Talk:Ayn Rand/Archive4

Dates and ages are very important for biographies
"Biography: the exact age and year isn't particularly important here" - Mikal

Since a biography is an account of the series of events in another's life, then I would argue that dates and ages are very important. Guidedog (talk) 15:52, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Rand the serial killer groupie
http://tinyurl.com/yhr6pbm So, yeah. This needs to be mentioned on the page, I think. It shows just how fucked up and twisted Rand's philosiphy was. She viewed a brutal murderer of children as a Superman and modeled her ideal man partially off him.69.9.210.13 (talk) 21:14, 21 January 2012 (UTC)


 * As I pointed out below, leftists have routinely made heroes out of murderers & sociopaths like Stalin, Trotsky, Mao, Castro, Che Guevara, etc. In fact, Che's image showed up a lot in the Occupy derelict camps. Advancedatheist (talk) 06:27, 9 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Oh ya, because I see alot of fucking people making heroes out of fucking STALIN. Also, Tu quoque. It doesn't change the fact she got wet for a fucking child killer. --Revolverman (talk) 11:40, 15 August 2012 (UTC)


 * A quick web search reveals two immediate hits that suggest plenty of people think of "fucking STALIN" as a hero. hero for our time Stalin: Top Twelve All-Time Hero! Oddly, Stalin t-shirts haven't become as popular as those for the brutal, sadistic murderer Che, though. --Joemama (talk) 14:08, 27 August 2012 (UTC)
 * We don't like Stalin very much either. Also, Fox. Тy Bored 14:10, 27 August 2012 (UTC)


 * A lot of people would think that this is a genetic fallacy. However who cares it's Ayn Rand! She's so evil! Why? Cause she wrote something admirable about a serial killer in her diary! She was probably aged 20 a time when many people are still trying to find their exact identity. ProoF! Of what? Blank out. Guidewog (talk) 17:01, 19 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Leftist intellectuals get a pass when they praise sociopaths and murderers as agents of authentic living and repudiators of bourgeois values. In the same year Rand published Atlas Shrugged, Norman Mailer published his infamous essay, "The White Negro," where he romanticizes the violent "psychopath": http://www.dissentmagazine.org/online.php?id=26 Advancedatheist (talk) 01:11, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Doubt Casting with file drawer effect
The journals of Ayn Rand contain 768 pages of working notes for novels and books Ayn Rand wrote and didn't write. One page is something that alludes to a serial killer and his possible motivations and morality. She never meant it to be published, therefore it's safe to assume she wrote the note with out thought of what others might interpret her claim to be. Meanwhile, she wrote thousands of pages on what she actually meant. Surely this article could at least reference her later non-fiction work, a simple google search would do. Guidedog (talk) 14:59, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Proposal to Modify

 * Since, this part of the article is only important because it strokes the egos of socialists, the key demographic of this wiki. Any more general wiki audience would have striped it out in favor of a reference to an article about Rational Egoism. This is the change I propose now:


 * For the above reasons the text: "In the late 1920s, Ayn became a passing groupie of sorts for murderer and fraud William Edward Hickman, who was known for kidnapping and brutally dismembering a 12-year-old girl."


 * Should be modified to: "When Rand was 23 years old (1928), the highly publicized trial of murderer and fraud William Edward Hickman helped to inspire the conscience of her heroes. Hickman would be considered in the modern era to be a psychopath, articulate and cold-blooded. Rand wrote, "My Ideal man is very far from him, of course. The outside of Hickman, but not the inside. Much deeper and much more. A Hickman with a purpose. And without the degeneracy. It is more exact to say that the model is not Hickman, but what Hickman suggested to me." What attracted Rand to Hickman was his pithy statements in the newspaper, such as: "I am like the state: what is good for me is right." Other inspirations would later include, Professional Boxer Muhummad Ali for his arrogance in shoving the notion of White supremacy aside saying, "There are two things that are hard to hit and see, thats a spooky ghost and Muhammed Ali."

Guidedog (talk) 13:34, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Bio and crit
Article in New Yorker Scream!! (talk) 11:33, 15 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Always hated that left-wing rag. --Let Them Eat Cake (talk) 20:47, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

I have noticed some information that is missing from Ayn Rand's relationship with Nathaniel Brandon. Brandon was the one that encouraged Rand to extend her influence beyond her friends and create an organization. This provides context for why Rand would choose to have an open relationship. Also there is an interesting avenue of research available for anyone that wanted to look into her reasons for not divorcing her husband, immigration? Guidedog (talk) 13:38, 27 September 2012 (UTC)


 * The envy and the broiling resentment are almost palpable in this article:
 * Settled companionably enough in a glassy, sharp-edged Richard Neutra house, Rand and O’Connor called each other Fluff and Cubbyhole. He poured his efforts into gardening and the maintenance of his wife’s working comfort. Often sloppy at home, Rand cultivated a striking, geometric look for the cameras and for her growing public. She wore gowns by Adrian, the costume designer who, when still Adrian Greenberg, had promoted her from pleb to aristocrat in “The King of Kings.” The diagonal slash of her hairdo was soon complemented by a cape, and the jabbings of her cigarette holder punctuated her dogmatic, accented conversation."
 * The left hate self-made people. Rand was poor, female and Jewish, three kinds of people the left claim to defend but they hate it when they don't need their help. And she lived in exactly the country they want: Communist Russia. And she broke free, came over to the West and told America "Don't listen to the liberals, Communism's shit, keep on as you are." Priceless. --Let Them Eat Cake (talk) 12:08, 8 October 2012 (UTC)


 * I find it interesting that the Rand phenomenon has happened spontaneously, without central planning, and even in defiance of the dominant mythologies promoted by the progressive strongholds in education, academia, the media and government. I mean, people bought Rand's novels and her other writings with their discretionary income, read them on their own initiative, and then some of them decided that she had some worthwhile insights into the human condition and the proper way to live. They didn't have to do any of these things. I guess the Rand-based resistance to progressivism, like its sometime ally conservative christianity, annoys progressives because it shows the limits of progressive social engineering. Advancedatheist (talk) 01:19, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Photo
I think it's hilarious that we can't find a copyright-free image of her. Osaka Sun (talk) 19:27, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

On the section "Endorsement of American expansionism"
What she meant in that quote was that Native Americans did not have a right to their land because they were savages and thus did not have established property rights. 95.14.196.52 (talk)
 * So? It says so in the quote itself. What makes you think that this was unclear?--ZooGuard (talk) 15:39, 25 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Because the article tries to put words into her mouth and insinuate that she was a racist hypocrite.95.14.196.52 (talk)

Funny ...
... watching folk get all excited about a very crap, very minor Russo-American author. Outside the US she is not known at all. If it weren't for RW I would never have heard of her. Her writing is turgid in the extreme and her philosophy(!) wouldn't travel beyond any rightwing nutters. Keep amusing us please. Scream!! (talk) 19:23, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
 * She's not that minor in the US, which is part of the problem. I don't think it helps that a lot of her fans have a persecution complex about the fact that she's not taken seriously in academic philosophy circles. EVDebs (talk) 17:22, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Politics and philosophy aside, she is indeed a bad writer. Her style lets her down, and her characters are wooden. (Ironic that someone who went on about individuality didn't give much of it to her characters)

According to the BBC, "Rand's popularity is not confined to the US, however, with healthy book sales in the UK, India, Australia, Italy and South Africa." Apparently, Indians like her. You can get her books in UK libraries, but few people have heard of her.Albannach (talk) 09:11, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
 * coug* seven months late *coug*--ZooGuard (talk) 09:18, 26 April 2013 (UTC)


 * To a European, a hundred miles is a long distance, to an American a hundred years is a long time. Seemingly seven months is too.Albannach (talk) 09:35, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Fountainhead and Frank Lloyd Wright
Do we have anything to back this up?-- "Shut up, Brx." 06:23, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
 * It's pretty well known that the The Fountainhead was (at least partly) inspired by FLW. Mentioned in the WP article + pretty much anything else that's been written about the book.  07:19, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Oh, so you are capable of using a talk page, my mistake.Albannach (talk) 08:48, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

On social security
"This difficulty was most clearly illuminated in Rand's final, lonely years when she claimed social security - an act her critics saw as inherently hypocritical but others said was her due." - Well, they say Americans don't understand irony, and she didn't either.Albannach (talk) 09:19, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Anti Science
Ayn Rand is also anti-science. Science requires collective action to support it. Someone needs to write about how just because a smart scientist discovers a new idea it doesn't mean that they did so. Society created that concept. How many people supported that Scientist? He was just the lucky one that managed to get to that position. We all serve society in some way. If you don't serve society you should die!!! What is society?

It's great that this article is so detailed. It's like one big Ad-hominem attack she deserves it. I know a lot of people here would think that because we are making Ad-hominem then there is some underlying rage that is motivating our illogical beliefs. That's just not true, they should read Kant. He proved that logic is useless when interpreting facts. It's a skeptic's dream!
 * Have you actually read any Kant? Considering that Ayn Rand didn't understand him, I hope you're not just regurgitating her thoughts.  A rugged individualist would make up his own mind.--Frybread (talk) 20:26, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Monet
I don't get the reference. A search for Ayn Rand and Monet only led me to RationalWiki-- "Shut up, Brx." 16:34, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
 * "Compare the radiant austerity of Vermeer’s work to the silliness of the dots-and-dashes Impressionists who allegedly intended to paint pure light. He raised perception to the conceptual level; they attempted to disintegrate perception into sense data." -pg 48, "The Romantic Manifesto". She also *objectively* hated Shakespeare, Beethoven, facial hair, homosexuals, etc. If you didn't agree with her there was a flaw in your thinking, you weak minded fool. --Frybread (talk) 20:13, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
 * She did not "hate" Shakespeare, she just thought that his concept of hamartia was a bad idea. She quotes him frequently in her work. --Let Them Eat Cake (talk) 17:47, 18 September 2013 (UTC)
 * And she didn't hate homosexuals either. She didn't personally approve of homosexual practices but was a campaigner for gay rights as it happens and there are many gay Objectivists. --Let Them Eat Cake (talk) 06:24, 26 November 2013 (UTC)