• • Hollywood honors American values 
Wayne Murray, Arizona Republic (Phoenix) Atlas Shrugged  James Cameron would be wise to consider picking up the rights to make his next epic picture "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand. He may even consider asking his ex-wife, [Kathryn] Bigelow, to collaborate in directing. Now, that would be an Oscar sweep.     Share on Facebook

• • Paul Ryan and the Republican vision 
Jonathan Chait, The New Republic Capitalism  The core of the Randian worldview, as absorbed by the modern GOP, is a belief that the natural market distribution of income is inherently moral, and the central struggle of politics is to free the successful from having the fruits of their superiority redistributed by looters and moochers. What's telling about Ryan's program is not so much that a hard-core ideologue like him would advocate it. It's that virtually the whole of the conservative movement has embraced him. [....] The rise of Ryan is a sign that the possibilities for bipartisan cooperation on domestic issues are, at the moment, essentially nil. This point is obscured by the figure of Ryan, a cheerful and courteous man who gives every sense of wanting to deal in good faith. But his goals, which are now fully the goals of the conservative movement and the Republican Party, are diametrically opposed to the liberal vision of capitalism shorn of its cruelest edges. His basic moral premises are foreign, even abhorrent, to liberals. He seems like a person you'd like to negotiate with, but there's nothing to negotiate over. Ryan is waging a zero sum fight over resources on behalf of the most fortunate members of society and against everybody else.     Share on Facebook

• • Mike Daisey reveals secrets of the world order 
Chris Kompanek, Flavorwire The Fountainhead  [Q:] Who are some of the guests we can expect on [your] show? [A:] [....] I believe we’re going to have someone who’s starring in a film adaptation — this is fascinating — a musical film adaptation of Ayn Rand’sThe Fountainhead. They’re going to be singing some really fantastic songs about libertarianism and female submission. The actress is just charming. A little freaky but charming. I think that’s going to be tremendous. It’s really a wide range of things that I feel capture where we are as a country and a people.     Share on Facebook

• Ignore socialist label 
Jeff Gadt, Kansas City Star (MO) Capitalism  On banks and the financial markets, Obama’s economic advisers and Treasury Secretary are staunch free-market advocates. Unless you’re comparing them to Ayn Rand, Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner cannot be accused of being market obstructionists. Regulating Wall Street’s ruinous greed is balancing "too big to fail" and "too small to care about." It is not socialism. For the sake of our country, tune out the fear mongers and turn on the brain.     Share on Facebook

• ‘What’s the Matter With Kansas’ liberal filmmakers get a dose of Wichita 
Robert W. Butler, Kansas City Star (MO) Capitalism  “I’m a natural-born pessimist,” [documentary author Thomas Frank] said. “People shouldn’t be waving pictures of Ayn Rand and cursing liberals when we’re sinking into a worldwide recession. But the Democrats can’t seem to get a handle on it.     Share on Facebook

• • The good work of government 
William J. Linn, Star-News (Wilmington, NC) Capitalism  The lessons learned from the 19th century robber barons are sufficient to reject [the] naive Ayn Randian notion that the “businessman would never willfully harm his customers and thereby hurt his own future business prospects.” Tell that to the tainted peanut butter “businessman.”     Share on Facebook

• • • The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism (1964) 
David Wilson, South China Morning Post The Virtue of Selfishness  Egoism  Personal life  (Requires subscription.)Nowhere in Rand's ascendant nicety-free canon is her take on politics expressed with more verve and venom than the essay collection The Virtue of Selfishness. The Neocon bible expounds Rand's philosophy, which she called "objectivist" in a foretaste of the equally dubious Fox News slogan: "The Spin stops here". About as objective as The Narnia Chronicles, Rand's gut-instinct tract exalts egotism as a rational code of ethics and slams socialism as a vice. A selfish, non-sacrificial way of life is possible and the only way to be, according to Rand, whose individualist take on how to live could be seen as an affront to Christianity, Confucianism and several other belief systems that place hope in community. Rand's Darwinian outlook, which makes Britain's Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher appear warm and fuzzy, must stem from her upbringing in Soviet Russia. [....] Rand can be so short on rigour that she resembles a crazed cult leader. Her claim that extremity equates with consistency is just one example of her borderline lunacy, which can be toxic. Elsewhere in the book, she is even more virulent. Despite Rand's fanaticism, The Virtue of Selfishness remains a compelling reflection of her spectacularly dysfunctional mind and a masterclass in the waspish art of polemic. Stinging.     Share on Facebook

• • Editors’ picks 
C. Rollyson, Choice Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  The Virtue of Selfishness  We The Living  Capitalism  Egoism  Personal life  Review of Ayn Rand and the World She Made, by Anne C. Heller.Although not stinting a concern with Rand's ideas, Heller is mesmerized by Rand the novelist and the person. The biographer pores over Rand's early years in Russia with brilliant results, showing how much Rand (born Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum) drew on her experience in the 1920s Leninist state for her impressive novel We the Living.     Share on Facebook

• • • The Ayn Rand follies 
The New Criterion Altruism  Atlas Shrugged  The Virtue of Selfishness  Capitalism  Egoism  Inaccurate  It was always, we suspect, Rand’s effort to make a “virtue of selfishness” (as she puts it in the title of a collection of essays) that accounted for a large part of her appeal. The shocking quality of advocating something so widely deprecated guaranteed an eager audience. Most human beings do not need special encouragement to be selfish. They come by it naturally enough. How welcome, then, to stumble upon a writer of long books who, far from criticizing selfishness, as everyone from your mother on down has done, tells you that you should be as selfish as possible.     Share on Facebook

• Charlottesville gears up for Va. Festival of the Book 
News Leader (Staunton, VA) Hundreds of writers and millions of words will flow through Charlottesville during the 16th annual Virginia Festival of the Book, which runs from March 17 to 21. This year's schedule includes more than 40 University of Virginia faculty members and alumni, speaking on topics as diverse as Ayn Rand, living through war and examining historical times.     Share on Facebook

• • Bioshock 2 
Jacob Muncy, San Antonio Current The opening of Bioshock 2 feels like coming home. You awaken in ruins in the old part of Rapture, an underwater city and objectivist paradise created by John Galt archetype Andrew Ryan. [....] Rapture feels alive. Every environment you visit is the ruined remnant of some part of Rapture prior to its collapse, the highlight of which is an amusement park full of objectivist propaganda (seemingly exaggerated unless you’ve read Ayn Rand).     Share on Facebook

• • Tequila sunrise & into the sunset 
Kasmin Fernandes, Mid-Day The Fountainhead  "I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline," author Ayn Rand wrote in The Fountainhead, "The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need?" she asked. "Come to Mumbai," we say.     Share on Facebook

• The GOP’s bait-and-switch game 
Gene Lyons, Salon Wealthy donors, as the world knows, need their posteriors kissed and their egos stroked. Hence GOP fundraisers ply them with access to party bigshots and tchotchkes ranging from "luxury retreats in California wine country to tickets to a professional fight in Las Vegas." And who could resist rubbing elbows with Newt Gingrich or Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol at a Napa Valley wine tasting? Kind of an Ayn Rand meets "Sideways" thing.     Share on Facebook

• • • Exploring “The Moral Foundations of Capitalism” … at Stanford? 
Autumn Carter, Stanford Review - Fiat Lux (Stanford U, CA) Capitalism  Image  This quarter, I took one of the best classes I’ve taken in my 8 quarters here at Stanford. “The Moral Foundations of Capitalism,” an Ethics in Society course, was featured in campus news, mired in a bit of controversy, and filled beyond capacity within days of its enrollment opening. [....] I learned so much history, so much philosophy, and so much about myself. The course’s cornerstone was Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. Rand, an Objectivist, championed Capitalism as a social system that leaves man free to use his mind to reason and determine what is best for his own life.     Share on Facebook

• Dean ‘the invisible economist’ Baker kidnaps Alan Greenspan 
Dean Baker, True/Slant Humor.I forgot to mention that I kidnapped [Alan Greenspan]. He was an easy catch. He was trying to have sex with his wife on their cold marble floor at the time. They such freaks for Ayn Rand, you know?     Share on Facebook

• • Fallen role models - keeping the value 
Somik Raha, Desicritics.org (India) Personal life  Inaccurate  Me: I find it very hard to follow Ayn Rand's philosophy, after learning that she died insane. I was very influenced by her writing, but decided to throw it all out after knowing about her personal life. Prof: I used to know a Buddhist teacher many years back, who was very high up in this country. He used to give wonderful enlightening sermons. Then one day, he was found to be a pedophile. I found myself questioning whether the knowledge I'd received from him should be thrown away. It was clear to me that whatever he had said about truth, compassion and love was invaluable, and had helped me in my own life. Nothing he did changed the value of his message for me, so it made no sense to throw out what he said because he could not live up to it.     Share on Facebook

• Inside Alan Greenspan’s nightmare 
Mark Weisbrot, The Guardian (London) Some may dismiss Greenspan's values as unrepresentative – he was, after all, a devotee of the extreme libertarian writer Ayn Rand.     Share on Facebook

• • High Society 
Todd Vanderwerff, The Onion A.V. Club TV series review.If nothing else, High Society should be the final nail in the coffin of Randian objectivism. I have no problem with the idea that people who rise from rags to riches are smart, hard-working, capable individuals. I'd say, in my experience, that that's often the case. I just am not so sure that's the case with their children, who often seem like some of the worst people to ever have lived, if the presentation of them on television is any indication. The CW's High Society is just the latest series to attempt to turn the lives of young, lithe, hot women in the big city into something approaching compelling television.     Share on Facebook

• Introducing Wall Street’s hottest offspring, Part II 
Gus Lubin And Courtney Comstock, The Business Insider Victor Niederhoffer has six daughters and one son. [....] Rand, 26, started a fashion company in Brooklyn. She is clearly named after her father's favorite author, Ayn Rand.     Share on Facebook

• • • Ayn Rand, Chapman University and serial killer love 
Matt Coker, Orange County Weekly - Navel Gazing (CA) The Fountainhead  Image  Inaccurate  The Mother of Objectivism and author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged "is the 28th notable figure to have a bust dedicated on the campus of Chapman University," reports Chapman Now. [....] [I]t's a good bet Rand is the only Chapman bustee whose first love dismembered little girls.     Share on Facebook