I checked it out from the library but upon seeing the size of it I knew I wouldnt have the time to finish it. I need to wait till summer break to read this bad boy.
im the same way lol, i finally get my BS in december so ill have more time to read. Anthem is about 120 pages, same author, good read. check it out man.
adding it on the list. Since I started school ive only read 1 book (steinbeck, Pastures of heaven 120 pages or so) I have so much reading to do in and for school reading for pleasure dosent exist. Its terrible.
I bought A.S. over the summer....But also bought Blindness that day...So I haven't read it yet because it looks time-consuming...and time is something I tend to lack over the school year, especially with English and what I am required to read....I can't wait to start it though... (little off topic, but I wanna mention it)...For some reason, I get kinda excited about books that are huge but don't cost much...A.S. was only ten bucks for me...new. It's refreshing in a way.
Now that's a kick ass book. I liked Atlas Shrugged but it didn't live up to all the hype, good read though. Anthem on the other hand completely took me by surprise I loved every page, when I finished I was left wishing I wasn’t done reading it.
I read Anthem in high school and Atlas Shrugged and some of her philosophical essays later in college. I was a huge fan for awhile. Then I realized her theories were unrealistic and her writing wasnt that good. Regardless I'll always remember how much fun I had when I first read Atlas Shrugged and that even though I don't much like her now that she was very important in acting as a foundation for my furthering reading of libertarian and conservative thought. All in all I'd say give her a try.
Atlas shrugged is a political treatise that isn't very well disguised. As a novel, the book utterly fails and is far too large and verbose for it's own good. That speech is unforgivable. It would have been better off as a novella. Even then there is no criticism of her own views or genuine view on opposing ideas. Anyone who doesn't agree with her is an idiot to the degree that it's shocking they're able to tie their own shoe laces.
I always wanted to read Atlas Shrugged until someone told me its the biggest piece of shit ever. Then my brother, whose constantly trying to shove extreme conservative ideas down my throat, recommended it and I figured I should stay away at that point. I'll still probably read it one day. Anthem is good. Anthem is basically 1984 before 1984 was ever written.
Hey- nothin' wrong with "Get yours and fuck everyone else". Fine human being. Shame she's a dead motherfucker--she'd fit right in the recent republican debates on how to further fuck the middle class. Next time I'll tell you how I really feel.
She'd have still managed to piss them off somehow. Didn't she hate the libertarian party for agreeing with her, saying they were stealing her ideas or something stupid like that?
Coming from someone who is far from right wing, I do not hate Rand or her books. I did truly love ANTHEM for like most extremism, far left is just as bad as far right (ask anyone from the 60's). So, ANTHEM became a refreshing little protest against logical progression of altruistic (Conservatives read 'COMMUNISM'!) extremism. Her farther agendas screamed through the rest of the novels, unfortunately, because while also long-winded, her writing was otherwise ok. And she did have a lot of good philosophical ideas that were practical in most situations. I wonder if she feels a bit stupid though right now, if any of her consciousness/soul/life-force/essence lived beyond herself. From what I remember of Objectivism, it left little room for anything supernatural, G-d, etc.
The Tea Party Manifesto. A very seductive ideal...butt flawed. If everyone were honest, and people were compensated justly for what they produced, it would work. But it breaks down thanks to government, whose source of profit is security, which is ripe for corruption, and it's not too hard to see that human nature is weak. Then there's the insider Harvard MBA country club, the financiers of "the mission" who make obscene amounts of money, yet they produce nothing. The people who make the laws, who spend our money to keep the military establishment running, who keep the economy alive by pissing off the rest of the world. Where it breaks down is it requires protection, and you know some asshole is always ready to push the influence and change the rules so that they get the spoils on my effort without earning it. The Tea Party is the biggest bunch of fools I could ever imagine. They are manipulated by an ideal that only serves to pick their pockets. I'm in if it could work, though, pull the plug on government, they are incompetent, and thankfully I work for the private sector and I'm competitive and I do well, though not nearly as well as I would if a bunch of rich people made less money on my efforts. But really, the poor people are the problem, the forty seven percenters, right? Dead beats. Then again, we need roads, we need teachers, we need common infrastructure to keep the whole thing going. Or do we? Cough, cough, smoke another one for me at the next Tea Party, will ya? I design motor drives, so maybe I'm not that different from John Galt. I just may happen to know a little more about the practice than the theory according to some insane novelist fifty years ago... Next stop, Galt Gulch...Then again, make it Willoughby...
The politicians who promote the theory, Republican congressmen like Paul Ryan, are complete hypocrites. How long do you think that asshole would last in the real world? Anyone who is part of the government, yet rallies for the elimination government is someone who should be voted out of office. I'm all for self sufficiency, personal responsibility, the work ethic, all that shit, that's how it should be, but these assholes, using Ayn Rand's work to promote an agenda of protecting the rich, forcing us to pick up the tab for their incompetence, that's bullshit. I'm all over the tea party, sign me up, just get rid of the Koch brothers and their ilk who seem to have spearheaded the movement in their self interest to suck the wealth off of us to profit themselves. Fuck 'em, they are the looters.
So the irony is, folks like Ryan, Romney, the Koch brothers, the ones who promote this tea party agenda of austerity for the rest of us in the name of fiscal responsibility, are the very ones who use the government to subsidize their inefficient mega corporations, prop up the big banks, subject us to high oil prices and GMO agriculture, promote mega-mergers to make corporations too big to fail so we the people get to bail them out. They are the looters, but god forbid we spend any of that loot on the people whos tax dollars support them. But hey, good thing the DOW is at a record high, now that the sequester has kicked in, because the sequester promises higher unemployment, and the stock market loves unemployment, at least in the short term, but it won't be sustainable.