^^

“Every woman loves a fascist”

that's not an ayn rand quote

5/22/2008 9:55:10 PM

Ayn Rand got some big ass tittays

That bitch give some good fountainhead

5/22/2008 9:58:50 PM

Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged were both ok books, but they were essentially the same book. I'm not going to tell people they shouldn't read anything ever, but if you want to get her ideas you can get the cliffnotes in the form of Anthem.

5/22/2008 10:05:11 PM

Or Just go straight to the source and read...

Isabel Paterson

http://www.fee.org/publications/the-freeman/article.asp?aid=38&print_view=true
http://www.mises.org/books/godofmachine.pdf

Quote :

"If the primary objective of the philanthropist, his justification for living, is to help others, his ultimate good requires that others shall be in want. His happiness is the obverse of their misery. If he wishes to help “humanity,” the whole of humanity must be in need."

Quote :

"What kind of world does the humanitarian contemplate as affording him full scope? It could only be a world filled with bread-lines and hospitals, in which nobody retained the natural power of a human being to help himself or to resist having things done to him. And that is precisely the world that the humanitarian arranges when he gets his way. When a humanitarian wishes to see to it that everyone has a quart of milk, it is evident that he hasn’t got the milk, and cannot produce it himself, or why should he be merely wishing? Further, if he did have a sufficient quantity of milk to bestow a quart on everyone, as long as his proposed beneficiaries can and do produce milk for themselves, they would say no, thank you. Then how is the humanitarian to contrive that he shall have all the milk to distribute, and that everyone else shall be in want of milk?"

5/23/2008 5:23:17 AM

^ Mega,

You reminded me of a book I saw on Mises.com last year. It's called The Driver...

Quote :

"It is set at the tail end of the Gilded Age, when railroads were being taxed and regulated to the point that they were losing money, even as their loses were being picked up by the taxpayer and the railroads being made public property. Along comes a shadowy speculator named Henry Galt, about whom everyone has previously asked: "Who is Henry Galt." He emerges into public view by buying out a railroad and gaining total control of it. He spends like crazy for upgrades and reroutes and generally does an amazing job in turning losses to profits. He then moves on to acquire more enterprises until he becomes a member of the super-rich, while working that mad. It is a thrilling story, complete with a detailed description of why bi-metallism didn't work. But he makes a few too many people angry in the process. The FTC, his competitors, and Congress put him on trial. He is even arrested! But in some thrilling testimony that explains the role of the speculator and capitalist, during which time the railroad stock begins rising again, he is ultimately vindicated."

http://www.mises.org/store/Driver-The-P418C0.aspx
http://blog.mises.org/archives/006985.asp

Sounds almost like an Atlas Shrugged rip off, right? No way. The Driver was published in 1922, almost 35 years before Atlas Shrugged!

Unfortunatley, I have not got a chance to read it myself to say much about it. But from what I can tell, the book echoes many of Rand's political arguments (Garrett himself was an amatuer economist and libertrian essayst), though it is not explicity based on a philosophy of heroic egoism.

No one can say for certain whether Ayn Rand actually read the book, but if she didn't it seems like an incredible coincedence.

PS* It's also about 2-300 pages shorter.

[Edited on May 23, 2008 at 6:46 AM. Reason : ``]

5/23/2008 6:35:55 AM

Quote :

"Ayn Rand has a lot of self-hate issues about being a woman. All of her female characters are weaker than the lead in a Harlequin novel, and Rand makes lots of generalizabilities towards women as a whole based on her own insecurities."

What about good ol' Dagney in Atlas Shrugged? She dominated the railroad industry, dominated, I tell you.

It is funny how most of the love scenes in her books are all forceful and rough, but I don't think that has to do with self-hate as a woman. She just liked it raw.

5/23/2008 10:21:03 AM

Quote :

"It is funny how most of the love scenes in her books are all forceful and rough, but I don't think that has to do with self-hate as a woman. She just liked it raw."

That's just an innocent preference, huh? It couldn't have anything to do with our culture's history of misogyny.

5/23/2008 10:30:19 AM

Sure it could have something to do with that, but it could also have just been that she wanted all her characters to be strong people who got what they wanted. Maybe she didn't like cuddling and whatnot, just not her style.

5/23/2008 10:52:56 AM

Well, note that Rand explicitly rejected feminism. I believe she declared herself a male chauvinist at one point. Her views on gender and sexuality don't seem completely consistent with her philosophy. (Neither does the opposition to soy, that communist plant.)

5/23/2008 11:08:40 AM

Quote :

"Congressman Proposes that Government Establish a "Reasonable Profits Board" "

http://www.taxfoundation.org/blog/show/23183.html

Quote :

"Socialism is the doctrine that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that life and his work do not belong to him, but belong to society, that the only justification of his existence is his service to society, and that society may dispose of him in any way it pleases for the sake of whatever it deems to be its own tribal, collective good. --Ayn Rand, For the New Intellectual"

[Edited on May 23, 2008 at 11:28 AM. Reason : .]

5/23/2008 11:27:45 AM

Socialism is the premise that the people own everything. I wish Ayn Rand would have just stuck with her crappy pulp fiction instead of trying to impart knowledge of ideas, that she clearly does not understand herself.

5/23/2008 11:29:38 AM

Quote :

"Sounds almost like an Atlas Shrugged rip off, right?"

Could very well be. Objectivists like to think that everything that came out of Rand's mouth or issued from her typewriter was both irrefutably true and completely original. This is simply not the case. Despite a few howling errors, I do think Rand got most things right, philosophically, economically and politically. However, hardly anything she said was truly original.

5/23/2008 11:30:10 AM

^^ She was friends with Alan Greenspan. She must have known something.

5/23/2008 11:54:35 AM

I too, gather knowledge through osmosis.

5/23/2008 12:15:33 PM