How many Objectivism followers are in the World?
Yet as a thinker Rand began entirely outside the mainstream. In 1926 she was a penniless Jewish immigrant to the United States, who lied to get in. She toiled for years in the lower echelons of Hollywood screenwriting. Her first novel was a flop. When she finally put together her philosophy of Objectivism, it adamantly, vehemently opposed nearly all contemporary trends in philosophy and literature. Against the contemporary advocates of subjectivism, irrationality, selflessness, naturalism, and big government (I’m putting this in Rand’s terms), Rand advocated * objective reality * reason * selfishness * a heroic view of life * romanticism in art * atheism * and extremely limited government. Yet despite intermittent ferocious intellectual opposition, her ideas (and friends) no longer seem like outsiders. What is the proof? * One of Rand’s closest former friends and students, Alan Greenspan, has been since 1987 the highly respected chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve Board. Photo of smil
