RadicalWacko November 14th, 2007
Ayn Rand’s massive work Atlas Shrugged turns 50 this year and the editorials are starting the flow in. The best so far has been from, ironically, the former editor of National Review, Maggie Gallagher. Included in the editorial is one of the best descriptions of why Rand continues to appeal after all of these years:
The key to Ayn Rand is that she pictured America largely from early films from Hollywood. As a young girl growing up in the grim world of communist Russia, she saw America as we dreamed ourselves to be, and she longed her whole life with a child’s intensity to make this vision real, to live in it. We respond to her novels because they offer us one deep strand of American self-identity — as individualists, yes, but individualists who together dream big dreams, conquer wild frontiers, invent the future, remake our very selves.
Source: THREE CHEERS FOR AYN RAND - Yahoo! News
RadicalWacko February 18th, 2005
My friend Peter, owner of PowTen.com, has a new blog called RomanOkie.com where he will post about all things religious and specifically Catholic. My own nasty opinions on religion aside, Peter is a thoughtful and contemplative man of faith who practices Christianity without the stink of irony so common today. It should be a good read and something to add to your blog rolls.
RadicalWacko February 2nd, 2005
Reason Magazine dug up this quote from a letter to the editor written by a young Alan Greenspan:
Atlas Shrugged is a celebration of life and happiness. Justice is unrelenting. Creative individuals and undeviating purpose and rationality achieve joy and fulfillment. Parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should. [The New York Times reviewer] suspiciously wonders “about a person who sustains such a mood through the writing of 1,168 pages and some fourteen years of work.” This reader wonders about a person who finds unrelenting justice personally disturbing.
[Via: Hit and Run]
RadicalWacko February 2nd, 2005
Ayn Rand
Today would have been Ayn Rands 100th birthday. Tonight I drink a toast to a remarkable woman with a remarkable mind who can truly hold claim to being part of the “motor of the world”. The greatest compliment I can give her is to say that my ideas have been transformed by hers, though through a process of a constant antagonistic fight. However, I can truly say that John Galt lives on in this one corner of the world . . .
RadicalWacko August 13th, 2004
Dr. Peikoff, “intellectual heir” to Ayn Rand and head of her institute has declared that he intends to vote for John Kerry for the sole reason that he isn’t a devout Christian. Rand must be turning over in her grave. That her “intellectual heir” would be supporting a candidate who claims that America’s great value is our sacrificing of ourselves for others is almost too much to believe. Now, of course, I wouldn’t support him voting for Bush either, but this is ridiculous. His hatred of religion has forced him to abandon the reason that is central to his philosophy. He has forgotten that the preachers of faith and the preachers of the state are one and the same. A lesson he should certainly revisit. Additionally, he should also remember that there is no compromise between good and evil. There is no middle ground which is yet to be discovered.
I highly recommend that if you wish to explore Objectivism that you read as much Rand as you would like, but stay away from the Ayn Rand Institute. They have abandoned their philosophy for hysteria.
Read the statement and listen to the full lecture here
[Watching: To Kill A Mockingbird - Universal Studios, Inc. - (02:09:28)]
