"I rob from the thieving poor and give back to the productive rich." And therein

[niyad]

lies the basis of so much of the ugly, upside down bs from the reichwing that we see today. .the virtuous rich, the thieving, grasping, lazy poor. The prosperity gospel. This line comes from "Atlas Shrugged", which I read when I was 16 (yes, printing had been invented by then!!!), and which crossed my mind this morning. Robin Hood, in the scene, is held up as a symbol of ultimate evil, the feudal lords a symbol of virtue, and the serfs and peasants as greedy, grasping, undeserving, lazy and evil.

Is it any wonder that so many on the reich are fans of that book. A perfect justification for all the horror they so cheerfully and sadistically inflict.

[yardwork]

1. That's exactly how this is justified.

[Martin Eden]

2. When Paul Ryan was speaker he made all his staff read Atlas Shrugged

There's a video of Ryan proclaiming Rand's book represented the kind of "morailty" needed in America.

[niyad]

3. Thank you for that grim reminder. And now I have that image of him in his

workout gear in my head. Oh well, I didn't really need to eat breakfast anyway.

[harumph]

4. Atlas Shrugged captures the imagination of "misunderstood" teen boys

...who never grow up. Now apparently, the right wing here and abroad is co-opting Tolkein's work. Meloni when to "hobbit camp."
Ya know, Orcs = dirty immigrants. I've suggested to my fellow DUer's that those of us who are able should craft a philosophically liberal
curriculum for reading/study groups K-12. This has been dismissed or ignored I suppose, due to it's similarity to right wing home
schooling programs and that it implies giving up on the public schools. Yet, I live in a red state and for years now the reading lists of public schools have been shifting rightward.

[lostnfound]

6. I've seen impressive eye-opening curricula in a red state private school and blue state public school

The public school served a quite wealthy version of a ‘Wonder Years’ neighborhood, but the curricula had major emphasis on the less fortunate, the downtrodden, on arts and music, and also on old-fashioned civics. I just ran across the play ‘Raisin in the Sun’, which starts with a Langston Hughes poem and was assigned reading for lit class in 7th or 8th grade — about 10 years ago.

A private catholic school had service projects and food drives and more, but i remember one thoughtful project where they visited a cemetery. It wasn’t putting flags on veterans graves (they did have Veterans Day projects, too). It was an ‘abandoned’ African-American cemetery that needed to be cleaned up, and documented where possible. They helped clear weeds, cleaned headstones / markers with care and documented the graves, using GPS to mark them on a map that was being made, to try to recover the stories of people who had been repeatedly disrespected even to their grave. I’m not describing it well, but it was a good integrated project that was out of the norm. Empathy and an awareness that other people’s lived experiences may be quite different from your own.

[harumph]

8. That kind of thing is where I'd like to go - but offer self guided/parent led material.

I love what you describe about the cemetery project. I remember my daughter was assigned "Atlas Shrugged" by a clearly right wing
reading teacher who celebrated the ideas therein rather than conducting a critical reading. I just about lost my shit.

[spike jones]

11. John Rogers quote.

“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."

[malthaussen]

14. I dunno, I was a misunderstood teenaged boy and Ayn Rand disgusted me...

... come to think, I'm a misunderstood adult boy and Ayn Rand disgusts me.

-- Mal

[Paladin]

5. I was an Ayn Rand fan for about 15 minutes, at the start of my freshman year in college.

Thankfully, I grew out of it shortly thereafter.

FYI, the movie version of "Atlas Shrugged" is better than the novel---but then, I could make the same comparison to the toilet paper in the bathroom down the hall...

[niyad]

7. I didn't know that a movie had been made of it. I did know about "The

Fountainhead", which I understand was perfectly dreadful.

[Paladin]

18. My mistake.

There is in fact a multi-part film version of "Atlas Shrugged," but I haven't wasted any time on it. I was thinking of the 1949 movie of "The Fountainhead," with Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal---my comments as to the flick being better than the book still stand. Hey, if you've pissed away time on any of Rand's books, you might as well have pissed away time on them all. Glad I weaned myself off of those tributes to money-grubbing and selfishness when I was young...

[Fichefinder]

13. I think everyone was

[Ilsa]

9. lI lost a friend over those stupid books.

She stopped being a compassionate person and turned into a persecutor of the poor and those less able. Even people with higher IQs can turn into assholes.

[Midnight Writer]

10. Same here.

[paleotn]

12. What they don't get is people many times end up where they are....

not by some mistake or character flaw. But simply because the universe's great wheel of fortune did not smile on them. Probabilities. The birth lottery. All that Atlas Sucked screed was just the sociopaths covering for their own disgusting, character flaws. Deep down, they know they suck and have to compensate. That's also why every time some narcissistic Wall Street type gets stupid and "blows up", an angel gets their wings.

[odins folly]

15. I came across her via Rush

2112 was based partially on Anthem, I read that book the looked at other books I think Atlas was one of them. Tried to read it but determined early on it was nothing but drival bullshit. I was 15 or 16, but didn't get pulled in because of said bullshit...

[GiqueCee]

16. Alisa Rosenbaum's...

... two door-stop novels were so similar in plot and characters that they could have been one cinder block of a book called, Fountainhead Shrugged. A cinder block would have been more interesting to read.
Ayn Rand was a 3rd-rate writer, but she was a Russian extolling the supposed virtues of predatory capitalism at the height of the Cold War, so Republicans adored her.
In every public appearance she ever made, she fulminated in rage at the concepts of altruism and empathy. Sound familiar? Musk undoubtedly indulged in autoerotic fantasies with her works until his palms got hairy and he needed glasses.
The mercifully short, The Virtue of Selfishness, scraped the bottom of her cesspool of creativity. It belonged in an outhouse, hanging from a string, with most of its pages missing . I only read so much of her drivel because my employers back in the sixties were movers and shakers in the Objectivist community in Boston, and I was strongly encouraged to pollute my mind with her books and essays.
She died collecting Social Security and food stamps. Sadly, there are still deluded people that admire her. Go figure.

[SomedayKindaLove]

20. I can see

Musk being a kind of gender fluid Howard Rourke of “The Fountainhead”.

What the social Darwinists never understood is that Darwin mentions “survival of the fittest” only once in “Origins of the Species”. About 150 times in the book he mentions the need for love in order to continue as a species.

[Mr.Bee]

17. Atlas Shrugged

Ayn Rand is dancing in her grave!

[Mblaze]

19. It's time for those "productive rich" exploiters

To emulate John Galt and find a hidden valley somewhere to relocate and take their genius away from the rest of us as punishment. That'll teach us.

[Shipwack]

21. I read a parody comic strip about this.

Alas, I can’t find it now. It begins with the “geniuses” of the Gulch celebrating how smart they are and how much they can achieve now that they are no longer chained down by lazy corrupt “takers”.

It ends with everyone panicking because they realize that no one brought any food, and none know how to make a sandwich…

[Mblaze]

22. Good one

They did have all the Reardon steel they could use. Too bad they couldn't eat it. 😀

[niyad]

24. Think the Malheur Preserve insanity.

[Ocelot II]

30. See post #28.

[haele]

31. Bob the Angry Flower...

And I'm pretty sure Cracked and Mad have done parodies over the years.

[Shipwack]

34. That's the one I was thinking of!

I knew it was a regular comic, and that the punchline was delivered by a non human, but couldn’t remember the details.

Thank you!

https://www.angryflower.com/348.html

[lame54]

23. Robbin' Pointy Hood

[niyad]

25. Good one.

[Hey Joe]

26. Fairytales

Read Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead when I was 18 as someone suggested them to me. As someone who was raised poor they did not exactly resonate with me .
Years later I came by a copy of The Virtues of Selfishness and curious about the title,( how can selfishness even be a virtue?), I began reading it. Didn’t get a third of the way through and put it away. Claiming selfishness as something positive or good for anyone is sick.

[LoisB]

27. I tried reading Atlas Shrugged many years ago (only because the book was given to me) but

was not able to get through it.

[Ocelot II]

28. I am reminded of this perfect cartoon:

[niyad]

29. Oh my word! Perfect, indeed!

[malaise]

32. One of the best Dem ads ever

Needs an update with Johnson and Slobby

[niyad]

33. I had forgotten that one.