Dave27

I have always disliked the "scissors" method of responding to posts. It seems to me that with a bit of effort, anyone can compose a decent paragraph Do you think free men are happier than slaves? I've traveled. I've met real slaves, or very close to it. They aren't as miserable as you might believe. They sit in groups at night, drink whiskey, and tell stories. They laugh and play games with their children. On the other hand, the men of my country and yours are often disgusted with life; pills sell, and psychologist's offices are full. Do you think that you are happier than your average Chinese? I taught English in China. The people there are just like you and I. Do you believe that men in the past, who never had the guaranteed rights Americans put in their constitution, never knew happiness? I sincerely hope not. Again I insist that rights are not necessary for survival or for happiness. And what more is there?

I don't think rights are inherent to man. I also don't think they are necessary for survival, since people in different cultures and time periods have survived just fine with different rights--or none at all. I've thought about this too, and what I came up with is that men only have--or deserve--the rights that they were willing to fight and die for. Men fought to earn them and keep them because they considered them desirable, and then agreed not to violate those of others so as not to have their own violated. Animals don't have rights because they can't fight for them. As for other sentient beings...how about those on the other side of the globe? Do the Chinese have the rights that you have? I hope these thoughts are useful to you

I agree with this. Sense of life is very broad, whereas intuition is usually about a single given subject or event. Maybe sense of life could be defined as "the sum of all your intuitive valuations about life in general?"

I think you're right; he is strikingly different from Roark or Kira. But that difference, to me, is not in his favor. One of the rules of making an interesting literary character is to give him some fault to overcome. He learns and grows in the process, and that's called character development. Kira and Roark developed. So did Dagny and Rearden. There were things they didn't understand and things they couldn't do. I felt with them, and for them. I never felt the slightest interest in John Galt. He was just some perfect guy, pulling strings from the shadows. Incidentally, I never understood why Atlas Shrugged was considered AR's best book. I think I liked it least of her books. My favorite is Fountainhead.

I find myself thinking that it doesn't matter much who plays Galt. He always seemed shallow, kind of like AR's cardboard cutout of "ideal man" and not like a real character. Rearden, and Dagny are more important; they're actually flawed enough to develop. Rearden could be any hard-looking actor--I liked the Liam Neilson(?) suggestion--but I always pictured Dagny as an ephemerally thin blonde, hard but able to submit completely, too, when it suits her. I like Gwyneth Paltrow.

You threw out the ball, and I'm just returning it: the art of giving a good speech, or the art of rhetoric, has little to do with the strength of the argument of the speaker. That's always dissappointed me. It's kind of like acting; your gestures, the tone of your voice, and coming to a kind of crescendo at the end of the speech all sway the audience. (One must remember, an audience, statistically, must consist of mostly stupid people.) Also, all kinds of logical fallacies pass unnoticed in speaking. For example, ad hominem convinces just about everybody. As an art, I just can't look at it as very noble. It's play acting.