Then, someone said something that suggested to me I had really missed things that they had seen in Atlas. That prompted me to read the book a second time. Instead of reading for the plot, I read it for meaning. I was astonished. How could I have been so inept at reading!!? By grade ten I had been pegged as a post graduate level reader by the English Dept at my high school. I routinely read tomes written for adults, about religion, about politics and so forth. By grade 13, the last year of high school here, I was reading Scientific American from cover to cover every month, as well as reading still more books, and completing my schoolwork, and more.

In that second reading the characters suddenly jumped out at me. Not only were they NOT wooden, they were profound representations of very real human characteristics. I did not need details of what they looked like, or how much pain they suffered, or what they ate, it was only the essential elements of what they did and thought that mattered.

I realized I had never before read a book with so many layers or levels, ever. I also realized that my own method of reading was improper. I was not being suitably judgmental, and I was not examining my own ideas in any genuinely challenging way. I had to read it again, just to find out what else I had missed.

Yes, I am 17 years younger than you, and I hope to live another 45 years (wow). However, I do hope you will cease to misrepresent Rand’s ideas until you have read her more carefully. Just don’t say anything if you really thing reading her again is a ridiculous suggestion. On the other hand, people in their 80s have been know to pursue degrees, and even PhDs. Knowing what I know now, I would rather study Rand than waste time in any University program.

Rand is this millennium’s Aristotle. In 319 BC, I would rather have died as a complete unknown who had attended Aristotle’s Lyceum, than as some heroic warrior or political leader to be forever mentioned in history books. I have a similar opportunity with Rand, and I am making as much of it as I can. I have read nearly everything she has written (not unreleased archive material, of course), I learn from her best students, and I know what they mean when they speak or write. I recognize the intellectual mistakes made by people who attack them, or who attack Rand. Many of those attacks mirror the mindset of the antagonists (irrational subjectivists) in her novels. They echo, in their own words, of course, certain errors in economics, education, art, politics, ethics etc. She has indeed shown me a sunlit world, and the greatness Men can achieve in the short time they spend here.

If I was 90 I would want to die being able to say, “I too, know!“

Further, your attack of Rand demonstrates a profound misunderstanding or misrepresentation of her reviews.

Rand was deeply opposed to Reagan.

Reality demonstrates that the “trickle-down” economics you deride truly works. The poor in America were better off than the middle class in most other nations. That is why millions of people around the world flocked to America, as immigrants seeking the ideal that their productive efforts would be theirs to benefit from. Over the last 100 yrs, America’s administrations have systematically reduced that hope, in taxes and in regulation (as I pointed out here in the first comment below djelloul’s post.

Djelloul fails to understand that the freer a people are economically, the more charitable they will be. Indeed, Americans have been more charitable (per capita) than most other nations. That charity, readily accepted by Rand, also served to make America great. The recipients knew that they were being helped so they could be productive. They saw it as a help up, not as an entitlement right for the empty fact of having been born.

Djelloul has dismissed, for the sake of the above diatribe, the fact that Greenspan was not following Rand’s principles and morals but was actively pursuing the opposite. He joined in with the American administration’s heavy handed interference in the housing and mortgage market —54,000 regulations in the last twelve years is hardly Randian, laissez-faire capitalism.

Djelloul’s (and Obama’s) “grander vision” is no more mature than a 14-year-old with the idea that if one took all they could from the rich the poor would be rich too: with no regard for the producers who created the wealth the poor depended on. The obvious long term consequence is that the producers won’t be producing, and the poor will not get the same ‘hand outs’. That is, in the long term, under djelloul’s socialism, the poor will lose the most!

Rand did care about the poor, and she knew that it was the poor who needed economic separation from the state more than any other group. Heck, the poor include many great minds. But the principle is, “don’t rein in great minds“!

There is no doubt that the American administration has behaved egregiously over the last 75 years, but their behavior was the antithesis of what Rand stood for. They flirted with wicked dictators, they routinely engaged in, as Thomas Jefferson put it, “foreign adventures” that he cogently argued were not the proper role of an American government. Sure, it was American administrations that behaved that way, but it was not Jefferson or Rand’s America, it was the very political collectivism that Djelloul is advocating for.

When Djelloul writes, “We want to give each other a hand, we want prosperity for all of us, not just the arrogant rich.” he is saying, “those with ability” should provide for “those with need”. His use of “arrogant” is the sociopath’s method of justifying his immoral/criminal action. Hegel, Marx and Stalin succeeded in turning that sociopathy into a political system. “Depraved” is too kind a word.

The Fountainhead, rightly, speaks to the young. It says, “live to your own vision”. It says, “You are no-one’s slave”. It says, “Do what you most desire, to the absolute best of your ability.” It says, “do not compromise on your ideals”. Notice that Roark did help Keating when he believed it made sense to do so. Contrary to your interpretation of The Fountainhead Roark was charitable to Keating, but Keating cheated him.

You wrote, “We want to give each other a hand, we want prosperity for all of us, not just the arrogant rich. We are tolerant of dissent. We live in one nation indivisible, not a red country and a blue country. We are not secessionists. We intend to work together. Capitalism yes, piracy no.

You are absolutely right on that, but be careful. Socialism is not the alternative, instead the alternative is recognizing piratical regulations by government are the problem, the solution is more freedom. Sure, CEO’s of large financial corporations altered their game according to the rules of government, to make a profit, but the evil lies first in government rules. Government has the (improper) power to distort the market.

Do not blame the victim of that market manipulation.

Read, or re-read, Rand with intellectual honesty. Thus far you have not done so.

Tragically, both presidential candidates believe that robbing Peter to pay Paul. That is, they both believe sacrifice of self to others (socialism) is the real solution. That is the diametric opposite of what made America great by the 1930s.

— Brent