• • •Free for all 
David Leonhardt, New York Times Review of Radicals For Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement, by Brian Doherty.The group of young intellectuals who often gathered at Ayn Rand’s Manhattan home in the early 1950s had a couple of different names for themselves. One was the “Class of ’43,” after the year that Rand published her first successful novel, “The Fountainhead.” Another, with intentional irony, was “the Collective.” [....] In Rand’s apartment on East 34th Street, her collective sat around imagining a better, freer world. The movement remained on the political fringe, however, and not only because its adherents were out of step with the times. By any definition, they were also a little odd. As Brian Doherty writes in “Radicals for Capitalism,” his history of libertarianism, every member of the group had to subscribe to a series of cultish premises beginning with “Ayn Rand is the greatest human being who has ever lived.”  09:57 AM    View blog reactions

• •UCLA has feet held to the FIRE 
Joe Murray, The Bulletin (Philadelphia) On the cancellation of a campus immigration debate by UCLA administrators due to security concerns, and its subsequent rescheduling after protests, including a letter from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.A UCLA student group - Liberty, Objectivity, Greed, Individualism, Capitalism (L.O.G.I.C) - invited two prominent speakers to come to the sunny California campus and engage in an intellectual battle of wits. It did not take long for Carl Braun, Executive Director of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps of California, and open borders advocate Yaron Brook, President of the Ayn Rand Institute, to accept the invitations.  09:49 AM    View blog reactions

•Boomsday: Bankrupt satire 
Jessica Clark, In These Times Review of Boomsday, a novel by Christopher Buckley.Cassandra Devine is a heroine for our spin-crazy times—or actually, for five years from now, when the first wave of Baby Boomers will be eligible to retire, an event dubbed “Boomsday.” A “strategic communicator” for excessive executives, pesticide manufacturers and mink-farmers, by night, the twenty-something blogger imbibes Red Bulls and Ayn Rand in equal measure and sets her sights on the greed of those determined to make her “Generation Whatever”—Gen W—peers foot the bill for their golden years. Her modest proposal? Offer senior citizens a reprieve from estate taxes in return for their voluntary suicide at retirement—a publicity ploy that she terms a “meta-political device.” 09:42 AM    View blog reactions

• •Engraved on America’s tombstone? 
Frosty Wooldridge, OpEdNews Commentary opposed to illegal immigration.A noble citizen wrote me last week with quotes from the late Ayn Rand, “Which of these two variants of statism are we moving toward: socialism or fascism? To answer this question,” she said, “one must first ask: which is the dominant ideological trend of today's culture? The disgraceful and terrifying answer is: there is no ideological trend today. There is no ideology." 09:37 AM    View blog reactions

•Assessing the divide between rich and poor 
Marketplace (American Public Media) By coincidence today, the libertarian Ayn Rand Institute released an article called "In Defense of Income Inequality." Libertarians believe in an almost completely unregulated marketplace. The article's author, Peter Schwartz, says the growing gaps are the way markets should work. 09:36 AM    View blog reactions

• •Missing in action 
Hannah Tucker, Entertainment Weekly The Atlas Shrugged movie: A big-screen adaptation of Ayn Rand's 1,200-page epic about the economic collapse of the U.S. sounds marvelously ambitious... until you realize Hollywood has been trying to make it for over 30 years. Everything from corporate mergers to clashes over the script with Rand — who passed away back in 1982 — have proved to be sticking points. There is hope, however. Producer Howard Baldwin (Ray) has lined up a star (Angelina Jolie), a studio (Lionsgate), and a screenwriter (Braveheart's Randall Wallace). 
PROGNOSIS: The fate of Shrugged likely hangs on Wallace's first draft. A home run could attract a quality director and entice Jolie — who, as you may have heard, has a lot going on right now — to sign on the dotted line. 09:31 AM    View blog reactions

• •The time for talks: Can and should the U.S. make deals with Iran and Syria? 
The Donald & Paula Smith Family Foundation (Video). Recording of a February 13th debate including ARI executive director Yaron Brook. Also available in audio-only format. 06:52 AM    View blog reactions

•Emily Mahan’s School of Drama, and its most famous alumnus 
Jack Neely, Metro Pulse (Knoxville, TN) in the movies [Patricia Neal] was as grownup and dangerous as cigarette smoke, and cut a sharp and jagged swath through postwar cinema, playing opposite Gary Cooper, John Wayne, Ronald Reagan, Paul Newman. She was both the angular, smoldering, subtly dominant Dominque Francon in The Fountainhead --and, two years later, the plump, scrubbed, all-American Mommy opposite a killer robot in The Day the Earth Stood Still. 05:09 AM    View blog reactions

•What trading teaches us about ourselves and life 
Michel Pireupireum, Business Day (South Africa) "As Ayn Rand argued, egalitarianism is a perversion of justice and an assault on ability, and is motivated by something more evil than envy, 'hatred of the good for being good'." This hatred 'motivates people to criminalise and humiliate people of ability and success — using "greed" as a rationalisation'." - Glenn Woiceshyn — Capitalism Magazine 10:56 AM    View blog reactions

•Controversial speaker rescheduled for April 
Joe Osborne, Broadside Online (George Mason U, Fairfax, VA) Debate continues among student groups over whether or not controversial author and Ashland University professor John Lewis should be able to speak on campus. [....] The Objectivist Club, an unrecognized student organization, booked Lewis to speak before spring break. 07:46 AM    View blog reactions

• •Ah Koy fits FTIB bill, says minister 
Fiji Times Sir James [Ah Koy, chairman of the Fiji Trade and Investment Bureau] said those with talent and know-how must not evade their responsibilities and leave the nation to those who did not know what they were doing. "Now is not the time to desert our investments and head for the hills, as Ayn Rand depicted in her novel Atlas Shrugged. 07:44 AM    View blog reactions

•A fund-raising pitch for school 
Michael Klein, Philadelphia Inquirer [Dennis] Miller's nationally syndicated call-in radio show starts tomorrow [...]. Miller, 53, who describes himself as a "libertarian objectivist," came up liberal "but then they flew a couple planes through buildings."  10:09 AM    View blog reactions

• •Libertarians’ silver lining 
Brian Doherty, Los Angeles Times In the immediate aftermath of the New Deal, the modern American libertarian movement first began to coalesce in the works of such feisty American female novelists and philosophers as Isabel Paterson, Rose Wilder Lane and Ayn Rand, and in the insights of Austrian economists Ludwig von Mises and F.A. Hayek. 10:08 AM    View blog reactions

•Greenspan revels in new freedom of speech 
Jeff Ostrowski, Palm Beach Post (FL) During a March 15 session in Boca Raton and an appearance Monday in Palm Beach, the 81-year-old [Alan] Greenspan fielded questions with aplomb. You would expect that from a man whose biography includes stints as a professional musician, who was a confidant of libertarian author Ayn Rand, and is husband of NBC News reporter Andrea Mitchell. 10:05 AM    View blog reactions

•Guy next door one day, partisan bully another 
James Travers , Toronto Star On the Canadian prime minister, Stephen Harper.Stripped to its essentials, Harper's vision is unusually clear. He is largely content with the relationship between federal and provincial governments as it was written in 1867 with quill pens, prefers Ayn Rand's muscular individualism to Tommy Douglas' caring collectivism, and is more comfortable taking sides internationally than bridging differences. 09:32 AM    View blog reactions

•‘Uncle Joe’ will steal Tory clothes 
Simon Heffer, The Telegraph (London) [Alan] Greenspan is no closet Lefty: indeed, among his many honours is his role as figurehead of the Ayn Rand Foundation, named after the hardline libertarian authoress whose novels praise self-interest as the ultimate social good, and whose bons mots include the magnificent "the difference between a welfare state and a totalitarian state is a matter of time". 09:28 AM    View blog reactions

•Gordon Mims Lackey 
Greenwood Commonwealth (MS) Obituary.He was an avid reader who read for pleasure as well as knowledge reading everything from Socrates for Ayn Rand, and thousands of books in between. 09:25 AM    View blog reactions

•An ode to scheduling classes 
Joshua Malina, Student Life (Washington U, St. Louis, MO) There was an especially taxing competition between the "capitalism" class and the philosophy class, which demanded I read hundreds of pages of Ayn Rand and the Ancient Greeks, respectively, each day. 07:02 AM    View blog reactions

•Rise of the radical libertarians 
Bill Steigerwald, NorthFulton.com (GA) Interview with book author.Brian Doherty, a Reason magazine editor, has written "Radicals for Capitalism," a "freewheeling" history of the post-World War II libertarian movement whose brilliant, principled and always outnumbered thinkers – led by icons Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, Friedrich Hayek, Murray Rothbard and Ludwig von Mises – have greatly influenced American politics and public policy. 06:58 AM    View blog reactions

•Talks, not more war 
Charleston Gazette (WV) Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has joined high-level talks about Iraq that include both Syria and Iran. [....] Some extreme conservatives are howling. “Iran and Syria are our enemies,” Dr. Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute protested. 06:57 AM    View blog reactions

• •Professor who calls for war against Iran will speak at George Mason U. 
Jennifer Howard, Chronicle of Higher Education [John Lewis's] speaking invitation was withdrawn after Muslim students allegedly protested and the university discovered that the talk’s sponsor, the Objectivist Club, had let its charter lapse. 06:53 AM    View blog reactions

•The key to Locke 
Jeff Jensen, Entertainment Weekly On the TV series Lost.The focus of this evening's eagerly anticipated outing is John Locke — man of (misplaced) faith, wannabe Island hero, obsessed Objectivist oddball. 06:52 AM    View blog reactions

•Schools are right to limit parents’ say on book lists 
Ann Fisher, Columbus Dispatch (OH) In ninth grade, authors Ayn Rand and Kurt Vonnegut consumed my pleasure reading. Homer's Iliad and Odyssey monopolized the classroom. 06:46 AM    View blog reactions

•Casteen, he’s our hero 
The Cavalier Daily (U of Virginia) Be it resolved, the Managing Board of The Cavalier Daily supports anyone (but us) willing to do something about looters and polluters and other evil-doers -- especially smokers, fans of Ayn Rand and the homeless. 06:45 AM    View blog reactions

•The era of mediocrity 
Balaji Viswanathan, Desicritics.org (India) In the previous era, [....] [t]here were extraordinary literary persons like Emerson, Mark Twain, Ayn Rand and Bernard Shaw.... There were these incomparable aggressive businessmen like Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, Alfred P. Sloan (the man who brought up General Motors) . Where are their successors? 06:42 AM    View blog reactions