Michigan State University has posted online a PDF copy of “Screen Guide for Americans,” a pamphlet apparently written by Ayn Rand in 1947 that presents ideas for film makers on how to *not* be a stooge for Communists. It has a number of what are, frankly, still very good ideas: don’t trash the free market system, wealth, individualism or success in your little film. Don’t extol the mythical virtues of collectivism . Don’t tar industrialists or rich folk as villains as a *group.* Don’t raise up mediocrity or victimhood as morally superior. Basically… don’t be a dumbass progressive.
On the whole the pamphlet is on the mark, and as valid today as sixty years ago. But perhaps even more today, the suggestion that maybe we shouldn’t worship the economic philosophy that gave the world the Holodomor and the execution and deportation of the Kulaks and the Cultural Revolution and Venezuelas empty shelves and forced labor camps and purges and theft and greed on continental scales drives some leftists buggo. See, for example, the writeup and, better, the comments on the subject of this pamphlet HERE.