Today would be Ayn Rand's 100th birthday! "So what? Who is Ayn Rand?" you ask. Well, that is the pen name of Alissa Rosenbaum, an author and a philosopher born in St. Petersburg, Russia. Her father owned a chemist shop and the family lived in a spacious apartment above the store. However, after the Russian Revolution began in February 1917, a communist gang nationalized her father's shop, reducing her family to poverty practically overnight.
In January 1926 Ayn Rand was able to garner permission to visit relatives in Chicago. She seized this opportunity to defect, leaving Russia and her family (never to return) and arrived in New York City a few weeks later, with about $50 in her pocket.
Her most famous book is "The Fountainhead" (1943) where Rand tells a great story of American individualism. The story is about an architect, Howard Roark, who struggles to defeat collectivism attitudes by demanding the right to design and build the way his principles says he should. This novel was the first to present Rand's philosophy that rational egoism is moral; that is, any action or decision a person does/makes to the benefit of his own self-interest is a rational action/decision. This philosophy is usually thought of as selfish, and therefore immoral.
The pinnacle of her literary and philosophic career is best seen in her novel, "Atlas Shrugged" (1957) where she dramatized the major elements of her challenging new philosophy of "reason, individualism, and capitalism," which she called "Objectivism."
Objectivism is the cornerstone of true liberty. I tend to lean toward an objective philosophy in my own life, politics, and religion. Ayn Rand is by far one of the best writers of the twentieth century and one of the most courageous philosophers. After seeing the destruction of collectivism in communism, she articulated the morality of true liberty and freedom for all. You go girl!!!
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