So I watched To Kill A Mockingbird last night for the first time, and when we got to the courthouse scene, the defense’s closing argument delivered by Gregory Peck:
I couldn’t help but think that the speech would have been far cooler if it had been written by Ayn Rand and/or delivered by Gary Cooper:
Of course, I’m enough of a fanboy of Objectivism to think that speech was cool and prefer Gary Cooper over Gregory Peck. It was the best performance of Peck I’ve seen so far, but that just meant that it was a performance where I didn’t think the main character was a complete wuss.
Peck was good in The Man in a Grey Flannel Suit and Roman Holiday.
Objectivism goes too far, but it’s hard to read a Rand rant and not feel stirred. The final two chapters of Anthem, for example, have special meaning for me. They’ve added tensile strength to my backbone when someone has tried to exploit me, and told me that I had no value except as a resource to use.
I haven’t seen Roman Holiday. However, you must agree he is no Cary Grant or Gary Cooper.
As for Objectivism going too far, I’m not clear what you mean by that or where you would mark the extreme. However, the officially trademarked Objectivists hold that Ayn Rand was infallible and probably that her avatar Peikoff is, too. Which is where I definitely stray from the movement.
Well, to express myself a bit more comprehensively:
At some point, every one of us is going to end up knocked over, like a turtle that’s on it’s back. Each person is going to be a position when he needs someone else to perform an act of pure charity. I know that I‘ve been there. More than once.
So I occasionally try to help people without any expectation of reward. Because I know that I’ve been there and might in the future. Maybe that’s not really altruism. But I think that an Objectivist turtle would die on his back, as well as pass by any other flipped turtle.