Texas Libertarian

Point Taken.

Hitler's biggest msitake and the one mistake he made IMO that cost him the war was his treatment of the soviet citizens. If he would have opened the churches back up that Stalin closed down and did a "hearts and minds" strategy on the people of a nation that had endured famine and purges for the last 10 years, then he could have won, in the short term at least.

Well hell, consorting with prostitutes is not that bad.

This is what I dont get. People tend to worry about the wrong things about Obama. I dont care if his preacher is racist and in my eyes Michelle Obama is great. What I AM WORRIED ABOUT however, is Obama's record of gun-grabbing and border-jumper enabling. If you are a Republican and voted McCain, you deserve a president thats a coke sniffin non traffic ticket paying dude named Hussien!

I noticed that in "Atlas Shrugged" there aren't any sports. There is music, culture etc but no competitive sports. funny, huh?

I just read Fransico's wedding speech to the looters and IMO a lot of what makes Objectivism a uniquely American philosophy. I noticed that Rand even threw in a nod to the Second Amendment. I think Rand considered herself American and not Russian-American. I dont think that Atlas Shrugged could have been written anywhere on earth but the USA. I like to use two examples about the greatness of America. One is Don King. He listened to the first Frazier-Ali fight on a radio in prison. He promoted the third one. The second one is a story from a former instructer of mine. He was working as a lube tech at Wal-Mart when he came to work one morning and this bum was sleeping in a truck.He told the bum to move on, and the bum went back to sleep. He called the law, and when they got there and checked the bum's ID, his name happened to be Sam Walton. Ayn Rand gives nods to characters in the course of Atlas Shrugged.

Strictly in terms of ideas,no. But they do not inspire the kind of revulsion that Jim and Phillip and Lillian do.

Thanks guys. I guess ,to the poster who asked me why I thought Jim was worse than Orren, that it is because Jim is behaving that way toward his own sister.

No, not at all. It just struck me that the immediate family of both Hank and Dagny are the worst characters in the book and the kind of vicious hate directed at both Hank and Dagny is worse and less understandable than almost any kind of "hate" of family members of anyone Ive seen or read about.

I am currently re-reading "Atlas Shrugged", and first of all I must say its even better this time around.But something still bothers me, and it is Rands portrayal of both Hank and Dagny's families as being the worst ones. I mean the way that Hank's family treats him as well as Jim Taggart's whole character are repulsive. What do you think made Rand use family members as uber-villians. I understand that family is a verb as well as a noun and that sometimes you have to cut family off. But what I dont understand is that not one family member of the heroes is cool. Why is Ellis Wyatt not a cousin or something. And the depth of hatred of both Jim and Hank's mom is sickening. Its one thing to sleep with your cousin's wife because he stole your porn back in high school, or even let your little sister do all the work and you take credit, or even hit one of your relatives; but it's another thing entirely to hate with such intensity your own flesh and blood, the flesh and blood that feeds you nonetheless. Does anybody see any significance of the fact that all of the family members are the bad guys, and wonder why Rand wrote it that way?

This is a film made about American Victor Hermann, who went to Stalin-ea USSR and ended up in the GULAG. It paints a very interesting picture of life in the Soviet Union and the wayings worked. It also has the great Willie Nelson in it.

Some very deep and interesting discussion on the artistic value of action films. Personally, I have always and will always think that the best action movei ever is "Red Dawn". In addition to being a good action movie, it also has some substance to it, as far as messages and artistic value

LOL thats great

The first thing I learned in Auto Tech school was that gasoline is not made out of crude oil. I think the reason that we are dependent on oil is because too many people stand to lose too much money. If industrial hemp was legal , gasoline could be manufatured out of that and ran in four and two stroke engines with no difficulty.

1. "Sugar Hill" with Wesley Snipes....great movie, and the soundtrack is done by an African Jazz sax player 2."Superfly" The whole soundtrack was done by Curtis Mayfield and is an all time classic album, as is the movie. 3. "Scarface"............The "Push it to the limit" montague is a classic.

Hello Greedy and company. I'm Paul, originally from the cliff but now in Arlington. Im currently re-reading Atlas Shrugged, and it is even better than I remember. browsing the website, it looks like we have some deep thinkers here. I read the rules before registering and I had to laugh at the grammer and language one, because my grammer and spelling are pretty atrotious, so that is a challenge. there is so much here its hard to know where to start so I figured start from home one thing I noticed in Rand's world during Atlas shrugged is the lack of sports teams. I mean, they talk about composers, culture etc but never sports.