.....brought this email from reader Erskine Fincher:
Either you have never read Ayn Rand's "The Virtue of Selfishness,"
or you are a liar. Her philosophy is grounded in the principle that a man's
survival qua man is the moral purpose of his life. In her view, the virtues of
rationality, productiveness, honesty, integrity, etc., are the means by which we
achieve happiness and success over the course of our lives. She never
advocated sacrificing those virtues for any chimerical short-term gain. It is
very true that she disagreed with conservatives on issues such as abortion, but
she did so on moral grounds.
As for her view of free markets, unlike conservatives who base their
support for capitalism on pragmatic grounds and on the view that man is too evil
to live in a socialist utopia, Ayn Rand advocated capitalism because it is the
only moral system. It is the only system that requires men to deal with each
other by reason instead of force. It is the only system that acknowledges a
man's right to pursue his well being and achieve his own happiness. If you
honestly don't know that, then you need to read what she wrote. If you do know
it, then you have acted immorally, betraying your own self-interest by
misrepresenting her in an attempt to subject her ideas to ridicule.
Then there's this blog
entry, accompanied by a photo of your humble columnist that has been altered
to make us look foolish and unattractive (although the nearby photo of the
unnamed blogger undermines the attempt):
This is just disgraceful. Was Taranto really that desperate
for a bit premise? He starts the silly thing asking what Obama and Rand have in
common. He procrastinates (go figure it) on the project. He finally points out a
distinction between Rand and Obama, but not before he snides on the word
"Selfishness" as if he understood a single thing about Rand's book other than
how to spell the word.
Memo to Taranto, you bloody poseur: that book is all about
"moral and cultural concerns." You can keep trying to fool people who've never
read and understood it, and you'll probably even get away with that. Should any
of them actually do that, though, they'll see right through you in an
instant.
When it rains it pours blue heaven today Pamela,Ibn Warraq and Andy Bostom Bat Yeor and Andrew Bostom
Ibn Warraq and
David Littman Pamela, Leading scholar Ibn Warraq, UN specialist David Littman
Bat Yeor (AUTHOR OF Eurabia), David Littman, Ibn Warraq
Ibn Warraq and me. I will be attending his book signing at Columbia on Monday. Will vlog his remarks. He is without peer, the leading scholar on Islam. Read his books, he is joining me next week on my radio show.Go here and read Ibn Warraq on how to debate a Muslim.
the gang in the pantheon of warriors in the fight against the tsunami of islamic jihad
Books at the table
Bat, Atlas and the man among men Dr. Andy Bostom
LOVE HIM! Andy! Andy! Andy!
MWAH!!!
BOSTOM! Brilliant scholar, wonderful husband, fabulous wife, gorgeous children. He is all that and a bag of pork rinds. He is the dearest friend I have. I am blessed.
US: State Sponsor of Judeophobia an editorial by Pamela Geller
Last week, a line was crossed. A terrible line was crossed at Annapolis. As the world looked on, the President of the United States sponsored the first Judeophobic
conference legitimizing an Islamic terrorist state. Jew hatred was acceptable, understandable even.
Under the auspices of a global "peace" conference, the White House sanctioned
Jew hatred. The Jew is now contemptible, inferior, ignorant and politically and socially disenfranchised. Reminiscent of how African Americans were treated in the South, the Jewish attendees had separate entrance ways,
service entrances and were refused the touching, or shaking of hands by the so called moderate members of the Arab world as if the Jews were lepers. Certain members refused to wear the translation earphones when Olmert spoke.
"Saud Al-Faisel ears, underneath his red keffiyah, were left bare. And no, it
wasn’t because he understood Hebrew. It was the Saudi method of demonstrating
their relationship to the State of Israel. Even as the Israeli Prime Minister
was greeting him and speaking of peace, they were refusing to listen. For a
minute I thought I was wrong that maybe there was a technical problem. But then
I saw his aide next to him – also leaving his ears demonstrably naked.”
Then, as Olmert’s speech ended, and the audience applauded. “The Saudi
representative also brought his palms together in order to appear polite. Only
someone who sat very close to him could see that the never touched. The little
game that the Saudis were playing was just one contradiction – the least
noticeable one – in a day full of contradictions.” ...(More
here)
Submitting to Saudi demands, the Americans prohibited Israeli representatives
from entering the hall through the same door as the Arabs. This vile
behavi0r was sanctioned and institutionalized by the President of the
United
States
. I thought
Bush was a Christian, A man of faith? Shocking. He has squandered his second term, betraying our fight against the war on terror
and betraying the reason d’etre for the State of Israel, home of the Jews. We did not elect him to carry
Condi's water.
It is unfathomable to consider this kind of behaviour occurring
with any other race, creed or color. Imagine separate entrances for the leader of an African nation because a
"white" leader refused to walk through the same door as the black man? Because
it would be unclean.
And Israel, Israel took it like the ghetto Jew. They should have walked out like any self respecting human would have done. But no, they lowered the bar yet again. Offering all, and getting nothing, the Sheba Farms, Golan, Jerusalem - all of it in play. The post Oslo Jew has returned to the pre- Holocaust mentality of the 'ghetto' Jew. The Jew that doesn't want to be noticed, the Jew who will do anything to appease those that hate us, just to live in peace. Instead of asserting OUR rights, OUR will that we have a right, are the rightful heirs of Israel and Jerusalem, we are acting as if we have no rights and instead are begging, begging, our enemies to recognize us and accept us!" Behaving like beggars! And the silence of American Jews, well it's the ghetto mentality mixed with those that have assimilated into American culture, the let's not rock the boat crowd.
Appeasing and continuing in this tragedy, Condi Rice later proclaimed," 'I
know what it's like as a Palestinian.'" Such willful stupidity is
unacceptable in a US Secretary of State. Rice knows little about the history of
the Middle East, the politics, the Koran, the Jews, none of it. This ignorant
remark says it all, the Palestinians are not the blacks of the Civil Rights
movement or era, Abbas is not the great non-violent civil rights leader Dr.
Martin Luther King (what an insult to even think this!) and Dr. King was a
Zionist, lover of Israel and the Jewish people's right to it. The Jews are not
the KKK or police with the dogs either, this is not the old South, this the very
violent, blood lusting Middle East.
She doesn't know what it means to be a Jew, to watch innocent people,
babies, children, the old, the young, the tourist, being blown to bits, shards
of flesh flying in every direction, blood, guts strewn everywhere, missing body
parts and the survivors, with nails, nuts and bolts throughout their bodies,
marred for life. My dear friend wolf nailed it she said “Rice doesn't know what
it's like to have monsters throwing rocks at your car as you drive, to have
bombs thrown at you, to live under constant mortar fire and have to spend the
night in a bomb shelter. She doesn't know the feeling of the parents who lost
their sons that went on a hike near where they lived, only to find that their
children had been brutally murdered by these barbarians who had bashed in their
heads beyond all recognition and left alone to be discovered in a cave . She knows rein,
nothing...”
First, it's got to use the actual word in Arabic for "peace," not the phony
substitutes.
For it turns out there are three different words in Arabic for "peace." Only
one of them is for real. And it's not the one used at Annapolis, just like it
wasn't the one used at Camp David II, Oslo, or Camp David I. All failed a
linguistic test, a test which any real Arab-Israeli agreement must pass, the
Test of Suhl.
The three Arabic words translated as "peace" in English are salaam, hudna,
and suhl.
Salaam is the peace of submission. It's the drawn out pronunciation of "slm"
in "Islam," (written Arabic has no vowels) the Arabic word for submission and
obedience, and in "Moslem" or "Muslim," the Arabic word for "one who submits."
There is peace, salaam, among Moslems when they submit to Allah and the
teachings of the Koran. There is peace, salaam, between Moslems and kafirs,
infidels, only when the latter submit to the rule of the former.
In other words, salaam, Moslem peace, is not the absence of violence as it
is for us, but the absence of disobedience. Just like it was for the
Communists. In Lenin's words:
As long as capitalism and (Soviet) socialism exist, we cannot live in peace.
In the end, one or the other will triumph - a funeral dirge will be sung over
the Soviet republic or over world capitalism.
Or, as the Soviet Military Encyclopedia stated it: Peace is impossible
without Soviet socialism. A truly lasting peace is impossible and cannot be
achieved without a proletarian revolution.Compare Lenin's words to the words of
Allah, as dictated to Mohammed in the Koran: Fight and slay the unbelievers
wherever you find them. Seize them, confine them, lie in wait for them in every
place of ambush. (Sura - verse - 9:5) Believers! Do not befriend your fathers or
your brothers or your sons if they choose unbelief in preference to belief in
Allah. (Sura 9:22) Fight those who do not believe in Allah, those who do not
forbid what Allah and his apostle have forbidden, fight them until they pay
tribute to the believers and are utterly subdued. (Sura 9:29)
Mohammed is Allah's apostle. Those who follow him are merciless towards the
unbelievers but kind to each other. (Sura 48:29)
O Unbelievers! We renounce you. Enmity and hatred will reign between us until
you believe in Allah alone. (Sura 60:4)
Just as there could not be peace with the Soviets until we sang a funeral
dirge over the Soviet Union, there cannot be peace with Moslems who believe that
salaam requires Islam to be a religion of the sword.
Hudna, the second Arabic word translated in English as "peace," means
cease-fire, a temporary truce.
When the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, for example, proposes a hudna
with Israel, it's hailed in the Western media as a peace proposal. It is instead
a tactical, temporary break in hostilities, giving Moslems time to re-organize,
re-arm, then renew the Jihad against the kafirs when they can be most caught
off-guard.
A line in the sand was crossed last week. and anyone claiming that
Annapolis was a big yawn and that nothing would come of it, is living in the land
of unicorns and moonbeams. The Jew as dhimmi was made official and the world
was there to sanction it and bear witness. Moreover, Israel laid itself down, the sacrificial lamb, ready for slaughter while Sheba Farms, Golan,
Jerusalem were thrown on the table like so many marbles, all of it in play.
Bat Yeor was dead to right when I asked her what had become of the people of
Israel, "Israel is unworthy of her ancestors."
Today Atlas Shrugged is 50. Published 50 years ago today. Feels like it was written tomorrow. Rand called it, she called it all.
Atlas Shrugged defines me.
I read the book in my early twenties when my dearest, singularly closest friend, whom I respected enormously, casually mentioned it was her favorite book. Bonnie, by occupation the Corporation counsel for the city of NY, had majored in philosophy (she passed away over 10 years ago, but not going there.)
It was the first thing of Rand's that I read (I have consumed everything she wrote and uttered since.) Why isn't Atlas mandatory reading in every public school in America? That it is not is yet another stark indication of the choke hold the left holds on our education system.
Atlas Shrugged defined my thinking. It perfectly articulated my epistemology. I was the quintessential "romantic realist" (man as he ought to be in the real - the low state - of the world.) And while it's been over 20 years since I read that tome, it is as fresh and as important and as relevant (if not more so) to me now as it was then.
Atlas Shrugged is a treatise delivered in a fictional novel to better understand Rand's philosophy. Rand is, IMAO, the greatest philosopher in human history. It is man's great failure that it turns away from reason and truth and romanticizes barbarism, communism, socialism despite the 100 million deaths outside of war under those failed systems. Like Rand, I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
My blog is exemplar of A is A. That's what I deliver here ....A.
It's purpose is clearly defined by Rand's philosophy. Evil is made possible by the sanction you give it. WITHDRAW YOUR SANCTION.
A philosophic system is an integrated view of existence. As a human
being, you have no choice about the fact that you need a philosophy.
Your only choice is whether you define your philosophy by a conscious,
rational, disciplined process of thought and scrupulously logical
deliberation -- or let your subconscious accumulate a junk heap of
unwarranted conclusions, false generalizations, undefined
contradictions, undigested slogans, unidentified wishes, doubts and
fears, thrown together by chance, but integrated by your subconscious
into a kind of mongrel philosophy and fused into a single, solid
weight: self-doubt, like a ball and chain in the place where your
mind's wings should have grown. Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It
What struck me was when I first read Atlas was living by the coda of moral values. Man's moral value -his value through his work. His value through his his achievement and the evil that seeks to undermine it and destroy it at every turn.
I live by the glorification of the rights of the individual. Self reliance. American greatness.
In celebration I shall pick up Victor Hugo and read, perhaps, Les Miserables, as a gift to me from Ayn.
Robert Stacey McCain ran a wonderful piece this morning in the The Washington Times on Atlas Shrugged, Atlas, at last, on the map . It's a must read and yes, I am quoted (which we love.)
That influence has gained a new life on the Internet. Pamela Geller's blog,
"Atlas Shrugs" (AtlasShrugs2000.typepad.com), is named in tribute to Rand, whom
she calls "the greatest philosopher in human history."
I am not alone in my admiration for Rand's work. I find myself in excellent company.
Mr. Greenspan met Rand when he was 25 and working as an economic forecaster.
She was already renowned as the author of “The Fountainhead,” a novel about an
architect true to his principles. Mr. Greenspan had married a member of Rand’s
inner circle, known as the Collective, that met every Saturday night in her New
York apartment. Rand did not pay much attention to Mr. Greenspan until he began
praising drafts of “Atlas,” which she read aloud to her disciples, according to
Jeff Britting, the archivist of Ayn Rand’s papers. He was attracted, Mr.
Britting said, to “her moral defense of capitalism.”Ayn Rand's Literature of Capitalism
[...]
Shortly after “Atlas Shrugged” was published in 1957, Mr. Greenspan wrote a
letter to The New York Times to counter a critic’s comment that “the book was
written out of hate.” Mr. Greenspan wrote: “ ‘Atlas Shrugged’ is a celebration
of life and happiness. Justice is unrelenting. Creative individuals and
undeviating purpose and rationality achieve joy and fulfillment. Parasites who
persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should.”
Rand’s magazine, The Objectivist, later published several essays by Mr.
Greenspan, including one on the gold standard in 1966.
Rand called “Atlas” a mystery, “not about the murder of man’s body, but about
the murder — and rebirth — of man’s spirit.” It begins in a time of recession.
To save the economy, the hero, John Galt, calls for a strike against government
interference. Factories, farms and shops shut down. Riots break out as food
becomes scarce.
Rand said she “set out to show how desperately the world needs prime movers
and how viciously it treats them” and to portray “what happens to a world
without them.”
In this context, we can see the widest significance of Ayn Rand's literary
and philosophical achievement. She was the first thinker and artist to fully
grasp the meaning of capitalism and the Industrial Revolution and to give them
expression both in literature and in philosophy.
The most radical aspect of Atlas Shrugged is that it is a sweeping,
serious novel of ideas that is based in the business world, the last
place mainstream intellectuals would have thought to regard as the inspiration
for epic drama or profound new ideas. What makes Ayn Rand distinctive is that
she found drama, heroism, and profound philosophical meaning in the achievements
of the entrepreneurs and industrialists who were reshaping the world.
Atlas Shrugged was written in an age of creeping global socialism.
Extrapolating from the trends of the day, Ayn Rand projected a future in which
most of the world's nations are collapsing into the poverty and oppression of
socialist "people's states," while America itself is collapsing under the weight
of increasing government takeover of the economy.
She saw the dramatic potential in asking a single question: what would happen
if the innovative entrepreneurs and businessmen—after decades of being vilified
and regulated—started to disappear? What if the men condemned as parasites who
somehow grow rich by exploiting manual laborers—the whole Marxist view of the
economy—what if those "exploiters" were no longer around? The disappearance of
the world's productive geniuses provides the novel's central mystery, both
factually and intellectually.
[...]
Literarily, she recognized the romanticism in the extraordinary feats of
these business innovators. In Atlas Shrugged this is perhaps best capture
in repeated references to the legend of Nat Taggart, the swashbuckling young
adventurer who founded the railroad for which Dagny Taggart works—a character
based, in part, on the real-life swashbuckling of Commodore Vanderbilt's early
career.
Or consider this passage, from an early chapter of Atlas Shrugged, in
which steel tycoon Hank Rearden reflects on the process by which he invented a
revolutionary new metal alloy.
He did not think of the ten years. What remained of them tonight was
only a feeling which he could not name, except that it was quiet and solemn. The
feeling was a sum, and he did not have to count again the parts that had gone to
make it. But the parts, unrecalled, were there, within the feeling. They were
the nights spent at scorching ovens in the research laboratory at the mills—
—the nights spent in the workshop of his home, over sheets of paper which he
had filled with formulas, then tore up in angry failure—
—the days when the young scientists of the small staff he had chosen to
assist him waited for instructions like soldiers ready for a hopeless battle,
having exhausted their ingenuity, still willing, but silent, with the unspoken
sentence hanging in the air: "Mr. Rearden, it can't be done—
—the metals, interrupted and abandoned at the sudden flash of a new thought,
a thought to be pursued at once, to be tried, to be tested, to be worked on for
months, and to be discarded as another failure—
—the moments snatched from conferences, from contracts, from the duties of
running the best steel mills in the country, snatched almost guiltily, as for a
secret love—
—the one thought held immovably across a span of ten years, under everything
he did and everything he saw, the thought held in his mind when he looked at the
buildings of a city, at the track of a railroad, at the light in the windows of
a distant farmhouse, at the knife in the hands of a beautiful woman cutting a
piece of fruit at a banquet, the thought of a metal alloy that would do more
than steel had ever done, a metal that would be to steel what steel had been to
iron—
—the acts of self-racking when he discarded a hope or a sample, not
permitting himself to know that he was tired, not giving himself time to feel,
driving himself through the wringing torture of: "not good enough…still not good
enough…" and going on with no motor save the conviction that it could be done—
—then the day when it was done and its result was called Rearden Metal—
—these were the things that had come to white heat, had melted and fused
within him, and their alloy was a strange, quiet feeling that made him
smile at the countryside in the darkness and wonder why happiness could hurt.
The central philosophical theme of Atlas Shrugged is Ayn Rand's
demolition of the intellectuals' dichotomy between the high-minded pursuits of
the intellect and the allegedly grubby, un-intellectual world of business and
industry. Ayn Rand's answer to this is provided early in the novel by Francisco
D'Anconia. A flashback shows us Francisco and Dagny Taggart as teenagers combing
through the machinery of a junk yard, to the disapproval of a friend of the
family:
Once, an elderly professor of literature, Mrs. Taggart's friend, saw
them on top of a pile in a junk yard, dismantling the carcass of an automobile.
He stopped, shook his head and said to Francisco, "A young man of your position
ought to spend his time in libraries, absorbing the culture of the world." "What
do you think I'm doing?" asked Francisco.
Later, Dagny's observations about the motors of a railroad locomotive provide
a deeper explanation of this view of the products of industrial capitalism as
testaments to the power of the human mind.
For an instant, it seemed to her that the motors were transparent
and she was seeing the net of their nervous system. It was a net of connections,
more intricate, more crucial than all of their wires and circuits: the rational
connections made by that human mind which had fashioned any one part of them for
the first time.
It is a measure of the success of Atlas Shrugged that this message may
not seem as radical today as it did 50 years ago. With the discrediting of
Marxism and the rise of the "information age," it is now commonplace to
recognize that knowledge is the engine of production—that ideas, more than
physical labor or raw materials, are the primary source of wealth. Yet Ayn Rand
originated this idea during the old industrial age, when the brute muscle power
of union workers was still widely put forward as the source of America's
industrial might.
It may be easier to recognize the central role of the mind when looking at
advances in high technology. But Ayn Rand grasped the role of the mind in
all aspect of business. Late in the novel, Dagny Taggart observes the
reign of Cuffy Meigs—a kind of railroad czar empowered as chief regulator of the
industry—and surveys the havoc that his arbitrary decrees wreak on the rational
planning of private businesses.
She knew that no train schedules could be maintained any longer, no
promises kept, no contracts observed, that regular trains were cancelled at a
moment's notice and transformed into emergency specials sent by unexplained
orders to unexpected destinations—and that the orders came from Cuffy Meigs,
sole judge of emergencies and of the public welfare. She knew that factories
were closing, some with their machinery stilled for lack of supplies that had
not been received, others with their warehouses full of goods that could not be
delivered. She knew that the old industries—the giants who had built their power
by a purposeful course projected over a span of time—were left to exist at the
whim of the moment, a moment they could not foresee or control. She knew that
the best among them, those of the longest range and most complex function, had
long since gone—and those still struggling to produce, struggling savagely to
preserve the code of an age when production had been possible, were now
inserting into their contracts a line shameful to a descendant of Nat Taggart:
"Transportation permitting."
That the central "planning" of government actually consists of the disruption
of rational planning by millions of private individuals is a point that had
already been made by pro-free-market economists like Ludwig von Mises. Ayn Rand
grasped that these economic principle were not dry, academic abstractions, but
dramas played out in the real world—that the laws of economics are a matter of
life and death, of triumph or tragedy. Here, for example, is one episode of the
tragedy that plays out in the novel's later pages:
Six weeks ago, Train Number 193 had been sent with a load of steel,
not to Faulkton, Nebraska, where the Spencer Machine Tool Company, the best
machine tool concern still in existence, had been idle for two weeks, waiting
for the shipment—but to Sand Creek, Illinois, where Confederated Machines had
been wallowing in debt for over a year, producing unreliable goods at
unpredictable times. The steel had been allocated by a directive which explained
that the Spencer Machine Tool Company was a rich concern, able to wait, while
Confederated Machines was bankrupt and could not be allowed to collapse, being
the sole source of livelihood of the community of Sand Creek, Illinois. The
Spencer Machine Tool Company had closed a month ago. Confederated Machines had
closed two weeks later.
The people of Sand Creek, Illinois, had been placed on national relief, but
no food could be found for them in the empty granaries of the nation at the
frantic call of the moment—so the seed grain of the farmers of Nebraska had been
seized by order of the Unification Board—and Train Number 194 had carried the
unplanted harvest and the future of the people of Nebraska to be consumed by the
people of Illinois. "In this enlightened age," Eugene Lawson had said in a radio
broadcast, "we have come, at last, to realize that each one of us is his
brother's keeper."
Atlas Shrugged is about more than capitalism, and Ayn Rand carried her
observation about the role of the rational mind beyond economics into art,
family life, and yes, even sex—where she rejected brute materialism just as
thoroughly as she did in economics. To understand fully the lessons of
capitalism and the Industrial Revolution, she grasped, required that one
understand the validity and life-sustaining power of reason in human
life.
The passage I quoted above also hints at a second philosophical theme that
remains the novel's most revolutionary idea. Altruism—the notion that "each one
of us is his brother's keeper"—is still regarded as practically synonymous with
morality. Yet Atlas Shrugged concretizes the destructive impact of a
moral code based on sacrifice and shows us the virtues of selfishness.
Throughout most of mankind's history, moralists have warned that individuals
driven by "greed" and left free to pursue their self-interest would plunge
society into a destructive war of all against all, a system of brutality,
plunder, and exploitation—precisely the qualities Marx projected onto the new
capitalist system. Instead, capitalism produced a system of freedom,
independence, prosperity, and super-abundant creative energy—while the societies
most thoroughly dedicated to the sacrifice of the individual to the collective,
the 20th century's Communist regimes, were guilty of the greatest crimes ever
recorded.
The lessons of this history were not lost on Ayn Rand, who had escaped from
the Soviet Union to America in the 1920s, experiencing in a brief span the most
complete contrast between opposing social systems. In one of the novel's most
powerful metaphors, a character describes the collapse of the 20th Century Motor
Company, a once-prosperous firm that descended into rancor, petty tyranny, and
economic squalor after its employees voted to adopt a "bold experiment" in
egalitarian socialism. The tale's narrator concludes, "This was the end of the
20th Century." Literally, he is referring to the fate of the company;
symbolically, Ayn Rand uses the story to sum up the moral catastrophe of 20th
century socialism.
As her own answer, Ayn Rand offered a morality of self-interest in which the
individual's central moral goal is the pursuit of his own happiness. As one of
the novel's philosophical speeches expresses it:
For centuries, the battle of morality was fought between those who
claimed that your life belongs to God and those who claimed that it belongs to
your neighbors—between those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for
the sake of ghosts in heaven and those who preached that the good is
self-sacrifice for the sake of incompetents on earth. And no one came to say
that your life belongs to you and that the good is to live it.
Yet Ayn Rand's most radical idea is not merely her defense of
self-interest—others have grudgingly accepted self-interest as a necessary evil,
a "private vice" that makes for "public virtue"—but rather her redefinition of
the moral meaning of self-interest.
Most intellectuals have accepted the old altruist caricature of self-interest
as brute criminality, as if the only choice we face is between forms of
sacrifice: sacrificing ourselves for the sake of others or sacrificing others to
ourselves. Yet this caricature is thoroughly refuted by the history of
capitalism, in which the most self-interested men are not looters or vandals,
but creators who built railroads, steel mills, and computer networks. The
philosophy of altruism gives us a choice between two moral models: Mother
Theresa or Al Capone. Yet where is the room in this philosophy for a Bill Gates,
a Thomas Edison, or any of the thousands of other figures who populate the
history of capitalism, building their own fortunes through the creation
of new ideas and products?
For the first time, Ayn Rand recognized the reality and significance of these
men and drew a profound moral lesson: that genuine self-interest means, not the
short-range conniving of the brute, but the creative thought and productive
effort of the entrepreneur.
These philosophical insights were radical and new—but they were the only
genuine, honest response to the evidence provided by the achievements of
capitalism and the Industrial Revolution. Ayn Rand's detractors sometimes
dismiss her novels as "unrealistic," but it is today's mainstream intellectuals
who seem like they are wandering around in a fog of unreality. Stuck in a battle
between two pre-conceived conventional notions—the religious traditionalism of
the right versus the secular collectivism of the left—they have missed the
monumental lessons of two centuries of history.
The era of encroaching global socialism—the dominant trend when Atlas
Shrugged was written—has since given way to an era of global capitalism. But
the deepest meaning of capitalism and its achievements has still not been widely
understood and embraced. Capitalism is beginning to transform the lives of
billions of people across the globe, from Eastern Europe to India to China. But
there is no one to help them understand what it is, its deepest personal meaning
for their lives and values, and why it is good.
And that is why Atlas Shrugged is, if anything, even more relevant and
more necessary today than it was when it was first published five decades ago.
This is a view of the innovative entrepreneur as a kind of crusader, driven
by a profound commitment to moral excellence.
More than a century earlier, one of the most honest and insightful observers
of America, Alexis de Tocqueville, had recounted the extraordinary exertions and
risk-taking of American merchant sea-captains and concluded that "the Americans
put something heroic into their way of trading." But Tocqueville never really
took this idea seriously or followed its consequences. Ayn Rand did.
When she followed the consequences of this idea, it led her to two crucial
philosophical identifications that Atlas Shrugged introduced to the
world.
Running this Wallace interview again. Watch it over and over and over. love the cigarettes.
Kick back and watch Rand with Mike Wallace; Part I
Part II
Part III
I
swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the
sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
My parents are G-d and Ayn Rand. I forget who said that but it could have been me. 50 Years ago, Atlas Shrugged was published.
If Rand was alive today she would be apoplectic over the appeasement to savages. Her treatise seemed outrageous when she published it. Today, it seems tame in comparison to what is happening in the war on Islamic jihad. But she called it. She called it all.
I often quote Rand, "when you have civilized men fighting savages, you support the civilized men, no matter who they are."
Kick back and watch Rand with Mike Wallace; Part I
Part II
Part III
I
swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the
sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
Much thanks for Tiger Hawk reminding me that Atlas Shrugged turns 50 today. How brilliant, prescient Rand was. She defined my epistemology and helped to teach my how to think, question and deduce. This blog pays tribute everyday - in its very existence.
Rand ought to be required reading starting with We the Living. Throw the leftarded trash out of the classrooms and replace it with the exalted individualism, self reliance, meritocracy. Read all of Tiger's post here; hat tip Larwyn
With that enigmatic opening line,
author-renegade philosopher Ayn Rand began her 1957 novel "Atlas Shrugged,"
which remains a controversial book 50 years after publication.
More than 700,000 copies of Rand's
books sold in 2006, 25 years after her death. Several years ago, when the Modern
Library published readers' choices for the best novels of the 20th century, four
books by Rand made the list: "Atlas Shrugged" (No. 1), "The Fountainhead" (No.
2), "Anthem" (No. 7) and "We the Living" (No. 8).
A survey in 1991 by the
Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club found "Atlas Shrugged" the
second most influential book in the United States. The Bible was
first.
"Centuries
ago, the man who was ”no matter what his errors” the greatest of your
philosophers, has stated the formula defining the concept of existence
and the rule of all knowledge: A is A. A thing is itself. You have
never grasped the meaning of his statement. I am here to complete
it: Existence is Identity, Consciousness is Identification." This passage is part of the radio broadcast
delivered by John Galt to the people of America in Part Three, Chapter
VII.
More on my journey with Atlas.
I came to Atlas Shrugged in a very personal way. Atlas Shrugged was the favorite book of my dearest friend, a brilliant lawyer for the city of New York. A girl who I immediately bonded with at 11 years old and who remained my dearest, most precious friend (of which I have few) until she died of ovarian cancer 8 years ago July 22nd. I owe her more than I could ever say or repay. I loved her unconditionally and she me. She gave me Atlas. Thank you Bonnie.
Alexandra, who encompasses all things beautiful, ran this exquisite post. Watch the video, twice. Mike, the last of a dying breed, sent it to me with this dear note;
One of my buddies stationed with me in England in the early 1970's sent this, then I soon found it on this beautiful blog. My buddy was an F-4 pilot, two tours in Thailand during the Viet Nam war, and four years in England flying for the 78th Tactical Fighter Squadron, 81st Tactical Fighter Wing, RAF's Bentwaters and Woodbridge. I mention this because when I got his email I could just feel that he was hurting to be back in an F-4 flying a low-level mission. I can only dream, and envy him his memories. Even though I was in the Air Force for over 21 years, I was ground-bound, but I worked with the greatest bunch of guys in the world, fighter pilots, and listened to their tales. They were surprisingly quiet and humble, had great self-deprecating senses of humor.
George W. Bush was a fighter pilot, and it shows to his advantage as long as you leave the liberals out.
Strap in tight, turn up the volume, the music is great too, and prepare to use a Mirage as a weed-eater probably somewhere over South Africa.
UPDATE: Wanted share these pics shared with me;
Jay writes;
Noticed a few Air Force fighter jets on your site today. Airshow in
Quebec City last weekend. The Blue Angels and a F15 stole the show with
their incredible acrobatics. The humidity was 98%....notice the
pulverization cloud surrounding the F15...literally, the speed of these
jets can pulverization the H2O molecules....creating this vapour
cloud...
Thnaks Jay, you made my day. The previous Angel Decoy pctures can be viewed here.
Excellent post here, especially for those in search of how to think. (hat tip Eric)
Is this great news or terrible news? Not sure. The thought of the message of Atlas Shrugged making its way to the great unwashed is titillating. The thought of Follywood doing it, is depressing. I was always secretly happy that the left coast hadn't gotten its grubby, collectivist paws over Rand's great gift to the smallest minority of all, the individual. In fairness, they didn't destroy The Fountainhead,......but those were vastly different times.
"The weighty tome focuses on railroad executive Dagny Taggart, who feels crushed
by society's evil shift toward collectivism or something silly like that."
Yeah "something silly" that results in the death of 100 million outside of war. By why quibble with "silly" details. Yeah, that bad, even calling The Fountainhead kid lit (I wish kids were reading it.)
Angelina taking a full page ad in USA today for Darfur. Very cool thing to do, trend glomming.
Photo: Today's New York Post. "Brangelina sizzle under African sun", oyish
UPDATE: Ugh(hat tip Jer)-- She can't be a Randite. You can't be a looter and an individualist, maybe in coddlywood you can - but not in the real world.
Dissident Bush George W. Bush has the courage to speak out
for freedom.
There are two distinct marks of a dissident. First, dissidents are
fired by ideas and stay true to them no matter the consequences. Second, they
generally believe that betraying those ideas would constitute the greatest of
moral failures. Give up, they say to themselves, and evil will triumph. Stand
firm, and they can give hope to others and help change the
world.
Political leaders make the rarest of dissidents. In a
democracy, a leader's lifeline is the electorate's pulse. Failure to be in tune
with public sentiment can cripple any administration and undermine any political
agenda. Moreover, democratic leaders, for whom compromise is critical to
effective governance, hardly ever see any issue in Manichaean terms. In their
world, nearly everything is colored in shades of gray.
This story speaks for itself. The mainstream media will paint Israel in the most impossible, almost demonic light while tenderly, gingerly making love to killers and savages. But the following story really says it all;
On Thursday evening, an Israeli couple gave rides to three hitchhikers. One,
disguised as a religious Jew, was a suicide bomber, who blew himself up in the
car at the entrance to the community of Kedumim. Body parts were hurled dozens
of feet. The car burned for an hour.
What is really at play here? A struggle as old as time. The struggle between good and evil. My dear, brilliant friend and soul mate, Dr. Helen, points to "the involvement in antisemitism involves probably every person through his/her family at one point or another.
What it represents is the struggle between good and evil. The traditional Jew-peaceful, studious, dedicated to procreation, family and life of worship and simplicity. He is concerned with being benevolent hence the Kosher way of killing animals-without suffering. He does not deviate from faith in God and belief that God, if he is good, will take care of him. On the other side is the trayf - the more likely to use physical force, have many wives, or at least does not stay with one family and may beget a few, less concern in procreation rather more concern in pleasure. Kills even for his faith or in the name of his faith. More physical than studious and much less faithful to family and religion.Inflicts pain without remorse and enjoys the disrespect for other living creatures.
Therefore for the strife between good and evil to continue and exist - the fundamental basis and core for this existence the traditional Jew must survive. If he dies the good is gone and evil takes over the world. The struggle must continue as this is the setup and fabric of this world.
The conquering of Israel is in theory. That piece of beach holds no oil, gold, or any other valuable resources. It however, holds the Jewish people.The world knows that getting the land is meaningless, it is getting the Jew that will be the victory for the forces of evil. However, if the Jew dies they die too as their survival depends on this constant struggle because without it they will lose the meaning and purpose of their existence. And so it goes, a never ending struggle which is the very essence of life as we know it."
Hamas
Foreign Minister: "I Dream of a Map without Israel" Palestinian
Minister of Foreign Affairs Mahmoud al-Zahar, a senior Hamas leader who is the
new Palestinian top diplomat, on Saturday defended Hamas' ultimate goal of
destroying Israel and founding an Islamic state. "I dream of hanging a huge map
of the world on the wall at my Gaza home which does not show Israel on it," he
said. "Our dream [is] to have our independent state on all historic Palestine
(including Israel)." "This dream will become real one day. I'm certain of this
because there is no place for the State of Israel on this land," said al-Zahar.
(Xinhua-China)
Here's another analysis you should review. Augean Stables has a remarkable post here on Anti-Semitism: Medieval, Modern and Post-Modern. He has posted the final, Post-Modern.
Ex-left wing goddess, one time Muslim bride, anti-cultural relativist, and as Bat Ye'or called her "daring lover of the truth". I was unfamiliar with Phyllis Chesler until I heard her speak at The The Middle East & Academic Integrity on the American Campus Conference At Columbia University over a year ago. Her remarks blew me away and the more she revealed the louder she was heckled by Pro-Palestinian inciters in the room.
Inciters, thugs - these fools had their phones play
loud music, their walkie talkies go off , but Chesler never flinched, stumbled or faltered. She gave it right back and made sure her story was told. I subsequently have written about her numerous times and strongly recommend you review her extensive body of work. Brave, brilliant, and sagacious, I jumped at the chance to interview her.
in The
Death of Feminism : What's Next in the Struggle for Women's
Freedom, the level
of anti-American and anti-Israeli propaganda and intolerance towards
all those who do not kow-tow to it is fairly monumental on many
feminist list-serv groups. If one does not believe that America
"deserved" 9/11; if one does
not view America as the true "terrorist";
if one does not believe that Arabs and Muslims are being persecuted in
America for "racist" reasons; and if one does not simultaneously
believe that the Jews are "imagining" or "exaggerating" anti-Semitism —
then one is not welcome on such list-serv groups. In fact, I was
literally "purged," Stalinist-style from one such group for my various
pro-America and pro-Israel "Thought Crimes." It was a most instructive
experience.
