Atlas Shrugged

[Lamme Goedzak]

Het is dan ook een fameuze knoert.

[C2C]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Lamme Goedzak

Dat was toch dat boek over anti-semitisme, of vergis ik mij? En dat is dan hetzelfde dan objectivisme? Als dat geen gevaarlijke uitspraak is.

In Atlas Shrugged worden ook alle vijanden van het systeem vergast (op de trein). Allen die geen egoïstische smeerlap zijn, worden in dat boek genadeloos afgemaakt.

Atlas Shrugged toont zeer goed aan waarom het libertijnse gedachtegoed zo dicht aanleunt bij het hardcore nazisme en fascisme.

[Lamme Goedzak]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door C2C

Atlas Shrugged toont zeer goed aan waarom het libertijnse gedachtegoed zo dicht aanleunt bij het hardcore nazisme en fascisme.

Dit is zowat het vreemdste wat ik de afgelopen weken gelezen heb.

[C2C]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Lamme Goedzak

Dit is zowat het vreemdste wat ik de afgelopen weken gelezen heb.

Ja, ik vond het ook vreemd toen ik dat las op de blog van George Monbiot:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...-ayn-rand-marx

How Ayn Rand became the new right's version of Marx
Her psychopathic ideas made billionaires feel like victims and turned millions of followers into their doormats

It has a fair claim to be the ugliest philosophy the postwar world has produced. Selfishness, it contends, is good, altruism evil, empathy and compassion are irrational and destructive. The poor deserve to die; the rich deserve unmediated power. It has already been tested, and has failed spectacularly and catastrophically. Yet the belief system constructed by Ayn Rand, who died 30 years ago today, has never been more popular or influential.

Rand was a Russian from a prosperous family who emigrated to the United States. Through her novels (such as Atlas Shrugged) and her nonfiction (such as The Virtue of Selfishness) she explained a philosophy she called Objectivism. This holds that the only moral course is pure self-interest. We owe nothing, she insists, to anyone, even to members of our own families. She described the poor and weak as "refuse" and "parasites", and excoriated anyone seeking to assist them. Apart from the police, the courts and the armed forces, there should be no role for government: no social security, no public health or education, no public infrastructure or transport, no fire service, no regulations, no income tax.

Atlas Shrugged, published in 1957, depicts a United States crippled by government intervention in which heroic millionaires struggle against a nation of spongers. The millionaires, whom she portrays as Atlas holding the world aloft, withdraw their labour, with the result that the nation collapses. It is rescued, through unregulated greed and selfishness, by one of the heroic plutocrats, John Galt.

The poor die like flies as a result of government programmes and their own sloth and fecklessness. Those who try to help them are gassed. In a notorious passage, she argues that all the passengers in a train filled with poisoned fumes deserved their fate. One, for instance, was a teacher who taught children to be team players; one was a mother married to a civil servant, who cared for her children; one was a housewife "who believed that she had the right to elect politicians, of whom she knew nothing".

Rand's is the philosophy of the psychopath, a misanthropic fantasy of cruelty, revenge and greed. Yet, as Gary Weiss shows in his new book, Ayn Rand Nation, she has become to the new right what Karl Marx once was to the left: a demigod at the head of a chiliastic cult. Almost one third of Americans, according to a recent poll, have read Atlas Shrugged, and it now sells hundreds of thousands of copies every year.

Ignoring Rand's evangelical atheism, the Tea Party movement has taken her to its heart. No rally of theirs is complete without placards reading "Who is John Galt?" and "Rand was right". Rand, Weiss argues, provides the unifying ideology which has "distilled vague anger and unhappiness into a sense of purpose". She is energetically promoted by the broadcasters Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Rick Santelli. She is the guiding spirit of the Republicans in Congress.

Like all philosophies, Objectivism is absorbed, secondhand, by people who have never read it. I believe it is making itself felt on this side of the Atlantic: in the clamorous new demands to remove the 50p tax band for the very rich, for instance; or among the sneering, jeering bloggers who write for the Telegraph and the Spectator, mocking compassion and empathy, attacking efforts to make the word a kinder place.

It is not hard to see why Rand appeals to billionaires. She offers them something that is crucial to every successful political movement: a sense of victimhood. She tells them that they are parasitised by the ungrateful poor and oppressed by intrusive, controlling governments.

It is harder to see what it gives the ordinary teabaggers, who would suffer grievously from a withdrawal of government. But such is the degree of misinformation which saturates this movement and so prevalent in the US is Willy Loman syndrome (the gulf between reality and expectations) that millions blithely volunteer themselves as billionaires' doormats. I wonder how many would continue to worship at the shrine of Ayn Rand if they knew that towards the end of her life she signed on for both Medicare and social security. She had railed furiously against both programmes, as they represented everything she despised about the intrusive state. Her belief system was no match for the realities of age and ill health.

But they have a still more powerful reason to reject her philosophy: as Adam Curtis's BBC documentary showed last year, the most devoted member of her inner circle was Alan Greenspan, former head of the US Federal Reserve. Among the essays he wrote for Rand were those published in a book he co-edited with her called Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal. Here, starkly explained, you'll find the philosophy he brought into government. There is no need for the regulation of business – even builders or Big Pharma – he argued, as "the 'greed' of the businessman or, more appropriately, his profit-seeking … is the unexcelled protector of the consumer". As for bankers, their need to win the trust of their clients guarantees that they will act with honour and integrity. Unregulated capitalism, he maintains, is a "superlatively moral system".

Once in government, Greenspan applied his guru's philosophy to the letter, cutting taxes for the rich, repealing the laws constraining banks, refusing to regulate the predatory lending and the derivatives trading which eventually brought the system down. Much of this is already documented, but Weiss shows that in the US, Greenspan has successfully airbrushed history.

Despite the many years he spent at her side, despite his previous admission that it was Rand who persuaded him that "capitalism is not only efficient and practical but also moral", he mentioned her in his memoirs only to suggest that it was a youthful indiscretion – and this, it seems, is now the official version. Weiss presents powerful evidence that even today Greenspan remains her loyal disciple, having renounced his partial admission of failure to Congress.

Saturated in her philosophy, the new right on both sides of the Atlantic continues to demand the rollback of the state, even as the wreckage of that policy lies all around. The poor go down, the ultra-rich survive and prosper. Ayn Rand would have approved.

Twitter: @georgemonbiot

A fully referenced version of this article can be found at www.monbiot.com

----------
Kortom, iedereen die deze filosofie aanhangt, is zo gek als Hitler, zo psychopathisch als Stalin, en moet onmiddellijk naar een gesloten instelling voor geesteszieken.

Het libertijnse gedachtengoed is niet enkel extreem-rechts (want Ayn Rand was ook een groot aanhanger van het nazisme), het is werkelijk te lullig om veel stof rond te maken.

Maar we moeten wel waakzaam blijven en zij die lijden aan die geestesziekte opsluiten en behandelen met zware psychotropische middelen. De ziekte is wellicht ongeneeslijk, maar dat betekent niet dat we niet moeten helpen.

[Derk de Tweede]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door lombas

Objectivisten bedoel je, maar ook voor ons, ja, zo'n beetje.

Het gaat over treintjes. Je kan de uitgebreide uitleg lezen op wikipedia. Het boek is voor een tiental euro te verkrijgen in de betere boekhandelaar (in het Engels of andere vreemde taal), en is tamelijk lijvig (een duizendtal bladzijden, als ik me niet vergis).

Kom de NS 1200 en de bolle neus er ook in voor ?

[vrijevlaming]

pffff boeken...

[Demper]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door vrijevlaming

pffff boeken...

Dief...

[vrijevlaming]

[Demper]

trololololoooooooooooooooooo

[vrijevlaming]

[Demper]

[Scherven A. Mok]

Ik heb het boek helemaal gelezen en de film gezien. Er moet nog een tweede deel komen van de film. Het verfilmt maar het halve boek.
(En eigenlijk zou er ook nog een vervolg moeten komen op het boek. Rand heeft wel in een karikatuur genadeloos enkele fouten vergroot waar een democratie en vrije markt met overheidsregulering moet voor opletten maar ze heeft nooit geprobeerd een verhaal te schrijven waarin haar theorie dan wel werkte. Ofwel was de speed op ofwel is dat nogal moeilijk omdat dat ook helemaal niet gaat.)

Maar de film dus. Vond ik niet speciaal goed. Het boek was beter.
Grappiger waren de reacties van de objectivisten. Zoals deze van een objectivistische filosofe waaruit je kan opmaken dat enkel extraverte mensen goed werk kun leveren. Ze vind Owen Kellog dus volledig fout gespeeld. Nochtans was die in het boek een eerder introverte hard werkende man volgens mij.
Maar dood aan alle introverten dus Of therapie. Eenzijdig mensbeeld en diversiteit hatend van de objectivist dat weer maar eens komt boven drijven.

[vrijevlaming]

[de Wakkere burger]

atlas had de wereld op zn rug
komt uit de griekse mythologie
in de huidige mythologie is dat een bol schulden

[Fredo]

There are two novels that can change a 14-year-old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

http://clclt.com/gyrobase/film-2011-...wFullText=true

[Koenraad Noël]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Fredo

http://clclt.com/gyrobase/film-2011-...wFullText=true

[Lamme Goedzak]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door C2C

The poor die like flies as a result of government programmes and their own sloth and fecklessness. Those who try to help them are gassed. In a notorious passage, she argues that all the passengers in a train filled with poisoned fumes deserved their fate. One, for instance, was a teacher who taught children to be team players; one was a mother married to a civil servant, who cared for her children; one was a housewife "who believed that she had the right to elect politicians, of whom she knew nothing".

Op welke pagina staat dit? Bedoel je de passage waar ze haar spoorwegbedrijf niet leidt?

[eno2]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door lombas

Van Rand gaat verfilmd worden 8)

Angelina Jolie zou Dagny spelen. Niet echt bon, want Jolie heeft wel niets van Dagny weg.

Liever naar de vergeetput ermee.

[eno2]

Dat ultralibertarische monster moest op het einde op sociale hulp uitbollen.

[C2C]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door lombas

Van Rand gaat verfilmd worden 8)

Angelina Jolie zou Dagny spelen. Niet echt bon, want Jolie heeft wel niets van Dagny weg.

Dat wordt een geile film.

Er bestaat ook al een porno-versie: Rocco screws everybody in the ass until they drop dead and he remains the only cock on the planet - hier te bekijken: http://xhamster.com/movies/1270513/r...mpilation.html