Galt's Gulch

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  • Posted by jabuttrick 8 years, 7 months ago
    Nice piece. Thanks for posting it. As to the issue of deliberate or negligent misinterpretation of Rand, one of the earliest and most notable of that ilk was Whittaker Chambers' review of Atlas Shrugged published in National Review with the express consent of the publisher, William F. Buckley, Jr.. Chambers actually asserted that AS advocated for "gas chambers" and amounted to an argument for authoritarianism! Rand never forgave Buckley for publishing that libel.
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    • Posted by H2ungar123 8 years, 7 months ago
      Never knew that Rand never forgave Buckley for publishing that review! Thanks jabuttrick.
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      • Posted by jabuttrick 8 years, 7 months ago
        There was no love lost between them. Rand famously said that the observant Catholic Buckley was too intelligent not to be an atheist and Buckley often criticized Rand saving his most ungracious and unfair attacks for the obituary he wrote right after her death. But the animosity began with the Chambers piece.
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        • Posted by Maritimus 8 years, 7 months ago
          If Rand knew, as I suspect she must have, that Buckley was intellectually totally committed Catholic, I cannot understand how she could expect him to be friendly to her philosophy. The only tentative explanation I come up with is Rand's total confidence in reason. Buckley certainly was intelligent, but, apparently, not willing to think through what was built into him from early on.
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          • Posted by khalling 8 years, 7 months ago
            intellectual titans, Martimus. Of course, she far exceeded :)
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            • Posted by jabuttrick 8 years, 7 months ago
              She expected him to think through his beliefs and then reject them in favor of Objectivism. This, of course, never happened. Why did she think he would be sympathetic to her philosophy in the first place? I would guess, and it's only a guess, that she thought his professed anti-communsim coupled with his willingness to go against the grain of the liberal intellectual establishment of the time (see "God and Man at Yale") would make him a natural ally of hers. It was never to be.
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  • Posted by $ Abaco 8 years, 7 months ago
    Nice read. After reading Atlas Shrugged years ago I remain surprised at the reasons people give for hating it. Sometimes I think, "Are they talking about the same book I am?". I got very different things from the book. I'd even say I was highly receptive to concepts in the book that many Objectivists either never mention or just didn't latch on to. The left simply hates the book - even if they never read it.
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    • Posted by blackswan 8 years, 7 months ago
      The part that's the most stupefying is the fact that leftists have such strong emotions about Ayn Rand, yet they haven't read a single word she wrote.
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      • Posted by Dobrien 8 years, 7 months ago
        So true in my experience with liberals also. When I asked a liberal if he had read Atlas Shrugged he reply" no who is the author "when I said Ayn Rand he replied "oh she's the enemy". I said "enemy, why". He didn't know but looked her up on his i phone " she's a libertarian" he smugly replied not knowing what that was either.
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    • Posted by CircuitGuy 8 years, 7 months ago
      "Sometimes I think, 'Are they talking about the same book I am?'."
      Most of the times I talk to someone who's not really into it I have this reaction. On many topics the books are about exactly the opposite of what people think.

      In 2000 some told me she knew someone into Ayn Rand. I told her I was totally against Ayn Rand. That was stupid of me b/c I was going by things I had heard. I had never even read a page of Rand.

      I don't know why there there's such broad misunderstanding of what the books are about, but here's my guess: Like any popular idea or philosophy, politicians and groups try to co-opt it. Books on individualism and reason are incompatible with politics. When people try to co-opt Rand into a simplistic group-conflict narrative, it attracts a particularly nasty type of person. People meet those people and think they represent Rand.
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  • Posted by Herb7734 8 years, 7 months ago
    When I read The Fountainhead, as a 'teen, I was utterly amazed to discover that all my "intellectual" friends scorned it. What were they into? Why The Catcher In The Rye of course. Just compare the two heroes of those books. It was bewildering. Of course, I grew to understand more as I grew older. In any case, if anyone wants to understand what America was formulated to be and why it succeeded so well while other countries faltered and fell, all you need to do is read Rand's Textbook Of Americanism. It's all there in a mere 12 pages. Those 12 pages will explain pretty much everything you need to know about the differences between what was America and why it became great.
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  • Posted by term2 8 years, 7 months ago
    Of course its the statists who on the one hand talk about how bad the rich people are, but on the other hand secretly WANT to take their riches for themselves.

    Montel Williams said it best once (paraphrasing)- people love the idea of being rich, but they hate the people who are rich.
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  • Posted by Zenphamy 8 years, 7 months ago
    It's always been interesting to me that part of the biological 'hard wiring' of the human mind is to search for causes and reasons for the events in their lives. But to make sense of what is discovered as possible or probable causes, one also requires knowledge or at least the drive to obtain it, and the ability to apply reasoning and logic to the observables, and both of those are volitional and ego related.

    In the absence of, or with only limited knowledge and reason, the mind will still favor an external cause, rather than internal. It's then easy for that lazyand weak ego mind to see others' success as cheating, unfair, luck, or greed, rather than the hard work and self analysis the success really reflects.
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  • Posted by DrZarkov99 8 years, 7 months ago
    The myth is a typical statement of apparatchik propagandists, who prey on the gullibility of the "unwashed" masses. Most people I've engaged who rail about the "evils of capitalism" have never cracked a book on economics. What's really pathetic is those who extol the virtues of socialism have never read any of Marx or Engels original documents, either (I have, which blows liberal minds). A mind that spouts second or third hand opinion without any thought to discovering the facts belongs to an "oxygen stealer."
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  • Posted by $ jbrenner 8 years, 7 months ago
    Are the myths perpetrated about Ayn Rand because of a lack of knowledge, willful ignorance, evil, none of the above, all of the above, or some combination of the above?
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    • Posted by BeenThere 8 years, 7 months ago
      Some combination............but, basically, I have concluded it is fear of independence, of being an individual............dependent mentalities look for caretakers (in many, many forms) and are frightened to death of self sufficient individuals for fear of being told to "get off your ass and take care of yourself."
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      • Posted by $ Abaco 8 years, 7 months ago
        A vast, vast majority of Americans are looking for caretakers. It's got to be well over 90% now. And, I don't believe it was always like that.
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        • Posted by BeenThere 8 years, 7 months ago
          Not certain it is "well over 90% now", but it could be considering all of the various forms of how "caretaker" could be defined. And, "it was not always like that"; having "been around" since 1938, I can attest that the predominant view, until at least the early 1960's, was "get off your ass and take care of yourself." And though that view was probably declining, it was still healthy until the 1990's, maybe even early 2000. My take is that 2008 marked the "tidal wave" of the caretaker era....................altruism run amok!!! (Sort of akin to the employee meeting at Twentieth Century Motors.)
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  • Posted by mia767ca 8 years, 7 months ago
    in high school or college debate clubs, the real battle was over defining the terms to be debated, NOT the actual debate...if you can define the terms of the debate, the probabilities were high that you would win the debate...
    define or be defined...always remember that and you will win...
    ayn is pro-producer in all definitions...
    liberals and conservatives are fascist/socialists in all discussions...do not compromise...define the debate...before the debate or discussion...do your homework...check your premises...
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  • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 8 years, 7 months ago
    Typical myth of the left, the brain only that lacks the ability to integrate and of course because they lack morality they fail to see it and assume it resides not in others...the money, the riches, the gun, your SUV and your footprints are at fault.
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