Ayn Rand

[MJ-12]

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[Tom]

A while back I read the book "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand. It was much better than I expected. Her other novels were good, too, especially "The Fountainhead". This was surprising because I had heard that Ayn Rand is cruel, unfeeling, inhuman, and otherwise a bad person. So what do people here thing about her?

[Hans Solo]

Atlas Shrugged-

 The people that say that she is cruel are usually the big government/Socialist/Communist type people.  I guess they would rather rally around the peaceful communist/socialist type leaders.  Meet Mr. Stalin, Mao, Hitler (not right wing-Nazi=national socialist party), Mussolini, every 2 bit left wing dictator in Latin America and Africa.

However, I am not right wing.  More libertarian.  

Left wing doesn't equal compassion, just more control.

Hans Solo

PS. Who is John Galt?

[Tom]

I have a shirt which says "Who is John Galt?" on the front. People often ask me who he is when I wear it. I think one of the funniest parts of the story "Atlas Shrugged" is when John Galt says it himself.

[no_leaf_clover]

Meet Mr. Stalin, Mao, Hitler (not right wing-Nazi=national socialist party), Mussolini, every 2 bit left wing dictator in Latin America and Africa.

It's a common misconception that Hitler, Mussolini, or any other Fascist leader or system of government is left-winged. In fact it is very quite the opposite and any modern history book can tell you this.

Nazi may have the word 'socialism' in its name, but the system itself is totally against anything spawned from Marxist ideas. Marx wanted to abolish social classes completely, which is what governments based on his ideas try to do (like Communism). Fascism, on the other hand, embraces the concept of social classes and encourages their relations in order to have the most efficient industries, etc.

It's true that they are both authoritarian by nature, and that the best cases in history were dictatorships, but their ideologies are totally contrasting. The Nazis and Italian fascists despised Communism openly. When the Nazis burned their own parliament building, they blamed the Communists in order to spread panic and allow Hitler to come to power as 'father'. The Nazis were anti-Jew, anti-black, anti-homosexual, etc., and if there wasn't such a boundary of political correctness today, you know exactly which party would be more likely to oppose those same people today, and it wouldn't be the Democrats (Republicans are still the openly anti-homo party). The conservatives in German parliament were the ones to join the Nazis to appoint Hitler, as well. Marx's ideas, as a contrast, were of supreme and overwhelming equality, to the point of requiring extremities in government's role.

They may often come to the same visible effect, but Fascism is definitely not left-winged in its ideology. It's the extreme of the right, whereas Marx's ideas compose the extreme of the left.


Btw,

However, I am not right wing. More libertarian.

Nice to see another libertarian. Too bad that we'll never have things suit our reasoning without another violent revolution.