Lessons from John Galt

Recent headlines seem lifted directly out of an Ayn Rand novel. President Obama decries the “fat cat bankers on Wall Street”. Harry Reid attacks insurance companies for making too much profit. House Democrat leaders call Tea Partiers “Racist, Nazi, Gun Nuts”.  How about this nauseating statement made by Army General George Casey after the Muslim terrorist attack on Ft. Hood?

As great a tragedy as this was, it would be a shame if our diversity became a casualty as well

Each of these headlines might well have been uttered by an Ayn Rand character. Rand, whose father’s pharmacy was confiscated by the Soviets during the communist revolution of 1917, and who came to America in 1926, seems uniquely able to speak to us about the inverted morality of our times. Virtue is to be apologized for. Depravity commands respect. Success is cast as evil and punished while failure is blamed on others and rewarded. Rand’s insights into the psychological state of collectivists—those who demand that we sacrifice our individual freedom and happiness for the sake of the state—explain what often seems incomprehensible to thinking people.

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Tags: ACORN, Al Gore Copenhagen, Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand, Barack Obama
Posted Dec 24th 2009 at 7:06 am in Healthcare, History, Media Criticism, Obama, Tea Party, Uncategorized, federal spending | 51206176 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/dfreeman/2009/12/24/lessons-from-john-galt/Lessons+from+John+Galt2009-12-24+15%3A06%3A58Dan+Freeman

Rand-O-Rama: The Long Shelf Life of Ayn Rand’s legacy

With the publication of The Fountainhead in 1943 and Atlas Shrugged in 1958, Rand became a full-blown cultural phenomenon, selling millions of books and inspiring countless readers-ranging from former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan to Playboy founder Hugh Hefner to actress Angelina Jolie-with her moral defense of capitalism.

A refugee from Soviet Russia, Rand argued that capitalism was the best way of organizing society not simply because it was more efficient than communism but because it allowed the individual to fill his or her potential. A self-declared “radical for capitalism,” Rand emphatically rejected collectivism of all stripes and embraced “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.”

Decades after her death, Rand’s work is hotter than ever.

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Tags: Alan Greenspan, Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand, Colbert Report, Fountainhead
Posted Nov 2nd 2009 at 10:47 am in Culture | 2417064 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/ngillespie/2009/11/02/rand-o-rama-the-long-shelf-life-of-ayn-rands-legacy/Rand-O-Rama%3A+The+Long+Shelf+Life+of+Ayn+Rand%27s+legacy2009-11-02+17%3A47%3A18Nick+Gillespie