Saturday, January 29, 2011

Ford's Load Of Crock On Ayn Rand Over At Huffington Post

"My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."--- Ayn Rand


Once in a while you read something so stupid you just have to shake your head and this morning was one of those times when I clicked on a Huffington Post link written by some guy named Michael Ford.

Ford accuses famous author Ayn Rand, who wrote Atlas Shrugged, of being a hypocrite for accepting Social Security and Medicare when her writings indicated she did not believe in government assistance and he refers to the acceptance of the two named above as "bailouts."

First, the money taken from her and/or her husband's paychecks was owed to her and in no reality can that be called a "bailout", doing so shows an incredible lack of honesty on Ford's part.

Welfare, foodstamps, extended unemployment insurance, all can be considered government assistance, but Social Security and Medicare? For people that worked and saw money taken out of every check with the promise that when they aged and retired they would get it back, can anyone truly be so idiotic as to believe that being paid back is being assisted?

In 9 paragraphs and two simple sentences, that is not the only mistake Ford made either, as is pointed out in the comment section but those of us who have studied up on Rand already knew.

In the second paragraph was Ford's first mistake in research:

It's good he was not named for Ayn Rand because her real name was Alisa Zinovievna Rosenbaum which she changed honoring her Rand typewriter.


I will turn this one over to JDsays in the comment section on Ford's piece:

This article lost credibility
­ in the second paragraph. Rand is NOT named after her typewriter­. The rest of the piece continues the misreprese­ntation of Rand.

"Despite persistent rumors", Micheal Ford doesn't research his subjects prior to writing about them.

"“While still in Russia, c. 1925, and long before Remington-­Rand typewriter­s were produced, Alisa Rosenbaum had adopted the name ‘Rand.’ Letters written in 1926 from Ayn Rand’s family in Russia already refer to the name ‘Rand.’ These were sent from Russia before Ayn Rand had communicat­ed from America. The Remington and Rand companies did not merge until 1927; ‘Rand’ did not appear on their (or any) typewriter­s until the early 1930s"

http://www­.aynrand.o­rg/site/Pa­geServer?p­agename=ab­out_ayn_ra­nd_faq_ind­ex2#ar_q3b


The reason for Ford's hit piece on Rand is easy to figure out. It is the outrage felt and even expressed in comments at this particular point:

"A Library of Congress survey of the most influential books on American readers, "Atlas Shrugged" ranked second only to the Bible."


The liberal left cannot stand the thought that the writings of a woman who believed in capitalism and despised socialism can be so overwhelmingly "influential."

Memorable quotes from Atlas Shrugged

"If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down on his shoulders—what would you tell him to do?" " To Shrug."--- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

"So you think that money is the root of all evil? Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?"--- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

"Through centuries of scourges and disasters, brought about by your code of morality, you have cried that your code had been broken, that the scourges were punishment for breaking it, that men were too weak and too selfish to spill all the blood it required. You damned men, you damned existence, you damned this earth, but never dared to question your code. Your victims took the blame and struggled on, with your curses as reward for their martyrdom - while you went on crying that your code was noble, but human nature was not good enough to practice it. And no one rose to ask the question: Good? - by what standard?"--- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

Those quotes above are indicative of Rand's philosophy and it is a philosophical viewpoint that the liberal left fight against every single day of their lives.

Meh

Who is John Galt?

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