Ayn Rand

I after all did not want to miss the one hundredth anniversary today of her birth. As an homage to her, I would like to draw your kind attention to the essay

Ayn Rand at 100

co-editor Cathy Young has published on the Reason Online website. You should not miss it, as you hardly could read any better anniversary text about Ayn Rand than this essay by a columnist for the Boston Globe who, like Rand, came to America from the Soviet Union, she at the age of 17, Rand at the age of 21. There are a good number of links to other stories about Rand on that page, but I also recommend, on today's occasion, to read the shorter essay with the same title Ayn Rand at 100 by David Boaz published on the site of the Cato Institute.

I myself came for the first time into contact with the writings of Ayn Rand, when in 1965 I had founded The American Bookstore in Luxemburg, which was very much visited by American students, either tourists that Icelandic Airlines, then operating the first discount direct flight from the United States to Europe (my shop had ads in the flight magazine) and pouring several hundreds of those students a day into Luxemburg (at a time when the U.S. dollar still had an extremely favourable exchange rate for American tourists...), or, later, resident students of the American Miami University. The bookstore being well stocked, had of course also several titles by Ayn Rand, notably Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged in paperback editions. I remember a couple of Ayn Rand fans who came in, touched the subject and tried to proselytize me. When they had gone, I took the books from the shelves, looked into them and happened to run into enough passages abhorrent to me (on gold for instance) that I put the books back to the shelves where they belonged. My present opinion is much more favourable, but has not changed completely. There is some balance between my positive and my negative attitude towards that grande dame and this balance will no doubt continue to change in the future. At least, I am working on it. After all, I sometimes enjoy the writings of Chris Matthew Sciabarra and an astonishingly large number of other Objectivist authors (rather the less orthodox ones, as you might have guessed...), but there are also, among Objectivists, the other ones, who can be a pain in the acronym!

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As I am with the subject of great essays that deserve more than a recommendation: I happen to read two more today, that are just perfect:

Moderates and Radicals by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. on LRC which happens to marvellously fit in with the essay by Cathy Young.
Self-Ownership: The Foundation of Freedom by David McGregor on STR which fits in well here too. Have you, by the way, read this great essay by him on my Op-Ed page?

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Finally, I read the two latest columns added to my Op-Ed page:

Are SpongeBob's Pants Really Square? by Wendy McElroy
The Psychology of Eagles Fans by Jonathan David Morris

You can decide how much they fit in.

Now I am going to see if anyone of the team of my new cooperative blog "CB's fireplace" has thought of posting something about Ayn Rand today. Probably not.

And last, but not least, I am going to start the indexing of my local search engine, so that it may be up-to-date for your further searches. And then I will go to bed. Good night, Objectivists!