Monday, February 02, 2009

Happy Birthday Ayn Rand


Ayn Rand was born on February 2, 1905 and died March 6, 1982. A Russian-born American novelist and philosopher, best known for developing Objectivism and for writing the novels , The Fountainhead, We the Living, Atlas Shrugged, and the novella Anthem. She was a broadly influential figure in post-WWII America, her work attracting both enthusiastic admiration and scathing denunciations. I notice that the folks at Google did not note her birthday on their home page. I am sure it just slipped their notice. To read more about her click on to the title above for a link to her page in Wikipedia the Internet encyclopedia. As my Objectivist friends used to say "need is not a claim" She once told William F Buckley that "he was too intelligent to believe in God." She believed in the right of the individual to his property and the fruits of his labor and was against the collectivist state. My friend, Gains Smith, who is also now gone, was a disciple of Rand. I can still see Gaines running around the University of Oregon campus in the late 1960's wearing that $ (dollar) sign lapel button that Rand liked to wear and ticking off the left wing hippies. Unfortionatly, every day the United States is become more and more a collectivist state.