Anthem, and got downright annoyed. By the time Roarke and his lover whatserface were explaining to each other why she had married his arch-enemy, and he was explaining to her why she was wrong, I put down Fountainhead and never picked it up again. The G-d she doesn’t believe in really does not exist, but she never really bothered to understand religion, just dismissed it out of hand. I’m sorry, but that makes her philosophy unpalatable. G-d is not a “bureaucrat you come to for a special favor,” but the Great Manufacturer of the universe, Who simply wants to be paid His due for services rendered. The fact that she failed to understand that is a major flaw in her philosophy, not a side point.

But try telling that to the Rand-ies. The idea of questioning the Great Ayn’s core beliefs is a threshold they fear to cross, and as a result they’ve become that for which Ayn Rand herself would have had nothing but disdain, people who let others do their thinking for them, ironically in this case, Ayn Rand.