Is Rand Paul’s Love of Ayn Rand a ‘Conspiracy’? (Chait: Why Ayn Rand is Evil)

Lakeshark: "I was agreeing with someone that she was not a LITERARY great, not even all that good.
Alexander Sohlznetsin might be said to be great literarily (at least very good), and he fought the Marxists just as well as Rand did, if not a bit better."

First, I had no problem reading Rand's books, but couldn't get through Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's.
Typical Russian writer -- hard for Americans to read.

Second, Solzhenitsyn wrote about what he knew: i.e., the Gulag Archipelago in Soviet Russia.
Great stuff, it helped bring down the old Soviet Union, but it had nothing directly to do with the good ol' USA.
Solzhenitsyn does not warn us about the socialist rot in our own national character which is eating us from inside.

Indeed, while Solzhenitsyn decried "materialist" western culture, he was not so opposed to a "kinder-gentler" socialism and even advocated return of the Russian monarchy!
He was also Putin's pal.

So Solzhenitsyn is essentially Russian, not American.
By stark contrast, Rand arrived here while still young enough to learn the best of American values, and to sharply contrast them to those she left behind in Russia, but too often also found here.

It's what Ayn Rand did -- in the 1950s -- and so far as I can tell, she did it better than anyone before or since.

antceecee: "I was spoonfed the solzy crap in college ... What a huge let down that was... "

Sorry, I just couldn't get into Solzhenitsyn.
Sure, he opposed Stalinist Communism -- so how much brains does that take?
But his criticisms of western culture sound like less-than-full-throated American conservatism to me.

But, if you want a Russian-soul author that I'd recommend -- and more important that both Ayn Rand and Rand Paul recommend -- read Dostoyevsky's Brothers Karamazov and Crime & Punishment.

I believe Ayn Rand patterned John Galt's speech after (and in response to) Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor.

Number one - we are NOT a ‘democracy’ - we are a REPUBLIC - or supposed to be.

We also haven't had real Capitalism in over a hundred years -

If we had true Capitalism and ran the country as a Republic, we'd be what our Founding Father's created.

How many of you have read Ayn Rand's: Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”

And the ONLY way we have a chance of it is to ABOLISH THE IRS - NO Flat Tax - that keeps the monster alive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&list=UUklV9zN4UYcV3DcF5BBak3g&v=QRpWir4eDrs

Well, sir, having read the Gulag Archiplego myself, it's very compelling, clearly well written (even in translation), lays out the stealing of the Russian soul by the Marxists so compellingly, that I beg to differ. It came at a time that history was in the balance and anti-communism was derided here,so it influenced plenty of us here in the US of A. Rand was writing when anti-communism was fashionable.

One photograph with Putin is hardly as damning as the well known long term affair Rand had that was so clearly against her own stated principles. You think Rand was ever with anyone bad? Of course she was.

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