The Galt and the Lamers 4
In the course of discussing criticism he has received for a column he wrote on Ayn Rand, Jonathan Chait dances around his own feeling about that lady:
Read the rest.
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June 20, 2013 at 11:48 am
Arguing with a run of the mill libertarian and another who writes for the Atlantic is like arguing with a wooden table. One is just ordinary and pointless to debate, the other is shined up and presented as special, but is still the same. The latter, because of the fancy label, is an expert on nothing but being most senseless and therefore fit for the job, gets to be the expert on everything because Google gets paid to put the magazine’s slug lines in its news tab. Has there ever been a western civilized country governed by libertarians? Rhetorical. It’s a minority position with some power now only because of national paralysis and abuse of system rules of procedure. And you’ll never convince me that anyone who professes to like Atlas Shrug isn’t a secret hater of good books and literature. So here in the US we can have a magazine called Reason, based in California, that hardly anyone reads, dedicated to the libertarian logic of Ayn Rand who, among many things, concluded that cigarette smoking was the mark of intellectual refinement. Or even better, that Robin Hood was evil incarnate, explained in a rant in which a pirate gives a gold bar to a rich man on a dark road at night.
June 20, 2013 at 1:43 pm
I agree, but to whatever extent I have an audience, “run of the mill Libertarians” and writers for the Atlantic are not who I’m trying to get to read his article.
June 20, 2013 at 3:45 pm
I made the point poorly. What I might have said was that libertarians make a noise that’s entirely out of proportion to their actual presence. When people get a clear picture of their art and thought, it’s not a big seller. And I still think Atlas Shrugged sells in the manner that books by L. Ron Hubbard sold. The second installment of the Atlas Shrugged movie was a horrible flop, much worse than the first. If Rand Paul didn’t have the foundation of his father, would he even have a following?
June 20, 2013 at 9:34 pm
Atlas Shrugged pictures a fantasy world–and one that is much less based on reality than the Lord of the Rings.
How anyone over 12 years old can buy into it is beyond me.