People love
to hate Ayn Rand.
You are out to destroy
almost every edifice
in the contemporary American way of life.
60 years
to the day
after "Atlas Shrugged" was published,
people STILL feel compelled
to pan her.
Ayn Rand became famous
for her philosophy of objectivism
which is a nice way of saying
being a selfish asshole.
Atlas Shrugged and Rand's other books
are about many such
"self-interested people".
Mr. Rearden,
you wouldn't want it misunderstood that
you work for nothing
but your own profit?
Indeed I want it understood clearly.
And how does that benefit your fellow man?
Thousands of jobs, billions in revenue,
fueling our economy
despite your efforts to destroy
the very foundation of our existence.
Rand argued
that even if entrepreneurs and creators are "selfish"
so what?
They create opportunities for others.
They never got that.
But I'm glad these people do.
They love Rand's heroes.
They had an idea,
people told them "you can't do that,
that's too selfish,
that's too
out of the ordinary",
They did it anyways.
And they're successful.
So being selfish themselves in the end
helped out a lot of people.
Through
me wanting to make more money,
I may create an invention
that may improve the standard
of living for millions and millions of people.
These young people
are part of an organization called "Turning Point USA",
a group that tries to get Atlas Shrugged
read more on campuses.
We're on over 1100 college and high school campuses
across the country.
But the campuses are
not listening to you
or you're a tiny
fraction of the political discussion.
You would be surprised at how big
the following is
and how much appetite there is actually for this.
Atlas describes an America where government
passes so many rules that
most of the economy just shuts down.
That idea horrified people who
like regulation.
I find it abhorrent.
I really do.
Why was the left so
enraged by it?
Because she was
and is
effective.
She wasn't talking about economics
in terms of practical good.
She was talking about
your having a right
to your own life.
Jennifer Grossman of the Atlas Society
loves seeing young people
discover a new way to
think about things.
I'm a Peace Corps baby.
I was raised in a community
where I had never
seen a conservative
except in caricature.
Libertarians were either stupid
or evil.
And when I went to Harvard,
which was a bastion of liberalism,
I actually found
a couple of
people who didn't fit that stereotype.
So I decided I needed to go back and do some thinking
And some reading.
She says she found the 12,000 page novel…
a "spiritual experience".
Spiritual?
It's about business.
I think it's about overcoming odds.
It's about not allowing people to take advantage of you
and feeling bad about pursuing your
own interests.
The consensus of the best metallurgical authorities
are highly skeptical.
I'm not interested in their opinions.
Then whose do you go by?
My own.
In America, the social justice people are winning
and people who wear dollar signs on their
dress are vilified.
They completely marginalized Ayn Rand.
They completely took this stuff out of the classroom
and now when they're introduced to it,
they freak out.
In a good way, she means.
People are surprised
when they see how freedom-minded
college students are.
They're socialists.
They're not socialists.
Admittedly Bernie Sanders' biggest portion
of his support came from young people.
But our generation is split in a really ironic way.
60% think socialism is a good idea
and then 70% say they don't want to pay
higher taxes and they don't trust the government.
So they just don't understand what socialism really is.
The first day of class we had a student that walked in
and opened his laptop and on that
laptop there were a ton of Bernie bro stickers,
and "I love socialism".
So the very next day
I brought to class a
ton of stickers,
laptop stickers that said
"This laptop was brought to you by capitalism."
Towards the end of the semester
I had most of the class on my side.
With the help of a book
that's 60 years old today.
Fiction is more powerful than facts.
Facts are more important,
but maybe fiction
does a better job teaching people
what really matters.
No comments:
Post a Comment