Several letters (mostly praising) were printed today in the Wall Street Journal in response to Yaron Brook's opinion piece on March 14 titled "Is Rand Relevant?"
The letters comprised almost half of the Letters section of the Editorial Page. This fact and the fact that they printed Brook's piece to begin with says much about how far this rational movement has come since Rand's death 27 years ago.
When I became an Objectivist in 1991, just mentioning Rand's name elicited either blank looks (because of her obscurity in the mainstream) or scoffing dismissal from the "intellectual elite." Now, though, she is taken seriously as the enemy by the elite, who are chafing at her popularity. In colleges and high schools, her name and books are almost common knowledge, thanks largely to the extraordinary work done at the Ayn Rand Institute and to people like many of my readers.
The WSJ is arguably the most prestigious paper in the country, printing letters or columns almost daily by Congressmen, Senators, international heads of state, heads of the most prestigious colleges around the world and much more. And the WSJ now prints a mention of Rand in the letters section or in a story or in a column about once a week.
We're catching up!
2 comments:
This reminds me of the "when I was a budding Objectivist" post that I have been meaning to make.
Since I became an Objectivist around a decade ago, there is now a ton of information available for free online--from blog posts to books to podcasts and so on.
There are also a ton of new books, from Viable Values and Normative Ethics to Loving Life and the entire Sparrowhawk series.
I really need to catalogue everything new that has come out just in the past 10 years, but the huge amount of information and the ability to connect on the internet is amazing.
It's actually past the point where newbies have to be selective in what they read or watch--simply because there is so much stuff.
Twenty and thirty years ago one had the fiction, the letters, and Ominous Parallels--along with some lecture courses. Again, a crazy amount of new material is out there and free too. The more I think about it, the more inspirational it is!
Inspirational, indeed, Daniel!!!
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