• •The secular right 
Robert Tracinski, RealClearPolitics My own defense of the secular right is based on the ideas of Ayn Rand, the novelist, philosopher, and famous defender of capitalism who originated a secular philosophy she called Objectivism. Ayn Rand's ideas are hardly a secret--her novels still sell briskly, fifty years on--and the strangest part of the current debate about secularism and the right is that no one has yet seen fit to mention her. 09:21 AM    View blog reactions

•Quillman and Stillman 
Bruce Hamilton, Arcata Eye (Arcata, CA) Letter to the editor responding to an article about Dana Quillman, who is running for city council, and Paul Pitino, her partner and a current council member.Dana apparently believes that the “community” should provide a living wage for the people. Does she not realize that the “community” has no money, creates no wealth, and is restricted to taking from those who do create wealth [...]. Did she miss the great Soviet quagmire? I suggest Dana (and Paul) read We The Living, a book by a powerful woman, Ayn Rand, about her experiences in Communist Russia’s “great” experiment in trying to provide a political solution to the needs of its citizens.  09:15 AM    View blog reactions

•Racism is evil 
Hana Johnson, Hawaii Reporter Racism has been manifested in Hawaii by advocates of collectivist rights and they are guilty of causing civil disorder. To quote from Ayn Rand, “[r]acism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage….[It] negates two aspects of man’s life: reason and choice, or mind and morality, replacing them with chemical predestination.” 09:09 AM    View blog reactions

•The lure and lore of risk-free profits 
Antal E. Fekete, Free-Market News Network I am suggesting that Barrick is the modern Atlas carrying the entire derivatives market, currently estimated at $300 trillion, on its shoulders. The global derivatives market and Barrick's 'hedging' program stand or fall together. In particular when Altas shrugged, there would be an earthquake measuring ten on the Richter-scale, and the derivatives market would go down the drain. 09:07 AM    View blog reactions

• •Winners named for 11th annual Anthem essay contest 
Mansfield News (MA) High school sophomore Lian States, from Fairfield, Ill., is the winner of the Ayn Rand Institute's 11th annual "Anthem" essay contest, for which she received a prize of $1,000. 09:02 AM    View blog reactions

•Wishful thinking from Mr. Lind 
Tibor R. Machan, Free-Market News Network On an article by Michael Lind entitled “The Unmourned End of Libertarian Politics."As far as the dominant ideas being discussed at conferences, in books and journals addressing political economy and theory, including prospective public policies, libertarianism has been making headway. Not enough to satisfy most libertarians-although many share the late Ayn Rand’s view that “It’s earlier than you think,” meaning the time hasn’t yet come for these radical ideas to take root. 08:59 AM    View blog reactions

•Love on the Rockies: The ‘quarterlife crisis’ 
Allyson Reedy, Your Hub Denver Friend #3 is one of the most rational, level-headed people I know. She just isn't too good with the 9-5 jobs because she refuses to settle for anything less than complete fulfillment. It's a very Ayn Rand-esque quality, but one that would probably leave me homeless. 08:52 AM    View blog reactions

• • •Rational Christian answer to Ayn Rand 
Babu Ranganathan, The Conservative Voice Ayn Rand misunderstands the concept of Christian altruism and the proper context in which Christian altruism is to be applied. Christian altruism does not mean that we should give to others unconditionally in all circumstances because that would not be for the true benefit of others. Christian love seeks what is for the true benefit of others, not whatever they desire or want. 09:05 AM    View blog reactions

• •Auditions set for Ayn Rand play at the River Theater 
The Daily Astorian (Astoria, OR) With a story full of twists and turns, [Night of January 16th] was Rand's most successful [play]. A great financier's mistress stands accused of his murder, with defiance of society's standards as the greatest evidence of her guilt. 09:01 AM    View blog reactions

•Witchdoctors and thugs 
Alan Reynolds, Townhall.com On fascism.Ayn Rand, the novelist-philosopher, thought most of history had been dominated by witchdoctors and thugs (Attila). Thugs rule by force, while witchdoctors come up with clever excuses for thuggery. 08:57 AM    View blog reactions

•This week’s revivals 
Richard von Busack, Metro Silicon Valley (CA) Gilda/Laura (1946/1944) [....] Gay people cherish Gilda for its double-jointed romance and for Hayworth's flamboyance. [....] Let's take the minority view and say the film is latently heterosexual. Farrell's awe of Ballin may not be a lover's passion but perhaps an Ayn Rand-like swoon over the power of capitalism. 08:47 AM    View blog reactions

• • •Proposed college resurfaces, in Virginia 
Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed While [CEO and chairman Gary] Hull acknowledges that Objectivism is his “own personal philosophy” and that of some of the proposed institution’s other leaders, “there is no ideological orientation of Founders College. It is not an Ayn Rand university.” 08:08 AM    View blog reactions

•Leave the decadent businessman alone! 
John Stossel, Townhall.com As the novelist Ayn Rand put it, "The right to agree with others is not a problem in any society; it is the right to disagree that is crucial. It is the institution of private property that protects and implements the right to disagree." 08:04 AM    View blog reactions

•The best advice is to follow your nose 
Terri Choate, Reno Gazette-Journal (NV) The Modern Library commissioned scholars to pick the 100 best novels, coming up with a top ten [headed by] Ulysses by James Joyce [and] The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald [...]. Readers disagreed and chose Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, both by Ayn Rand, in first and second places. 07:59 AM    View blog reactions

•Even sadists need somewhere to play 
Elizabeth Farrelly, Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) Film is the moral medium of our time, message stick and image maker in one. So it's fitting the Royal Australian Institute of Architects marked this year's 10th Sydney Design with four design-conscious movies. The choice was interesting. [....] Not the usual apocalyptic favourites The Fountainhead, Metropolis or Blade Runner. No, the RAIA showed Woody Allen's Sleeper, Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, My Architect by Nathaniel (son of Louis) Kahn and the interminable Russian Ark. 07:51 AM    View blog reactions

• •The OTHER Bubble Boy, gone for good! 
"Amanda Balzastones", American Politics Journal Satire.Anyone interested in Mr. Greenslime's background will find a cache of intellectual interests from the women he loved, like modern artist Joan Mitchell, or Media Madam Barbara Walters, or current journalist wife Andrea Mitchell Greenspan, to the mentors (Ayn Rand) he kept in his company, his political party preference (Republican), and of course, an upbringing by a father who was a stockbroker. 07:29 AM    View blog reactions

• • •Ayn Rand and the myth of Hezbollah 
Anthony Oluwatoyin, Canada Free Press Randian myth provides the best conceptual framework to unpack the mad moral equivalences that have just won the day in the Middle East fraudulent ceasefire of unceasing hostility. So much more savage than the vaunted "Newspeak" of George Orwell, Ayn Rand probes deeper into the vocabulary of apologists for terror. 07:39 AM    View blog reactions

•In a strange sort of way, Harvey Pekar’s alter ego 
Mark Sommer, Buffalo News Review of Ego & Hubris: The Michael Malice Story.Although Malice flirted with being a Republican and now calls himself an anarchist, his outlook is strongly influenced by the late libertarian-capitalism author and guru, Ayn Rand. 07:33 AM    View blog reactions

• •On books: ‘Literary Lives’ 
Scott Eyman, Palm Beach Post (FL) Review of Literary Lives, by Edward Sorel.The essence of Sorel is the gap between writerly professions of purity about their work, and the shabby hypocrisies of their life, which is why he really goes to town on Ayn Rand and Lillian Hellman. It's not just the physical details, although he captures Rand's expansive peasant hips in all their bone-crushing glory; he's also a good writer. 04:40 AM    View blog reactions

•Moral quagmire 
Stirling Newberry, TPM Cafe Why "the right is intellectually incoherent, combining ultra-darwinian free market fundamentalists, with evangelics who believe that Darwin is the ultimate evil in the world."Even today there are people arguing that Ayn Rand is a major "liberal" theorist, and fighting to preserve her holy memory on the internet. This from a philosophy that starts out from two questionable tautologies and worships getting cancer. No rhapsody anywhere in Rand's books surpasses her paean to smoking. 04:36 AM    View blog reactions

•A novel idea 
David Wilcox, The Citizen (Auburn, NY) On a local library book sale.Recent New York Times best-sellers like Kitty Kelley's “The Royals” and Dan Brown's “The Da Vinci Code” rest on one table. Bordering them in the “adult fiction” section are staples of contemporary literature, such as “The Fountainhead” by Ayn Rand and “Catch-22” by Joseph Heller. 07:37 AM    View blog reactions

•Moving pictures 
Anya Kamenetz, Fast Company On entrepreneur Jeff Skoll's efforts to make films that "boost awareness of one of six issues: the environment, health, human rights, institutional responsibility, peace and tolerance, and social and economic equity."If Skoll's life ever becomes an inspirational biopic a la Gandhi, one of his favorite films, the opening credits will roll over a montage like this: Toronto boy with his nose stuck in The Fountainhead and Brave New World, young man strolling under the oaks at Stanford business school, 31-year-old sitting in the living room of a group house writing the first business plan for eBay, 36-year-old retiring in 2001 with a personal fortune now estimated at $5 billion. 07:25 AM    View blog reactions

•Plot or ploy? 
Dylan Matthews, Slate Roundup of blog commentary on current events.Objectivist Chip Gibbons of The Binary Circumstance [...] believes there to be a sexual component [to the murder of JonBenet Ramsey], and thinks it extends beyond just [the accused John Mark] Karr. "Had so many adults not had sexualized fantasies about JonBenet," he continues, "she might still be alive today." 07:30 AM    View blog reactions

• •Student achievers 
The Eccentric (West Bloomfield, MI) Claire Bates, a senior at Andover High School, won a third place prize in the Ayn Rand Institute's annual "Fountainhead" essay contest, for which he received a $10,000 prize. 07:25 AM    View blog reactions

• •Diary of a mad county 
Steve Lowery, Orange County Weekly (CA) Just received an e-mail from Dr. Yaron Brook, who heads the Irvine-based Ayn Rand Institute. “We should demand that the government start profiling travelers now,” Brook says. “There is no reason to ask old ladies and little blond girls to discard their shampoo; there is no reason to treat all passengers equally, as is now happening at our airports, creating massive delays.” The e-mail goes on to say that “President Bush himself acknowledged the threat comes from Islamist fascists." [....] First, Dr. Brook should be reminded that there are, in fact, blond, blue-eyed Muslims—read The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Chechnya mean anything to you? 07:18 AM    View blog reactions