Ayn Rand's 'Atlas Shrugged' having its comeback

Dang!  That is spot on!!!!  Good job, eastvanray. Very good!

Rand never argued that greed and selfishness should not be subject to laws.  What happened on Wall Street was a failure of the regulatory structure.  Greed produces the greatest wealth.  That fact is not widely disputed.  The real argument should not be whether greed is good or bad since we will never change ingrained human behaviour.  What needs to be debated is how to use greed to produce the most desirable outcome for society. 

I read The Prince in university.  I have to say that of the the works of political philosophy I have read it (more so than The Art of War, Candide or even works by J.S. Mills) teaches lessons that can be applied daily in our lives.

Voltaire had one good line and it was at the end of Candide.  I believe it went like this "... in the end, we must till our own garden as best we can. .."  An important statement about the need for self-reliance.  To me that is not inconsistent with the writings of Rand.

I was not trying to make that point.  My point was that Rand's beliefs about selfishness and greed are not at odds with many other philosophers.  She is controversial due to the raw language and harsh arguments she employs to make her case.  I would argue that she has been the object of criticism due partially to the fact that she is a female atheist and did not embrace early 20th century society's notion of "woman" as nurturing and politically soft.  Her views on government and the evils of collectivism are mainstream libertarian today.  She would not be so shocking if she wrote Atlas Shrugged in 2009.

Rory,

There are clips of her on youtube. Feisty lady. Respected her energy and unwillingness to be intimidated by the "liberals" of her day.

I bet she was hot in her day. Apparently she thought so. She hooked up with a 24 year old disciple of Objectivism when she was 50. Didn't matter that they were both married. Here's a little excerpt from the book:
The Rand Cult (Open Court, 396 pages, $31.25), by Jeff Walker, an account of the chaotic, angry school that swims in Rand's wake. While Walker's book is often clumsily written, it provides an absorbing portrait of the still-thriving Rand movement. He reports that books by and about her sell half a million copies a year, and Randian organizations keep attracting new members.

Walker is a Toronto freelance journalist who did a series on Rand for CBC Radio's Ideas in 1992. It's appropriate that a Canadian should dissect the Rand organization. After all, Canadians founded it. In 1951 two New York University students, Nathan Blumenthal of Toronto and his wife-to-be, Barbara Weidman of Winnipeg, were enthralled by Rand's vision of world-conquering heroes, unfettered by government, freed of religious restraints on their triumphant egos. Soon Blumenthal became Nathaniel Branden (he chose the surname because it contains "rand") and signed on, with Barbara at his side, as Rand's chief disciple, building the Objectivist movement.

In 1955 he also became Rand's lover, when she was 50 and he was 24. This led eventually to the scandal that shook Objectivism. In 1968 he told Rand (who was wondering why their affair had lost its magic) that he was in love with a gorgeous model who happened to be 35 years younger than Rand. Predictably, Rand threw him out of the movement and blacklisted anyone who associated with him. Nevertheless, he kept spouting Randisms. He still thinks Atlas Shrugged the greatest novel ever written.

Walker classifies Objectivism as a cult, and certainly it has cultish qualities: It insists on conformity, judges members by loyalty rather than merit, shames and excommunicates dissenters, interferes in the private lives of members and claims to have an answer for everything. But it doesn't entirely fit the cult pattern: no street solicitation, no begging, no barracks or dorms, no techniques of sleep deprivation, etc. It more closely resembles an old-fashioned political movement, always splitting into smaller parts, like the Trotskyites.

And just in case anyone forgot: Atlas Shrugged was a work of fiction.