Can someone explain Ayn Rand to me?!

I remember the first time I heard of Rand - I was about 20! No one reads her in Europe. One of my Philosophy professors asked the room if anyone had heard of her and this US student raised her hand and identified as an Objectivist at which point the lecturer proceeded to do what can only be described as a half-hour postmortem hazing of Rand. Just really brutal, and fairly mean to this poor girl. Then I found out that people actually read her in America, which was just puzzling.

I just read Eon Colfer's book Screwed and the central character Dan McEvoy says he wound up with a copy of the Fountainhead at the end of some caper and learnt a lot from it.
Screwed is a current book by a writer I enjoy so not sure how happy I am to find that in it. Not very in short. Unless I'm missing some level on which it's not an endorsement.

Thought it funny that I saw that just after having read through this thread, since it was a couple days after when i came across the paragraph concerned.

Ex-army sergeant Daniel McEvoy is ready to say goodbye New Jersey's lawless underworld and concentrate on his new life as club owner and bona fide boyfriend. But when he's abducted and driven into the Hudson by a vengeful crime boss, he realises that the New Jersey underworld isn't ready to say goodbye to him.

If Dan is to survive, he will have to evade bad guys on both sides of the law and find the missing aunt who once taught him how to handle boobs.

i have no idea but on reading this blurb i wdn't necessarily take the protagonist's thoughts as authorial endorsement

if Rand wd appeal to anybody it wd be lunk-headed rugged individual action heroes

thisfuckingguy.jpg

http://www.forbes.com/sites/harrybinswanger/2013/09/17/give-back-yes-its-time-for-the-99-to-give-back-to-the-1/

harry binswanger

binswanger

bins wanger

harry 'the bins wanger' binswanger

A+ trolling Harry "I defend laissez-faire capitalism, using Ayn Rand's Objectivism" Binswanger

so p much trolling is just this guy's thing?

Insider Trading Is A Right: Don't Shackle The Knowledge-Seekers

trolling is his Randian objectivist right PS. there's no such thing as society u dummies

lmao @ Don't Shackle The Knowledge-Seekers

sounds like a Rush song title

By-Tor and the Knowledge Seekers

for god's sake won't someone please think of the knowledge seekers

Hah before I was forwarded to that Forbes article I had to read a quote from Che Guevara.

i was just sitting in a restaurant with some people i didn't know, and the girl next to me started spouting some shite, and I said 'That sounds like some serious Ayn Rand shite to me' and she said 'OMG SHE'S ONE OF MY HEROES'. Later she said with a beam on her face 'I'm one of Cameron's babes.'

dinner voyage into abjection

Salient thread 4 U, Fizz:

Popular delusions and our duty to dispel them

it wasn't great, imago.

oh wait, bb (gr8 display name btw) i need to see this thread.

You are the only person who's got the reference so far. :-/

lol I was just reading this piece on Rand yesterday.

It doesn't mock the whole thing as much as I'd like it to.

You are the only person who's got the reference so far. :-/

he's a really interesting character. not all unsympathetic iirr. (became mildly obsessed when I was abt 20).

Half Cornish, you know! Also ginger. Patron saint of talented youths who squandered their vast potential!

Was gonna start a Pick A Bronte: Poll! thread on ILB but, um, apparently this is the ILX Bronte thread:

the Bronte sisters Porn book

Hmmm.

AR and megan mccardle are the two chicks libertarians dig. see, they're not sexist

oh and veronique de rugy. tax cuts pay for themselves

http://www.arpanetdialogues.net/vol-iv/

I am surprised to be in such a conversation. It feels like a deliberate test.

It's not real.

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2011/04/so-reagan-signs-into-this-chatroom.html

nothing is real but john galt

well known, from wikipedia:

Rand underwent surgery for lung cancer in 1974 after decades of heavy smoking.[88] In 1976, she retired from writing her newsletter and, despite her initial objections, was persuaded to allow Evva Pryor, a consultant from her attorney's office, to sign her up for Social Security and Medicare.[89] During the late 1970s her activities within the Objectivist movement declined, especially after the death of her husband on November 9, 1979.[90] One of her final projects was work on a never-completed television adaptation of Atlas Shrugged.[91]

Rand died of heart failure on March 6, 1982, at her home in New York City,[92] and was interred in the Kensico Cemetery, Valhalla, New York.[93] Rand's funeral was attended by some of her prominent followers, including Alan Greenspan. A six-foot floral arrangement in the shape of a dollar sign was placed near her casket

question: you would think that she, of all people, would have the motivation to not accept social security or medicare. so she must have been broke? i always just assumed she was rich because she wrote best selling books and traveled widely and hung out with a bunch of rich assholes. did she really whittle away her life savings so much that she had to accept help from the evil altruistic govt?

A six-foot floral arrangement in the shape of a dollar sign was placed near her casket

gangsta

A broke ass person memorialized by a giant dollar sign floral arrangement vs a richass mofo with a giant floral cross in a church, we live in a crazy place

Rand's funeral was attended by some of her prominent followers, including Alan Greenspan

gangsta

http://www.internetweekly.org/images/alan_greenspan_poster.jpg

Needs a Sgt. Pepper parody

https://scontent-lga1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xft1/v/t1.0-9/11825700_10153099759181475_682204531232852883_n.jpg?oh=fab9d63f7fef8d1ec06fcf9f73cfbeb1&oe=564D470D

http://billmoyers.com/story/media-morality-neighbors-cow/

neal gabler otm

https://www.thedailybeast.com/john-galton-wanted-libertarian-paradise-in-anarchapulco-he-got-bullets-instead

would crosspost to bitcoins thread if I could find it

john galton

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EAq-VzeXoAAsWX-?format=jpg