In Defense of the Constitution: Ayn Rand

Showing posts with label Ayn Rand. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

An Ayn Rand Movie Recommendation

I've not seen the new Atlas Shrugged movie; therefore, I cannot offer a comment on it at this time. I heard it is a bit clunky and suffers from poor technical film-making, but without seeing it myself I cannot deny or confirm these claims.

What I can do is recommend another movie based on an Ayn Rand novel that I have seen. That film is the 1949 classic The Fountainhead--a film written by Ayn Rand in which she exercised a large amount creative control.

If you have never seen The Fountainhead, I recommend you remedy that loss as soon as possible. More than just a great defense of individualism, the film is a great movie experience. While I do not endorse Rand's Objectivism as a political or moral philosophy, I do appreciate her contributions toward the pursuit of human freedom and free markets.

I have heard from those who have read the book, which the movie was based on, that the book will satisfy any Rand fan.

Below is a video of the philosophical highpoint of the movie.

"The several states composing the United States of America are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government; but by a compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a general government for special purposes [and] delegated to that government certain definite powers and whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force. To this compact each state acceded as a state, and is an integral party, its co-states forming, as to itself, the other party. The government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself, since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution the measure of its powers." --Thomas Jefferson