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