Writes Susan Shelley in the OC Register on “The visionary woman the left can’t stand“:
The intensity of the hostility to Rand’s work is an acknowledgment of the power of ideas to change long-held beliefs. In “Atlas Shrugged,” Rand writes of the misery caused by the “Morality of Death,” a code that “begins by damning man as evil, then demands that he practice a good which it defines as impossible for him to practice.”
…In her final lecture, Rand concluded by quoting from “Atlas Shrugged”:
“The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it’s yours. But to win it requires your total dedication and a total break with the world of your past, with the doctrine that man is a sacrificial animal who exists for the pleasure of others. Fight for the value of your person. Fight for the virtue of your pride. Fight for the essence of that which is man: for his sovereign, rational mind. Fight with the radiant certainty and the absolute rectitude of knowing that yours is the Morality of Life and that yours is the battle for any achievement, any value, any grandeur, any goodness, any joy that has ever existed on this earth.”
Why are so many people so hostile to the ideas of Ayn Rand? Take nobody’s word for it. See for yourself.