The Fountainhead and Objectivism

[Brant Gaede]

I just stumbled on a showing of "The Fountainhead" on TCM. It's on right now.

Consider how things were in the 1930s, "The Red Decade." When collectivism still had moral gravitas in the hoity-toity intellectual dominant circles. Today, that's confined mostly to the college campus and the traditional media. "The Fountainhead" was an answer and rebuke to collectivism inside a man's soul.

Today, where are the elites which were confined then to a few? They are all around us creating and building, even in China. Collectivism died years ago as a moral and intellectual force. Now all that's left is the Green religion. Utopia is Earth without man. Talk about a dead end! On, yes, Muslim jihad: knock down some badly built buildings.

The elite, the creators, haven't come down. No, the mass of society has come up and is rising still.

As Roark once was to those around him Israel is to those around it and as America now is to the enemies of freedom and individualism, but people and things are getting better. The Chinese want to get rich. What is the collectivist impulse in that?

Right now Toohey is giving his version of the speech of The Grand Inquisitor to poor Peter Keating. What a blast!

--Brant

[Barbara Branden]

Brant, you wrote: "Collectivism died years ago as a moral and intellectual force. Now all that's left is the Green religion."

When the Berlin Wall came down and the USSR collapsed, I wondered where all the communists would go. Then I realized where they'd go: to the environmental movement.

You wrote: "As Roark once was to those around him Israel is to those around it and as America now is to the enemies of freedom and individualism."

I hadn't thought of it, but I agree.

Whatever the faults of the movie, it is next door to a miracle that it was produced, especially in that climate and at that time. I'm always stunned, when I see it, that those words -- the words Roark speaks, and especially in his final courtroom speech -- are being carried to millions of people who have never heard or imagined them before.

Barbara

[BaalChatzaf]

Today, where are the elites which were confined then to a few? They are all around us creating and building, even in China. Collectivism died years ago as a moral and intellectual force. Now all that's left is the Green religion. Utopia is Earth without man. Talk about a dead end! On, yes, Muslim jihad: knock down some badly built buildings.

Those folks who hate invention, industry and intellectual excellence have to have some place to call home.

The very devout Muslims cannot bear the thought that nations of Unbelievers are so much better off than they are. The delights promised to the Muslim faithful in Paradise (after they are dead) are actually realized by very much alive Unbelievers. That drives them bonkers.

Ba'al Chatzaf