Alisa Rosenbaum Was Right

I'm a fan of Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum, have been for years. I find her to be on of the most interesting philosophers that Russia ever produced.  In my mind she is also the best Russia has ever offered and one of the top 10 philosophers of all time. As a little girl she witnessed first hand the horror of the Russian Revolution.  She never forgot it.  It became a defining period of time in her life.  She became one of the most intelligent and outspoken critics of collectivism in all its forums.   She was a contemporary of and acquainted with Ludwig von Mises.  

In the 1950's Alan Greenspan started dating painter Joan Mitchel  and Joan introduced him to Mrs. Rosenbaum.  Allan claimed to share her philosophical views.  Mrs Rosenbaum helped to get Greenspan's essay "Gold and Economic Freedom" as well as several other of his works published.  Greenspan's association with Mrs. Rosenaum was one of the factors in his reputation as an economic conservative.  When Greenspan was sworn in as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers (under Nixon) she attended the ceremony.  Greenspan latter proved himself a traitor to both the Austrians and Mrs Rosenbaum personally.  Mrs. Rosenbaum maintained her relationship with him until her death in 1982.  Perhaps she was hoping that Allen would put his professed ideas into reality on a national scale.

Mrs. Rosenbuam was an unique women.

When she appeared on the Tonight Show, Johny Carson had planned on having her on for about 5 min at the end of the show.  After taking with her, he scrapped the show and spent most of the hour visiting with her.

The New Republic (leading intelligentsia socialist rag) is still complaining about her.

She was a Jew turned atheist (OK not uncommon or unusual).

Mrs. Rosenbuam's books continue to be widely sold and read, with 25 million copies sold as of 2007, and 800,000 more being sold each year. In 1991 the Library of Congress and the Book-of-the-Month Club asked what the most influential book in the respondent's life was, one of her books was the second most popular choice, after the Bible.

Recently I started rereading her works.  With the passage of ObmaCare and the coming Barackcalypse.  I found that she was more in tuned to the social destruction coming to American than I ever expected.  She was right about many of her predictions back in the 1960's and 70's.  I wish she wasn't.

Quotes:

"Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter."


"Altruism declares that any action taken for the benefit of others is good, and any action taken for one's own benefit is evil. Thus the beneficiary of an action is the only criterion of moral value - and so long as that beneficiary is anybody than oneself, anything goes. "


"The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities."


"You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality. "

I guess Allen Greenspan and those who voted for the Obamanation That Bringth Desolation, the Barackcalypse, Obama Care, forgot about that last one.

Center for the Advancement of Objectivism