Has Anyone Else Read “Atlas Shrugged?”

Maybe she was forward thinking enough to know that decades later the unfortunate neo-conned offspring would somehow stumble upon her work and mistake it for something worthwhile.

 

Unlikely, but you may hold to any adecdotal evidence you may wish.
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Indeed, it did come out to bad reviews when released becasue as stated previously it is boring and at times poorly written. None of these facts betray the underlying philosophical ideas, which when delved into are monumental in scale. .

Jeff9k, if you yell into an echo chamber all you will hear is echos. I have read probably 20 biographies on her, and the honest ones had mixed critiques. The Objectivist laud her, of course...and the Progressives (such as you) despise her. Neither are honest in their critiques.

Jeff9K, I am not fond of proffering responses to strident ideologues- I simply haven't the time to waste. You are showing signs of being one, so should I discontinue my responses to you?

 

While Objectivism and philosophical Satanism have some similarities, they are pretty different in a lot of respects.

Rational self-interest is a key component of both ideologies, but Objectivism has more to say about economics while LaVey was looking mostly at personal choices.

 

Her economics failed miserably in both the original Great Republican Depression and the current Republican Depression. She predicted the church siding with socialists. She predicted conservatives believing in science. She thought poets would side with Galt. She said cigarettes are harmless, has Galt saying that liberals hate knowledge when it's cons that hate it, etc. etc.

Name anything she was right about!

 

You are smarter than all Rand's biographers and reviewers?

 

I read it in the late 1960's, and again three or four years ago. It badly needed a good editor, too long and too turgid, but expressed some very valid priciples.

Anthem and We The Living were better reads, and The Fountainhead was made into an entertaining movie.

Coming from Soviet Russia she knew what she was against.

 

You haven’t actually done any research on Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan, have you? Many of the basic tenets are virtually identical to the beliefs held and promoted by modern day liberalism.

 

The hedonistic side of philosophical Satanism isn't incompatible with Objectivism, although Rand herself had a bone to pick with gay people for some reason.

Support for the separation of church and state is consistent with libertarianism and Objectivism.

Taxing churches is one of the more interesting aspects of philosophical Satanism. How this could apply to modern policy would involve a compromise.

Currently, the tax-exempt status of religious institutions makes it illegal for them to endorse political candidates; however, taxing them would likely also involve giving them the freedom to endorse candidates as they please.

In many ways, this seems like a more rational position, since the bans on endorsing candidates are very selectively enforced.

 

Isn't that a right wing counter to Argo, so to speak? (no...I've never read it).

 

LOL. As long as there is any government, there will be force involved to achieve some end - deemed noble or otherwise, whether it be national defense, upholding rights, or paving roads. I always chuckle when I hear libertarians use terms like "force" and "theft" when referring to the government and taxes. Unless you go all the way and become an anarchist, then you are arbitrarily deciding what you want your government to force you to pay for. And it is arbitrary, because nowhere is it written in stone what a government should or shouldn't provide for it's citizens. It all just depends on what the citizens, or the people in power as the case may be, decide.

 

So when she was promoting the virtues of selfishness and greed, while decrying altruism as collectivism, she was only referring to taxation?

 

Says who? The purpose of government varies from society to society and over time. It all depends on what the society in question thinks it should do. And I can guarantee you that no government is limited to just preserving rights. Promoting economic interests is another function that governments usually* play.

* Usually not always because sometimes a regime takes power and destroys the country's economic interests

 

But these are both largely true. Perhaps your perception of reality is not as accurate as you believe it to be?

 

Taxation exclusively? No.

Taxation is not all encompassing concept, but is altruistic in motive "for the greater good" . You are sacrificing self (and should be proud of doing so, as the Progressive mantra goes), but said concept can be (and is) extended further into the fabric of society. Feeling bad about not giving money to a beggar is an example that fits with Rand's quote. This is why selfishness and greed is portrayed by Rand as virtues, becasue it is the refusal to give into societal driven pressures of altruism and self-sacrifice that no person should be, according to her, written plainly here:

You see, rational selfishness, to Rand at least, are the values considered needed for human survival, and not as portrayed (usually intentionally, but is Jeff9K's case it is from ignorance of topic it seems) by that on this board "the values produced by the desires, the emotions, the “aspirations,” the feelings, the whims or the needs of irrational brutes". A good example of this would be the type of greed that Madoff portrayed, which is defrauding people of their possessions for his own profit. This is not the greed that Rand portrays as virtuous.

 

Isn't national defense "for the greater good"? In fact, any form of government which isn't obviously destructive would be considered for the greater good of society. Government is a collective arrangement. Protecting rights is for the greater good of all involved, at least in theory.

Taxes do involve a mandated sacrifice on your part to support the collective (society) in one way or another, even with minimal government. It's just a matter of what people want their taxes to pay for and what they don't. And that varies quite a bit. Unless you envision a government not supported by taxes at all. I'm guessing the military would either be privatized or voluntary in such a scenario.

 

And that's interesting. But I'm thinking that lots of people won't agree with Rand as to what values constitute human survival. If you ask people from Asia, they would more likely think in much more collectivist terms as to what constitutes survival, as they are more community oriented and less individualistic than Westerners. What makes them wrong?

 

So, what does Rand say, really?

She says that a persons' life is his own to live, and he doesn't exist simply to support totally useless strangers.

Gee, what an evil idea that must be to the DemocRATs.

What else does she say?

Oh yeah, she says that selfishness is nothing more than rejecting the selfish demands of others and living your own life instead. Those people have no demands on you, and their greed is what drives societies to ruin, not the urge of others to live their own lives free of busy-body governemtn do-gooders.

(you have to read The Fountainhead to get a better grip on Atlas Shrugged...and you have to read We The Living to understand Rand herself, and how her life in the socialist paradise of Leninist Russia colored her world view of the Stalinists in the USA).

Gee, it took the liberal in the OP four months to read a mere 1200 pages....no wonder he can't understand it. He reads very slow, and his lips must have been really tired towards the end....or really strong, from all that daily exercise. The Mayor won't ever know, and doesn't really care.)

What Rand was basically illustrating, with many many examples for the slow learners and the no-learners, was the following:

People aren't property, you can't use them as resources to be consumed.

That wasn't complicated, was it?

All the interesting bits of human history happen when one group or the other violates this basic fact of life.

Oh, and one last thing: Rand was one KINKY broad. In each of the three novels mentioned above, deviant sex was glorified in some way. Never mind that the rape in the Fountainhead was the worst sort of violation of the People Aren't Property Rule, Rand believed in it. She's human, she's kinky, and to expect ideological purity from any human is to expect too much. Only socialists are robots, after all.

 

Probably the fact that collectivism inherently makes one less free. Also worth noting, those same Asian countries typically have higher suicide rates than western countries.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate

 

Because people aren't property.

Because people aren't property, other people cannot presume to consume them, or their lives, as if they were.

If the Asian from the failed commie collective FEELS otherwise, it's because they're warped by their unnatural upbringing.

If you're going to claim the Mayor has a parochial view on this matter due to his lifetime immersion in the greatest of the cultures wrought by Western Civilization, you'll be absolutely correct.

If you're going to disagree with the Mayor's assertion, start by saying who hold's your title, and who issued it. The Mayor isn't property and doesn't discusss ideas with lesser creatures who wish to be owned.

 

Freedom being one value, but not the only value, and not necessarily the value most esteemed. We in the west glorify being free individuals. Other societies focus more on being part of a community. Is it better or worse? Probably a mix. Humans are social apes, so our needs and desires are a balancing act between being communal and being individuals. Go too far one way or the other, and you're asking for trouble.

Looking at the suicide list, I do notice that the US is 34th, while Pakistan is 99th, Syria is 103rd and Egypt is 104th. I'm guessing freedom isn't the only factor involved. Interesting to note that Haiti, with all it's problems, is 108th.

 

It's not about people being property. It's about the fact that we humans evolved as social animals in tribes. That's how we survived. We didn't survive as mere individuals. We did so as groups. The good of the group benefited the individual. And it's the same today, unless you live alone in the wilderness. We get so many benefits by being part of society.

 

I would pose that this argument is of secondary importance and effect, as national defense is primarily instituted for protection of the individual's right to life from foreign threat- completely selfish, by Rand's standards.

And this is why Rand, among others, found taxes to be immoral (this is a concept of which I agree). Government can be paid for with completely voluntary transaction, instead of through threat and monopolized use/initiation of force by government.

 

Humans are tribal by nature. Which is about halfway between individual and collectivist. This is why it's important not to try to force them to be unnaturally sacrificial toward strangers they have no connection to.

 

They are free to think that, as long as they are free to think that- it is the essence of what Rand proposed. IF an easterner should be chose to be individualistic even within the confines of said society, then he should not be forced, coerced or pressured by society to differ through an altruistic mindset. You see, your perception of the eastern/western dynamic has no bearing on an objectivist's view. People are free to form societies, as they formed Galt's Gulch. But as long as they are not infringing upon the life of another, a human should be free within society to pursue whatever he chooses.

 

I'm sympathetic towards that point. But there's a difference between being forced to work in a soup kitchen and having to pay taxes, where some of those taxes go toward supporting the soup kitchen.

In an ideal world, individual tax payers would be able to determine what their taxes were paying for, within reason. So if you wanted your tax to only go for national defense, or farm subsidies, or universal health care, then it would go toward that, at least until the need was met. If something didn't get fully funded, then the tax payers had spoken. You can imagine this being online and you could watch as various programs were being funded so that you can decide what percentage to give to what programs.