has my copy of Atlas Shrugged. <\/p>\n
I warned him, and I tried to warn him off reading it, but he insisted. <\/p>\n
I told him that this was my fifth copy, the first I threw out the window of a moving car, the second and third I took to the range and shot, and the fourth got run through my desk shredder, one or four pages at a time. it took me five copies before I could stand to get through it. <\/p>\n
No, I won’t see the movie. Having that all injected into my brain once is more than enough. I’m assured that the movie is well done and honest to the book, and for acolytes of Ms Rand, that’s very nice, hopefully they’ll finish all three and do a good job of it. When they do, I might rent the DVD’s and scan through to a few parts I considered enjoyable in the book. <\/p>\n
The world is not black and white. In the era of Randolph Scott, the good guys were always good, no matter what, and the bad guys were bad all the time, and always lost. That world of serial westerns was as realistic a portrayal of the west as you can’t get. Give me Blondie any day, or Angel eyes; the good guys sometimes act bad. Lie with cheap women. Doublecross a partner, maybe even. In the end, they do the right thing, but they are not the two dimensional cardboard cutouts from the beginning of the Wild Wild West, they have some depth and some dimension. <\/p>\n
Atlas Shrugged is the Taurus Judge of conservatism\/civil libertarianism. It’s good to have a weapon, but there are better suited weapons for the purpose. it looks nice, and on the surface it’s powerful and big, but at the core it tries to do several things, for each of which it is well unsuited. <\/p>\n
Sure, Randolph Scott was a hoot to watch. And it’s fun to see bad guys get their comeuppance. Hell, evengun hating peace loving tree hugging Liberals flock to the theaters to see Bruce WIllis shoot the bad guys. And therin lies the problem with all of this: Not all bad guys are always all bad. Not all good guys are always all good. And there is nor has there ever been any person or group of people that can- as in Atlas Shrugged- drag the world to a halt as a result of the loss of their industry, it cannot happen, and never will. There will always be someone to step in and fill the gap, even if their gap filling is inadequate and inefficient. <\/p>\n
Kornbluth’s “Marching Morons” is- though a much lighter piece- a much better indication of our futures; it’s easy to read the book and think “Those very few, very intelligent people- they are the kings of this planet, of this race! ” but when you look around, the obvious truth is not that the intelligent and industrious are the rulers of the race, but slaves to it. Such is it as it is, such it will always be. Oh, we’re compensated for the enslavement, and frankly, bright people have the power to wrench more enjoyment from life than the stupid, but we have chosen our enslavement by our very industry. “Want something done?” Lucille Ball once famously said, “Give it to a busy person”<\/p>\n
There will always be busy people. The instant Atlas Shrugs, another Atlas will be right behind him, to take up the burden- maybe better, maybe worse, but the line of pretenders to the throne is as endless as the human race. <\/p>\n
I have no love for the book, though I think Ms Rand might have been a lovely and interesting person to know in person. I share her burning desire that people be free and have a right to the fruit of their labor. Had she been a carpenter, or a chef, she might well have left the world a far better place than it was when she entered; instead, I fear, she leaves behind her a trail of acolytes as unwilling to admit her slightest fault as owners of Norinco 1911’s or people who have a Taurus Judge sitting on ther nightstand next to the false teeth in the glass and the Harlequin romance. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
has my copy of Atlas Shrugged. I warned him, and I tried to warn him off reading it, but he insisted. I told him that this was my fifth copy, the first I threw out the window of a moving car, the second and third I took to the range and shot, and the fourth […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4307"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4307\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}