Atlas Shrugged

[LaymansTermsPlease]

I'm about 700 pages into this doozy and found much to like about this book so far. She seems pretty anti-theistic, and I'm sure her theology or lack thereof is tragic. But from a no-nonsense behavioral and economic standpoint, she's spot on.

She errs too far on the "even personal giving is bad" side of things of course, showing an un-Christian lack of compassion altogether...but she's dead right about the state being evil and wrong to "confiscate" your wealth and redistribute to those who are lazy and are parasites on society.

She's got this part right:

2 Thess 3:10-12 For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat. For we hear that there are some which walk among you disorderly, working not at all, but are busybodies. Now them that are such we command and exhort by our Lord Jesus Christ, that with quietness they work, and eat their own bread.

But since she's anti-theistic, she forgets stuff like this:

Acts 20:35 I have shewed you all things, how that so labouring ye ought to support the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive.

Notice Acts says "weak", not lazy, though.


Amazing, written in 1940s and 50s I think, and it slams the stupidity that is post-modernism, pluralism, and political-correctness that is/has destroyed the American system.

One of the characters is talking about 3 good men who society had grown to spurn because they weren't "correct enough"... lol.

Well, one of them is a professor of economics who couldn't get a job outside, because he taught that you can't consume more than you have produced—one is a professor of history who couldn't get a job because he taught that the inhabitants of slums were not the men who made this country—and one is a professor of psychology who couldn't get a job because he taught that men are capable of thinking.

 

[Bro. Curtis]

As much as I agree with & respect Ayn Rand, I have to part with her, because of her insistence that there was no room for theism. I believe, like our forefathers believed, that our freedoms come from God. I do agree with her that our success, or failure, should begin and end with the individual.

 

[Marcia]

Why is this in Current Events? Sould be in the Books forum.

 

[LaymansTermsPlease]

Sorry, you may be right on that.

I didn't even think about a book forum, it was the election, socialized everything on the horizon, and lots of threads in this forum that made me think of the book.

For an old book, it seems timely.

Why is this in Current Events? Sould be in the Books forum.