(http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/images/2007/10/05/atlas_top2.jpg)
Atlas Shrugged is in active development by Baldwin Entertainment Group and Lions Gate Entertainment. Based on Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged, a two-part draft screenplay written by James V. Hart was developed into a 127-page screenplay by writer-director Randall Wallace.
(http://img.tfd.com/wiki/3/32/Ayn_Rand1.jpg)
Angelina Jolie has been confirmed to play the role of Dagny Taggart, and there are discussions with Russell Crowe to play the part of Hank Rearden. Brad Pitt is rumored to be cast in a yet unspecified role. Both Jolie and Pitt are fans of Rand's works. The role of the mysterious John Galt is likely to be played by an unknown. Vadim Perelman (House of Sand and Fog) is confirmed to direct. Lions Gate Entertainment has picked up worldwide distribution rights. The film is expected to be released in 2009.
Dagny Taggart will be played by Angelina Jolie
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/48/Jolie.png/220px-Jolie.png)
Dagny is Vice-President in Charge of Operations at Taggart Transcontinental. She is the female heroic character, and those in the know understand that she is the one who really runs the railroad.
Feminists have long been divided in their attitudes to the character. She is manifestly a strong, assertive woman who seeks and succeeds in having a major career in business - an idea which was far more daring at the time of writing than at present. She is the one and only female business executive in her environment, all the many colleagues and rivals which she encounters throughout the long book being exclusively male. Being born into the rich and powerful Taggart family enabled her ascension to her position at the railroad and in society (inasmuch as she actually participated in societal functions), but she still had to work hard to achieve her intellectual and professional status and to become as wholly capable as she was; all previous Taggart women (including Dagny's 19th century namesake) had confined themselves to traditional female roles.
Despite her running the railroad, her brother remains the figurehead, while she receives little to no credit from most of her colleagues. (There is a specific mention of the press attributing the success of the John Galt Line to James Taggart, who had done nothing but obstruct it, while Dagny's superhuman efforts are ignored).
As against the above, feminists have often criticised the description of Dagny Taggart's appearance at the Reardens' anniversary party: "…the diamond band on the wrist of her naked arm gave her the most feminine of all aspects: the look of being chained." (It has been pointed out that this scene is, however, described from Lillian Rearden's point of view, not Ayn Rand's). Dagny, while otherwise invariably strong and assertive, seems, in some scenes, to have a submissive attitude to the men in her life. This is manifested both in Hank Rearden's ability to subdue and soften her with gifts and in sexual encounters in which the men use physical violence which Dagny seems to enjoy. Dagny's relationship with Rearden involves elements of bondage, with one scene in which she is described as enjoying his treating her as a slave "whose consent is not needed" when she is being undressed and intimately touched.
Russell Crowe will play the part of Industrialist Hank Reardon
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/39/RussellCroweOct05.jpg/220px-RussellCroweOct05.jpg)
He is the founder of Rearden Steel and the inventor of Rearden Metal, a form of metal stronger than steel. Scientists in the real world have yet to duplicate this feat.
He lives in Philadelphia with his wife Lillian, his brother Philip, and his elderly mother Gertrude, all of whom he supports. Gwen Ives is his secretary.
The character of Hank Rearden has two important roles to play. First, he is aware that there is something wrong with the world but is unsure of what it is. Rearden is guided toward an understanding of the solution through his friendship with Francisco d'Anconia, who does know the secret, and by this mechanism the viewer is also prepared to understand the secret when it is revealed explicitly
Brad Pitt will play an as yet unreleased character, (my guess is Ragnar Dammerskjold...although there are rumors that he will play John Galt.)
(http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/54/039_44145~Brad-Pitt-Posters.jpg)
He is world famous as a pirate. Ragnar was from Norway, the son of a bishop and the scion of one of Norway's most ancient, noble families. He attended Patrick Henry University and became friends with John Galt and Francisco d'Anconia, while studying under Hugh Akston and Robert Stadler. When he became a pirate, he was disowned and excommunicated. There is a price on his head in Norway, Portugal, Turkey.
Ragnar seizes relief ships that are being sent from the United States to Europe. As the story progresses, Ragnar begins, for the first time, to become active in American waters, and is even spotted in Delaware Bay. Reportedly, his ship is better than any available in the fleets of the world's navies.
People assume that as a pirate he simply takes the seized goods to himself. However, while many other characters take pride in making a personal profit from the proceeds of their creativity, Danneskjöld's motivation is to restore to other creative people the money which was in his view unjustly taken away from them - specifically, their income tax payments.
For that purpose, Danneskjöld maintains a network of informants in the US Internal Revenue Service (and possibly also those of other countries) who provide him with detailed copies of the tax receipts; among other talents, Danneskjöld is mentioned as being a skilled accountant.....
For other characters of the Novel, Here is a great (although dry) listing of all of them from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characters_in_Atlas_Shrugged
Atlas Shrugged has been in "development hell" for 35 years. In 1972, Albert S. Ruddy approached Ayn Rand to produce a cinematic adaptation of Atlas Shrugged. Rand insisted on having final script approval, to which Ruddy would not agree. Consequently the project was shelved.
Rand received other offers and in 1978 Henry and Michael Jaffe negotiated a deal for an eight-hour miniseries on NBC. Michael Jaffe hired screenwriter Sterling Silliphant to adapt the novel and he obtained approval from Rand on the final script. However, in 1979 with Fred Silverman’s rise as president of NBC, the project was scrapped.
Rand, a former Hollywood screenwriter herself, began writing her own screenplay but died in 1982 with only a third of it finished. She left her estate to her student Leonard Peikoff who sold an option to Michael Jaffe and Ed Snider. Peikoff would not approve the script and the deal fell through.
In 1992 investor and Objectivist John Aglialoro bought an option to produce the film, paying Peikoff over $1 million for full creative control.
In 1999, under Aglialoro’s sponsorship, Albert Ruddy negotiated a deal with TNT for a four-hour miniseries but the project was killed after the AOL Time Warner merger. After the TNT deal fell through Howard and Karen Baldwin obtained the rights while running Phillip Anschutz's Crusader Entertainment. The Baldwins left Crusader and formed Baldwin Entertainment Group taking the rights to Atlas Shrugged with them. Michael Burns of Lions Gate approached the Baldwins to fund and distribute Atlas Shrugged. Baldwin Entertainment Group purchased the film rights in 2003.
Pretty conservative(politically) for Hollywood. A great story I think could be a good movie.
I cant wait for this to come out, Angelina Jolie is perfect for this part
QuoteCheck out Mike Wallace's oxen sized wooden cross hanging around his neck.
I think that's actually a microphone. It looks as if Ayn is wearing the same setup and it looks like they're both taking them off after the interview.
I find Ayn Rand a fascinating personality in an unsettling sort of way. The human psyche consists of many facets that we all, as humans, possess for survival. Each of us possesses these traits in different degrees and develop them according to our genetics and social environment. Ayn has adopted the super ego as the dominant and only trait that humans should live by to the expense of all others. There is no doubt that the super ego in humans has produced great accomplishments in the history of mankind. Unfortunately, it has also produced some of the worst disasters. Ayn states that when the super ego begins to force it's ideas on others then it becomes unacceptable. I believe this is where Ayn misunderstands or ignores other facets of human nature because it is those other human traits that she considers weakness that keep the super ego in check in normal human beings.
This is a book too long unread by yours truly. Shame on buckethead.
Off to the bookstore...
Bucket, I am just finishing rereading it. I first read it about 20 years ago. I am amazed at how much more I get from it now than I did then. While her characters are over the top, and she can be verbose at getting to her point, the read is well worth it. I have 200 pages to go.
Dammit! If bucket is gonna pick it up and read it I feel compelled to do so myself. Damn you buckethead! :)
Here is a line from the book that I find interesting
QuoteWhenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values... Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it becomes marked: 'Account Overdrawn.
I actually find Francisco's speech on money to be very interesting.
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=1826 (http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=1826)
Quote"Francisco's Money Speech"
by Ayn Rand (August 30, 2002)
The following is an excerpt from Atlas Shrugged, © Copyright, 1957, by Ayn Rand. It is reprinted with permission from the Estate of Ayn Rand.
"So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Anconia. "Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?
"When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears not all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor--your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money, Is this what you consider evil?
"Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions--and you'll learn that man's mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.
"But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made--before it can be looted or mooched--made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.'
"To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss--the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery--that you must offer them values, not wounds--that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best that your money can find. And when men live by trade--with reason, not force, as their final arbiter--it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgment and highest ability--and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?
"But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality--the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.
"Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants: money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he's evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil?
"Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth--the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one, would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve the mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?
"Money is your means of survival. The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men's vices or men's stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment's or a penny's worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you'll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? Is this the root of your hatred of money?
"Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money?
"Or did you say it's the love of money that's the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money--and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it.
"Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.
"Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another--their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.
"But money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or to keep it. Men who have no courage, pride or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich--will not remain rich for long. They are the natural bait for the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt--and of his life, as he deserves.
"Then you will see the rise of the men of the double standard--the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money--the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law--men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims--then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.
"Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion--when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing--when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors--when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you--when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice--you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that is does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.
"Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked, 'Account overdrawn.'
"When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, 'Who is destroying the world? You are.
"You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it's crumbling around you, while you're damning its life-blood--money. You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your cities. Throughout men's history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, whose names changed, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor. That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves--slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody's mind and left unimproved for centuries. So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer, Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers--as industrialists.
"To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money--and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man's mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being--the self-made man--the American industrialist.
"If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose--because it contains all the others--the fact that they were the people who created the phrase 'to make money.' No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity--to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words 'to make money' hold the essence of human morality.
"Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters' continents. Now the looters' credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide-- as, I think, he will.
"Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns--or dollars. Take your choice--there is no other--and your time is running out."
The above is an excerpt from Atlas Shrugged, © Copyright, 1957, by Ayn Rand. It is reprinted with permission from the Estate of Ayn Rand.
I found the book boring and repetitive, and could only make it 3/4 of the way through before I gave up. But to each his own...
I liked this one better: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041386/
Apparently the movie is about to be released. I got an email from FreedomWorks (one of the Tea Party groups) yesterday announcing a screening:
Quote
Friday, February 04, 2011
Visit the Official Atlas Shrugged Movie Web Site
In 1957 when Ayn Rand published Atlas Shrugged, a dystopian novel about a world in which the burden of government over the producers of society grew too great, it quickly became one of the most influential works in literary history. Ever since the book's release, fans have been clamoring for Atlas Shrugged to finally make it to the silver screen. Well, the wait is over.
Visit the Official Atlas Shrugged Movie Web Site.
http://www.atlasshruggedpart1.com/ (http://www.atlasshruggedpart1.com/)
FreedomWorks is excited to announce that we will be screening the world premiere of the Atlas Shrugged movie trailer at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on February 11th. The trailer will also be available on the film's website on the same day!
With Part 1 of the film adaptation set to hit theatres on April 15, I urge you to spread the word about this inspirational film to family, friends and your network of grassroots activists. Don't miss out on this important opportunity to learn more about the philosophy of individual liberty!
http://action.freedomworks.org/email/view/956/ (http://action.freedomworks.org/email/view/956/)
I was doing a little internet research about her and found this on Wikipedia:
QuoteAlthough she had long opposed government assistance programs, she eventually accepted Social Security and Medicare payments for herself, under the assumed name of "Ann O'Connor", and her husband as well. A July 1998 interview with Ewa Joan Pryor, a New York state social worker, conducted in 1998 by the Ayn Rand Institute, revealed that Pryor assisted the two with filing claims for government assistance.
I was a little surprised to see Freedom Works embracing a movie by Ayn Rand because her philosphy is contrary to the Christian beliefs held by most Tea Partiers:
QuoteRand developed an integrated philosophical system called "Objectivism." Its essence is "the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."
As an atheist who rejected faith as antithetical to reason, Rand embraced philosophical realism and opposed all forms of what she regarded as mysticism and supernaturalism, including every organized religion. Rand wrote in her journals that Christianity was "the best kindergarten of communism possible." Rand argued for rational egoism (rational self-interest), as the only proper guiding moral principle. The individual should "exist for his own sake," she wrote in 1962, "neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayn_Rand (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayn_Rand)
Not that surprising Doug, the right-winger christians are generally the least christian people around.
Quote from: ChriswUfGator on February 05, 2011, 04:08:22 PM
Not that surprising Doug, the right-winger christians are generally the least christian people around.
However, they seem to be the most vocal about their religion and protecting their religious rights. If Ayn had her way there would certainly never be commandments in the courtroom, prayer in school or 'In God We Trust' on money.
Can't wait to see it!
perfect for Libertarian date night!
^^ If it makes it to theaters. :D
Below are the local theatres that will be showing the movie. It comes out April 15.
Quote
Jacksonville
5 Points Theatre
1028 Park Street, Jacksonville, FL 32204
Cinemark Tinseltown and XD
4535 Southside Blvd, Jacksonville, FL 32216
Regal Beach Boulevard 18
14051 Beach Blvd, Jacksonville, FL 32250
Orange Park
AMC Orange Park 24
1910 Wells Road, Orange Park, FL 32073
http://www.atlasshruggedpart1.com/theaters (http://www.atlasshruggedpart1.com/theaters)
Quote from: urbanlibertarian on April 10, 2011, 01:02:18 PM
Below are the local theatres that will be showing the movie. It comes out April 15.
Quote
Jacksonville
5 Points Theatre
1028 Park Street, Jacksonville, FL 32204
Cinemark Tinseltown and XD
4535 Southside Blvd, Jacksonville, FL 32216
Regal Beach Boulevard 18
14051 Beach Blvd, Jacksonville, FL 32250
Orange Park
AMC Orange Park 24
1910 Wells Road, Orange Park, FL 32073
http://www.atlasshruggedpart1.com/theaters (http://www.atlasshruggedpart1.com/theaters)
Now I understand why they changed Tax Day.
I notice the trailer says "Part 1". Is it going to be like the Harry Potter movie in two parts?
Man, I was really looking forward to this, but the movie is just being ripped to shreds by critics. Most cite poor acting, wooden dialogue, and a low budget feel. Rotten Tomatoes currently has the film at a 6%, which is shockingly bad.
A real shame.
Still might see it though.
I am going to be at the Tinseltown theater for the 7:45PM showing! Anyone else going?
I'm going to 5 Points at 7:10. I really hope it doesn't suck.
We now interrupt this discussion for a shameless plug:
Don't forget - the 5 Points Theatre has six beers on tap, including offerings from Bold City and Intuition, plus wine, Pizza Palace pizza and fresh brownies!
I hope MetroJacksovillians will choose us over the mutli-plex if they see Atlas Shrugged.
Showtimes tonight and tomorrow at 5, 7:15 and 9:30 pm, and Sunday at 5:15 and 7:30 pm.
As much as I respect Ayn Rand's writing abilities, had she stuck around to see how her philosophies have been so utterly twisted to the point of being unrecognizable from what she most likely meant when she wrote them, she would probably be putting her head in an oven a la Sylvia Plath.
Today, Maureen Dowd released a pretty good op-ed (http://"http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/opinion/17dowd.html?_r=3&ref=opinion") detailing the ridiculousness of the current fervor over her writings and summed it up pretty nicely with this...
QuoteShe wrote about Nietzschean superheroes who made things. She died before capitalism evolved into a vampire casino where you could bet against investments you sold to your clients, and make money off something you didn’t own or that existed only on paper.
The sexy Manichean ’toons in the novels of the goddess of capitalism don’t behave unethically. When they blow up things, it’s because they will not be sacrificial victims to evil second-raters.
Greed had a less ennobling effect on real genius capitalists. Instead of fighting the looters, they joined the looters.
What Rand and acolytes like Alan Greenspan failed to realize is that if everyone acts in self-interest and no one takes into account the weakness to the entire system that occurs when everybody indulges in the same kind of risky behavior, the innocent and the guilty are engulfed.
Nevertheless, Rand is blazing back as an icon of the Tea Party, which overlooks her atheism, amorality in romance and vigorous support for abortion.
I'll probably go see the movie. Just to see what the fuss is about.
Ironic how cheaply the film was made....
::)
Ayn Rand’s adult-onset adolescence
By Michael Gerson, Thursday, April 21, 8:00 PM
The movie “Atlas Shrugged,†adapted from Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel by the same name, is a triumph of cinematic irony. A work that lectures us endlessly on the moral superiority of heroic achievement is itself a model of mediocrity. In this, the film perfectly reflects both the novel and the mind behind it.
Rand is something of a cultural phenomenon â€" the author of potboilers who became an ethical and political philosopher, a libertarian heroine. But Rand’s distinctive mix of expressive egotism, free love and free-market metallurgy does not hold up very well on the screen. The emotional center of the movie is the success of high-speed rail â€" oddly similar to a proposal in Barack Obama’s last State of the Union address. All of the characters are ideological puppets. Visionary, comely capitalists are assaulted by sniveling government planners, smirking lobbyists, nagging wives, rented scientists and cynical humanitarians. When characters begin disappearing â€" on strike against the servility and inferiority of the masses â€" one does not question their wisdom in leaving the movie.
None of the characters expresses a hint of sympathetic human emotion â€" which is precisely the point. Rand’s novels are vehicles for a system of thought known as Objectivism. Rand developed this philosophy at the length of Tolstoy, with the intellectual pretensions of Hegel, but it can be summarized on a napkin. Reason is everything. Religion is a fraud. Selfishness is a virtue. Altruism is a crime against human excellence. Self-sacrifice is weakness. Weakness is contemptible. “The Objectivist ethics, in essence,†said Rand, “hold that man exists for his own sake, that the pursuit of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose, that he must not sacrifice himself to others, nor sacrifice others to himself.â€
If Objectivism seems familiar, it is because most people know it under another name: adolescence. Many of us experienced a few unfortunate years of invincible self-involvement, testing moral boundaries and prone to stormy egotism and hero worship. Usually one grows out of it, eventually discovering that the quality of our lives is tied to the benefit of others. Rand’s achievement was to turn a phase into a philosophy, as attractive as an outbreak of acne.
The appeal of Ayn Rand to conservatives is both considerable and inexplicable. Modern conservatism was largely defined by Ronald Reagan’s faith in the people instead of elites. Rand regarded the people as “looters†and “parasites.†She was a strenuous advocate for class warfare, except that she took the side of a mythical class of capitalist supermen. Rand, in fact, pronounced herself “profoundly opposed†to Reagan’s presidential candidacy, since he did not meet her exacting ideological standards.
Rand cherished a particular disdain for Christianity. The cross, she said, is “the symbol of the sacrifice of the ideal to the nonideal. . . . It is in the name of that symbol that men are asked to sacrifice themselves for their inferiors. That is precisely how the symbolism is used. That is torture.†Yet some conservatives marked Holy Week by attending and embracing “Atlas Shrugged.â€
Reaction to Rand draws a line in political theory. Some believe with Rand that all government is coercion and theft â€" the tearing-down of the strong for the benefit of the undeserving. Others believe that government has a limited but noble role in helping the most vulnerable in society â€" not motivated by egalitarianism, which is destructive, but by compassion, which is human. And some root this duty in God’s particular concern for the vulnerable and undeserving, which eventually includes us all. This is the message of Easter, and it is inconsistent with the gospel of Rand.
Many libertarians trace their inspiration to Rand’s novels, while sometimes distancing themselves from Objectivism. But both libertarians and Objectivists are moved by the mania of a single idea â€" a freedom indistinguishable from selfishness. This unbalanced emphasis on one element of political theory â€" at the expense of other public goals such as justice and equal opportunity â€" is the evidence of a rigid ideology. Socialists take a similar path, embracing equality as an absolute value. Both ideologies have led good people into supporting policies with serious human costs.
Conservatives have been generally suspicious of all ideologies, preferring long practice and moral tradition to utopian schemes of left or right. And Rand is nothing if not utopian. In “Atlas Shrugged,†she refers to her libertarian valley of the blessed as Atlantis.
It is an attractive place, which does not exist, and those who seek it drown.
michaelgerson@washpost.com
I enjoyed reading that review. Objectivism as an arrested state of adolescent development sounds right to me. I've said it was a dressed up form of narcissistic personality disorder.