Update: The movie is now playing in Janesville but not Rockford. So we are heading up to Janesville’s Wildwood theatre for the 7:10 p.m. showing of Saturday, May 7. Here is a Google map.
Free movie outing this weekend for Rockford College students.
See the new Atlas Shrugged movie this weekend.
Cost to students: Free. Courtesy of the Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship, which will buy your ticket (but not your popcorn).
Where: Showplace 16, 8301 East State Street, Rockford, IL 61108.
When: Saturday, May 7. The movie starts at 4:20 p.m. Please arrive at Showplace 16 by 4:15. Look for Professor Stephen Hicks or Professor Shawn Klein.
About the movie:
Based on the novel by Ayn Rand
MPAA Rating: PG-13 Length: 1 hr 42 min
Genre: Drama
Director: Paul Johansson Screenplay: Brian Patrick O’Toole and John Aglialoro
Cast: Taylor Schilling, Edi Gathegi, Paul Johansson, Michael O’Keefe
Synopsis: With American society in decay, railroad magnate Dagny Taggart begins to notice the mysterious disappearance of the world’s leading artists, businessmen and thinkers. While struggling to keep her business afloat despite an economic crisis marked by collectivism and groupthink, Dagny soon discovers the truth about an organized “strike” against those who use the force of law and moral guilt to confiscate the accomplishments of society’s productive members.
Here’s a flier with the above information [pdf].
Pardon me, I have a question unrelated to this blog post but didn’t see another way to contact you.
I’m reading Explaining Postmodernism, and maybe I just missed it, but could you explain to me exactly your definition of the terms Left and Right? I realize they hardly have any useful meaning remaining in them these days, but I have still always used them generally to mean Right = Individual liberty and capitalism and Left = collectivsm and planned economy. So how can it make sense to say Right Collectivism, or Right Dictatorship? These seem like oxymorons to me.
Regards,
Danny Sheives
It has been a week, now more, without a response here by Professor Hicks. Obviously I am not he, but I will try to clarify.
If you will read with the classical definitions of political Right and Left in mind then perhaps understanding may be achieved. The French National Assembly (1789) arrayed with invited nobles sitting on the president’s right and Third Estate commons to the left. The nobles on the right were conservative of their privileges and reactionary to the egalitarian commons.
Collectivism can be egalitarian horizontal cooperative or self-sacrificing hierarchical vertical.
The progression from feudal Tzars to Stalinist leaders might illustrate the evolution from right to left dictator.
I am reading EP as an e-book converted from the kindly provided PDF to MOBI. I am enjoying it so much that I will buy the 2011 edition in print. Professor Hicks joins my heroes. Thank you very much for EP!
Doug Huffman
Washington Island
Wisconsin
Nicely said, Doug. Thanks for the pinch hit while I’ve been in exam week.
Yes, to speak of left and right is to speak of positions along a single dimension line. What political dimension is meant varies from time to time and culture to culture. In the 19th century German political-theoretic culture, both “right” and “left” were variations on collectivism. Neither was about individual liberty and collectivism.
In 21st century America, “right” and “left” are much harder to pin down. Republicans tend to be more in favor of individual liberty on economic matters but less so on non-economic matters such as homosexuality, abortion, euthanasia, or drugs. Democrats tend to be more in favor of liberty on the non-economic issues but less so on economic ones.
So I agree with Doug: left and right can have their uses, but they’re metaphorical spatial labels, and how the metaphors are used is highly variable historically.
On the subject of the dimensionality of politics/sociology, I recommend the essay ‘The Mathematical Impossibility of Compromise’ by my friend ‘Uncle’ Al Schwartz, here
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/comprom.htm
in which he demonstrates that the ability to compromise vanishes in the limit as the number of political considerations increases.
Al Schwartz posts a daily essay that is always thought provoking. I have learned much from him.
On the subject of labels misused and demonized, I was heartened by Timothy Ferris’ The Science of Liberty: Democracy, Reason, and the Laws of Nature. (2010 HarperCollins)
If there is a more appropriate forum in which to engage so, then I will be pleased to post there.
I’ve re-read Atlas Shrugged a number of times and am only now discovering its criticism as a literary genre, and I need help integrating it. In my college days I was in a program informed by Alexander Meiklejohn, our Dean was his student Mervyn Cadwallader. I was steeped in the foundations of post-modernism but rejected it for a career in nuclear power.
Doug Huffman
Washington Island
Wisconsin