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Previous comments...
I liked the way she built up to the Galt speech and the Galt speech itself. I didn't find it boring in the slightest.
When there is time to sit down and study out a philosophy, an author has much more time to lay out their thoughts, order them, and back them up as you would in a scientific paper or a court case. Speeches don't work that way, however (which may explain why politicians are so universally short-sighted).
Consider the following examples: Paul Ryan's budget explanation and Barack Obama's "Fundamental Transformation" speech. Ryan's budget explanation was fantastically presented - if you are an accountant at a board/bored meeting. To most Americans who watched that speech, it left them unmoved. Without passion, the speech gets forgotten and the speech quickly fades into the forgotten. Obama's speech is a conglomeration of liberal thinking and nonsense. The content is shoddy and so full of holes in reason and logic it's astounding. But it accomplished its goal: it got him elected. It stirred the passions of its listeners and galvanized them to action.
Want a few examples of absolutely brilliant speeches? Lincoln's Gettysburg Address is one of them. It is one of the shortest public speeches in history (less than two pages long), yet it's simple language and structure have a depth of meaning and purpose rarely matched in any contemporary writing. Shakespeare's soliloquys (such as those by Hamlet, MacBeth, Juliet, etc.) are similarly remarkable for the same reasons. All that aside, however, there was a very good reason none of Shakespeare's speeches went on for 40+ pages: he knew his audience and the capacity of the human mind was best engaged by profound topics, simply explained.
Galt's speech may work as a philosophy text, but it fails as a "speech". That's my only point. Speeches are short, sweet, and to the point. They engage the listener and impel them to action. Effective speeches are a maximum of 10-15 minutes long. Galt's speech goes on for nearly 40 _pages_ in the book. (A basic rule of thumb is that it takes about one minute to read one page of text.) That's an awfully long time to try and hold an audience's attention (and it's one of the reasons Obama's State of the Union speeches are such a disaster). Having sat through an average of three speeches per week for more than 30 years of my life, I can tell you that the biggest impediment to success in a speech is length and Galt's speech is certainly no exception.
derful Life, and I don't really agree with George
Bailey's decision to sacrifice his ambition and stay
there in that town for people who apparently didn't
have enough sense to decide to maintain an in-
dependent organization on their own. But to
travesty Atlas Shrugged by deforming it and
mixing it into a kind of hybridization with its
opposite seems sickening to me.--I read Galt's
speech before I read the rest of the book and
it was far from "yawn-inducing" to me. But
that's the kind of thing people would say who
don't have any other argument to fall back on.
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/give-...
Jesus did promise that his disciples would be fishers of men.
In interpreting the Golden Rule, I have to ask myself, would I want someone to enable me in being non-productive and dependent? Of course not! If I'm temporarily down on my luck through no fault of my own, sure, lend me a hand. But I don't think the "altruism" that keeps someone down and relying on a handout would be approved under either philosophy, if they are appropriately applied.
My perception is that in this and many other things the focus on the difference between individualism and collectivism is being lost.
Jesus is a cry baby, bleeding for the world .. he got that right too. And he sees the future- Atlas is in it. He certainly ins't making the point that Jesus stands alone, by bringing Atlas into the picture, and he openly admits it. So, his book is more like an implied pleading, with tears, for Atlas to stop and help Jesus(it's in the title). You know Atlas's reply ... F.U. And not because he won't stop to help an injured person. He knows it's Jesus and that the game it up. "F.U. Jesus". God it feels good saying that.