Thanks for the kind words, guys...

I did the Ayn Rand thing back in College, reading The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged and Anthem. (What young male upstart who's read these hasn't fantasized about a fling with Dagny Taggart, eh?) They were grand, massive stories with grand ideas in them to be sure. I liked Fountainhead because I felt it was more believable. Atlas Shrugged had a marvelous story/plot but parts of it just didn't connect for me.

I doubted the intense application of hers ideas then and doubt them even more so now, 30 years later.

I must say that my opinion of her fell greatly when I came to learn that she had, for years, carried on a virtually open affair with one of her assistants. For an author and a thinker to pervert the grand and pure ideals she wrote on and on and on about into some kind of justification for her moral errors, well...her credibility took a hit, let's say.

I am not a Socialist, I am certainly not a Marxist or a Communist, but as I get older, I am disgusted by the systemic ways we as a Country maneuver huge numbers of people, usually by economic groups into various outcomes. Personal responsibility is valid and essential for a successful society, but there are powers at play in the US that are not good ones. Our political process is highly flawed, our media from both the right & the left are seemingly more concerned with agendas than the facts and I think a few special interest groups have hijacked America's Moral Compass.

We don't treat each other very well all too often and that saddens me deeply...

I started way too late in life to really try and understand my world and for the last several years have been reading quite a bit. I have been reading quite a bit about Health Policy, Corporations, Politics and Pr. Obama over the last year or so...Next up is a book on the Auto Industry bailout and then a new book on Glen Beck...

God help me, lol...

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Bill in Dayton


[This message has been edited by Bill in Dayton (edited 10-23-2010).]