•On being unselfconscious 
Josh Treviño, The Remedy (Claremont Institute) The spectacle of a grown woman rejecting her own aged mother over their conflicting opinions on the Bush Administration [...] is at best an affront to piety borne of a monumental lack of perspective. To borrow a non-leftist parallel, one is reminded of Ayn Rand's furious fault-finding with those who dared disagree with her [...]. But Rand's group was, and remains, essentially a cult. The Democratic Party is not. 08:28 AM    View blog reactions

•Notes on the coming election 
Craig Biddle, Capitalism Magazine No single election is as important as the underlying cause of the political nightmare in which we find ourselves today. That cause is bad philosophy, and the only way to counter it is by understanding, embracing, and spreading good philosophy. However you choose to vote in this election, study and spread Objectivism, donate to the Ayn Rand Institute, read The Objective Standard, and encourage your friends and family to do the same. 08:25 AM    View blog reactions

•Haunted house creator likes books that focus on politics and history 
Tiffany Erickson, Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) Profile of Cydney Neil.Among [Neil's] favorite reads are Harry Potter books, "The Da Vinci Code" by Dan Brown and any book by Ayn Rand. Her all-time favorite is Rand's "Atlas Shrugged." 08:22 AM    View blog reactions

•For all that’s holy in hockey 
John Buccigross, ESPN Last week, within days, I went to an NHL arena and a house of worship, and neither place inspired me very much. Yes, I believe architecture matters. I believe presentation and form matter. Howard Roark matters. 08:20 AM    View blog reactions

•Bellini Signs with Monitor Records 
Derek Fahnestock, Pitchfork Fear not, stoned rich kids, former math-rock theorist and Don Caballero drummer Damon Che-- think of him as indie rock's Neil Peart, but without the misinterpreted objectivist palaver-- will soon return to grace your tweeters with his hyperkinetic fills. 08:14 AM    View blog reactions

•Legal profile 
The Daily Advertiser (Lafayette, LA) Profile of lawyer Gregory A. Koury.Favorite author and book: "Two books come to mind, The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas and The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. Favorite author, J.R.R. Tolkien." 07:45 AM    View blog reactions

•Charity should be voluntary, not coerced 
Kris Wampler, Charlotte Observer (NC) Letter to the Editor.In reference to "Ayn Rand followers selfish, unimaginative" (Oct. 21 Forum): All individuals have a fundamental right to be "greedy" if they so desire. No one has a right to force any person to live for the benefit of another. Such a system is properly called slavery. 07:43 AM    View blog reactions

•Getting to know - Cyndi Walsh 
Sue Bero, Northwest Indiana Times Profile of the vice president of National Bond and Trust Company.What I read: "Ayn Rand is my favorite author. I find her writing to be very relevant and thought provoking." 07:41 AM    View blog reactions

•The contradictions of libertarian interventionism 
John Markley, LewRockwell.com If minarchists like Ayn Rand, Ludwig von Mises, and Frédéric Bastiat are libertarians, and they obviously are, than it is possible [...] for a libertarian to believe that a certain amount of state coercion is a necessary and acceptable method for preventing even greater rights violations. [....] Having the state overthrow tyrants abroad, interventionists often argue, is just an extension of having the state stop crimes against life and property at home [...]. But in practice, how likely is it that a libertarian government that repeatedly started aggressive wars to liberate foreign countries would stay libertarian? 07:34 AM    View blog reactions

•Freddie Mac 
Ken Howe, Bill Burnett, et al., San Francisco Chronicle Interview with Richard Syron, chairman and chief executive of mortgage financing company Freddie Mac. [Syron:] If you look in pure economic theory, it would say that you shouldn't subsidize housing. [Alan] Greenspan has said very much that he has an Ayn Randian view of the world and everything floats on its own bottom. I think that's a legitimate argument. 07:54 AM    View blog reactions

• •They are no angels: Throw the bums out! 
Tom Chartier, Atlantic Free Press Once in office, “elected officials” spend most of their time raising money to remain in office. They pass laws that complicate our lives and turn innocent pursuits into federal crimes. Ayn Rand summed it up. In Atlas Shrugged, a government official lays it out: “‘Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?... We want them broken... We're after power and we mean it.'" 07:48 AM    View blog reactions

•Writing dirty 
Slate "Slate Quiz: Match the porn with the politician who wrote it." Includes excerpt from Getting It Right, by William F. Buckley. 09:07 AM    View blog reactions

•A man and his synth not easily parted 
Mike Doherty, National Post (Toronto) On this year's Audio-Visual Preservation Trust "Masterworks" awards.The recipients of this year's musical honours could hardly be more varied: there's a seven-disc box set by opera pioneers (Opera Recitals and Lieder, by soprano Pierette Alarie and late tenor Leopold Simoneau), Canada's one and only heavy-prog-rock-science-fiction-Objectivist-half-concept-album (Rush's 2112) and the music of a jazz pianist who nearly perished 33 years ago while himself engaged in a perilous act of preservation. 08:46 AM    View blog reactions

• • •The River distills highbrow philosophy into sizzling drama 
Kathleen Strecker, The Daily Astorian (Astoria, OR) Theater review.To anyone unfamiliar with the work of Ayn Rand, "Night of January 16th" may resemble a Perry Mason episode that gets a little "deep" at the end. 08:42 AM    View blog reactions

•Pope Benedict the Deeply Mistaken 
Richard Winkler, Capitalism Magazine Bedrock certainty can only result from viewing man as he really is, as a biological entity possessing a unique type of consciousness – i.e. as man the rational animal. If you would like to discover such a bedrock, read any of the books by Ayn Rand. Islam has grasped the banner of irrationality; let those who love life here on this earth grasp the banner of reason. 08:41 AM    View blog reactions

•In Galactica, it’s politics as usual. or is it? 
Virginia Heffernan, New York Times "This 'Battlestar Galactica' season looks suspiciously like an allegory for Middle East politics. And that infuriates people."For many [20th-century critics] allegory was a lesser genre, didactic and prim, and lacking sophisticated literary features like ambiguity, irony, dissonance, verisimilitude. Readers, on the other hand, continued to embrace allegory in all kinds of popular fiction by writers as disparate as Ayn Rand and George Orwell. 08:39 AM    View blog reactions

•Braving rejection 
Carol Hoenig, Huffington Post Years ago, I bought a thin copy of a book titled Rotten Rejections. [....] That companion helped me not to give up in my endeavors and on any given day, I'd randomly open a page for a reminder that even the most noted authors had been rejected at one time or another. For instance, here is one sent to Ayn Rand for The Fountainhead: "It is badly written and the hero is unsympathetic. I wish there were an audience for a book of this kind. But there isn't. It won't sell." Imagine if Rand had let that rejection stop her from forging onward. 08:35 AM    View blog reactions

•We need an Earth movement on the web 
Puneet Vohra, Hindustan Times While searching for environment sites, I came across a very interesting site with an alternative view www.earth4man.com.  The theme is Save the Earth from the Environmentalists and has quotes by Ayn Rand. The site has some well written articles. 08:32 AM    View blog reactions

•There is a happy land 
Tim Footman, The Guardian - Comment is Free (London) "Thailand's prime minister wants to put his nation's happiness before economic prosperity, a notion that can make powerful people nervous."When I was at high school in Canada, my history teacher was a starry-eyed devotee of the libertarian Ayn Rand. He explained to us that, when the founding fathers of that promised land on the other side of Lake Ontario declared that all men were entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, what they really meant by the last bit was the pursuit of property. 08:27 AM    View blog reactions

• •Chasing China: How Alaska’s Don Young and Wal-Mart are sinking the American Dream 
Terry Haines, Alaska Report I am not really a liberal whacko. I'm a disgruntled conservative whacko. As a teen I huddled under the sheets with a flashlight and a copy of "The Fountainhead". Ayn Rand's sexy ideas about individuality and freedom and the nobility of good work were very exciting to me. 08:25 AM    View blog reactions

• •Angelina Jolie on track for ‘Atlas Shrugged’ 
Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith, Los Angeles Daily News The Angelina Jolie starrer "Atlas Shrugged" may not become the ambitious trilogy initially proposed a la "Lord of the Rings" after all, reports co-executive producer Karen Baldwin "We've hired Randall Wallace [...], and he's going to revise the script, so we're letting Randy and his writing determine how many movies there will be," says Baldwin, confirming that "Angelina Jolie is attached to play Dagny," the heroine in Ayn Rand's classic 1957 novel about a powerful railroad executive determined to keep her business going while the society she lives in is falling apart. 04:07 PM    View blog reactions

•Volunteering? What’s that? 
Yifei Chen, Harvard Crimson Not too long ago, I received an e-mail from the Harvard Objectivist Club, inviting everyone “disillusioned with today’s intellectual and political climate” to a meeting discussing why “being selfish is not wrong.” I’ve never understood why the objectivists believed altruism irrational and dishonest, and I was particularly irritated to see such nonsense in my inbox. Yet their views are but symptoms of a much larger problem here at the College. 07:51 AM    View blog reactions

• •City should adjust its volume 
David Harsanyi, Denver Post On the "One Book, One Denver" public reading program.In 1998, The Modern Library conducted a poll of the 100 best novels published in the English language since 1900. [....] Readers [...] voted Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged (a novel that takes place, partly, in Colorado) first overall. Do I expect the Denver library to stock 6,000 copies of a book celebrating radical individualism and capitalism - not to mention painfully stilted prose? No. 07:45 AM    View blog reactions

•300 million reasons to vote Republican 
James P. Kelly, Human Events Online “Ethics is an objective necessity of man’s survival,” said Ayn Rand, the philosophical novelist. I once felt in reading these words that Rand was stretching a point. After all, man has been around for a long time and its ethics have often been open to question. Yet, we’re still here. However, I saw their wisdom when I considered the stem cells and human cloning debates in light of colossal problems that confront mankind and Earth. 07:42 AM    View blog reactions

•Tired of politics and politicians? 
Heidi Swillinger, SFGate.com Gene Boscacci, San Francisco: "Yeah, happened about 10 years ago. Talking heads, saying what you want to hear, politically correct, robotic botox-smiled clones. "Atlas Shrugged" lives again." 07:37 AM    View blog reactions