Posted on 11/03/2008 12:14:37 PM PST by Freestar
(Los Angeles) Barak Obama and John McCain should take note of a Zogby poll released today that found that 8.1 percent of American adults have read the book Atlas Shrugged by pro-freedom philosopher Ayn Rand. This result matches the 8.1 percent result from the 2007 Atlas Shrugged survey. This poll illuminates a large segment of the American public that favors minimum government.
Atlas Shrugged chronicles an America where government has taken control of nearly all aspects of life. As society collapses the heroine follows a trail of clues surrounding the disappearance of innovators and the rise of a mysterious phrase "Who is John Galt?" A 1991 poll by the Library of Congress and The Book of the Month Club found that Atlas Shrugged was the second most influential book after the Bible.
The poll of 1,338 adults was conducted by Zogby International in October 2008 at the request of Freestar Media, LLC. The margin of error of the poll is +/- 2.7 percentage points. More information on the poll and what it discovered about Atlas Shrugged readers can be found at: http://www.freestarmedia.com
Freestar Media, LLC and its sister company Freestar Movie, LLC are currently producing a documentary movie about the health care crisis that exposes the disaster of socialized medicine and offers free-market solutions to lower costs. The movie entitled "Sick and Sicker" will be released in the fall of 2009.
Logan Darrow Clements, Freestar's president, decided to release the Zogby poll results today, the day before the election, to remind voters of the importance of protecting freedom from further encroachment by government.
Freestar Media, LLC was created by Logan Darrow Clements to produce media applying Ayn Rand's philosophy of reason, individual rights and laissez-faire capitalism to current events. The company's most popular project was The Lost Liberty Hotel, a rebellion against eminent domain abuse that involved applying the Supreme Court's Kelo vs. City of New London ruling to one of the justices who voted in favor of it.
website: http://www.freestarmedia.com
Sure it does... First invent an engine that gives you something for nothing...
I would go further - high schools should have a mandatory one year course centered around Atlas Shrugged, The Gulag Archipelago and Darkness at Noon. These books would lead into a study of economics, human nature and the desire of a non-trivial part of the population to exchange freedom for "free stuff" and how the exchange has always wound up with the population in chains, serving their masters. Part of the economics section of the course would involve the students running a fictional business, with guest lectures by local lawyers and accountants on all the regulatory hoops their businesses will have to comply with.
Jack
I read it in my early twenties and have reread it several times, learning more each time. She agonized over every sentence and every sentence is worth reading. It’s true that you have to get into it in order to get into it, but worth it.
It’s been “coming out next year as a movie/miniseries” since the early 1980s.
Reading closer on that site, I’m still not convinced that it actually is working toward release.
And this is why Republicans aren't competitive in California any more. When the national GOP made a conscious decision to kick out libertarian-minded Western economic conservatives in favor of big government Southern social conservatives, they allowed the Democrats (ludicrously) to paint themselves as the party that cares more about individual liberty. You will find millions of successful, high-income, productive Californians - a natural Republican constituency - who now equate the GOP with Big Brother and think Democrats are true the guardians of freedom.
An excellent (but unauthorized by Rand) film version of We the Living was produced in Italy during WWII. The producers thought it would be effective anti-Soviet propaganda, but the Germans realized it would be equally effective anti-Nazi propaganda and banned it.
I’ve been thinking of buying Atlas Shrugged by the case and handing it out on street corners. I’ve already pummeled my friends and family with multiple copies.
If I can name one book that completely altered my view on things it was this one (sorry Christians, I was raised Lutheran and the Bible didn’t blow the top of my head off nearly as much as A.S. did).
LQ
That would be the American taxpayer.
One of both Cooper’s and Massey’s finest performances. Also one of Vidor’s better films, too.
Its also amazing who shows up in secondary and bit roles, too. Ray Collins, (Lt. Tragg on “Perry Mason”) is terrific as Roger Enright, Kent Smith as the suitably befuddled and incompetent Peter Keating, Robert Douglass as the suavely evil Ellsworth Toohey, and Henry Hull as the once-great but now forgotten Henry Cameron.
FYI, it was Patricia Neal’s very first film and rumor has it she and Gary Cooper had a torrid affair while it was filmed.
Oh, Max Steiner’s score is magnificent.
Socialism leads to tyranny.
I have some libertarian attitudes and sympathies, but atlas shrugged is terribly written and painful to read.
The author was an ardent atheist who in the end went totally insane
The real question is how many of the 8.1% actually finished it.
And then leave it and its paperwork almost intact on the completely deserted and picked over factory floor for Dagney and Reardon to find...
Talk about a MacGuffin...
And she excommunicated him over a disagreement concerning monetary policy.
Ayn Rand eventually excommunicated those who disagreed with her on one thing or another. She was left with a clutch of toadying disciples who hung on her every word.
In the end, Rand turned out to be little better than one of the "mystics of mind" whom she claimed to despise.
I completely agree - seldom have I read a book that was so indisputably right and it crystallized my then inchoate libertarian/conservative views.
Another book with the same power is Milton and Rose Friedman's "Free to Choose." If you have not read it, by all means locate a copy and do so.
Jack
Atlas Shrugged was not “about” the thirties. It’s genius is that it is about every generation since then, becoming more and more pertinent as time goes by. Look around. Whats happening now was described in great detail in the book.
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