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Atlas Shrugged: Why is this so bad?

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  • Santa ClaustrophobiaSanta Claustrophobia Ho Ho Ho Disconnecting from Xbox LIVERegistered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Organichu wrote: »
    bioshock is a pretty interesting game but i'd hardly count the conclusions of a popular video game as a meaningful informer of anything

    Especially in an 'actual results' kind of way. It's just as narratively guilty as Atlas Shrugged is. But then, most things are.

    Santa Claustrophobia on
  • celandinecelandine Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    wfo wrote: »
    Goumindong wrote: »
    *Image*

    Libertarianism, at least the philosophy (I know the party down in the US is pretty out there), isn't in favor of no government. If it was, it would be anarchy, not libertarianism. It's a philosophy that calls for less government intervention in the day to day lives of people, and more personal autonomy. Regardless of whether someone agrees with it, disagrees with it, or agrees with some parts of it and disagrees with others, it's just a political philosophy.

    No, libertarianism really is anarchy. What you're arguing is a "no true scotsman" fallacy. "That isn't libertarianism, libertarianism is only how I define it"

    Um, it isn't. If it were, it would be called "anarchy" and not "libertarianism". There's a reason we have different names for different things. Depeneding on the context, it is a blanket term to describe a number of different more specific political philosophies which share common traits (minimalist government, specifically NOT no-government philosophies - these are properly categorized as anarchy), some of which may be very similar to anarchy (but many are not), or it is a direction, rather than a place in the political landscape - pointing from any reasonable currently-existing government to one of those minimalist government philosophies.

    You are attributing to libertarianism characteristics you may have heard used to describe one specific strain of libertarianism, or simply characteristics which you find convenient because they make it easier to ridicule. Please stop kicking a man while he's down. It's already easy enough.

    As your friendly neighborhood libertarian:
    Yes, libertarianism is different from anarchism. Minarchist libertarians fight constantly with their anarchist brethren. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to get them to do anything else!

    celandine on
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  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    libertarians are anarchists who believe that people will donate money to the state to keep the military and contract enforcement laws going right?

    override367 on
  • celandinecelandine Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    libertarians are anarchists who believe that people will donate money to the state to keep the military and contract enforcement laws going right?

    It's a bit of a mess. I think the donation business is what Rand believes (this a vague recollection.) Minarchists think that yes, you can have a state, and yes, it can raise taxes, but only for national defense and contract enforcement (including protection against violent crime.) A good many libertarians aren't as rigid as either -- Friedman and Hayek were fine with a much broader list of state services, including subsidies for health care and the earned income tax credit.

    It's not a unified platform in any way. More of a way of seeing the world, and a direction that policy can go in -- just as policies can be more left-wing or more right-wing, they can be more or less libertarian. "Libertarians" are people who want policy to be significantly more libertarian than it is today. They differ a lot in how far they'd want to go in an ideal world -- but it's a moot point because they have a hard time accomplishing even their most moderate goals.

    celandine on
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  • ronyaronya Arrrrrf. the ivory tower's basementRegistered User regular
    edited July 2010
    And anarchist libertarians like Rothbard believe in private militaries and private courts and contract enforcement, anyway...

    ronya on
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  • ApollohApolloh Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    ronya wrote: »
    And anarchist libertarians like Rothbard believe in private militaries and private courts and contract enforcement, anyway...

    Because nothing corrupt and evil can come from completely privatized organizations.

    Apolloh on
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  • ronyaronya Arrrrrf. the ivory tower's basementRegistered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Well, there you have two strands of thought: one which holds that it won't be corrupt and evil, and one which holds that it will be corrupt and evil but less so than the existing state of affairs (which, needless to say, many libertarians regard as corrupt and evil).

    ronya on
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  • CervetusCervetus Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    ronya wrote: »
    Interestingly, Ayn Rand has just been received a Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry.

    I'm wondering whether the gaggles of Rand devotees are torn between cheering that Rand is a now a Serious Philosopher, or asserting that Serious Philosophy has always been bankrupt anyway, or - somewhat unlikely - realizing that they didn't understand Rand or its place in philosophy to begin with.

    I didn't realize Rand went to a state school. This just gets better and better.

    Cervetus on
  • ApollohApolloh Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    The enforcers of regulation on people doing xyz is the necessary evil of government.

    Thats just accepted.

    Apolloh on
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  • Kipling217Kipling217 Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Cervetus wrote: »
    ronya wrote: »
    Interestingly, Ayn Rand has just been received a Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry.

    I'm wondering whether the gaggles of Rand devotees are torn between cheering that Rand is a now a Serious Philosopher, or asserting that Serious Philosophy has always been bankrupt anyway, or - somewhat unlikely - realizing that they didn't understand Rand or its place in philosophy to begin with.

    I didn't realize Rand went to a state school. This just gets better and better.

    She went to a state school that prior to the communist revolution restricted jews, barred women and had high tuition rates.

    Guess who was a jewish woman from a lower middle class familly?

    Kipling217 on
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  • N1tSt4lkerN1tSt4lker Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Isidore wrote: »
    You'd think people would say the same about Atlas Shrugged but here we are.

    Exactly. Bioshock is just a narrative, but it's a pretty effective picture of where laissez-faire capitalism ultimately leads barring something miraculous. Matching narrative with narrative isn't a terrible way to do things always. I wasn't being terribly serious, but it is a pretty good application of Objectivism to its ultimate end. Certainly far more realistic than anything Rand put forward.

    N1tSt4lker on
  • Xenogear_0001Xenogear_0001 Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Excluding the crazy-genetics-gone-wild and whole-city-underwater scenarios, yeah.

    Xenogear_0001 on
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  • shrykeshryke Member of the Beast Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Excluding the crazy-genetics-gone-wild and whole-city-underwater scenarios, yeah.

    Yeah well, the creator's of Bioshock thought a perpetual motion machine would be way too unrealistic so they went with something a bit more grounded.

    shryke on
  • GoumindongGoumindong Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    celandine wrote: »
    As your friendly neighborhood libertarian:
    Yes, libertarianism is different from anarchism. Minarchist libertarians fight constantly with their anarchist brethren. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to get them to do anything else!

    As your friendly neighborhood pragmatist. No, its not. There may be some ability to have minarchist tendencies within the libertarian tent, but these are extremely small without falling into another ideology entirely.

    Ideologies are not defined by how much government they want despite people who call themselves libertarians wanting it to be this way. Ideologies are defined by their methods and processes of thought and information identification. This is why marxism (seeing everything within the context of historical class struggle) and communism (seeing everything through the context of purely community property rights) can be different ideologies with the same utopian vision.

    Libertarianism is an ideology that explicitly states that coercion is never justified. Minarchist deviations from this require different methods and processes of thought in order to come to that conclusion. Though a small amount of cognitive dissonance may be allowed, once you go further you are clearly into a different range of thought. Yes anarchists are not explicitly libertarians, many different ideologies can create an ideal world which is anarchy. But libertarians are explicitly anarchists, because there is no other ideal world which can exist within the framework of thought that is libertarianism.

    Goumindong on
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  • OptimusZedOptimusZed Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Libertarianism as advertised by the political party is effectively AnarchoCapitalism. Or, if you want to make it sound even more insane, AnarchoCorporatism.

    OptimusZed on
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  • DuffelDuffel jacobkosh Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    N1tSt4lker wrote: »
    Exactly. Bioshock is just a narrative, but it's a pretty effective picture of where laissez-faire capitalism ultimately leads barring something miraculous. Matching narrative with narrative isn't a terrible way to do things always. I wasn't being terribly serious, but it is a pretty good application of Objectivism to its ultimate end. Certainly far more realistic than anything Rand put forward.
    I don't want to turn this into a Bioshock thread... but since it gets hashed around in every AS thread, here's my take on it.

    The real "moral" of Bioshock isn't necessarily anything as specific or academic as an indictment of Objectivism, Rand, or even rampant capitalism - although those are elements in the narrative. Rather, the real moral or "thesis statement" of Bioshock is that it is bad to be selfish and it is good to place the well-being of others (especially the weak and helpless) above your own. The writers used the whole mythology of the art-deco, mid-20th century AS-type world as an inspiration, partially because it's a compelling setting but also because it represents an extreme form of behavior that exists in every society and individual - greed and selfishness.

    Rapture wasn't just an indictment of Rand or Objectivism - it was the end result of a society that devalued the lives of other people, and that forgot the meaning of love and compassion. Objectivism was just a part of it.

    This would have came across much better if the Rescue/Harvest system wasn't broken. What it should have involved was that refusing to harvest the Little Sisters made the game increasingly difficult and you had to make a genuine sacrifice to continue rescuing them. As it was you actually came out ahead for doing the right thing.

    I don't know how this holds up in light of the sequel, though, because I haven't played it.

    Duffel on
  • ronyaronya Arrrrrf. the ivory tower's basementRegistered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Goumindong wrote: »
    [Libertarianism is an ideology that explicitly states that coercion is never justified.

    No, see, that's your definition. To be trite,
    Goumindong wrote: »
    What you're arguing is a "no true scotsman" fallacy. "That isn't libertarianism, libertarianism is only how I define it"

    It seems fair to say that the vast majority of uses of the word "libertarianism" do not equate it to anarchy.

    ronya on
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  • electricitylikesmeelectricitylikesme Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    The harvest change was disappointing as hell because they decided both ways of playing had to be equal.

    My first run through of C&C3 GDI's last mission was more what it should have been like:
    Basically, half-way through the mission you get the option to use the Liquid Tiberium bomb, but with potentially devestating consequences. Right when that popped up, I was getting hit on every side of my base by the Scrin, and was on the verge of being defeated. Firing that bomb looked real tempting right then.

    Basically all of Bioshock should've been like that, with the only reward being a less fucked up ending.

    electricitylikesme on
  • JacobkoshJacobkosh Gamble a stamp. I can show you how to be a real man!Moderator mod
    edited July 2010
    I think Bioshock was also drawing a line between the animalistic, predatory ecology that emerged in Rapture and the predatory, animalistic ecology of hyper-capitalism, and I think that would have been even clearer if Irrational had had the funds and time to implement their original vision of a complicated underwater life-cycle, a whole hierarchy unto itself, instead of the simplified Splicer/Sister/Daddy relationship.

    Jacobkosh on
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  • SchrodingerSchrodinger Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Not harvesting the little girls should have been akin to beating contra without the extra lives cheat.

    Schrodinger on
  • TaramoorTaramoor Storyteller Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    jacobkosh wrote: »
    I think Bioshock was also drawing a line between the animalistic, predatory ecology that emerged in Rapture and the predatory, animalistic ecology of hyper-capitalism, and I think that would have been even clearer if Irrational had had the funds and time to implement their original vision of a complicated underwater life-cycle, a whole hierarchy unto itself, instead of the simplified Splicer/Sister/Daddy relationship.

    I think the part that drove home the abysmal failure that Rapture became for me was the audio log where the female scientist talked about creating the underwater forest and then Andrew Ryan wanted to charge people for oxygen.

    That's like inviting someone over to your house and then billing them for the food they eat.

    Which Ayn Rand would totally be in favor of.

    Taramoor on
  • Santa ClaustrophobiaSanta Claustrophobia Ho Ho Ho Disconnecting from Xbox LIVERegistered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Taramoor wrote: »
    jacobkosh wrote: »
    I think Bioshock was also drawing a line between the animalistic, predatory ecology that emerged in Rapture and the predatory, animalistic ecology of hyper-capitalism, and I think that would have been even clearer if Irrational had had the funds and time to implement their original vision of a complicated underwater life-cycle, a whole hierarchy unto itself, instead of the simplified Splicer/Sister/Daddy relationship.

    I think the part that drove home the abysmal failure that Rapture became for me was the audio log where the female scientist talked about creating the underwater forest and then Andrew Ryan wanted to charge people for oxygen.

    That's like inviting someone over to your house and then billing them for the food they eat.

    Which Ayn Rand would totally be in favor of.

    She would be more in favour of the guests eating all your food and then stealing your cat on the way out.

    Santa Claustrophobia on
  • DrezDrez Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Not harvesting the little girls should have been akin to beating contra without the extra lives cheat.

    I can't even beat Contra WITH the extra lives cheat.

    That last level is ridiculous.

    Drez on
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  • SchrodingerSchrodinger Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Drez wrote: »
    Not harvesting the little girls should have been akin to beating contra without the extra lives cheat.

    I can't even beat Contra WITH the extra lives cheat.

    That last level is ridiculous.

    Wha--?

    Dude, you suck.

    No, seriously.

    Schrodinger on
  • Xenogear_0001Xenogear_0001 Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Drez wrote: »
    Not harvesting the little girls should have been akin to beating contra without the extra lives cheat.

    I can't even beat Contra WITH the extra lives cheat.

    That last level is ridiculous.

    Well I feel a little better about myself, then, because I did that when I was seven. Granted, I was much better at video games back then, as my current self found out recently.

    Just going to add that people overlook the difficulty of Contra III on Hard with anything less than seven lives and a partner. I mean, there's an extra boss fight for shit's sake.

    Xenogear_0001 on
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  • GoumindongGoumindong Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    ronya wrote: »
    No, see, that's your definition. To be trite,

    There is a difference between excluding aspects that meet a definition and a different definition. Anarchist libertarians are libertarian no matter how much minarchists and near statists who call themselves libertarian would want it to be.

    The key to the no true scotsman fallacy is that the aspect must be a scotsman. Its not no true scotsman if the person in question is Irish.

    Goumindong on
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  • The EnderThe Ender Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Drez wrote: »
    The Ender wrote: »
    Okay: to understand any book, you must at least understand the author

    No you don't. You don't need to know one single thing about the author of a book to understand the book.

    I didn't bother reading anything else because that is the exact opposite of the truth, and I'm assuming the rest of your ginormous post went into supporting that incorrect statement.


    Oh, good. The "LALALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" strategy.

    Well, if you'd bothered to read the post, you'd see it ended with this:
    Now, assuming that you had never read Atlas Shrugged, does this sound like somebody you should be taking any measure of advice from? Even her staunchest defenders reported that her addiction to amphetamine drugs gave her wild moods swings and that she was say erratic, sometimes hardly coherent, things.

    Maybe you like Atlas Shrugged as just a piece of fiction. Well, that's fine, I guess. The problem is when people decide it's some manual for building a utopia written by some monolithic figure. It just isn't that. AT ALL. It was an emotional vent written by someone who was mentally unstable & surrounded by nothing but raving fans.

    Books don't just write themselves, so yes, I'd say that understanding the author is paramount to understanding the book - but whatever.

    If you want to model your life around the ideas penned by someone who was cooked on amphetamines & mentally deranged by growing-up in an extremely cruel environment, be my guest. Certainly not my own cup of tea.

    The Ender on
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  • Santa ClaustrophobiaSanta Claustrophobia Ho Ho Ho Disconnecting from Xbox LIVERegistered User regular
    edited July 2010
    You should probably walk back that last paragraph. He's never claimed to be a fan or follower. His claim is that it is invalid to view a work in concert with the creator.

    Santa Claustrophobia on
  • nescientistnescientist Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    In fairness, many of our grandparents may have enjoyed an amphetamine or two (often prescribed as "diet pills) but hey if a doctor pens a note it it can't possibly be bad for you right? Bear in mind that this was well before home-cooked speed and meth for recreational use became a black-market industry; the stigma just didn't exist yet against that particular chemical, which still shows up in psych drugs today.

    (wait what am I doing defending Ayn Rand there must be something wrong with me)

    nescientist on
  • Alistair HuttonAlistair Hutton Dr EdinburghRegistered User regular
    edited July 2010
    shryke wrote: »

    Hell, it really misses what the book is ABOUT. It's taking death of the author to such an extreme that literary analysis becomes impossible. To consider Atlas Shrugged as just a work of fiction is to close our eyes and ignore what the book is about.

    Pfft, Death of the Author makes literary criticism easy. You just insert your own meaning into every word and phrase.

    "The cat sat on the mat" you say? Clearly a proto-fascist text that betrays a deep unease at modern liberalism in politics. That was simply an entry for the author's diary where they described what their cat did 5 minutes ago? Irrelevant to the analysis.

    Alistair Hutton on
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  • jungleroomxjungleroomx It's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovels Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    You know, I saw that you could get a pretty decent scholarship writing a dissertation on Atlas Shrugged when I was getting ready to go to school a few years back.

    So I checked the book out with the intent of doing so, got about 200 pages in, found it to be a distasteful bit of agony, and entirely fucking boring, and the entire intent of the scholarship was indoctrination in objectivism. Cute.

    We had read an abridged version of "Anthem" in high school, and it sucked. I should've known better.

    jungleroomx on
  • SpoitSpoit *twitch twitch* Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Isn't anthem like only a xouple chapters long?

    Spoit on
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  • enc0reenc0re Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    According to Wikipedia, it only runs 146 pages. I can't imagine what an abridged version looks like.

    enc0re on
  • OptimusZedOptimusZed Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    enc0re wrote: »
    According to Wikipedia, it only runs 146 pages. I can't imagine what an abridged version looks like.
    "Future. Underground. Life sucks because of collectivism. Forest = Freedom."

    OptimusZed on
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  • DrezDrez Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    The Ender wrote: »
    Drez wrote: »
    The Ender wrote: »
    Okay: to understand any book, you must at least understand the author

    No you don't. You don't need to know one single thing about the author of a book to understand the book.

    I didn't bother reading anything else because that is the exact opposite of the truth, and I'm assuming the rest of your ginormous post went into supporting that incorrect statement.


    Oh, good. The "LALALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" strategy.

    Well, if you'd bothered to read the post, you'd see it ended with this:
    Now, assuming that you had never read Atlas Shrugged, does this sound like somebody you should be taking any measure of advice from? Even her staunchest defenders reported that her addiction to amphetamine drugs gave her wild moods swings and that she was say erratic, sometimes hardly coherent, things.

    Maybe you like Atlas Shrugged as just a piece of fiction. Well, that's fine, I guess. The problem is when people decide it's some manual for building a utopia written by some monolithic figure. It just isn't that. AT ALL. It was an emotional vent written by someone who was mentally unstable & surrounded by nothing but raving fans.

    Books don't just write themselves, so yes, I'd say that understanding the author is paramount to understanding the book - but whatever.

    If you want to model your life around the ideas penned by someone who was cooked on amphetamines & mentally deranged by growing-up in an extremely cruel environment, be my guest. Certainly not my own cup of tea.

    Ender, I believe your basic premise was, and is, false, and that is what I responded to. If someone starts a post in a mathematics thread saying "trigonometry is false!" I'm not going to feel obligated to read the rest of the post. I might, because that would at least be interesting, but I believe the "okay you need to understand the author to understand the book" premise is fundamentally invalid.

    I apologize if that particular response that you quoted was dickish and dismissive. I guess it was. So, I'm sorry for that.

    For the record, I don't subscribe to Objectivism at all. I think it is a morally defunct philosophy. I don't know if you were actually suggesting that I in particular might be susceptible to it or what, but that's just false.

    Finally, your last sentence is exactly why "death of the author" is a good idea. You just posted a classic ad hominem: You believe that everything Ayn Rand ever wrote should be dismissed because she was "cooked on amphetamines & mentally deranged by growing-up in an extremely cruel environment."

    I don't agree. I believe Ayn Rand, or at least Objectivism, should be dismissed because it is a terrible and morally defunct philosophy. You don't need to know she was "cooked on amphetamines & mentally deranged by growing-up in an extremely cruel environment" to dismiss Atlas Shrugged or Objectivism. Even people who have disagreed with me seem to agree with this. The moral values put forth in The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged can be dismissed from reading the book alone.

    Do you believe that someone who was, at some point, "cooked on amphetamines & mentally deranged by growing-up in an extremely cruel environment" could never, ever come up with a good philosophy? That people who ever took drugs, or who ever grew up in a terrible environment, could never promote a logical, intelligent, and positive philosophy? I'd say that's terribly dismissive of you. There's no evidence to suggest such people are completely intellectually defunct. And I'm willing to bet the "cooked on amphetamines & mentally deranged by growing-up in an extremely cruel environment" descriptor could apply to a good number of our greatest thinkers.

    So I rather think you've proved my point for me. The point is: Atlas Shrugged isn't terrible because Ayn Rand is terrible, but that Atlas Shrugged is terrible because Atlas Shrugged is terrible.

    Drez on
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  • CorehealerCorehealer The Apothecary The softer edge of the universe.Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    OptimusZed wrote: »
    enc0re wrote: »
    According to Wikipedia, it only runs 146 pages. I can't imagine what an abridged version looks like.
    "Future. Underground. Life sucks because of collectivism. Forest = Freedom."

    "Apparently."

    Corehealer on
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  • enlightenedbumenlightenedbum Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    OptimusZed wrote: »
    enc0re wrote: »
    According to Wikipedia, it only runs 146 pages. I can't imagine what an abridged version looks like.
    "Future. Underground. Life sucks because [strike]of collectivism[/strike] John Galt was such a dipshit. Forest = Freedom."

    If you've never read it, that's my favorite line of analysis.

    enlightenedbum on
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  • jungleroomxjungleroomx It's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovels Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Spoit wrote: »
    Isn't anthem like only a xouple chapters long?

    Yeah, it was included in the hardcover English books, and it was 30-40 pages long.

    jungleroomx on
  • DeebaserDeebaser on my way to work in a suit and a tie Ahhhh...come on fucking guyRegistered User regular
    edited July 2010
    OptimusZed wrote: »
    enc0re wrote: »
    According to Wikipedia, it only runs 146 pages. I can't imagine what an abridged version looks like.
    "Future. Underground. Life sucks because [strike]of collectivism[/strike] John Galt was such a dipshit. Forest = Freedom."

    If you've never read it, that's my favorite line of analysis.

    My company won't let me go to the livejournals.

    Is this the Angry Flower or the Atlas Shrugged is a trilogy?

    Deebaser on
  • enlightenedbumenlightenedbum Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    The trilogy line.

    enlightenedbum on
    Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
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