The Fountainhead
by Ayn Rand, Leonard Peikoff

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Book Review: Difficult to be objective about objectivism or Jesse Ventura
Summary: 5 Stars

The intuitional scrambling of my scholarship makes for some strange bedfellows. I've just finished reading The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. Simultaneously the crystallization of Jesse Ventura as a political candidate has begun. When Jesse was a wrestler for the WWF and the WCW, the essential idea behind grappling was that of a carnival act pitting good guys (baby faces) against bad guys (heels). The good guys were at one end of the moral spectrum and the bad guys at the other. A newcomer could be defined immediately by his interaction with the established order. If a newcomer used questionable tactics to defeat a baby face, then he became a heel. A newcomer who used the same questionable techniques to defeat or even lose to an identified heel became a baby face. Life was simple then. Not simple really, but objective. Black and white. Objectivity, taken to the nth degree, becomes Objectivism, the philosophy that Rand created and used throughout her writing. Ayn Rand once told Alvin Toffler: "I most emphatically advocate a black and white view of the world. What is meant by the expression black and white? It means good and evil. Before you can identify anything as gray, as middle of the road, you have to know what is black and what is white, because gray is merely a mixture of the two. And when you have established that one alternative is good and the other is evil, there is no justification for the choice of a mixture. There is no justification ever for choosing any part of what you know to be evil" Much of Jesse Ventura's perceived allure comes from his willingness to "speak his mind". In general, Jesse's mind remains a carnival of baby faces and heels; a non-intellectual version of objectivism. So Jesse speaks his mind to Playboy and a tempest in a teapot starts about his demeaning views of religion. Ayn Rand also rejected religion because both of religion's fundamental premises; a) an all powerful being and b) acceptance of that being's existence through faith rather than logic are rejected by objectivism. Rand once explained her position thusly. "First, there are no reasons to believe in God, there is no proof of the belief, second, that the concept of God is insulting and degrading to man- it implies that highest possible is not to be reached by man, that he is an inferior being who can only worship an ideal he can never achieve". Ventura contrasts and distances himeslf with other politicians, once again because of his willingess to clearly speak his mind in spite of political ramifications. Ventura holds great contempt for politicians whose philosphy is disguised with weasel words. Ventura seeks only to be understood not necessarilly to be embraced. Rand contrasted and distanced herself from other novelists of her time. She told a Newsweek reviewer, "one cannot write about life without discussing philosophy. Most novelists today try to be as vague as possible in order to be misunderstood by the greatest number of people. I want to be understood, so I present my philosophy openly and consciously. Ventura is a reform candidate which means he is not accepted by Democrats nor Republicans nor liberals nor conservatives. He is an entertainer although his medium of entertainment is not accepted whole heartedly by other entertainers. He is an athlete whose sport is not accepted by other athletes. His sport is, in fact, defined as sports/entertainment with nods towards the lowest common denominator of each. Likewise,Rand was either ignored or denounced by the critics of her time. The literary community considered her an outsider. She was exiled by philosophers. Glowered at by liberals and swallowed hard over by conservatives. Both Jesse and Ayn have had made for teevee movies made about them in the past year. If Ayn Rand were alive today and if Jesse was looking for a female to round out his ticket... hmmm let's see. I'm sure they would oppose George W Bush whose "gray" compassionate conservatism would be viewed as anarchy and W himself as an irrational hoodlum playing at politics without philosophy or consistency. They would also oppose Ralph Nader, the ecology movement and women's liberation. Of course Rand, feeling too often misquoted would never appear on the Sunday talk shows unless she could be interviewed alone without editing and without being confronted with quotations from her enemies. Those qualifications sound like a perfect match for theLarry King show. She would not be bringing her saxophone nor discussing her underwear. Jesse, on the other hand, would soak up all of the other media invitations and whereas Rand would refuse debate, Jesse would welcome it...after all his confrontational oratory skills skills have been polished under the tutelage of Vince McMahon and Mean Gene Okerland. And the economy? Allen Greenspan is a graduate of Nathaniel Branden's Institute formerly located in New York City. Branden's institute became in the sixties the headquarters for Objectivism and studied "The Fountainhead" as other institutes study the Bible. Of course this campaign will never happen because Ayn Rand died in 1982. Rand's death reminds me of one of my favorite bits of 60's graffiti. Crossed out on hundreds of restroom walls across America was the quotation "God is dead" signed "Nietschze" and underneath that quotation, was this correction "No, Nietschze is dead" signed "God".

Summary of The Fountainhead

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