

Mike Wallace interviews Ayn Rand (1959) - wslh
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2012/04/mike-wallace-interviews-ayn-rand-1959/

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btipling
I don't understand what's up with all the tea party political activism on HN
today.

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're
> evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

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lhnz
Do you really believe that she was more of a political activist for the Tea
Party movement than a philosophising fiction-writer?

Not everybody that enjoys Ayn Rand is a Tea Party activist. I am certain that
there are many that found the self-confidence to live their lives freely and
form their own businesses in her books.

On top of that, her philosophy may be wrong but the conversations it sparks
are often gratifying for the intellectually curious.

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kennu
I've been reading Rand's Atlas Shrugged and found it pretty boring and naive.
OTOH after a friend of mine reminded that Rand was born in Russia and
experienced the beginning of its transition into the Soviet Union in the
1920's, I kind of understand her points of view.

At that time, some people probably had a very strong belief in communism, not
having seen the really dark sides of it yet. And also, some other people
probably saw any kind of social democracy as a threat and considered it all
the same as communism, not yet having seen the future of increasing economic
inequality, the 1% vs. the 99% and all that.

It's probably good to hear what Rand has to say, but it should be put in the
right context (of more than 50 years in the past). Nowadays our western
economic systems have different kinds of problems to tackle.

