Anyone in Boston is invited to our screening on October 24th at 7pm at the Medford Public Library in Medford, MA. For details, see http://ohpcenter.org/events.php
That’s a nice little commercial you have there. It isn’t correct to say “Prophecy ” in reference to Ayn Rand. It’s more a work of logic and mathematics. History has played this scenario out many times before. Always the same outcome. Total destruction of the society. Nothing left but fodder for archaeologists. If we want to save ourselves from the next dark ages, we had better learn from history what not to do.
I became fully awake when I read the book six years ago. I didn’t go to the movie but have tried to get it on comcast and then U-verse when we changed over. Neither of these fine liberal companies have chosen to offer it.
The White Hats have now become the John Galts of our country and world. Ayn rand kept her book mostly in the realm of America. what she had predicted for America is now happening also in Europe.
If I compare the present America to her book, the lies, misdirections and prevarications of the leadership in Washington is even worse than she could have written.
We must turn out all incumbents and start over unless they have shown to be dedicated Conservatives.
Tennessee Volunteer: do you really think that Ayn Rand was a conservative? National Review panned her work because she was not religious. I wrote about the high points of her belief system here: http://clarespark.com/2011/04/16/index-to-ayn-rand-blogs/. Don’t miss the ones about We The Living and the one about railroads.
I would much rather live in Randist state than in a Marxist one, I’ll tell ya that much. There are two points, one major, the other (I think) minor, whereby cannot subscribe to Randism in its entirety.
First is its virulent atheism, as others here have noted. Rand, if anything, is even more hostile to religion than Marx. Marx, at least, by calling religion an “opiate” at least acknowledged that it had some beneficial side effects, in keeping people from utter despair. Rand does not even go that far; although she nowhere uses a parallel description, it might be that religion is the cyanide of the people. And of course along with goes, deliberately, 2000 years of Christian philosophy, as well as the few thousand more of Hellenic philosophy from which it drew.
Second, “Atlas,” in particular, exhibits an almost cultic reverence for gold (in the absence of God, fairly predictably.) However, what Rand and countless others who swoon (especially in troubled times) over the value, in particular, the “intrinsic” value, of gold, (ouch, sorry for the syntax), is that gold STILL has no “intrinsic” value. Like anything else, it has only the value society ascribes to it. The only difference between a $5 gold coin and a $5 bill is that the gold coin is far rarer, so less likely to be inflated. No really. If things get really bad, really REALLY bad, which would you rather have in your basement — a few chests of gold, or about 20 cases of canned beef stew and 500 pounds of rice? In about 3 months, you, Ms Rand, would be offering me gold by the pound for one can of Dinty Moore.*
Seriously, she misinterprets the idea of money as a mystic totem – again, almost the same way the Marxists do.
The brilliant and engaging Catholic write Gilbert Chesterton had a remarkable way of seeing apparently opposite things as really the same thing: he said that Communism and Capitalism were alike in making the same fundamental error, in that they viewed a man as a unit of economic production, rather than a spiritual being with a higher purpose than his place on the assembly line.
Finally, I would also invoke C.S. Lewis, and note his satirical pokes at Evil as being entirely humorless, particularly with regard to his portrayal of Hell in “The Screwtape Letters.” Even one of the bits in the video notes Rand as being entirely without humor; here and elsewhere, I and others have noted the bitter, dour, even Puritanical humorlessness of the Left: Ms Rand is no better in this regard.**
*Fortunately for you, Ms Rand, I am subject to certain standing orders regarding feeding the hungry, as well clothing the naked, visiting certain prisoners, etc.
** Q: How many feminists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: JUST ONE, AND THERE’S NOTHING FUNNY ABOUT IT!
I have no use for most of Alica (“Ayn Rand”) Rosenbum’s philosophy. As a commenter in PJTV pointed out, it’s telling that almost no-one in her novels has small children. The characters in the Fountainview are all unattractive and reprehensible, and her morality – outside of economics – is very sick. Not very rational, either.
BUT – when it comes to economics, Atlas Shrugged might as well have been written from today’s newspaper. She predicted everything – the “banker with a heart” who destroyed people’s lives by giving out easy loans and ended up with a governement job, the union that does actually represent the workers, even the current businesses that are flush with class and don’t want to invest it here – Atlas is indeed shrugging.
Anyone in Boston is invited to our screening on October 24th at 7pm at the Medford Public Library in Medford, MA. For details, see http://ohpcenter.org/events.php
That’s a nice little commercial you have there. It isn’t correct to say “Prophecy ” in reference to Ayn Rand. It’s more a work of logic and mathematics. History has played this scenario out many times before. Always the same outcome. Total destruction of the society. Nothing left but fodder for archaeologists. If we want to save ourselves from the next dark ages, we had better learn from history what not to do.
I became fully awake when I read the book six years ago. I didn’t go to the movie but have tried to get it on comcast and then U-verse when we changed over. Neither of these fine liberal companies have chosen to offer it.
The White Hats have now become the John Galts of our country and world. Ayn rand kept her book mostly in the realm of America. what she had predicted for America is now happening also in Europe.
If I compare the present America to her book, the lies, misdirections and prevarications of the leadership in Washington is even worse than she could have written.
We must turn out all incumbents and start over unless they have shown to be dedicated Conservatives.
TV, I don’t think it’s even out on DVD yet. Cable companies don’t get it until it’s been released on DVD, in general.
Tennessee Volunteer: do you really think that Ayn Rand was a conservative? National Review panned her work because she was not religious. I wrote about the high points of her belief system here: http://clarespark.com/2011/04/16/index-to-ayn-rand-blogs/. Don’t miss the ones about We The Living and the one about railroads.
The first of many to just shrug?
http://lonelyconservative.com/2011/07/coal-mine-owner-declares-im-just-quitting-at-environmental-justice-meeting/
I would much rather live in Randist state than in a Marxist one, I’ll tell ya that much. There are two points, one major, the other (I think) minor, whereby cannot subscribe to Randism in its entirety.
First is its virulent atheism, as others here have noted. Rand, if anything, is even more hostile to religion than Marx. Marx, at least, by calling religion an “opiate” at least acknowledged that it had some beneficial side effects, in keeping people from utter despair. Rand does not even go that far; although she nowhere uses a parallel description, it might be that religion is the cyanide of the people. And of course along with goes, deliberately, 2000 years of Christian philosophy, as well as the few thousand more of Hellenic philosophy from which it drew.
Second, “Atlas,” in particular, exhibits an almost cultic reverence for gold (in the absence of God, fairly predictably.) However, what Rand and countless others who swoon (especially in troubled times) over the value, in particular, the “intrinsic” value, of gold, (ouch, sorry for the syntax), is that gold STILL has no “intrinsic” value. Like anything else, it has only the value society ascribes to it. The only difference between a $5 gold coin and a $5 bill is that the gold coin is far rarer, so less likely to be inflated. No really. If things get really bad, really REALLY bad, which would you rather have in your basement — a few chests of gold, or about 20 cases of canned beef stew and 500 pounds of rice? In about 3 months, you, Ms Rand, would be offering me gold by the pound for one can of Dinty Moore.*
Seriously, she misinterprets the idea of money as a mystic totem – again, almost the same way the Marxists do.
The brilliant and engaging Catholic write Gilbert Chesterton had a remarkable way of seeing apparently opposite things as really the same thing: he said that Communism and Capitalism were alike in making the same fundamental error, in that they viewed a man as a unit of economic production, rather than a spiritual being with a higher purpose than his place on the assembly line.
Finally, I would also invoke C.S. Lewis, and note his satirical pokes at Evil as being entirely humorless, particularly with regard to his portrayal of Hell in “The Screwtape Letters.” Even one of the bits in the video notes Rand as being entirely without humor; here and elsewhere, I and others have noted the bitter, dour, even Puritanical humorlessness of the Left: Ms Rand is no better in this regard.**
*Fortunately for you, Ms Rand, I am subject to certain standing orders regarding feeding the hungry, as well clothing the naked, visiting certain prisoners, etc.
** Q: How many feminists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: JUST ONE, AND THERE’S NOTHING FUNNY ABOUT IT!
I have no use for most of Alica (“Ayn Rand”) Rosenbum’s philosophy. As a commenter in PJTV pointed out, it’s telling that almost no-one in her novels has small children. The characters in the Fountainview are all unattractive and reprehensible, and her morality – outside of economics – is very sick. Not very rational, either.
BUT – when it comes to economics, Atlas Shrugged might as well have been written from today’s newspaper. She predicted everything – the “banker with a heart” who destroyed people’s lives by giving out easy loans and ended up with a governement job, the union that does actually represent the workers, even the current businesses that are flush with class and don’t want to invest it here – Atlas is indeed shrugging.
sorry – the union that does not represent the workers