Posted on 02/03/2005 7:43:40 PM PST by tbird5
A hundred years after her birth and nearly 25 years after her death, Ayn Rand remains a fascinating and enigmatic presence. She has been “mainstreamed” enough to have been honored by a U.S. Postal Service stamp in 1999 and to have been featured on C-SPAN’s American Writers series in 2002. Her novels figure prominently in readers’ lists of the 20th century’s greatest books. Notably, in a 1991 survey of more than 2,000 Book-of-the-Month Club members about books that made a difference in their lives, Rand’s magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, came in second—albeit a very distant second—to the Bible. Rand, a devout atheist, might have seen that as an insult rather than an honor.
Yet in many ways Rand remains an outlier and an oddity on the cultural scene, a cult figure with plenty of worshippers and plenty of desecrators. No other modern author has had such extravagant claims of greatness made on her behalf: Followers of her philosophy, Objectivism, regard her as the greatest thinker to have graced this earth since Aristotle and the greatest writer of all time. Mainstream intellectuals tend to dismiss her as a writer of glorified pulp fiction and a pseudo-philosophical quack with an appeal for impressionable teens. Politically, too, Rand is an outsider: Liberals shrink from her defiant pro-capitalist stance, conservatives from her militant atheism, and conservatives and liberals alike from her individualism. Libertarianism, the movement most closely connected to Rand’s ideas, is less an offspring than a rebel stepchild. In her insistence that political philosophy must be based on a proper epistemology, she rejected the libertarian movement, which embraced a wide variety of reasons for advocating free markets and free minds, as among her enemies.
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...
I understand L Ron Hubbard is rated highly too.
I like his SciFi, but his scientology stuff is crap.
A done to death post on FR,BTW.
Seems like I've heard of that guy.
To nopardons, It was (as HR knows, I am sure) a rhetorical question. Hence the italics. A question repeated in Atlas Shrugged. Also Hank Reardon is an AS character as well. I surely didn't mean to start a thread on it.
Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesh.........I know that. And one of THE stupidiest/innane/banal posts made here REPEATEDLY.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1334559/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1334407/posts
-- including pix and links
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. and to articles about Ayn Rand HERE. |
Only because his minions went out and bought up thousands of copies of his books to inflate the sales figures. ;)
Yet, somehow, they always manage to evade answering her points - preferring to criticize her writing style or the nature of her heroes.
Politically, too, Rand is an outsider...and conservatives and liberals alike [shrink] from her individualism.
And neither side can be forgiven for it. Collectives build nothing but dysfunctional bureaucracies.
Thanks for the links. B.F.Skinner happened to come up in a conversation at work today. I had read "Beyond Freedom and Dignity" in college (forgotten most of it) and I see that it is one of the links inside your link. Good weekend to brush up on some old reading material. Thanks.
Ayn Rand now knows, there is a God.
When asked his favorite book, Patriots' kicker Adam Vinatieri replied, "Atlas Shrugged".
Interesting that a field goal kicker would say that -- one of the most high-risk, responsible, pressure-packed vocations where the livelihoods of many are reliant on the skill of one individual, who cannot be helped by others.
Ayn Rand would have loved Adam Vinatieri. In fact she would have done about 200 pages on his speech before a big kick
AynFans are willing to declare her books are Great Literature, whereas I doubt the most dedicated admirer of Newt Gingrich would claim 1945 is the Great American Novel of the 20th Century.
Which ("Who is John Galt?") is close to how it is presented in the book, of course, where it is the usual answer to what are perceived to be stupid/inane/banal questions. Kind of the like prevailing equivalent of "I like cheese. Do YOU like cheese?"
Pardons flamed me one day for a post that went something like this:
Thread subject: New York City under ten feet of water (Due to Global Warming)
My Reply: Most of middle America Replies:
And the down side would be?
He goes off on a multi-post flame about how cold and heartless I am for wanting people to die etc. etc.
He was fun to toy with for a bit, you could get him to do all sorts of fun verbal gymnastics.
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