Damn! The Thread Police! Got me again!
Much in the same way that ‘Requiem for a Dream’ compares to ‘Pineapple Express’ regarding the theme of drug addiction.
I’m letting you off with a warning this time. 
Seriously, when someone responds to one of my posts, I want to know if they are criticizing the plot of the book or criticizing Objectivism as it can be applied to the real world. My response will be different, depending on what they are talking about.
I think the plot of the book is perfectly in line with Objectivist philosophy and think those trying to poke holes in the plot either haven’t read the book or don’t understand Objectivism. However, I would not defend Objectivism as a practical philosophy to be applied to the real world as I think there are flaws in it.
Rand didn’t even consider Picasso an artist. All artists beginning with the Impressionists were “post-art,” with a few exceptions, like Dali’s Crucufixion. To Rand, visible brush strokes were the mark of an amateur.
Oh, then nevermind.
After all, a love of Monet is the root of all evil.
That sounds like a load of Pollocks.
I suppose you’d rather we get rid of the banks altogether, and hide your wealth under the Matisse?
What gives you that impression?
Adam Lee: 10 Things I Learned About the World from Ayn Rand’s Insane "Atlas Shrugged’.
The most intriguing is this:
Somehow, I doubt any of Rand’s own lovers ever were privileged to use her so.
I always thought that Rand’s attitude was the result of her being married to a man she didn’t respect and who drank too much. Her husband was always a background figure who never amounted to much and passively gave in to anything she wanted. This alpha-male worship nonsense of hers was a reflection of her own desire for something more.
But I agree her view of sexuality and male-female relationships was distorted and bizarre. One of the things I hated most about her works. You see the same thing in “The Fountainhead”, which I think is a better book than Atlas Shrugged. But the male-female relationships in the book are still distasteful.
I found #6 to be rather intriguing: All natural resources are limitless.
It’s your land to strip out, and you right to abandon it and buy more land to strip out. Of course, all you have left when you are done is a lot of stripped out land, and no amount of payoff will put the nutrients and minerals back into that land.
That entire article is just a badly done hatchet job, substituting contempt for actual criticism, as so many ‘critics’ of Rand tend to do.
I might be convinced…if you tell us specifically where the author of that piece got it wrong. Which parts of her book were misquoted?
You know how defenders of AS tend to say to critics, “But you haven’t read the book!” and they’re usually right?
You haven’t read the article.
IIRC, she cuckolded him. Her view of sexual relationships seemed to be an adversarial or competitive one where one partner exerted dominance over the other.
Did too.
Then point out the misquotes and inaccuracies.
It’s misrepresentation more than misquotes and inaccuracies, but sure, give me a few hours.
Right. I’ll start with the second point, since it’s most glaring.
This is a blatant misrepresentation of the scene in the book. The crew does not ‘fret that they should wait until they’re sure it’s safe’. They know the light is broken, and don’t want to take any responsibility.
The second bit, about her using Rearden metal because she ‘feels it in her gut’ is so blatantly wrong, that I don’t even need to argue it. I’ll just quote a few sentences on either side of the line that guy cherry picked.
The third point: “Bad guys get their way through democracy; good guys get their way through violence.”
I’ll give him the first part, while pointing out that in most of the book it’s not democracy but crony capitalism that she’s representing and deploring. In fairness, she’s probably not a committed democrat, I doubt she believes that whatever is voted is necessarily correct. In that though, I agree with her.
The second part is again a blatant misrepresentation. Rand’s philosophy explicitly notes that violence is wrong. The characters that Lee mentions in support of ‘good guys are violent’ are Nathaniel Taggart, an ancestor of Dagny’s from I don’t know how many generations back, and Ellis Wyatt. The second case is interesting, because what Lee notes as ‘violence’ is Wyatt setting fire to his oil fields. These are oil fields that, in the context of the book, existed only because Wyatt developed a method to extract oil from shale. His statement is "“I am leaving it as I found it. Take over. It’s yours.” This is something of a recurring theme in Rand’s books - the creator destroying his creation rather than let it be used as he/she did not intend, but in this book in particular, it’s a sidenote. There is only one character in the book that is both on the side of the good and is a violent man - Ragnar Danneskjold. The other characters do not approve of his actions. Funnily Lee makes no mention of him. My guess is he didn’t read the book either.
As for the degradation thing - I have no qualms about admitting that Rand’s ideas of sex are fucked up, but again, everything this guy is quoting is nonsense.
This is utter shit. They’d been the best of friends for years, Rand presents tension between the two of them in the scenes leading up to sex - he’s come to see her in her office, and while he’s there
They go out hiking together, and Lee presents this line to back up his thesis
ignoring of course, that it’s preceded by this
and followed by this
Then Lee goes off on a tirade about natural resources being limitless, and those dreaded words - sustainability and recycling not featuring prominently. The book was published in 1957. Just how much did sustainability feature in any writings of the period? Environmental concerns were simply not a thing back then. I’m happy to be corrected if they were.
His 8th point “Crime doesn’t exist, even in areas of extreme poverty.” is just utterly wrong.
The last part of the book reports roving gangs of people who resort to crime for sustenance, and people banding together to resist such gangs. There are several riots, incidents of mob violence are noted, and a general breakdown of law and order is depicted. I have no clue what Lee is talking about.
His 9th point, “The only thing that matters in life is how good you are at making money.” he contradicts with the quote he himself provides. I don’t even need to do anything here
In a scene from part I, the copper baron Francisco d’Anconia explains to Dagny why rich people are more valuable than poor people:
“Dagny, there’s nothing of any importance in life — except how well you do your work. Nothing. Only that. Whatever else you are, will come from that. It’s the only measure of human value. All the codes of ethics they’ll try to ram down your throat are just so much paper money put out by swindlers to fleece people of their virtues. The code of competence is the only system of morality that’s on a gold standard.”
10. Smoking is good for you.
Again. 1957.
In summary - I did read the article, and it’s a hatchet job.