• • The book that changed my life 
Ela Dutt, The Indian American The Fountainhead  Decades after reading Ayn Rand’s ‘Fountainhead’ as a teenager, I am now realizing the many ways it conditioned my mind, that it was probably the reason I chose when presented with the opportunity, to come to America rather than go elsewhere. That it lived in my mind and spirit clouded over but not killed off by other thinking. It has, over the last few days, led me to re-examine my life, the choices I made; to see those choices through a different prism – not as random acts but as definite decisions; and to understand why I love my country of choice, warts and all.     Share on Facebook

• • National service and slavery 
Bradley Harrington, The Bulletin (Philadelphia) Anthem  Those who want slavery should have the grace to name it by its proper name. They must face the full meaning of that which they are advocating or condoning; the full, exact, specific meaning of collectivism, of its logical implications, of the principles upon which it is based, and of the ultimate consequences to which these principles will lead.” - Ayn Rand, “Anthem”     Share on Facebook

• • White liberals and politically correct racism 
Edmund Standing, Family Security Matters The Virtue of Selfishness  Image  While I’m far from an Ayn Rand acolyte, her analysis of racism in The Virtue of Selfishness is spot-on.     Share on Facebook

• • • Tea Party brings Ayn Rand back 
Noah Kristula-Green, FrumForum Atheism  Ayn Rand Center  Ayn Rand Institute  Atlas Shrugged  Capitalism  Essay Contests  Yaron Brook  At least one part of the American economy has enjoyed a boom since the financial crisis: the estate of Ayn Rand and sales of her dystopic door stopper novel, Atlas Shrugged. Until recently interest in Rand represented a small subculture in conservative intellectual life—small, perhaps, because as long as Rand lived, she belligerently chase away anyone who disagreed, even slightly, with her “philosophy” of Objectivism. Rand denounced libertarians as “a monstrous, disgusting bunch of people” and conservatives as “futile, impotent and, culturally, dead.” In return, critics found Rand’s declaration that “The only philosophical debt I can acknowledge is to Aristotle,” laughable. The revelations of Rand’s destructive affair with Nathanial Branden undercut Rand’s writings on “rationally” practicing sex and love. Her acolytes were called “crazy” on the rare occasions they interacted with the outside world. But since the financial crisis, all has changed. The Ayn Rand Institute, which owns the Rand copyrights, claims that sales of Atlas Shrugged tripled between 2009 and 2008.     Share on Facebook

• Greg Mangus at Mercy Lounge 
Adam Gold, Nashville Scene Chark Kingsolving assembled a crack team of local musicians to flawlessly execute a note-for-note recreation of Rush’s “2112” — the 20-minute suite that opens the band’s breakthrough record of the same name. [....] If Ayn Rand-informed Canadian prog rock ain’t your bag, it’s probably safe to assume Muscle Shoals-informed blue-eyed soul and gritty mod rock is.     Share on Facebook

• WikiLeaks mastermind Julian Assange: Evil genius or visionary hacker? 
Luisita Lopez Torregrosa, Politics Daily Atlas Shrugged  As they said about John Galt in Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged:” Who is Julian Paul Assange?     Share on Facebook

• • Philosophy in chiropractic education 
Christopher Kent, Dynamic Chiropractic As Ayn Rand wrote, “As a human being, you have no choice about the fact that you need a philosophy. Your only choice is whether you define your philosophy by a conscious, rational, disciplined process of thought and scrupulously logical deliberation, or let your subconscious accumulate a junk heap of unwarranted conclusions, false generalizations, undefined contradictions, undigested slogans, unidentified wishes, doubts and fears, thrown together by chance, but integrated by your subconscious into a kind of mongrel philosophy and fused into a single, solid weight: self-doubt, like a ball and chain in the place where your mind’s wings should have grown.”     Share on Facebook

• • LACMA opening Resnick Pavilion! 
Jay Weston, Huffington Post The Fountainhead  I have been increasingly fascinated of late by the contemporary architectural scene, since my ex, Annabelle, and her partner Marci are working on a film remake of the legendary Ayn Rand book and movie, The Fountainhead, and I have been preoccupied on how to take the dynamic story of architect Howard Ruark and update it.     Share on Facebook

• Amber Heard heats up The Joneses and pursues The Rum Diary 
Monsters and Critics The Fountainhead  [In The Joneses] twenty three year old Amber Heard, a rising star in Hollywood’s youth brigade, plays the sex obsessed fashionista daughter who beds men twice her age. Heard told Monsters & Critics that she immediately related to Jenn Jones. “The first act of the film you start to notice that something is really off. My character is desperately seeking affection. She realizes she’s just looking to understand love. She’s a vulnerable character that’s cheeky and tough on the outside. There were some layers there and I thought it was a real character that made sense not just to me but to a lot of girls.” Heard has ways of dealing with life’s ups and downs and she approached the role armed with things that inspire her. Amber Heard in The Joneses “My religion is philosophers, poets, artists, and thinkers, especially Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. I don’t need anything else.     Share on Facebook

• Census plan continues to dog Harper 
Michael Den Tandt, Toronto Sun This is the most puerile argument of all: That killing the long-form census is a nod to this government’s “libertarian” sensibilities. It’s all about rugged individualism, we’re expected to believe. [Prime Minister] Stephen Harper is such a fine and principled libertarian. He presides over a government that spent, in the 2009-10 fiscal year, $237.8 billion, up from $207.9 billion the year before. This fiscal year the finance department projects spending of $249.2-billion — and a deficit of $53.8-billion. Every hen-house, outhouse and fence-row in Canada has received infrastructure funding. Ayn Rand move over.     Share on Facebook

• • Forced to be free 
Jesse Walker, Reason Leonard Peikoff  In theory, [Leonard] Peikoff believes in strictly limited government and strong protection of individual rights. But last month he argued that the authorities should block a Muslim community center from being erected near the site of the 9/11 attacks, on the grounds that Islam—not just jihadism, but Islam itself—is a threat to a free America. [....] We may soon face an “Islamic takeover of a paralyzed United States,” Peikoff warned. Allowing the Manhattan center to be built would be an “objective sign of our weakness,” and therefore it would be “immoral and catastrophic for Americans to permit it.” Thus, “permission should be refused, and if they go ahead and build it, the government should bomb it out of existence, evacuating it first, with no compensation to any of the property owners involved in this monstrosity.” Peikoff believes this conclusion is consistent with “individualism,” and in a sense I suppose it is. It’s the individualism that saw slavery in the free exercise of religion, the individualism that saw liberation in the prohibition of alcohol and consensual sex. It’s an individualism with deep roots in both American and European history. It just isn’t a sort of individualism that believes in individual liberty.     Share on Facebook

• • First Impressions owner wants focus on industry 
Ocala Business Journal (FL) The Fountainhead  Profile of Frank Spontelli, president of First Impressions Printing.Q: What is your favorite business book? A: “The Fountainhead” by Ayn Rand, an amazing statement (made over 60 years ago) of where we may be headed as a nation.     Share on Facebook

• • Why our ship is listing 
Wes Browning, Real Change News - Dr. Wes Ayn Rand says that if her heirs don’t deserve her money, because they didn’t earn it, well then neither do you. Prove that is not a valid argument. Hint: Substitute “drunken space-giraffes” for “her heirs.” Should drunken space-giraffes have inherited Ayn Rand’s wealth? Did they?     Share on Facebook

• What is orthodox Republicanism? 
David Schultz, OpEdNews The Palin makeover of the GOP combines Goldwaterism and Reaganism with a cult of personality, a multi-media advertising campaign, and a dose of Ayn Rand libertarianism. But Palinism is also built on what historian Richard Hofstadter labeled the paranoid style in American politics. It is an anti-intellectual world view nurtured in a fear that outside forces are threatening a way of life that includes faith in God, free enterprise, and democracy.     Share on Facebook

• No mystery in Sharon: Book-signing is a thriller 
Kathryn Boughton, Litchfield County Times (CT) Biographer Anne Heller will be present [at the Sharon Summer Book Signing ]with “Ayn Rand and the World She Made.”     Share on Facebook

• Samuel Edward Konkin III 
Jeff Riggenbach, Mises.org Daily Article [Sam Konkin’s] new roommate, another chemistry grad student, named Tony Warnock, turned out to be a big fan of everything related to Ayn Rand. Through Warnock, Sam was introduced not only to the writings of Rand, but also to those of a couple of economists — Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard — and to those of Robert LeFevre, the real-life anarchist philosopher on whom Robert A. Heinlein had based Professor Bernardo de la Paz.     Share on Facebook

• Freedom fest, taxes, deficits 
Gary Rust, Southeast Missourian (Cape Girardeau, MO) Wendy and I recently attended Freedom Fest, a three-day annual gathering of conservatives, libertarians, gold and silver investors, health food proponents, Ayn Rand readers, stock investors etc. It was an intellectually stimulating experience.     Share on Facebook

• When lightning strikes, be glad the public employees are there 
H. Bruce Miller, The Source Weekly - The Wandering Eye (Bend, OR) In ancient Rome, Marcus Licinius Crassus – described by one website as “ambitious and an entrepreneur – the kind of man Ayn Rand might have appreciated” – made a fortune with his free-enterprise firefighting business. When a fire started in the city he’d rush to the scene, buy up the adjacent properties at bargain prices and then have his crew put the fire out.     Share on Facebook

• Two brainiac oddballs and one mean bastard 
Steven Wishnia, The Indypendent Capitalism  [George] Steinbrenner epitomized the Ayn Rand arrogant capitalist. He never swung a bat or threw a ball at anything close to a professional level, but he was quick to claim credit for the Yankees’ victories and to insult players publicly when they lost, in terms like “fat toad,” “he spit the bit,” and “Mr. May.” Like every other baseball owner, he found ignoring steroids highly profitable.     Share on Facebook

• Newberry Library Book Fair 2010 features over 120000 books 
Carole Kuhrt Brewer, Chicago Now - Show Me Chicago Atlas Shrugged  The highly-anticipated 26th annual Newberry Library Book Fair is expected to draw over 100,000 book lovers and collectors to the hallowed halls of this treasured Chicago institution, designed by architect Henry Ives Cobb, and built in 1893. [....] Some of the collectibles that dealers and the public will be clamoring for at this year’s sale include first editions of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged,” Fredic Brown’s “Space On My Hands,” and Thomas Harris’s “Silence of the Lambs.”     Share on Facebook