"The whole novel is nothing more than Rand's attempt to warn people of the inevitable decay of America run by statists."

It's QUITE A BIT MORE. It's also a great work of art, and it laid out a new, completely integrated philosophy (from metaphysics, epistemology, ethics to aesthetics) as the centerpeice of its plot (Galt's Speech).

Sounds like you need a few more reads, because there's a lot more going on there than just politics or some political warning.

I look at Venezuela as a snapshot of our future but of course it's not the fault of socialism- it's just that socialism wasn't carried out properly !!! What nonsense....

It should make you uneasy today. Ragnar was operating in a breakdown of civilization far more advanced than today's. Ayn Rand was not advocating anarchy.

You didn't need that to get back the money you were forced to pay into Social Security, only filling out forms. Ragnar dispensed with the red tape.

The description of Robin Hood by Ragnar in Atlas Shrugged was not an historical Robin Hood but the commonly accepted legend treating robbing from the rich for the poor as a moral ideal. Ragnar told Rearden, "It is said that he fought against the looting rulers and returned the loot to those who had been robbed, but that is not the meaning of the legend which has survived. He is remembered, not as a champion of property, but as a champion of need, not as a defender of the robbed, but as a provider of the poor. He is held to be the first man who assumed a halo of virtue by practicing charity with wealth which he did not own, by giving away goods which he had not produced, by making others pay for the luxury of his pity. He is the man who became the symbol of the idea that need, not achievement, is the source of rights, that we don't have to produce, only to want, that the earned does not belong to us, but the unearned does."

As for the historical Robin Hood, if there was one, an interesting attempted account of the legend of Robin Hood is in William Manchester's A World Lit Only by Fire, The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance - Portrait of an Age:

"A Yorkshire gravestone bears this inscription:

"Hear underneath dis laihl stean
las Robert earl of Huntingtun
neer arcir yer az hie sa geud
And ipl kauld in Robin Heud
sick utlawz as he an iz men
il england nivr si agen
Obiit 24 kal Decembris 1247

"Robin Hood lived; this marker confirms it, just as the Easter tables attest to the existence of the great Arthur. But that is all the tombstone does. Everything we know about that period suggests that Robin was merely another wellborn cutthroat who hid in shrubbery by roadsides, waiting to rob helpless wayfarers. The possibility that he stole from the rich and gave to the poor is, like the tale of that other cold-blooded rogue, Jesse James, highly unlikely. Even unlikelier is the conceit that Robin Hood, aka Heud, was accompanied by a bedmate called Maid Marian, a giant known as Little John, and a lapsed Catholic named Friar Tuck. Almost certainly they were creatures of an ingenious folk imagination, and their contemporary, the sheriff of Nottingham, is probably the most libeled law enforcement in this millennium.

"The more we study those remote centuries, the unlikelier those legends become.

But there is very little evidence of what, if anything, Robin Hood may have been. Some even doubt http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&l... that the tombstone cited by Manchester (described above) is legitimate.

If Robin Hood did exist, it is unlikely that either of the emphases of the legend of the "good outlaw" for either of the competing notions of "good" is true. There is apparently no evidence for either: he would most likely have been only a ruthless outlaw stealing from whomever had something to steal, which was common at the time.

Whether or not he existed, the legend has existed for centuries in various versions in different historical stories, ballads, poems, songs, plays and movies. Ragnar in Atlas Shrugged was denouncing the common version we hear today cheering on "robbing from the rich for the poor", which is throughout the novel in different forms in contrast to Ayn Rand's ethics of reason, productivity and egoism neither sacrificing oneself to others or others to oneself.

It would make me uneasy taking stuff stolen from others though. If it was my stuff, that's another story

"Nothing more"? Ayn Rand said she wrote Atlas Shrugged to project in fiction her vision of the "ideal man", i.e., man at his best. To show the crucial role of the mind in human survival the plot illustrates what happens when, in a fictional accelerated form, the mind is withdrawn from society

But she was well aware of the parallels between the novel and the course of the country and the intellectual reasons for it. She told herself repeatedly while writing the novel that she was trying to prevent it from happening in reality. The statism is a result of the irrationalism in collectivism and self sacrifice regarded as a moral "ideal" spreading and dominating the culture. That can't be stopped without the acceptance of reason and individualism. It isn't enough to denounce the statism.

"Even she"? The objection among the heroes in the plot were to his risking his life, not to retrieving loot from the looters to return it to its rightful owners.

Actually the taxes were not for the war Crusade, but for ransom to get the King released. However Prince John was heavily skimming the collected taxes, and as long as his brother, the King was being held, he was by default, King. Add to that. If he never got enough money (gold and silver) collected in time, his brother would be put to death. Thus leaving him the Monarch.

She was not saying that Robin Hood was a looter but that is how myth is structured. She was trying to set set it right with Ragnar, just as she did with other wrongly believed ideas such as the nature of sacrifice which is taken oppositely than what it really is.

That's quite true, but, as noted, he himself may
simply have been "robbing" the tyrants to give
the stuff back to the original earners.

The only Robin Hood I cared for was from the movie "Men In Tights" by Mel Brooks. Of course in medieval times, there was some justification especially when it came to the church funds which cheerfully stole as well.The Libs should be OK with that since we are heading back that way at a faster increasing rate.

It's very hard to reach ANY reliable historical conclusions about such a mythical figure. But as for the legend, the prevailing sentiment IS INDEED one of class warfare, i.e. "robbing from the rich to feed the poor" and on that level it does very much deserve to be condemned in the way that Ragnar's character condemned it.

I feel enslaved already by the taxes they TAKE from me. I cant live without earning money, and I am enslaved during the time I make that money that they steal from me.

As to SS, I dont feel good about taking it, or medicare for that matter. I would never have agreed to those programs if it was up to me to subscribe to them in the first place.

Except that Ragnar didn't follow the looters rules to get paid, and took significant risks of bodily harm. If you use medicare(if that is the correct program for it), you may be risking bodily harm.

There is a theory that consent to social security actually empowers the state legally to enslave you as you have given up your sovereignty under the national emergency declared by FDR that continues even today..

I will say its emotionally appealing that a Ragnar would take from the state and give to the productive people. At least its not giving based on "need"

Most material goods travel by Mega-Container vessels. It would be very hard to steal goods from such vessels. Ragnar would need special cranes on his ship to remove containerized goods.

I am actually doing a "Ragnar" by accepting SS money

Sometimes I wonder if in the dead of night, he really believed in the weapons of mass destruction thing. I suspect NOT.

Kings don't last long nor do governments that tax its people to bankruptcy. Taxes are used to give to the peasants whose votes those in power need and eventually kill the producer's will to produce. Same with kings. It won't stop as Santa is real in the eyes of many.

The whole novel is nothing more than Rand's attempt to warn people of the inevitable decay of America run by statists. The ideas like the Gulch and Ragnar are things to reach for as a people, simply an objective.

Ar, me hearties, ye ole' dino has a shut down ye brain cells n' talk like a pirate day presentation for all ye swabs! Ar! Ar! Arrrr!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfYoy...

Ragnar didn't think so.

Guess I am accustomed to novelists who do extensive research in order for their fiction to be very believeable. Just wondering if Rand had some historical support when she wrote Ragnar's speech. It would be in character for Rand to have support.

Yes. Power corrupts.