•‘If Christians fail, America will fail’ 
Stan Guthrie, Christianity Today Interview with Don Feder, president of Jews Against Anti-Christian Defamation.Ayn Rand, the novelist/philosopher—who, by the way, I don't have much in common with—used to say that the culture is an idea transmission belt, and that's exactly what it is. Evangelical Christians and traditional Catholics were very successful politically last year. Despite their success, we still can't get [President] Bush's judges confirmed, at least the more important conservative nominees. 06:58 PM    View blog reactions

•Out there! A true believer’s guide to the Outer Cape 
Eric Williams, Cape Cod Times (MA) "Some of the best places to see and fun things to do on the Cape and islands."Quickly northward, stopping only at the Truro Swap Shop, at the town's transfer station off Route 6. Hey, if you forget shorts or a sweatshirt on your vacation, stop here and get 'em free! I grab a copy of Ayn Rand's ''The Virtue of Selfishness,' which will hopefully justify my existence. 06:50 PM    View blog reactions

•Evolution revolution 
Pollstar Music industry satire.The first child suspected of being an example of concert industry-influenced evolution is Wilhelm, a German pre-teen living with his parents in Berlin. While the child appears to be just like any other German ten-year-old - he loves girls, beer and a strict, well-defined social order - Wilhelm also possesses the unique capability of connecting any given scheduled performance with a stated date... 'Most people can only remember 20, maybe 25 percent of all the concert dates to which they've been exposed,' says Dr. Alfred Bellows.... 'However, Wilhelm appears to retain every concert date currently on the books, including support acts, co-headlines and showcase dates. He's like Einstein, Ayn Rand and Clear Channel all rolled into one!' 07:04 PM    View blog reactions

• •Shania, Michael Cullen and bad law 
Peter Cresswell, Scoop (New Zealand) Op-ed opposing the Resource Management Act, an environmental measure.As Ayn Rand observed, when the productive have to ask permission from unproductive arseholes in order to produce (I paraphrase slightly) then you know your culture is stuffed. And so it is. If you want to understand why that's a sign your culture is stuffed, I recommend the 'Money Speech' from Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged. 06:55 PM    View blog reactions

• •The most philosophical student 
Teri Kelsh, St. Louis Park Sun Sailor (MN) Interview with the winner of the 2005 National Kids Philosophy Slam, Christian Tarsney.I would strongly recommend the study of philosophy. The arguments for why it’s worthwhile are too long to give here, but anyone who doubts it should read Ayn Rand’s essay 'Philosophy: Who Needs It?' Most people accept uncritically whatever ideology is crammed down their throats by their parents, religion being a prime example, on the implicit premise that abstract ideas don’t particularly matter. 06:50 PM    View blog reactions

•Second act: Sisson’s fun-filled party 
Lisa Provence, The Hook (VA) Profile of film producer Barry Sisson.Favorite book? Atlas Shrugged -- powerful statement, grandly realized. 06:43 PM    View blog reactions

•Why I’m still a liberal 
Clay Evans, Daily Camera (Boulder) As diehard conservatives insist we move from America's New Deal ethic into Ayn Rand Adventure Land — minimal taxes; everyone out for themselves — I can't imagine why they think our (far from perfect) system has been so awful. 06:38 PM    View blog reactions

•Battle of our principles 
Bob Little, Pahrump Valley Times (NV) Op-ed on the cause of the current federal appeals court nomination controversy.It is my thesis today that the sheer tenacity of the collectivist impulse, whether you call it socialism, communism or altruism, has changed not only the meaning of our words, but also the meaning of our Constitution, and the character of our people... Ayn Rand similarly attributes the collectivist impulse to what she calls the tribal view of man. She notes: The American philosophy of the Rights of Man was never fully grasped by European intellectuals. 06:34 PM    View blog reactions

•The circle is now complete: I am a geek 
John Doran, Silverton Appeal Tribune (OR) I remember in college a Religion in Society course professor asking each student to name someone who had impacted their lives. God was one common answer. Mine was George Lucas. People laughed, of course, but it was as good an answer as Ayn Rand, right? I mean, she can write and all, but… 06:29 PM    View blog reactions

•Why stop… anywhere? 
William F. Buckley Jr., National Review Online (Also appears in the New York Sun, 25 May.) Op-ed raising the question: Why, given current justifications for loosening standards, are more and more radical changes to laws and ethics governing stem-cell and other biological research not inevitable?The guidelines issued by the National Academy of Sciences specify that no human embryo should be grown in a lab more than 14 days -- 'when the first primitive streak of a nervous system appears.' We learn that that has been the practice for in vitro fertilization, a line carefully drawn. But one is driven, in the open laboratory of unhampered thought, to ask again, Why? What is it that requires untethered free spirits, of the kind dreamed about in the idylls of Ayn Rand, to abide by existing biological models? 06:13 PM    View blog reactions

•Will government cease working for the people? 
Lois W. Jennings, The Day (New London, CT) Letter to the Editor.I doubt that most Republicans know what has happened to the party over the last 25 years, with control now in the hands of a small group of neo-cons of the Ayn Rand philosophy. It's not about abortion, it's not about gay marriage. It's about the corporate agenda — repeal federal regulation (in the name of smaller government) and promote global free trade, outsourcing and a corporate empire protected by American military bases around the world. 06:11 PM    View blog reactions

•‘Gianni’ come lately 
Wenzel Jones, Back Stage Profiles of five people who are taking up opera singing later in life.Kathy Cross, who works for the Ayn Rand Institute, has a good sense of where she is, vocally, and she intends to take lessons to improve the quality of her singing voice.  05:58 PM    View blog reactions

•Sir Millard Mulch beyond the obscure 
Dawn E. Scire, Sarasota Herald-Tribune Review of musician Sir Millard Mulch's three-disk "How to Sell the Whole F#@!ing Universe to Everybody ... Once and For All!"Mulch is also publishing a two-part 'companion guide' of the same name.... Part of it includes the lyrics and liner notes for the discs; part is "sales/motivational." So the book's purchase is at least semi-mandatory if one wants to follow the album concept, which is more than hinted at in the project's subtitle: "The Ultimate Guide to Social Metaphysics for Salesmen, Artists, Magicians and All Other Types of Manipulative Fakes and Liars." It's loosely based on Ayn Rand philosophy and Mulch's zany interspersements. 09:55 PM    View blog reactions

•Young authors and reformers 
The Telegraph (Calcutta) Review of Post Box No. 99 and Other Stories, a collection of teen-written short stories, edited by Ruskin Bond.The writing is, in most cases, remarkably fresh, committed and original, and an added pleasure is to read the varied profiles of the 12 writers. Their reading habits are a bit alarming though, many preferring writers like Paul Coelho, Richard Bach and Ayn Rand. 09:52 PM    View blog reactions

•It’s lurking in the basement 
Camilla Gibb, Globe & Mail (Toronto) Any would-be writer is more likely than not to have kept meticulous records of some of the most excruciating details known to man. Letters to the most inappropriate objects of affection,... acutely self-conscious poetry misemploying words from the thesaurus, pretentious and flagrantly derivative prose,... and important lists: e.g. Books read in 1984: Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, Camus' L'Etranger, Graham Greene's The Heart of the Matter, Laurence Durrell's The Alexandria Quartet, Khalil Gibran's The Prophet -- at least one of which you know you never even started, one of which was assigned at school, and most of which you're pretty sure you never finished. 05:52 AM    View blog reactions

• • •Rand-itis 
Rutland Herald (VT) A major problem with Ayn Rand's approach is her emphasis on what she considers to be intelligence. In her view, the world's problems are solved if intelligent people are allowed to have their way. But that ignores the fact there is no absolute definition of intelligence, despite her attempt to do so by introducing characters in her novels who follow similar thinking patterns. 08:02 AM    View blog reactions

•The Green Wall: A Libertarian classic 
Ira Katz, LewRockwell.com During a Kafkaesque series of frustrations, Mario attempted to gain title to his land. The individual bureaucrats recognized his heroism (he could be described as a Randian hero, he tells the clerk he wants 'to produce'), even if they also believed it was tragic and misplaced. 08:00 AM    View blog reactions

•Catching dreams: Preston Tucker’s fight for free enterprise 
Jomana M. Papillo, Le Québécois Libre Review of the movie Tucker: The Man and His Dream.Nothing can stymie Tucker's idealism and his faith in the system he has been so proud of his entire life. His feelings are reminiscent of those expressed by Ayn Rand's Objectivist heroine, Dagny Taggart. In Rand's famous novel, Atlas Shrugged, Dagny says, 'The sight of an achievement was the greatest gift a human being can offer to others.' Tucker echoes this same sentiment. 09:56 PM    View blog reactions

• • •The logical compatibility of Austrian economics and Objectivist ethics, Part II 
Heidi C. Morris, Le Québécois Libre The Austrian economist goes so far as to claim rationality as the appropriate method for discovery of economic truth; the objectivist goes further, and asserts that rationality is the appropriate method for discovery of all aspects of reality, in ethics as well as intellectual endeavors. The difference between the two conceptions of reason is that while the Austrian economist bases his methodology on a prioristic reasoning, the objectivist's reasoning is more grounded in empirical truth, and the reality of the physical world. Nonetheless, the two disciples are compatible; the objectivist can quite consistently be an Austrian economist, and vice versa. 09:53 PM    View blog reactions

•Tall tax, food police, a bizarre bridge and a robber wanting your past or future 
Hindu Business Line (India) Book review.You probably know of John Galt in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. Here is a different JG in Ken Schoolland's story, The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible: A Free Market Odyssey. 09:48 PM    View blog reactions

•The Army should try stressing what it’s all about: service 
Brad Warthen, The State (SC) Why Army recruiting should focus on altruism.Experts were cited as saying 'the Pentagon must find every imaginable way to uncork youthful idealism and the desire for "meaning" that appears in surveys of both Christian and liberal teenagers and twentysomethings.' Setting aside the odd implied assumption that one cannot be both Christian and liberal, that makes a whole lot more sense than the Ayn Randian 'Army of One.' Of course, almost anything does. If military recruiters are not asking young people to set aside their personal interests for something larger than themselves, then who is? 09:38 AM    View blog reactions

• • •Ayn Rand at 100: An ‘ism’ struts its stuff 
Benjamin Harvey, Barre-Montpelier Times Argus (VT) Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, pointed to a map of the United States colored to mark school districts where he had shipped more than 165,000 free copies of Ayn Rand's books. 'My goal is to make that map green,' he said. 09:32 AM    View blog reactions

•Have a heart 
Gaby Wood, The Guardian (London) Interview with novelist Nicole Krauss, author of The History of Love.Krauss grew up on Long Island, where, she says, 'the houses were pretty far from each other. I didn't really know my neighbours'. She immersed herself in reading - 'crumbly yellow paperbacks', a biography of Henry Miller, Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, Roth's Portnoy's Complaint - all by the age of 12. 09:28 AM    View blog reactions

•Yonge Street is the great divide 
Peter Kuitenbrouwer, National Post (Toronto) Documenting Toronto's east-west cultural split.For Chris Earle, the east end, with its parks and good public schools, is perfect -- well, almost perfect. 'We could use another shoe store, a cheap shoe store, if you're talking to anybody.' Mr. Reynolds insists Riverdale is hardly so pastoral. 'Everybody's really acquisitive, decking out their children in the latest brand names. It's war out here in Riverdale,' he says. 'Nobody talks about it but everybody's a seething yuppified Ayn Randian.' 09:17 AM    View blog reactions

•Chicken soup doesn’t cut it 
Sue Ferguson, Macleans (Canada) A look at "extreme self-help" books.Roy Valentine's The System: How to Get Laid Today explains, well, how to get laid 'within a day of seeing her for the first time.' Claims like these make it difficult for the self-help genre as a whole to shake its image as smarmy and tabloidesque, a task Tom Butler-Bowdon sets himself in 50 Self-Help Classics. He contends the books on his list -- which places modern works by Anthony Robbins, Ayn Rand and Robert Bly alongside sixth-century philosopher Boethius' The Consolation of Philosophy, the Bible and the Bhagavad-Gita -- draw on respected principles in psychology and philosophy, and are 'packed with stuff that could change and deepen a life as much as any fictional work.' 09:08 AM    View blog reactions