[Dr Big Bird PhD]

I'm not sure that I would agree with the proposition that she was unable: She more accurately simply didn't bother as it was not germane to her broader arguments. Although she used "guns" as a metaphor for force, she did not see life thru the 2nd Amendment prism as we do.

I attribute that to her childhood experiences and her original exposure to the firearms that fueled the revolution. She was also much more focused on creating a mental framework that was uniquely "American" and that could defend itself from Kantian philosophy.

Unfortunately, she adopts the metaphysical substrata of the Marxist materialism and appeals to objectivity that destroyed her father's world.

While her philosophy's roots are pretty clearly grounded in rationalizing her personal history as unethical, I wouldn't agree that she adopted anything Marxist. If there was one person she hated more than Kant it was Marx. She attempts to induce ethics through the concepts of Life vs. Death being the ultimate positive and ultimate negative. Anything you interpret as "materialism" is merely a misinterpreted building block of her epistemology.
To reject her conclusion that a Right to Life equates an inherent Right to Property, is to reject the other deeper concepts in her ideology.

This is reflected in Binswanger's writing which is littered with the gratuitous use of the word "objectively". Remove that word from his piece and it loses none of its persuasive force. Indeed, Rand used the word as a talisman to sidestep the epistemological absurdity of her process.

Having gone through the piece, the author does not define what is "objective" very clearly. I don't see how you can denounce Rand's entire methodology of thinking though. In fact, I can hardly believe how one can rationalize a small government, individual rights, and the RKBA without agreeing with a large chunk of her conclusions.

The individualism of Rand is easily distinguishable from the view of individuals of the founding fathers and their view of rights arising from man's nature. Neither is the individualism of Rand reflective of the American sense of individualism as we expanded west; that American individualism featured a vibrant sense of voluntary association, what Rand's camp would call collectivism. Rand's individualism is very much that of a refugee from a mob. As appealing as that sense is in the current climate, it is ultimately corrosive of the social sense that translates individual rights into political force in our system.

You have grossly misread her if you think anything in this paragraph is true. The entire purpose of her writings following the Fountainhead is to create a philosophical framework that justifies the original founding father's decisions to create a society by the American method.

I confess that my analysis of Rand is not widely shared in my part of the political spectrum, and that I know many sharp, intelligent, perspicacious people who are enthralled with Rand. However, I echo the caution of Whittaker Chambers who noted a fundamental defect in her philosophy as manifested in her literature.

What is it? I am curious to read his thoughts.

I will take a look at that, though having suffered through Galt's unending speech I do consider myself to have already done considerable randian penance.

Hahaha. Did you read the speech separately of reading the book or not? The speech is much easier and enjoyable to digest if you read the book start to finish.

Sounds pretty explict to me.

http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/essays/guns.html

You have to remember that under her philisophy the people are not supposed to be allowed to use violence to obtain politcal ends. That is the exclusive domain of the government. A bit ironic in context.

In my opinion, its where the effectiveness of her philosophy ends. It is extremely functional on an individual and business basis. However when it comes to law, it does not do a very good job of illustrating what should be law. It is only good at saying what shouldn't be law.

I read every last miserable word of Fountainhead. I confess that I do not understand the enthusiasm many people have for her literature. Her characters are archly cartoonish and most of the dialogue is thinly veiled philosophical exposition.

I could get into a long discussion about this, but in my opinion it serves the book better to keep the characters in such a manner. Her point wasn't to create someone real, but to imagine the best possible a man could be. She highly respected Romanticism and the Greco-Roman virtue ethic.

As literature, I think it is amongst the worst I've read.

I wish I could have a more in depth conversation of it with you, the Fountainhead is the most inspirational piece of literature I've ever read.

Ayn Rand, her essays and her books have provided me with an understanding of economics, philosophy, morals, ethics and provided intellectual where-with-all to defend my rights.
That might have been her intent, rather than addressing particular issues.
And I thank her.

Absolutely the point.

After writing the Fountainhead, she was no longer trying to create a Romantic storyline different to her contemporaries (she uses the world "romantic" to mean the "romanticist" movement of literature i.e. Victor Hugo/Dostoevsky). The Fountainhead did so well, she most likely felt that it was the moral argument present in the book that made it so vastly popular. In my opinion Atlas Shrugged should only be regarded as fiction because the novel presents its views in a highly intricate and volitional set of circumstances to reinforce her epistemology. She did this because it would have a stronger impact on people to see how her rationalization of reality goes step by step, and essentially make her conclusions self-evident.

This is very obviously a form of loading the material and begging the question, but one only has to look at the novel and where she came from before then looking at the world today. She is frighteningly accurate with her portrayal of the steps a civilized society takes towards becoming dystopian.

Most of her Dystopian contemporaries like Huxley and Orwell created fictional societies already set and established within their respective timeframes. The plot arc of the heroes in either is realizing the futility of stopping the march towards this form of society. While Huxley and Orwell are very critical of this type of society, they are essentially saying that it is inevitable and anyone ethical upon our standards of individualism will be consumed by this next stage of civilization.

Rand's purpose was to illustrate how we go from America's yesterday to today to tomorrow. In my opinion, the point of the novel was to forewarn people of the cycles of history Humanity has gone through. The few societies of greatest profit and individualism are eventually swallowed whole by themselves. People often forget the first society that went from a republic to a democracy to a socialized autocracy to a dictator was the Greco-Roman empire. This is the period of civilization that we are destined to repeat in my opinion.