• Greenspan the great swami? That’s baloney 
Charles Reed, Waco Tribune-Herald (TX) Alan Greenspan, friend and follower of the radical ideologue Ayn Rand, was quite happy to accept credit for Clinton’s [economic] success. 08:13 AM    View blog reactions

• Montessori Manor director believes in program 
Bitsy Kemper, El Dorado Hills Telegraph (CA) [Maria Montessori's] non-traditional [educational] methods have been recognized throughout the century, garnering everything praise from philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand and being honored on the 200-lire coin in Italy. 08:13 AM    View blog reactions

• A quote a day for November 
Barbara Sloan, BellaOnline The form in which man experiences the reality of his values is pleasure. ~Ayn Rand 08:10 AM    View blog reactions

• • Patents shrugged 
Raymond Van Dyke, E-Commerce Times Atlas Shrugged  Fifty years ago, novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand wrote of a society that hindered innovation and stifled the creative spirit. Atlas Shrugged told of a society where individual effort went unrewarded, where technological advancement was thwarted by short-term greed, and where the governments failed to serve the greater public good. Although fiction, some of these societal concerns are mirrored in various proposed changes to the patent laws under consideration today. 08:08 AM    View blog reactions

• Economist Greenspan’s memoir surprisingly engaging 
Manish Pandey, Winnipeg Free Press Review of Alan Greenspan's memoir, The Age of Turbulence.The first half of [Greenspan's] book offers a brief account of his early life, including his aspirations as a clarinetist and his association with the Ayn Rand circle of libertarians. 05:34 PM    View blog reactions

• • A most peculiar man 
Antara Dev Sen, Sify News (India) Personal life  I remember newspaper reports of Ayn Rand’s death in the 1980s, saying she was found dead in her home, possibly a day or two after she had died alone with her pet cats. As a teenager who had just finished reading Rand’s Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, I found it enormously ironic that this demigod of individualism and objectivism had been so terrifyingly alone in her last hours, not even discovered till much after her death, yet had such a public funeral with much fanfare and a huge dollar-sign made of flowers placed as a wreath on her grave. So typical of the self-absorbed objectivist world that Rand advocated, where the individual was supreme and charitable feelings towards others needed to be banished. 05:31 PM    View blog reactions

• The Age Of Turbulence, engineered 
Bruce Collins, American Chronicle Years ago, Alan Greenspan was an associate of philosopher Ayn Rand, forming a twenty year relationship. While Rand was no proponent of religion, she was against the evils of collectivism, opting for individual rights instead. Rand had her faults, in my opinion, because she did not understand that God-given rights also require God-given responsibilities, such as charity and service. 05:28 PM    View blog reactions

• Business blessing 
Ken Morgan, Guelph Tribune (ON) Ayn Rand refers to governments, bureaucrats and those who depend on their hand-outs as "looters" - people who make laws and through taxation take from business, and who contribute nothing of value to society. At times, I fear she may not be far off in her terminology. 05:26 PM    View blog reactions

• Shouting at the Devil 
Jason Miller, RINF Alternative News Capitalism  Unfortunately, capitalism remains the 800 pound gorilla in the room. There is little doubt that its countless millions of fiercely loyal minions amongst the working class and poor will continue heeding their indoctrination, daring us to pry their copies of Atlas Shrugged “from their cold dead hands.” 05:23 PM    View blog reactions

• Globalisation dynamics 
C. T. Kurien, The Hindu (India) Review of Alan Greenspan's memoir, The Age of Turbulence.[Greenspan] admits [...] that fairly early in life he was influenced by Ayn Rand and her “objectivism” which championed laissez faire capitalism as the ideal form of social organisation. 05:21 PM    View blog reactions

• • Academia is being auctioned off to the highest bidder 
Devin Stone, Collegiate Times (Virginia Tech, Blacksburg) Everything is being corporatized, which is reducing our freedom as individuals in today's world. The most recent example of this phenomenon was announced last Wednesday by the College of Business, which has received a $1 million gift from BB&T. [....] During the hour-long lecture last Wednesday given by John Allison, the CEO and chairman of BB&T, the ideological agenda the bank wishes to promote was very apparent. The lecture was nothing more than a very boring and dry discussion that failed to go outside the most basic and elementary talking points for Objectivism, a radical free-market philosophy created by Ayn Rand. 05:17 PM    View blog reactions

• • • Objectivism anyone? 
Indian Express (Mumbai) Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  On the influence of Ayn Rand's works on Indians.Rand’s works have never been considered as easy-reading material, filled as they are with philosophical interpretations of individualism against collectivism. Most of her characters, like Howard Roark in The Fountainhead and Dagny Taggart in Atlas Shrugged, are idealists who are uncompromising in their principles and often going against the current grain of thinking.  05:10 PM    View blog reactions

• The liberal surrender 
Dennis Perrin, Huffington Post I presented myself [at right-wing websites] as a classical conservative, someone steeped in Burke, Hayek, Albert Jay Nock, with flashes of Ayn Rand for spice. 05:41 PM    View blog reactions

• • The smart money is on Rudd 
Phillip Adams, The Australian A few modern PMs can be removed from the high-IQ listing. Harold Holt, John Gorton and William McMahon were hardly burdened by Mensa mentalities yet their intellectual ordinariness didn't save their careers, as often seems the case with state premiers. Malcolm Fraser? His intellectual stimulus seemed limited to Ayn Rand. Malcolm would stress her inspiration in his political life and she may well have influenced his conduct of the Kerr coup. Yet it's only since he renounced Rand's rampaging right-wing values that he's revived his reputation. Though now regarded by progressives as a prominent public intellectual there wasn't much evidence of the force of intellect in Fraser's term in office. 05:38 PM    View blog reactions

• American Gangster: The Denzel Washington interview 
Prairie Miller, News Blaze Atlas Shrugged  Q: Is it true that [mobster] Frank [Lucas, who Washington plays in the movie American Gangster] can't read? He said on some talk show that he's illiterate. A: He said that? Well he said to me that his favorite book is Atlas Shrugged! That's what he told me. Hey, maybe somebody read it to him! 05:34 PM    View blog reactions

• Guest film review: Into The Wild 
Dan Schneider, The Moderate Voice The film is based upon the 1996 nonfiction bestseller by Jon Krakauer, about a spoiled rich white suburban boy who basically commits suicide in the Alaskan wilderness, although he is so painfully unaware of the real world that he does not even know his own dark- almost Objectivist, impulses, and where they will lead. 05:22 PM    View blog reactions

• It’s as if they don’t care about their own opinion of their work 
Jaime Richards, Oakland Tribune (CA) Ayn Rand wrote, "Great men can't be ruled." Exactly. They self-check. 10:25 AM    View blog reactions

• Get a new view of a destination from a cemetery 
Kathy Rodeghier, Daily Herald (Arlington Heights, IL) Notable burial spots and those who occupy them: [....] Kensico, Valhalla, N.Y.: Lou Gehrig, Tommy Dorsey, Ayn Rand. 10:23 AM    View blog reactions

• Kesselman offers apology, of sorts 
Henry M. Kesselman, Savannah Morning News Letter to the editor.I was a tool of socialized medicine almost sixty years ago and it has been on my mind every since. I was an officer in the army dental corps, a not for profit organization, and spent five years serving the health needs of the military in a totally socialized framework. In truth I knew I was completely violating the Ayn Rand philosophy of total self-absorption, the philosophy that the modern Republican Party has taken for its masthead. I therefore offer my "mea culpa, you all" but I got caught up in being of service to others rather than pursuing a path of personal aggrandizement and a program of self-enrichment by all means necessary. 10:17 AM    View blog reactions

• Extremism seemingly on the rise in Indiana 
Daniel Cohn, Post-Tribune (Gary, IN) Personal life  Letter to the editor.I would [...] like to point out to followers of Ayn Rand (seeing that your newspaper recently published a column by the president of the Ayn Rand Institute), such as Alan Greenspan, that Rand was left by her long-time lover, psychologist Nathaniel Brandon, who went on to renounce her reactionary philosophy. 11:08 AM    View blog reactions

• Nastiness dominates the day 
Murray Mandryk, Leader-Post (Regina, SK) [NDP leader Brad] Wall said Monday that the last time he remembers talking to [candidate Jeff] Potts was in the early 1980s when he was a young Conservative promoting Ayn Rand's "objectivism" beliefs. 11:06 AM    View blog reactions

• The Wick Poetry Prize Winner 2007 for my book, Far From Algiers 
Djelloul Marbrook, Student Operated Press Atlas Shrugged  I loved [Edward FitzGerald’s translation of Omar Khayyam], the way the “enlightened” selfish today love Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. 10:54 AM    View blog reactions

• • Empowering women entrepreneurs 
Faryal Najeeb, The News (Pakistan) The Fountainhead  On a visit by American entrepreneur Ann Stone to Pakistan.[Stone] names her mother to be her greatest inspiration other than the author Ayn Rand. [....] Quoting Ayn Rand from her favourite book, The Fountainhead, Stone mentioned how important it is for people to have control and ownership over things they create. Otherwise, one would not be able to spur creativity in a country, if they thought their ideas could be stolen. 10:50 AM    View blog reactions

• • For true insight into the libertarian ethic read Ayn Rand’s novel 
Adrian Fletcher, Financial Times (London) Atlas Shrugged  Letter to the editor.In January, Charles Pretzlik wrote a piece questioning the contemporary relevance of Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged published 50 years ago and still selling well. [....] Clive Crook (“End global inequality: be a Luddite”, October 22 ) cleverly satirises an International Monetary Fund report which worries that technological innovation increases inequality while John Lloyd in the same issue (“A freedom that needs redefining”) reviews a book by Stein Ringen who argues that “we are what we are by virtue of our anchorage in community with others ... he who stands alone is lost”. Readers interested in these issues should get hold of Rand’s novel and judge its relevance for themselves. 05:38 PM    View blog reactions

• Colbert’s trademark wit tells America’s story 
Olivia Tattory, The Rider News (Trenton, NJ) Review of the book I Am America, by Stephen Colbert.[Colbert] suggests denying tenure on campuses and replacing it with a series of clear-cut requirements professors must complete. The requirements, albeit a few reeking of Colbert’s sarcasm, are not all that far-fetched. First and foremost, penmanship — how many times do professor’s hand back papers and exams with red scribble on them? Colbert challenges professors to legibly write a brief paragraph and then to use those skills to write an essay on how Ayn Rand would kick “[Shakespeare’s] a– in a bar.” 05:23 PM    View blog reactions