From the time I was oh about 15 I would read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged at least once a year. This continued until Clinton’s Second term began and the book became entirely and completely to close to reality. Since then, I cannot read the book as I become so annoyed at the sheeple and elites that have allowed the US to become. They have allowed the country to proceed a frighteningly long way down the road that will lead us to where the country is in that book.
It recently came to mind when thinking about the 2A thread I started, if the Supreme Court rules in anyway but one. They will create 40 million criminals out of whole cloth. The reason that this situation brought Atlas Shrugged back to the forefront of my mind is the declaration by Ferris that government wants laws broken so that they have power. If no one is breaking the laws there is no way for the gov’t to gain power.* Does it not seem that we have reached, and passed this point?
If you want to realize what direction our society is running read, or re-read AS and try not to weep for our people’s stupidity and weakness.
I am recalling from memory, so can’t recall complete quote.
Unfortunately, in todays society, Atlas Shrugging is the equivalent to a french shrug of indifference, not to shrug off the shackles of tyranny. I agree that the supreme idiots may create 40 million criminals, but if only a 4th of those actually get off our collective arses, the true meaning of Atlas shrugging will be known and felt.
You, sir, are well read. I waited far too long to read Atlas Shrugged, but once I did I handed it to my 15 year old for him to read.
Y’know, schools don’t encourage kids to read intense books anymore, so I was bound an determined to insure my children read more than just the fluff they are assigned in school.
My perennial book is Moby Dick - if you can make it through all the chapters on uses of whale bones and types of sails, it contains some of the most soaring prose in the English language.
Ah Ayn Rand. That was a woman with a set of brass balls. A Jewish immigrant who immediately embraced America and made a genuine contribution to the country and the world.
I’m not trying to turn this political, but the Right seems to focus on the Individual while the Left focuses on the collective and the group. I got a laugh out of the Mrs. when I castigated her for letting our youngest son watch “The Land Before Time part XIV”. I asked her why she was letting our son be indoctrinated by those little commie dinosaurs teaching him to get along with everybody and all that crap.
Atlas Shrugged only read it once at the behest of my mother back in my early 20’s and was floored by it. I’ve haven’t the time or perseverance at the moment to re-read that bugger.
I thought it wouldn’t be much, considering that I tackled Dune at the age of 14. Boy was I wrong. The concepts I learned from it were timely as I was already on my road to being a conservative.
And yeah I saw the similarities also during the 90’s, not that they’ve stopped popping up.
Regarding what the ‘highschools’ want read, here I was doing the whole Dune series, and they wanted me to waste my eye-ball time with such weighty tomes as : Cheaper by the Dozen, Death be not Proud, and more drivel.
It is slow going in some parts, but well worth the effort to get through. Here are a few pages that were worth marking to me*.
pg 388-389 on money and morality
pg 411 Ferris states the reason that gov’t makes laws
pg 618 where our country is headed socially
pg 987 where our country is headed in a business sense
These passages stick with me, I mearly had to open the book to pages marked and scan for the words to jump out and remind me why I had marked the page.
Reading Atlas Shrugged changed my life. It’s as relevant now if not more so than it was the day it was published. Fountainhead is a good read to prepare you for Atlas Shrugged. I would not say that either are beautifully written but they are very important literary works. Oddly enough I believe I read somewhere that Atlas Shrugged was also one of Hillary Clinton’s favorite books. Though I’m quire sure that she admires the work for all the wrong reasons. It can also be used by the socialist vermin as a strategy for the destruction of our Republic. It also ranked #2 behind the Holy Bible as the most influential book about 15 years ago in a survey conducted by the Library of Congress. What’s amazing is people will stop you when you read it in public to discuss it. Her books are not easy reads but Atlas should be required reading for every American IMO. My kids will be required to read it before finishing high school.
Interesting that two people that have made such a public showing of their charity would choose to make a movie based on a story where the downfall of America is brought on largely by those that insist on forcing others to give to charity.
I suspect that they are much more interested in the thought that they are somehow the productive members of society and the rest of us bums are leaching off of them. The wikipedia site has the following quote, which I could easily see megalomaniacle celebrities mistaking
Hank and Dagny begin to experience the futility of their attempts to survive in a society that hates them and those like them for their greatness.
I’m another one of those that read Atlas in my mid-teens, which I think is the prime time for someone to read it. Rand puts forth, through flat characters and bad prose, a set of individualist heros, explains the philosophy, and calls out the enemies of western civilization.
I think books like these deserve, and get, some reprieve from being judged as literature because of their philosophical and “PR” value. Ironically, Rand was totally ignored by acadamic philosophers and we have only see “serious” libertarian philosophy in the last 25 years.
Another step in understanding the origins of the anti-Reason, anti-West philosophy is getting a handle on post-modernism which was first developed (if I remember correctly) in the 1700’s in Germany. A good guide is Stephen Hicks’ “Understanding Postmodernism”.
I think it shows how important of a message that AS has that it can overcome its flaws, and still have taught me things.
My Faith and World Views course had some reading that made my head hurt, but one thing stuck with me. The postmodernist agnostic/athiest belief system is a slow road to anarchy. The agnostic will lead us there fast due to their fear of absolutes.
The lack of an absolute basis for the postmodernist’s morality will lead to a race to the lowest point. Without an external point to declare something wrong or right, who decides what is wrong or right? We are getting a good bit down this road IMHO if you take a look at basic right and wrongs that held for millenia have been over thrown in the past century.
Rand was an atheist and clearly against post-modernism. Hell, she called her philosophy Objectivism and railed against subjectivism in all its forms.
I think science and its epistemology is the best hope for humanity’s future. Religion is at best a secularized feel-good belief system and at worst a barrier to progress and destroyer of life. We see both ends of it today around the world.
Yep, I read Steven Hicks’ “Explaining Post-Modernism” and it scared the crap out of me - why? Because it ties the nhilistic German Philosophers to marxism, and today’s postmodern multiculturalism. Once you read it, you understand that postmodern multiculturalism is the outgrowth of that nhilistic philosophy. A very different philosophy from the philosophy that drove the ascendency of the English and thier off-shoots.
Throw in a little Sorel and Gramsci and you have the marxist/post-modernist playbook.
