Friday, May 27, 2011

Everyone's Talking about Ayn Rand


A film adaptation of Atlas Shrugged, a BBC documentary and the support of rightwing economists have put the philosopher-novelist back in the news.

From a story in the Guardian...

Ayn Rand's gospel of unadulterated laissez-faire capitalism seems to be gaining popularity among a new generation of followers.

It may not come as a surprise that the Tea Party movement in the US is using Rand, the Russian-American who developed a philosophical system called Objectivism, as a posthumous poster girl for lower taxes, with banners reading "I am John Galt" – a reference to the idealised hero of her 1957 magnum opus Atlas Shrugged. Or that elaborate public talks on her radical philosophy are being sponsored by the economically rightwing Adam Smith Institute in London. But this week she also surfaced in popular culture with a starring role on BBC2 in All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, the documentary by Adam Curtis.

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