"Ayn Rand had it completely wrong."

[kpete]

[treestar]

1. Probably never thought about how the US constitution is "statist"

and "collectivist."

[librechik]

2. At my grandson's HS graduation, everyone got to give him a piece of advice for college (Harvard!)

I said "whatever you do, don't get involved with Ayn Rand" I got a couple of Yeaaahs! for that.

He has graduated from college now. I hope he took that to heart.

[Paladin]

5. College students have a bad habit of going through a Rand phase.

Mine was thankfully short and long ago (and yes, there was a young lady involved). Hope your grandson avoids Rand altogether.

[GopherGal]

6. There's a quote about Atlas Shrugged:

“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."

[Kung Fu Monkey -- Ephemera, blog post, March 19, 2009]”

― John Rogers

[link:https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/366635-there-are-two-novels-that-can-change-a-bookish-fourteen-year|]

[Paladin]

7. Good one.

So glad I walked away from Rand, early in life. As if the world needs more selfishness, money worship, and shitty writing.

[Warpy]

17. That's the best summary I've read

I did kick and claw my way through her rubbish, although I readily admit I skipped a lot of the polemics that passed for conversation in "Atlas Shrugged." Once I'd read the first five page screed, the rest were redundant.


My favorite is the Angry Flower cartoon:

[Paladin]

47. Love it! (nt)

[Whatthe_Firetruck]

75. My copy had a big paperclip containing "the speech"...

... And my story comprehenion didn't falter a bit. Granted I was in high school, but I was an advanced connoisseur of quality science fiction, and I could feel the plot screech to a halt during the speech. Worse, it was boring with no dialogue tags to speak of.

[Warpy]

79. Obviously we noticed the same thing

The plot was as thin as tissue paper, made even thinner since I'd absorbed a lot of knowledge from my metallurgist mother and her mentor, a deputy director at the Bureau of Standards. The novel appealed to me because I was a lightning fast reader and it was a thick one. Alas, once I discovered the silly plot was only a vehicle for the prolonged sermons with little else to recommend it, I soldiered through to the end, which I remember was anticlimactic.

She really was an execrable writer and a worse philosopher, logic based on faulty premises. GIGO.

[Delphinus]

33. Ooh,

that is *so* good!

[Hekate]

46. Outstanding! I was just about to paste in that quote when I saw you already had done so...

“The other, of course, involves orcs.”

[regnaD kciN]

37. A young lady in college was involved in my case, too...

…we got along great for the first few months, until she decided to share with me “the greatest philosopher who ever lived.” I read the first chapter of, I believe, We The Living, and had the immediate reaction “this is the worst-written drivel I’ve ever seen.” Needless to say, our relationship never recovered…

[calimary]

80. I've never been that impressed with Ayn Rand.

I’m still not sure what all the fuss is/was about.

[ExWhoDoesntCare]

55. Sheesh. I thought that was a secondary school thing

All of the liberturdians I ever ran across read her idiot screed before uni, not after.

[Paladin]

63. Sue me, I came by my Rand loathing a little late. (nt)

[ExWhoDoesntCare]

70. It wasn't meant as a slam.

If you didn't learn about it until uni, then I envy how you were lucky enough to have more time to be unaware of that form of stupid, which means less time to be aggrieved by it afterwards.

It's one ignorance that really is bliss.

Not all of us have been so lucky.

[Paladin]

76. Mine wasn't meant as a slam, either.

All these years she's been dead, and Ayn Rand is still fucking with us.

[FakeNoose]

11. Hah! When I was in college everybody was reading Kurt Vonnegut

I don't think any of my cohorts gave two spits for Ayn Rand. She'd already been discredited and discarded by my Boomer group (late 60's, early 70's).

[ShazzieB]

42. When I was in college (early 70s), it was The Lord of the Rings.

Vonnegut was big, too. If anyone was reading Ayn Rand, I wasn't aware of it.

[appalachiablue]

50. Amen ++

[Warpy]

65. I'm an old Boomer and I can remember a few high school classmates

reading The Fountainhead, probably her most accessible book, and thinking they'd discovered a new morality. They got their sense of humor back when they attempted reading her other books.

By the time I hit college, if she had any diehard devotees, they knew enough to keep quiet about it for fear of getting laughed at.

[Poiuyt]

3. She wrote a book called The Virtue of Selfishness

That says it all for me

[Freddie]

4. At the end of her life she took her SS and Medicare

Yes, the virtue of selfishness

[CousinIT]

8. Tell ya what...my MAGA relatives are FIRST in line for any so-called "socialism"

And first to sign their kids up for it too if/when eligible.

They just don't think those "other" people should get it.

[Meadowoak]

22. After making a living railing against them for 40 years. She was

A phony, a fraud, and a hypocrite.

[Meadowoak]

26. She signed up for SS and medicare under her husband's name, which she never used,

So as to conceal her identity. Hipocrite.

[DownriverDem]

9. Many of those Ayn Rand folks

were reagan lovers. Now they are trumpers. Total selfish idiots who missed the "Common Good" part of who we are.

[EYESORE 9001]

10. I read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged in late adolescence

I recognized it as codswollop, yet continued to read it. When at sea, I read voraciously. Fortunately, it didn’t warp my little mind.

[Meadowoak]

25. If they want to ban books that children shouldn't read, there's

Two. Start with them.

[Farmer-Rick]

29. Well, there is that rape scene in Fountainhead

That should upset those pearl clutching Evangelicals.

But it strongly implies the victim wanted it and was to blame so it kind a goes along with those hate filled Christian misogynists.

[DBoon]

51. why ban books that are impossible to read?

I wouldn't even assign Atlas Shrugged for students in detention as punishment

[ExWhoDoesntCare]

56. I couldn't get past the first few pages.

I usually know within 3 pages if a book will be good, but, just in case, I usually make myself go 3 chapters. Every now and then a book surprises me when it needs a longer opening salvo. Not often. But sometimes.

Like that twit who wrote Twilight, I couldn't force myself to go past the 3 pages. It was that awful, in every way. A few skips into later chapters, and I realized: It never gets better. It's going to be utter dreck, start to finish.

Thank goodness it was a library book, because I didn't need the aggro of returning it to a store. Yes, I return books if they're awful. I'll admit it takes a really bad one to have me do that, but I will never endure having something foul stinking up my home with its presence.

[Hekate]

12. KnR

[OMGWTF]

13. Zombie-eyed granny starver Paul Ryan required his staff to read "Atlas Shrugged"

[TexasBushwhacker]

23. When he was 16, his father dropped dead of a heart attack

Paul received SS survivors benefits for 2 years. His grandmother, who had Alzheimer's, moved in with his family. Did Paul stick around, go to a local college, and stay to help care for her? Fuck no! He went to college in OHIO.

[Demnation]

14. Russian immigrant Ayn Rand, the poster-child icon of penis envy.

[Turbineguy]

15. It seems to me

that she took communism and just turned it upside down. Which isn't really the answer either.

[Igel]

18. She was harshly treated and not quite right after years

of being in a strongly socialist state.

We call it "communist" and those it called themselves "communists" but they also all said that communism way off, they were building socialism.

[TygrBright]

30. LOL... nothing "socialist" about the USSR except the name. Pure totalitarianism. n/t

[Farmer-Rick]

32. Yeah, they were building towards socialism

But Stalin kind of diverted it into totalitarianism. Seems Putin has brought it back to totalitarianism with a very capitalist bent.

[Yoyoyo77]

53. State socialism. It really is different, there many different degrees of government involvement in the

many, different variants of governments in our world.

[Snackshack]

16. Of course she did...

And anyone who still buys into her bullshit is an idiot and pretty lazy too because a simple search will show that for all of her bluster and psycho talk in the end she put her hand out for government support as far as she fucking could while still telling everyone else to stand on their own 2 feet and that whole bootstrap bullshit the gop salivates over.

🖕her, the damage she did is incalculable, it’s good she’s dead. Just like it will be when Americas biggest traitor and worst president ever follows suit.

[patphil]

19. Selfishness doesn't support the concept of survival of the species.

It only works for individuals who exist in a framework where the vast majority of people work together for the good of the whole.

If "I, me, me, mine" is the rule, then who provides that which you selfishly feel you are entitled to?

Spock was right, "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one".

[Midnight Writer]

24. Absolutely. Mankind survived against bigger, stronger rivals by being smart and working together.

Our greatest survival skill is the ability to band together and work as a team for the common good.

[Beartracks]

20. The "freedom" Republicans always shout about...

... is not the same as the Liberty espoused by the Founding Fathers.

===========

[Ohioboy]

21. The COVID pandemic and related worker shortages proved Ayn Rand completely wrong

In her novel "Atlas Shrugged" Rand imagined that society would suffer greatly if all the CEOs, owners, and managers gave up and said "Average Working Stiff, you're on your own. We're outa here".

During COVID the essential workers weren't the CEOs and managers . They were the average workers who became necessary. During the worker shortage (which still may be going on) the "help wanted" signs weren't advertising for managers and CEOs to save the day; they were/are requesting help from everyday workers, the ones that keep things going.

I always thought Rand's books were too long, and too full of crap.

[BlueIn_W_Pa]

72. The big message is

that the CEO, and all those Rand-types were narcissists,

and didn't realist that capitalism works both ways.

There are 10 people willing to take the place of those who bail out.

THEY ARE REPLACEABLE just as their workers are

[relayerbob]

27. Figured this out 50 years ago

Made it half-way through one of her books and literally threw it in the trash (which I NEVER do) because it was so bad. Why would anyone pay attention to her .... utterly worthless crap.

[Uncle Joe]

28. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread kpete

[JCMach1]

31. A Social Contract is always both... She was dead wrong and dangerously

Short sighted

[electric_blue68]

34. I heard of her around college years. But bc of what she espoused...

I didn't even bother reading her.

[rickford66]

35. In my s/w headers at work I used to list John Galt as the author.

I doubt anyone looked closely anyway.

[Farmer-Rick]

36. She was a sociopath who admired a serial killer. Like Trump.

She admired Hickman who abducted, held for ransome and decapitated a young girl. Hickman then threw the head at the father after he stole the ransome from the father. This is the monster Ayn Rand modeled one of her heroes after.

She wrote about Hickman, after he was arrested for the murdered of a 12 year old girl; "Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should," she wrote, gushing that Hickman had "no regard whatsoever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. He has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel 'other people.'"

https://www.learnreligions.com/ayn-rand-sociopath-who-admired-serial-killer-3975225

Good description of the feelings of a sociopath and Trump. Because of this lack of understanding for other people, they also can never feel love. She is giving away some of her own psychology when she describes Hickman.

[dchill]

38. My considered review of "Atlas Shrugged..."

I shrugged.

[albacore]

39. Ayn Rand's books are popular with young males ....

... who have yet to have their first non-self-induced orgasm.

[Mme. Defarge]

40. I read Ayn Rand at an impressionable age

and was not impressed.

[RANDYWILDMAN]

41. she was a total hypocrite anyways

and I can spot closet republicans who claim independence but have this idiot's books on their shelves

[Stargleamer]

43. She was also completely wrong about who the moochers are

they are the Kochs, Waltons, etc.

[Martin68]

44. Well....duh!

[milestogo]

45. DUH.

[Hekate]

48. "Not a book to be tossed aside lightly; it should be hurled with great force." attrib Dorothy Parker

[ExWhoDoesntCare]

60. Well, tossing it lightly would have proved difficult

Given how much they weighed.

The only people who write fiction that long are either exceptionally talented.

Or exceptional bores.

Rand was the latter.

[Mr.Bill]

49. Whenever someone brings her up,

I just say I don't have time to read fiction.

[ExWhoDoesntCare]

59. What's wrong with fiction?

Reading fiction teaches empathy--and a bunch of other stuff, too.

The problem with Rand isn't that she wrote fiction. It's that she wrong stupid and awful fiction.

[Mr.Bill]

61. It's just a quick one-liner to tell them

Rand writes fiction, which many of them don't realize. At least they don't think so, the way they talk. I say the same thing about the bible, too.

Actually, I prefer history, political current events and biographies, but that's just me. There is nothing wrong with fiction.

[ExWhoDoesntCare]

71. They know it's fiction.

Just like the freaky Tolkien fans or Trekkies know what they like is fiction, even if the way they talk about it sounds like they think it's all real. Overinvestment in a fictional work, or wanting it to be real, isn't the same thing as confusing fiction from non, though.

I've crossed paths with enough of the libercontrarian crowd to know they're aware her fiction books are just that. I suppose a rare one might have some kind of inability to deal with reality (schizophrenia), but I doubt it's the norm. Then again, I know a Gone with the Wind fan who thinks Scarlett and Rhett really did exist.

So I guess it can happen with any book that makes a strong impression on someone whose wiring isn't up to code.

[Mr.Bill]

73. "wiring isn't up to code"

I like that one.

[Faux pas]

52. Kickin'

[ExWhoDoesntCare]

54. Ayn Rand was an evil psychopath

She *admired* serial killers like Ed Gein and what's-his-name Hickman and exalted them as ideal men.

Seriously.

Thanks to celerity for reminding me about her excessive fondness for Hickman. I kept trying to think of his name, and it was escaping me.

[Jakes Progress]

57. ayn rand is full of shit

It only takes one minute and a moral center to know that.

[John1956PA]

58. RW websites extoll her rubbish and get MAGAs to feel . . .

. . intellectually superior if they can recite a few of her arguments. Last week, I heard a MAGA at a breakfast diner exuberantly preaching her rubbish to his table guest. He was about seventy years old. The RW indoctrinators know the importance of giving the disgruntled members of our society something they can latch onto so that they can feel intellectually and politically empowered.

[liberalla]

62. Excellent!

[BlueIdaho]

64. Maybe that's why she died virtually alone and a pauper

Dependent on Social Security to survive. Thanks god for Social Security and to hell with Ayn Rand.

[Upthevibe]

66. Kick. N/T

[Marcuse]

67. Nt

[Xolodno]

68. Never understood why they took this idiot's writings as gospel.

Writes a bunch of fiction and people transform it to an economic system and think it will work just like the fiction. SMH. I never went through the "phase" as I was Econ major and got my degree in it.

But, there is a lot of stupid people out there, I once quoted Adam Smith and someone I know said it was "socialist". I responded "The father of capitalism in your words a socialist?!". Yeah, he didn't own a liberal that day.

If someone proports Any Rand, you should try to sell them a bridge.

[elias7]

69. Kind of a Trump prototype, she justifies being an a**hole

That’s what everyone loves about her when they read the fountainhead in high school. It justified selfishness

[ChuckInMO]

74. Just a large collection of wasted words

Atlas Shrugged was stupid science fiction and bad soft porn interlaced with perverse economics. Why on earth this evolved into a movement only proves fools are easily fooled.

[JT45242]

77. Reading rev barber book on the moral Monday movement...1868 NC constitution

Quoted amendment to the NC 1868 constitution...

Section 2. That all political power is vested in and derived from the people; all government of right originates from the people, is founded upon their will only, and is instituted solely for the good of the whole.

Hard to believe, that is where the Republican party was in 1868...contrast that with where it was in 1968 or 2018.

Rand was an asshat, loved by those who were born rich and privileged or those who want to be rich and privileged and aren't worried about any moral limitations that might keep them from getting what they want, when they want it.

Rand is basically Veruca Salt from Charlie and the chocolate factory with a better vocabulary and an editor who wouldn't say no to thousands of pages of crap.

[alterfurz]

78. take it from Randian Satanist Paul Ryan...