Who Is John Galt?

So, i have finally finished "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand.

My first experience with ayn rand's writings was early on in elementary school in 2nd or 3rd grade. my dad introduced me to her and i read "anthem". I thought it was a cool story, though i did not necessarily understand the politics and philosophy behind it.

I read anthem later on and was able to better grasp the message. I then read "The Fountainhead" when i was 17 or 18.

I remember my dad reading atlas shrugged when i was young. I have wanted to read it for a long time but never found the time or the motivation. then, with all the government bailouts the book was referred to alot in different newspaper and magazine articles. I read one in the Wall Street Journal and it sparked my curiosity again. I went out and bought the book for myself as well as a copy of anthem. Now, i have finished it! :)

First, my thoughts on the comparisons made recently to the book and the current economic and political situation we see around us. While i can see where the comparisons are coming from, i do not agree completely with the assertations. The writers were comparing the bailouts to the directives and laws extended in the book by the government to halt the economic downfall. That is the similarity, the government stepping in the stop a problem. I do not agree completely with a lot of the bailouts and recent attempts of our government to stop the bleeding. However, i disagree completely with one thing. The heroes of rand's book are the industrialists, the producers. They are the men, without which there is no progress. They are men, and women that move the economy, they provide ideas and the enginuity to bring those ideas to life. She makes a good point that while the workers in a factory are dispensible the man that founded the factory, invented the product that the workers are to produce is indespensible. she talks about the importance of these types of men and women in the world and in the book, it is these types of men and women and their industries that come under attack from the government. In the book, the government is stepping into industries and companies that were doing fine and even very well on their own. in our situation, it is different. These companies are not industrial companies that produce! The reason so many of the banks were in trouble was because they were producing air, nothing, they were taking enormous risks for the immediate payout and backing it with nothing. The car companies were not producing good products! the men that were leading these banks and the car companies were not producers! I believe that ayn rand would have thought of these CEO's as the same trash as the government leaders and lobbyists in her book!

anyways, enough about the articles and comparisons, what did i learn from the book and what do i think about the book itself?
i enjoyed the book, i am glad to have read it. I agree with her belief in great potential that is in each individual. I would call it divine potential (though, that is where she might disagree with me) as an aspiring professor and educator i enjoy and agree with her view of man as a rational being and the power of reason. I admire her respect and love for life and living. She believes in agency, argues well for the necessity of freedom as well as the importance of rational thought in excercising that freedom.

She believes in man's right and moral responsibility to himself, and only himself, to be happy, and do what will make him happy. She advocates for real happiness based on rational thought and reasoning. She believes in respecting the rights of others and that they should do the same. Her philosophy is based on that of aristotles, what is moral is what will make one happy. if it will make one unhappy it is not moral. if it will limit ones ability to live freely and independently seek ones own true happiness it is immoral. I liked the explanation of why dishonesty is immoral,
"Honesty is the recognition of the fact that the unreal is unreal and can have no value, that niether love nor fame nor cash is a value obtained by fraud-that and attempt to gain value by decieving the mind of others is an act of raising your victims to a position higher than reality, where you become a pawn of their blindness, a slave of their non-thinking and their evasions, while their intelligence, their rationality, their perceptiveness become the enemies you have to dread and flee- that you do not care to live as a dependent, lese of all a dependent on the stupidity of others, or as a fool whose source of values is the fools he succeeds in fooling-that honesty is not a social duty, not a sacrifice for hte sake of others, but the most profoundly selfish virtue man can practice: his refusal to sacrifice the reality of his own existence to the deluded consciousness of others."
by lying, you are doing nothing more than decievng yourself, and sacrificing yourself. The one who suffers most is not the one that it lied to but the one who has trapped themselves and must now live in the lie.

so, i enjoyed the book. I highlighted a few interesting points and i am glad to have read it. I recommend it to all.