I believe the implication is that “socially awkward white men who seem disproportionately drawn to libertarianism” will like the ‘manic pixie dream girl’ instagrammed photo on the cover of the book. How would you have titled it at your blog?
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Conservative economist Murray Rothbard adored Ayn Rand — until he met her.
His unpublished one-act farce Mozart Was a Red is called a satire of the Rand cult, but I’d bet anything that it’s a pitch-perfect portrayal of what she was really like:
CARSON
Keith, how could you? I, who know the depth of depravity to which most men sink, even I have to ask myself, how can they? Beethoven, Mozart, who reek of naturalism, whose whole work tramples on values, whose every note displays the malevolent-universe premise.
KEITH
Are— are you saying that Mo— Mozart was a collectivist?
CARSON
Oh, not in that very primitive kind of way. But the system of premises interconnect, on a deeper, and therefore on a more important level. Do you see?
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Dagny … Taggert? Or was that The Fountainhead?
I did make it all the way through both of those, another lifetime ago, back in high school. Smelled fish the whole way, but hadn’t figured out yet just where that smell was coming from.
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Not only that, but proponents don’t get to curate exactly what you need to read to make up your mind!
I have not had the time or inclination not slog through Rand’s literature. But I would argue that watching interviews with her and reading articles she had written provided a more direct insight into her views than her stories would have done.
From a young age, I had proposed a system of “objectivism”, so of course many suggested I check out Rand. Truly objective living I think comes from basing society upon science - commerce and status are about as far from objectivity as one can get. Selfishness is deeply subjective, the unfounded belief that your “self” must be more special than the “self” of other people, all because you’re you. Surprisingly, even most who dislike Rand tend to operate under the same premise, although they don’t stress it as much. So I think many of both those who support and refute Rand alike don’t quite understand her - although this in no way implies rigor of her simplistic philosophy. She functions as a shibboleth for different people for different reasons.
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by Milo Yiannopoulos
Phew. Narrowly avoided that one.
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I attended a Tea Party event/religious rally, and I overheard some nice elderly lady say “We just started reading Ayn Rand…” and I felt like telling her, “Lady, Ayn Rand would have dropped napalm on people like you.”
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Heinlein tends to be the gateway drug for Randianism. It gets people down the road towards the same destination, with a few fewer 150 page speeches along the way.
I’m just glad my school library’s sci-fi section was alphabetised properly. If you’ve gone through Asimov, Bradbury and Clarke to get there, you’re already fairly well inoculated.
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You think her philosophy is bad? Wait’ll you see her writing.
I read “Atlas Shrugged”. Cover to cover. Every excruciating page. It is the worst book I have ever read.
The writing is heavy-handed, the characters barely even one-dimensional and entirely unbelievable. Rand apparently believed that the best way to introduce her point of view to readers was to hit them in the head repeatedly with a sledgehammer while screaming, “SEE?!?!! DO YOU GET IT NOW?”
It’s not just bad philosophy. It’s badly written philosophy. (Perhaps that shouldn’t make it so much worse in my eyes, but it does.)
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I’ve chosen that route and started watching her Donahue appearances.
Well said!
When a Political Randian talks of the sacrifice necessary to balance the budget, they have in mind Ayn Rand’s comments: "It only stands to reason that where there’s sacrifice, there’s someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there’s service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the MASTER.”
A lot of her books tend to say: “The world if full of idiot lazy leeches… Except for you, dear reader.”
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I did the audio book and by the time I got to the speech I was beating my head against the desk shouting “I got it 400 pages ago… please stop beating a dead horse!”
I would have been amazed that over the 4 hours anybody would still be listening to that broadcast of Galt repeating the same idea over and over again. Still, they were because the book said they were.
Early in the book I wanted to punch various characters in the balls… after the speech I wanted to punch Ayn Rand in the balls.
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Listen to the audiobook and it comes out to about 4 hours… 4 painful, irritating hours.
I read most of her books. I even subscribed to the Ayn Rand newsletter when I was a college student. I thought she was right about everything. Over the years I changed my mind.
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Though I would caution about assuming the objectivity of science without a rigorous interrogation of all the sorts of biases that can creep into it.
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63 fucking hours of terrible audiobook.
As for being unable to name characters:
Danny “Mary Sue” Taggart
Hank “Manly Man Weighed Down By Convention” Reardon
Eddie “Not quite square-jawed enough to be one of the paragons. Or survive. Or for people to remember my last name”
Francis “Swarthy miner guy” d’Anconia
Ragnar “I’m barely in this book but frequently mentioned” Pirateguy.
As for the antagonists, they all blend together since they lacked square jaws and were generally mewling strawmen.
The best part about having suffered through it (apart from being able to shit on objectivist arguments) is being able to fully enjoy the zany “Sewer, Gas and Electric” by Matt Ruff.
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Viewing the BoingBoing 'zine as a crypto-Randian production is an mind-altering experience.
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Why can’t both be true? http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-05-05/schools-find-ayn-rand-can-t-be-shrugged-as-donors-build-courses
And now you see the giant hole in Rand’s political reasoning. She’s advocating that everyone must play by her ideal set of rules, even if means they must sacrifice themselves. It means anyone who can’t hack laissez-faire capitalism has no alternative to sacrifice themselves to it, because any sort of safety net is immoral.
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