First, let me put forward the recent results of council votes. November 7 Council Winners First place with 2 2/3 votes votes! – >Joshuapundit – National Security Rears It’s Ugly Head Second place with 2 votes – The Colossus of……

Watcher’s Council submissions for this week are now up! If ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise – Bookworm Room looks at the bright side of the election of President-elect Obama. National Security Rears It’s Ugly Head – Joshuapundit is worried…

On another blog several years ago I went under the name “John Galt.” I liked the sound of it, and I had agreed with many of the points Rand had made in “Atlas Shrugged.”

I agree with you that the book is a “hyper-real” novel of ideas, with characters and situations almost cartoonishly delineated. But, considering how a great cartoonist can clarify by simplifying (Thomas Nast and David Low come to mind), there’s much to be said for that approach.

So, yes, I think we’re at the point Obama and his enablers are determined to deliver us into a nightmarish peasant world. It’s one where wealth cannot be created but only stolen by capitalists, then rightly expropriated and redistributed by compassionate socialists.

What bothered me the most about “Atlas Shrugged” was that Rand left out very much discussion of what was going on in hell-holes like Russia or China at the time, and what the cowardly responses from the novel’s “second raters” would have been doing to aid and abet advances in the war against wealth and intelligence. I suppose there was just a sheer limit to the number of important ideas she could address.

You’re right, “Brave New World” has drawn far less criticism over the years than “Atlas Shrugged.” Maybe that’s because until now it has been the dystopia that has come closest to describing the pit our civilization is sliding into — the profound disrespect for human life (abortion, euthansia, cloning), the degeneration of education (I’ve made tens of thousands of dollars teaching college graduates how to write), the divorce of sex from any end other than pleasure, as well as the mindless pursuit of pleasure.

But “Brave New World” presupposes a vast, wealthy, self-sustaining economy. With the recent financial debacles, and the ascension of wealth haters into power in the world’s greatest economy, the United States, this may well be the time when “Atlas Shrugged” becomes the dystopia du jour.

Interesting that you brought up Ayn Rand. On Monday I decided to begin rereading ‘Atlas Shrugged’. I picked up a copy that had the Leonard Piekoff introduction, which I highly recommend. The intro consists primarily of four excerpts from Ayn Rand’s notes.

These excerpts clued me into the fact that I’ve been reading ‘Atlas Shrugged’ incorrectly all along: Ms. Rand wrote Atlas Shrugged primarily as an expression of her own perfect ideal of three men and one woman (all but Galt admittedly with critical, deliberate flaws), and to present a view of a World where rationality had been abandoned. She said she wanted to express, and be able to immerse herself, in such an idealized version of reality.

I’ve been highly critical in the past of the novel because it is *so* hyper-realized, to the point where it has no relation to actual people or events that could occur in reality; that it was essentially a crude cartoon. But knowing what I know now, I’m a hundred pages in, and I find it *immensely* enjoyable and extraordinarily well-written. Once you accept its hyper-realizations, its broadness, as completely deliberate, I think it achieves its goal of providing a broad, deep satisfaction.

If you take the Obama super-radical past as an indicator of where he and the Democrats intend to take us, the novel also satisfies as a perfect warning of what is to come. It’s positively delicious how well it matches up. (I’m currently in the chapter ‘Climax of the D’Anconias’, which exhibits such delights that I think it must have been Ayn Rand’s favorite chapter that she ever wrote.) I’m going to enjoy the time I spend with the remainder of the novel, though time will be less available as I’m starting a new software project soon…

I personally think the election results put some stiffening in the spines of Leftists that have recently felt very insecure about their place in life. Obama has validated it all for them now, however. Everything will be alright now. They simply must follow orders and Defend the Cause.

Deana

Check out this comment of mine on VC.

This will be an interesting lesson in human pain thresholds, purple.

Perhaps with this election, there is a chance for some honest dialogue about things we have not been allowed to discuss in the name of political correctness.-Cassandra

Pain is a great way to smooth communications out, for human empathy only works when the pain is personal or close. It doesn’t work if the pain is only on tvs, courts, news programs, or in words. Since human beings naturally have defense mechanisms against feeling pain, painful memories, or other such things, you have to bring the pain past their pain threshold level. The Sunnis had an extremely high pain threshold but it was not infinite. AQ has an even higher pain threshold level due to their being fanatics, but their threshold isn’t infinite either. Humans are still humans.

www dot villainouscompany dot com/vcblog/

Cass has some other good posts up pre and post election results.

One of the classic differences between villains and heroes are that the heroes’ methods are perfectly acceptable when applied against the hero or his enemies. The villains’ methods, however, are only acceptable to the villain when applied against the villain’s enemies. Applied against the villain and suddenly things are no good, purple [Link]. Suddenly the villains must be protected from their own methods even though those methods were justified when used against people like Joe or Sarah.

That’s how you can detect the difference between ethics and lack of ethics.

I doubt that he will read your comments with any end other than to insult them or refute them out of hand, but I find them informative and well constructed.

Mike, it is amazing how much the Nobel Prize has degenerated into a series of cheap shots against democracy and capitalism. I’m not much of an Ayn Rand fan, but her expression ‘the second-raters” sure explains most of Europe and academia these days.

I think that deep down Al Gore knows his prize is a travesty and that he is being used. The question is how long will the part of him that knows the truth continue to exist before it is completely swallowed up by ego and mendacity?