This article in Reason is perhaps the best I've read in summing up her ladyship.
While complaints about Rand’s prose and character development are perennial, the nub of Atlas hatred isn’t literary: It’s the idea that Rand’s work is positively evil, celebrating a raw selfishness and glorying in a lack of compassion for anyone who fails to be a heroic producer, or even so much as disagrees with any aspect of Rand’s complicated system of epistemology and ethics. As Gore Vidal wrote in Esquire back in 1961, Rand’s “ ‘philosophy’ is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous.” More...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Oh Jim. REASON magazine indeed.
ReplyDeletePeople shouldn't hate Rand ; she's so much fun! But she should never be taken seriously. If you want to be a free marketeer or a libertarian, respectable thinkers abound. Truly the czarina had nothing fresh to say -- well, nothing that wasn't batshit crazy.
And REASON's claim that Rand never advocated the use of force in service of her beliefs is dead wrong. She repeatedly advocated the use of force to invade and overthrow the Soviet regime. She wanted to confiscate OUR TAX DOLLARS for this purpose! To aid other people! Immoral!!! (-:
lp