Has Anyone Else Read “Atlas Shrugged?”

She must have said that to you in a private conversation because she didn't say it in the book.

 

This explains everything!

 

So having a physical preference is "Hitlerian" now? What would you have thought had all these characters been black? Would you even be pointing this out? Would you be taking issue with it at all? No, let's be serious. Of course not. You only point this out because you already held a deep-seated bias against what you were reading before you ever opened page 1. And you are now backward rationalizing every reason you can find for why that bias must be true. Let's stop bull(*)(*)(*)(*)ting ourselves here.

Only by people who do not understand what Atlas Shrugged is actually about. And I can't help but notice you still haven't gotten back to me on the similarities between liberalism and the Church of Satan? Are you avoiding this on purpose?

 

I'm sure you're right!!! No doubt Alan Greenspan, Ayn's number one celebrity groupee, only read the back-cover synopisis. You, Sir, may be the only living person to read it in its entirety!!! Hell; I'm not even sure Ayn wrote it from cover to cover!!!!!!

(read: yeah; did. Tedious as get out. Shall I explain?)

 

You have posted a link to a NEGATIVE review of Atlas Shrugged that is one of the most famous negative book reviews in American history!!

Here are some excerpts:

The news about this book seems to me to be that any ordinarily sensible head could possibly take it seriously ... Somebody has called it: “Excruciatingly awful.” I find it a remarkably silly book. ... ITS STORY IS PREPOSTEROUS. ... The mischief here is that the author, dodging into fiction, nevertheless COUNTS ON YOUR READING IT AS POLITICAL REALITY.

In this fiction everything, everybody, is either all good or all bad ... This kind of SIMPLIFYING pattern, of course, gives charm to most PRIMITIVE STORY-TELLING.

Atlas Shrugged can be called a novel only by devaluing the term.

Upperclassmen might incline to sniff and say that the author has, with vast effort, contrived a simple materialist system, one, INTELLECTUALLY, AT ABOUT THE STAGE OF THE OXCART, THOUGH WITHOUT MASTERING THE PRINCIPLE OF THE WHEEL.

Thus, RANDIAN MAN, LIKE MARXIAN MAN, is made the center of a godless world.

... the book’s DICTATORIAL TONE, which is much its most striking feature. Out of a lifetime of reading, I can recall no other book in which a tone of OVERRIDING ARROGANCE was so implacably sustained. Its shrillness is without reprieve. Its dogmatism is without appeal.

And it was written by a famous CONSERVATIVE, for God's sake!!

 

That's pretty funny, are you trying to copy liberalminority?

 

I haven't seen it and definitely don't plan to (especially now) but, I could have just got out of the way and watched the rabid right gather round and defend it (like they have) and gotten my answer. Obviously (and again I haven't see it), it's a right wing, Fox type hack job (whatever it is). I've seen that "John Galt" phrase on pickup trucks recently too so, I'm fairly sure of it being nonsense now. Thanks for the response.

 

Oh dear lord no.

I first encountered your tepid brand "originality" on the interwebs eight year sago on another on-line forum. About a year ago, on another forum another poster who no posts here posited many of the same question, with the exception of he used to assign it to the high school kids he taught and they would read it cover to cover very easily as Rand's brand of philosophy appealed to them (you Progressives need to meet about that- which is it? To easy for high schoolers or too hard to your best intellectual...guess maybe both, it seems!).IIRC, many of you talking points were repeated a few months ago by teat another unimaginative poster like yourself. As I said, it happens every couple of month or so, without fail.


So, if you think this original, it is not. As stated earlier, there is so many other items that you could critique Rand on, but for the most part you are missing the mark.

 

I didn't say liberals reside in echo chamber, as I know a great many thought provoking, intelligent liberals who can make a well-reasoned case for their opinion.

However, I did say that you seem to reside in an echo chamber, it is becoming more and more apparent that just is the case. That said, I have no inclination with wasting further time with you, and especially on this topic. I would implore you to develop a rational though process, learn how to critically think instead of using circular logic and lastly t stray from the fallacies that you seem to use as crutches for you "arguments". You will be much better of intellectually, as this type of "forum thinking" tends to creep into one's real life.

 

I'd have thought the fact she died a bitter old lonely hag dependant on welfare would be enough evidence to her fans that her 'philosophy' was bunk.

Perhaps just criminally misunderstood until the towering intellects of Pam Geller and Paul Ryan appeared?



Jiddu Krishnamurti is the kind of writer I'd consider philosophical and intellectual as opposed to trivial novelists like Rand.

Expansion versus contraction.

I'm surprised she's on any school reading list unless under the category of 'what not to do, kids'.

 

That merely underscored the disparate nature of fact and fiction.

Yet rabid randians seem incapable of making that glaring distinction. Ms Rosenbaum's fantasies did not allow even her to escape reality.

 

Always good to remember the LAST chapter of "Atlas Shrugged"....



where Ayn Rand starts getting Social Security and Medicare from the "oppressive State".

 

"Shrugged" actually hinted at Ayn's commie-leanings. After all, what was Galt's Gultch? A friggin' commune!!!!!

 

You did well by bailing at page 250. I don't know if you watched my video, but I mention in it that Cenk of the Young Turks bailed on page 3 and Thom Hartmann bailed and then read the Cliff's Notes version.

 

What's your reference on that? I read seven biographies of Rand and the only mention of her IQ was a guess that it wasn't particularly high.

 

It's a good line, and one that Paul Krugman likes to use.

 

You need to read up on Hitler's "Aryan Race" idea, which had to do with his thought that Germans were superior because so many were tall, trim, blond-haired, and blue-eyed, just like Rand's "heroes."

 

It reportedly took her thirteen years to write, including the two years she spent on Galt's speech. And it seems like it takes that long to read.

 

No, I'm being truthful. It has happened to me. I made a thread called "New Year's Resolutions for Conservatives," which was fact-based and funny. They shut it down because my last resolution was "Lose weight." Meanwhile they kept up a totally dishonest, inflammatory thread about liberals being satanic!

 

I think it took me a week to get through it, since it's fiction and thus light reading. Something by David McCollough, i.e. Truman, John Adams, 1776, etc, takes me longer since it's a slower read and I often go back to clarify stuff.

The thing about Ayn is she wrote what it still one of my favorite fictions of all time: Fountainhead. So I'd hoped Shrugged would be about as good, and was gravely disappointed. Tedious PRs of this and that. Under-developed and unbelievable Galt character. And I was shocked that Ayn did not see the irony in JG's little mountainside retreat for the nation's industrialists (aka Galt's Gultch) was a friggin' communal society.

So I figure a fairly-great author, who perhaps peaked a bit early, then got full of herself and let it get away from her, in the turd, Atlas Shrugged. At least that's my take on Ms. Rand as an author.

 

I put all this together after reading Atlas Shrugged and seven biographies of Rand and watching many videos. You seem to be using generalized BS talking points which is probably all you have. You don't realize that other people studying Atlas Shrugged and Rand will notice some of the same facts?

 

Anyone who would take advice from you is screwed!

 

A bit of coincidental twist... My own daughter, who is a freshman in high school, was able to provide my with a bit of anecdotal evidence of the impact Rand has on today's society. Over the next two weeks, she will be reading and discussing in class this (she started last week):



In addition, her class will be studying The Fountainhead her sophomore year and Atlas Shrugged her senior year (yes, all of these are "cover to cover", so apparently there are at least 200 student per year read Atlas Shrugged cover to cover). She goes to a public school, which rates as "Excellent vwith Distnction" which is the highest mark given to Ohio Schools. Her school in in the top 5% of all schools in Ohio.

 

Just wondering if there ever has been a successful volunteer society to actually assess whether it functions far better than compulsory service. Merely claiming superior performance in an untested model is just another hollow sales pitch.

 

You're drawing parallels without showing any correlation beyond mere coincidence. That's a very dishonest stance.

So how about that liberalism and Church of Satan thing? I mean, you were the one who brought up Anton LaVey, so I assumed you either knew something about him or wanted to discuss him. I find it odd that you keep dodging your own analogy now that I've turned it back around on you.