•Obliging the entertainment industry poobahs 
James Lileks, Newhouse News Service The anti-copyright people think Mickey Mouse should be in the public domain, because he's, like, old 'n' stuff. (Under this theory, everyone should be able to live in the house of someone 80 years old.) They bridle at any sort of digital-rights protection, and deride Apple's iTunes store for making it slightly difficult to make infinite copies of copyrighted music. They're generally high-minded, and have the unbending purity of people who never got over reading Ayn Rand in high school.     Share on Facebook

• • •Ayn Rand’s Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist 
Helen Cullyer, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews Review of the book by Tara Smith.Whether one is a fan or a detractor of Ayn Rand, the issues raised by this book are manifold and provocative. This book should force a debate of renewed vigor about what we mean by egoism, whether and how the egoism / altruism dichotomy should be applied within eudaimonistic ethical theories, and what our ethical theories imply about our political outlook. Smith provides us with a version of egoism that will need to be argued against by those who find it distasteful or misguided, rather than simply dismissed.     Share on Facebook

•Colonists weren’t first to have a feast 
Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, San Francisco Chronicle Letter to the editor in response to an Ayn Rand Institute op-ed by Debbi Ghate.One has to wonder why The Chronicle editorial page published a Thanksgiving op-ed by an official of the Ayn Rand Institute, surely the closest entity to classic fascism that exists in the United States.     Share on Facebook

•In the world of sports, the price is not always right 
Eric Kay, CBS SportsLine.com Yes, NFL playbooks are Atlas Shrugged-like huge, but that's not where the learning curve happens.     Share on Facebook

•Economic divinity 
Al Cronkrite, Ether Zone Critique of an article by George Reisman in support of economic globalism.Libertarians are a diverse lot spanning the gamut of world views from Ayn Rand’s humanistic, free sex agenda to the legally based Christian Reconstructionist outlook of regular columnist Gary North.     Share on Facebook

•I, politico 
Daniel M. Ryan, Enter Stage Right This spoof is a take-off from Leonard Read's classic essay, "I, Pencil.", with conclusion left for you to draw. It is offered in the spirit indicated by Ayn Rand's words, "When the first creator invented the wheel, the first second-hander responded. He created altruism."     Share on Facebook

•Atheism and inalienable rights 
Robert E. Meyer, TheRealityCheck.org Commentary on how rights require a religious basis.[The atheist/secularist] will be inclined to point out that there are theories of rights that require no need for attribution to God, such as Ayn Rand's theory of Objectivism. Others will want their own day in court, also. What all these attempted refutations will completely ignore in their analysis, is how do you derive rights from a materialistic universe to begin with?     Share on Facebook

•Barb Treadway, reading specialist 
Stars and Stripes Q: What books are on your night stand right now? A: “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand and “Call of the Wild” by Jack London.     Share on Facebook

•Friedman gracious, tenacious 
Tibor R. Machan, Orange County Register (CA) On economist Milton Friedman, who died recently.When I began my involvement with the libertarian movement in America in the early 1960s, I was brought in by reading the novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand, but quickly discovered there were several others who had been making significant contributions to the study of the free society.     Share on Facebook

•Free State Project cheers one of its own in Winters 
Sarah Schweitzer, Boston Globe On Joel Winters, who was recently elected to the Massachusetts Legislature.[Winters] embraced libertarianism in his late teens and early 20s after reading Ayn Rand and the science fiction writer Robert Heinlein , from whom, he said, he learned the value of individual responsibility.     Share on Facebook

•Friedman’s philosophy ignored the poor 
Dylan Groves, The Record (Kitchener, ON) Letter to the editor.What did Friedman suggest? "The philosophy of objectivism -- working for yourself and not asking anyone to work for you -- creates far better results both economically and morally." In other words, we are all born with equal abilities and opportunities? We all have the potential to be the next Milton Friedman? I wish someone had bothered to tell me sooner. Someone needs to get all those lazy single parents and disabled loafers into the workforce.     Share on Facebook

•Time to give - and keep giving - and why 
Russell Sadler, Daily Astorian (Astoria, OR) Charity, for all its importance, is not designed to help the poor. Charity is deliberately designed to make the well-to-do feel good about themselves during seasons we are supposed to "help others." The rest of the year self-styled conservatives and Libertarians practice Ayn Rand's "Virtue of Selfishness." The poor remain an out-of-sight, out-of-mind disposable low-wage workforce to serve those who can still afford to live well.     Share on Facebook

•New on DVD 
Mike Clark, USA Today The Fountainhead. Ayn Rand was contracted to adapt her own doorstop novel sans tinkering by studio hands — the likely reason every cast member here speaks in windy platitudes.     Share on Facebook

•Will the real James Bond please stand up? 
Dan Kaufman, Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) [Ian] Fleming always wanted [James Bond] to be portrayed seriously but the filmmakers decided from the start to turn the movies into comedies that spoofed the spy genre [...]. This offended countless fans of the books, who included the conservative literary figures Kingsley Amis [...] and Ayn Rand. "Rand adored the 007 books for what she saw as their unabashed romanticism and heroic transcendence but she was appalled by the films, because they were laced with 'the sort of humour intended to undercut Bond's stature, to make him ridiculous'," [NYU professor Toby] Miller says.     Share on Facebook

•Lyndon LaDouche 
Will Swaim, Orange County Weekly (CA) At a Nov. 6 [UC Irvine] campus speech by Ayn Rand Institute president Yaron Brook, [LaRouche Youth Movement] activists stood and sang, called Brook a Nazi—and were promptly arrested by campus police.     Share on Facebook

•Say happy holidays in words and pictures with these P-I picks 
John Marshall, Seattle Post-Intelligencer Books recommended as holiday gifts, including The Book that Changed My Life, edited by Roxanne J. Coady and Joy Johannessen.A Connecticut bookseller and a New York publishing vet corral an impressive assemblage of noted writers to contribute brief essays on the one book that they will forever remember. Many of the pairings of writer and book are delightfully unexpected (Nelson DeMille on Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged!").     Share on Facebook

•Quotes of the day: Thanksgiving 
InformationWeek "Thanksgiving is a typically American holiday. The lavish meal is a symbol of the fact that abundant consumption is the result and reward of production." - Ayn Rand     Share on Facebook

• •Economics is dead 
Tyler Graf, Daily Emerald (U of OR, Eugene) On recently deceased economist Milton Friedman.Ayn Rand was an abominable writer. To this I can attest. Her symbolic touches were muddled, her characterizations flat. Her descriptive passages bring to mind a teenager with a propensity for quasi poetic, yet ultimately lackluster rhetorical flourishes.     Share on Facebook

• • •Welcome to Founders College 
Carl Milsted, Jr., Free Liberal On a new college founded by Objectivists.[Rand] and her followers adopted some rather tortured ideas as to what constitutes rational self-interest. (Note how the main heroes in Atlas Shrugged undergo great personal sacrifice for the cause of Self Interest. Brilliant inventor John Galt took on low paying blue collar jobs. Multi-millionaire Francisco D’Anconia blew the family fortune on Hugh Hefner style parties – without getting laid.)     Share on Facebook

•Friedman was more than a great economist 
David Driver, The Record (Kitchener, ON) Socialists have always ranted and railed about ways to help the poor, but inevitably they do far more harm than good. The philosophy of objectivism -- working for yourself and not asking anyone to work for you -- creates far better results both economically and morally and this is something [Milton] Friedman understood.     Share on Facebook