The other day I watched the movie version of The Fountainhead.
It was on one of those old movie channels, and I had never seen it, although I knew that the book had been made into a movie. The movie was OK, but like all movies made from great books, could not touch the book in terms of depth of the story, etc..
I first read the book when I was a senior in high school, and have read it several times these past 22 years.
Here is a link to the chat at Free Republic about Ayn Rands fiftieth anniversary of Atlas Shrugged. And the original article at the Wall Street Journal: (Members only to read the whole thing) QUOTE:
Businessmen are favorite villains in popular media, routinely featured as polluters, crooks and murderers in network TV dramas and first-run movies, not to mention novels. Oil company CEOs are hauled before congressional committees whenever fuel prices rise, to be harangued and publicly shamed for the sin of high profits. Genuine cases of wrongdoing like Enron set off witch hunts that drag in prominent achievers like Frank Quattrone and Martha Stewart.
By contrast, the heroes in “Atlas Shrugged” are businessmen — and women. Rand imbues them with heroic, larger-than-life stature in the Romantic mold, for their courage, integrity and ability to create wealth. They are not the exploiters but the exploited: victims of parasites and predators who want to wrap the producers in regulatory chains and expropriate their wealth.
Rand’s perspective is a welcome relief to people who more often see themselves portrayed as the bad guys, and so it is no wonder it has such enthusiastic fans in the upper echelons of business as Ed Snider (Comcast Spectacor, Philadelphia Flyers and 76ers), Fred Smith (Federal Express), John Mackey (Whole Foods), John A. Allison (BB&T), and Kevin O’Connor (DoubleClick) — not to mention thousands of others who pursue careers at every level in the private sector. Yet the deeper reasons why the novel has proved so enduringly popular have to do with Rand’s moral defense of business and capitalism. Rejecting the centuries-old, and still conventional, piety that production and trade are just “materialistic,” she eloquently portrayed the spiritual heart of wealth creation through the lives of the characters now well known to many millions of readers. Jenny Hatch
More at Michelle Malkin: Here is Michelle Malkins overview of Atlas Shrugged, one of my favorite novels.
“Capitalism unleashed an extraordinary burst of scientific and technological innovation and of human creativity–yet this had largely gone unrecognized as a phenomenon with any moral or intellectual significance. Ayn Rand was the first to celebrate the accomplishments of the James Watts and Andrew Carnegies and Thomas Edisons and to recognize in their productive energies an example of moral heroism.”
I loved this book, because reading it on the heels of being brainwashed in Socialism during my public school incarceration in the Michigan public schools during the hey day of the 70’s and 80’s and surrounded by classmates whose parents were constantly being spoon fed the cult of victimization by the various Unions tied to the car companies, it was like fresh spring rain on a parched earth to read her words of moral clarity and feel the passion for individuality and the power of one that objectivism encapsulates.
Reading The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged the spring of my senior year in high school was a spring board to adult life and a great balancing power in my mind as I tried to sort out the various ideologies I was being fed by the adults in my life up to that point.
I have large versions of each waiting on bookshelves in my home for my children to discover. Michelle tried reading The Fountainhead last year, but she was not ready for it yet.
I look forward to having many long conversations with my children in future years about the philosophy behind these books. Jenny Hatch
Wendy Shalit, author of A return to Modesty has written a new book called Girls Gone Mild. Here is the Amazon Link
And the web site/blog devoted to promoting the book: Go Here
Chapter one of the book in PDF
Book Overview: Go Here
Modesty Zone Blog: Go Here
Modestly Yours Blog: Go Here
These trends are really awesome! As a mother with two teens who have made the choice to stay chaste until marriage, I love the idea of the new rebels being those women who choose abstinance and virtue over the girls gone wild insanity.
Home Childbirth fits into this paradigm as well. One of the main reasons I chose to come home to birth and took personal responsibility for my own female health care was because I hated the contact I had with various doctors. Vaginal Exams, pressure to go on birth control, pressure to limit the size of my family, etc etc etc… By pulling away from the gynocological world, I have been able to feel a sense of wholeness and privacy that comforts my mother heart and keeps me away from the various practitioners who have blood on their collective hands. So much of a gyns practice is dealing with those diseases and unwanted pregnancies that accompany a girls gone wild society.
I am not too interested in even being on the same examination table or having the same vaginal speculums and fingers shoved into my body that have been probing into the diseased bodies of those women who have gone mad with sexual promiscuity. I don’t want to be around the doctors, clinics, and various proceedures and drugs that are so prevalent in our society to deal with STDs, bastard children, and the complications from abortions and miscarriages.
I have not had a vaginal exam since I gave birth to Andrew almost eleven years ago. And I don’t ever plan to have one, ever again. Saving my sexual body for my husband in all aspects of my fertility has felt right and taking the modesty principle into the OB/GYN side of my life has felt very empowering. And it is a theme from unassisted birthers. They tend to mention how wonderful it is while giving birth NOT to have all those exams and nurses and doctors checking and probing.
While I birthed my third child in the hospital I felt like every nurse on the floor popped their head in during the final moments of birth. I would not have been surprised if the janitors, food service people, and any assorted strangers had come into the room to watch me give birth. Too many people around tends to lengthen the process, and contributes to a woman feeling violated and overwhelmed.
Giving birth alone and not even having a camera on, contributed to the feelings of privacy and wholeness I experienced while I gave birth to my four year old in 2002. It was Jeannine Baker who challenged me not to video tape the birth. She told me that the very presence of a camera can have a terrible effect on labor for some women and with my sexual abuse issues, it was better not to have the birth documented.
I’m grateful for the whole modesty movement and am thrilled by women like Wendy taking the time to write and share. Jenny Hatch
Hugh Hewitt had a couple of professors on his radio show and asked them the top books freshman should read in college. The transcript was a good read. Here is the link
And my comment #34:
I thought I would share some of the great LDS literature, links anyway…these would be in my top ten, not a professor, just a mom.. The Book of Mormon
– Perhaps the greatest book ever written on Freedom and what it takes for individuals, families, and nations to be free. The Doctrine and Covenants
The Doctrine and Covenants is a collection of divine revelations and inspired declarations given for the establishment and regulation of the kingdom of God on the earth in the last days. The Pearl of Great Price
The Pearl of Great Price is a selection of choice materials touching many significant aspects of the faith and doctrine of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. These items were produced by the Prophet Joseph Smith and were published in the Church periodicals of his day.
I would add to the scriptures, these additional works of LDS non Fiction: Jesus the Christ The Miracle of Forgiveness Ezra Taft Benson, A Biography
While a study of the ancients is beneficial and gives a sure foundation in western thought and philosophy, my modern mind revels in the words of fiction writers like Victor Huge (Where was Les Mis???), Chaim Potok, JRR Tolkien, Ayn Rand, LM Montgomery, and two all time favorites, (which were required in my BYU Honors Colloquium Freshman Year, Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and The Dancing Wu Li Masters, which has profoundly impacted my life from the minute I first opened that book.
We did read quite a few of the classics the good professors mentioned freshman year. I shudder to think what my oldest daughter is going to experience fall of 2007…praying for sanity in her freshman college classrooms.
Jenny Hatch
WWW.NaturalFamilyBLOG.com Jenny Hatch
Last night Paul picked up the new DVD release of Pursuit of Happyness at the grocery store. It just came out on video. I have wanted to see it ever since I watched the Oprah where Chris Gardner and Will Smith appeared on her show a couple months ago.
We watched the movie last night, and this afternoon I watched the various extras in the special features section they provide on the DVD; the making of the movie, interviews with the director and Chris Gardner. I’m listening to bebe winans song “I can” as I type right now. What an amazing movie! I was struck listening to the Italian director, he felt it was crucial this movie be made by a foreigner because American directors would not be able to tell it right. I knew exactly what he meant as he spoke.
Will Smith in describing this movie, said it was about hope, being able to overcome odds, a story about being able to dream no matter what your circumstances are, and fathers and sons. As he was talking Chris Gardner said he ultimately wanted to set an example of Fathers taking care of their children, breaking the cycles of abandonment…etc…
The one word I did not hear during the whole movie and all of the extras was the word Capitalism. I believe the Italian Movie director was implying that Americans do not understand what it means to pursue the American Dream because we take so many things for granted. So many of our assumptions as Americans revolve around the realities of Capitalism and the guarantees of individual rights that we all enjoy. Yet the fact that our schools are blatently teaching Socialism as the ideal creates a sense of shame around our corporations and industry. In some circles Capitalism has been turned into an ugly, selfish word. The films producers called Capitalism, The American Dream, a more nuanced description of our form of economics.
The director said:
“To appreciate and understand the American Dream, you have to be a foreigner.” He said Chris is the essence of the American Man who wanted to make it and he did make it.
This wonderrful movie is a celebration of Capitalism and individual rights.
Juxtiposed with this experience of enjoying and cherishing the message of this excellent movie has been the experience I have been having these past few weeks re-reading Wild Swans by Jung Chang. This is the third time I have read this book. I first read it while I was pregnant with Ben in 2002. Then I bought the paperback copy of the book and read it right when it showed up a few years ago, and then I picked it up a few weeks ago for a re-read. I have been reading it slowly this time. It has been a busy time with the Gathering of Eagles efforts, so I have not blasted through it as I usually do with most of the books I read. This time I have marked a few passages that I wanted to share here on my blog.
I keep thinking of the little cretin who showed up at the anti war rally with that Mao T-Shirt. What an arrogant little ball of collectivist ignorance juxtiposed with American Freedom of Expression.
He shows up later in this movie I made at the Denver Anti War Rally. He claimed that the people who died in China died of Famine. Thinking about his words and beliefs while I have read this book has actually made me feel nauseated. Truly sick to my stomach that politcally active people in our country would believe that Mao’s China is the ideal.
Here are a couple of passages from Changs book. This book and her bio of Mao should be required reading for all of our Professors and anyone who would call themselves “educated” in our society. P. 136 from the chapter titled A Revolutionary marriage:
“
My grandmothers brother in law, “Loyalty” Pei-o, was exciled to the country to do manual labor. Because he had no blood on his hands, he was given a sentence called “under surveillance”. Instead of bing imprisoned, this meant being guarded (just as effectively) in society. His family chose to go to the country with him…. His work “under surveillance” lasted three years. It was rather like assigned labor under parole. People under surveillance enjoyed a measure of freedom, but they had to report to the police at regular intervals with a detailed account of everything they had done, or even thought, since their last visit, and they were openly watched by the police.”
P 210 China Silenced
In the early 1950’s, a communist was supposed to give herself so completely to the revolution and the people that any demonstration of affection for her children was forwned on as a sign of divided loyalties. Every single hour apart from eating or sleeping belonged to the revolution, and was supposed to be spent working. Anything that was regarded as not to do with the revolution, like carrying your children in your arms, had to be dispatched with as speedily as possible.
At first, my mother found this hard to get used to. “putting family first” was a criticism constantly leveld at her by her party colleagues.”
P. 225 Famine
“The whole nation slid into doublespeak. Words became divorced from reality, responsibility, and people’s real thoughts. Lies we were told with ease because words had lost their meanings – and had ceased to be taken seriously by others.
This was entrenched by the further regimentation of society. When he first set up the communes, Mao said their main advantage was that they “are easy to control,” because the peasants would now be in an organized system rather than being, to a ceratin extent, left alone. They were given detailed orders from the top about how to till their land. Moa summed up the whole of agriculture in eight characters: “soil, fertilizer, water, seeds, dense planting, protection, tendind, technology” The party central committe in Peking was handing out two-page instructions on how peasants all over China should improve their fields, another page on how to use fertilizers, another on planting crops densely. Their incredibly simplistic instructions had to be strictly followed: the peasants were ordered to replant their crops more densely in one mini-campaign after another.
Another means of regimentation, setting up canteens in the communes, was an obsession with Mao at the time. In his airy way, he defined communism as “public canteens with free meals” The fact that the canteens themselves did not produce food did not concern him. In 1958 the regime effectively banned eating at home. Every peasant had to eat in the commune canteen. Kitchen utensils like woks and in some places, money, were outlawed. Everybody was going to be looked after by the Commune and the State…..
The failure to get in the harvest in 1958 flashed a warning that a food shortage was on its way, even though the official statistics showed a double digit increase in agricultural output. It was officially announced that in 1958 China’s wheat output had overtaken that of the United States. The party newspaper, the Peoples Daily, started a discussion on the topic, “How do we cope with the problem of producing too much food?”
P. 304 My Parents Dilemma:
“I was not forced to join the Red Guards. I was keen to do so. In spite of what was happening around me, my aversion and fear ad no clear object, and it never occured to me to question the Cultural Revolution or the Red Guards explicitly. They were Mao’s creations, and Mao was beyond contemplation.
Like many Chinese, I was incapable of rational thinking in those days. We were so cowed and contorted by fear and indoctrination that to deviate from the path laid down by Mao would have been inconceivable. Besides, we had been overwhelmed by deceptive rhetoric, disinfomation, and hypocrisy, which made it virtually impossible to see through the situation and to form an intelligent judgement.”
I would recomend wild swans and the happyness movie as excellent sides to an economic coin.
A few months ago Paul and I were talking about the doublethink that is currently part of American Culture in regards to the medical profession. He had just read Natan Sharanskys The Case for Democracy and we were discussing the fact that if you decide to deviate from the current medical orthodoxy in regards to birthing, not immunizing, and other so-called dogmas of medical practice, there is a very real chance that you could have your children taken away by social services, or be looking at a court order to force you to have whatever treatment is being recomended. The fear tied around this reality keeps the vast majority of families marching lockstep to big pharmas marching orders.
When Parents who are just trying to protect their little ones from being medically damaged are called child abusers and social workers feel justified in taking away children for medical neglect, I know it is hard to comprehend, but the threat is real and is happening in various cases around the country. This form of American group think is a blight on our freedoms and individual sovereignty.
I am all about Freedom and families being given complete rights of self determination over the health of their children. Jenny Hatch
