• • • Market Neutral - November 28, 2007 
Chip Hanlon, GreenFaucet Ayn Rand Institute  Capitalism  Audio  (Audio) "Ayn Rand Institute analyst, Alex Epstein, discusses goverment's proper role in 'fixing' the subprime mess. He also weighs in on Libertarians, with remarks that may surprise given the recent euphoria surrounding long-shot presidential candidate, Ron Paul."     Share on Facebook

• 1000 albums to hear before you die 
The Guardian (London) Rush, 2112 (1976). Of course it's preposterous. What album featuring a 20-minute sci-fi "suite" somehow inspired by Ayn Rand couldn't be. But who could hate Rush? You can't make this sort of thing without knowing you'll be mocked for it. And there's real grandeur amid the pomposity.     Share on Facebook

• • Merry objectivist Christmas next? 
Craig Wehrle, Wisconsin State Journal (Madison) Ayn Rand Institute  Letter to the editor.A guest column in Wednesday's State Journal advocates using Thanksgiving as a day to celebrate our selfishness. The author is a member of the Ayn Rand Institute, a group that advocates selfishness as a societal good. The column reads like it would be more appropriate if it were published on April 1.     Share on Facebook

• Protesters turn silent 
Joseph Serna, Daily Pilot (Costa Mesa, CA) Report on a Muslim student protest of a Daniel Pipes speech at the University of California in Irvine.The event’s organizers — the College Republicans, the David Project and The Objectivist Club — had six police officers on hand. They weren’t needed.     Share on Facebook

• Empire is bad, m’kay? 
Al Barger, Blogcritics When someone invokes the word "empire" in a discussion of US policy, that's pretty much a sign that you needn't bother talking to them. [....] Empire is bad, m'kay? If we have any troops in any other country in the world, then we are building "empire." Therefore, by definition we are cast as moustache-twirling villains. Except that America is not engaging in anything like the bad things implied by the label. It's one of those stupid dishonest "package deals," as St. Ayn Rand would call them.     Share on Facebook

• • Social Darwinism 
Southeast Missourian (Cape Girardeau, MO) Atlas Shrugged  Letter to the editor.Thanks to Gary Rust for calling attention to the 50th anniversary of the publication of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged." Though widely read, thank goodness our political system has not completely caved in to what amounts to Rand's social Darwinistic, dog-eat-dog suggested style of life. Otherwise, life would be nasty, brutish and, somewhat mercifully, short.     Share on Facebook

• • The philosophy of Van Hunt 
Tom Lanham, The Examiner The Fountainhead  Profile of R&B artist Van Hunt.“Now, I’m not a big follower of people or movements,” says the 30-year-old, who plays the Independent in San Francisco on Thursday. “But a big transition in my life was reading ‘The Fountainhead’ — I identified with not only the story, but Rand’s whole philosophy of objectivism. “It was the key to my own freedom, to recognizing that my manhood was the only responsibility I had in this world. And ‘manhood’ meaning the expression of my creativity, and not anything self-indulgent.”     Share on Facebook

• Today’s professionals focused on winning at any cost 
Douglas W. Cornwell, Sun-Sentinel (FL) Letter to the editor.Ayn Rand's theories of greed and selfishness are wrong. Period.     Share on Facebook

• The Ron Paul conundrum 
Knute Berger, Crosscut (Seattle, WA) Many liberals are more than a little intrigued by Paul. Drawn by his anti-war, pro-civil-liberties positions, some hope for a grand alliance in the 2008 election — think of a unity government led by Ayn Rand and George McGovern.     Share on Facebook

• Book review: The Gum Thief by Douglas Coupland 
Hoon Choi, Imprint (U of Waterloo, ON) The Fountainhead  While the novella [interspersed throughout the main book] is amusing in itself, the message Coupland intended to deliver through it is even more amusing, but unintentionally so. In Glove Pond, Steve, a penniless alcoholic who also happens to be a traditionalist English literature professor, serves as a foil to Kyle Falconcrest, young and commercially successful writer of experimental fiction — the story’s Howard Roark. Combine Coupland’s frequent gripes about how he is being persecuted with unfairly disparaging reviews by traditionalist zealots because of his experimental style, and it becomes impossible to not see this as Coupland’s rebuttal to his critics.     Share on Facebook

• • Good book 
Warren Willis Jr., Las Vegas Review-Journal Atlas Shrugged  Letter to the editor.I read with some dismay Keith Hubbell's letter ("Shrug it off," Friday) in which he disparages Ayn Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged." It is patently obvious that Mr. Hubbell has not even read this novel, for if he had, then he would know that the story does not declare "all government regulation is harmful and destructive." May "Atlas Shrugged" be as popular and relevant over the next 50 years as it has been since its release.     Share on Facebook

• • Libertarians: The new ‘It’ faction 
Scott Galupo, Washington Times Atlas Shrugged  In a retrospective review of Ayn Rand's philosophical novel "Atlas Shrugged," which turned 50 this year, conservative critic Terry Teachout wrote in National Review that "small-L libertarianism has now attained a measure of cultural and intellectual respectability not far removed" from the conservatism of the Reagan era.     Share on Facebook

• Rock your stockings off 
Brian D. Crecente, Rocky Mountain News (Denver) BioShock. Why it's cool: A revolutionary first-person shooter that captures, both in tone and game play, Ayn Rand's subtly complex objectivism.     Share on Facebook

• Holiday shopping deferred 
Beth Velliquette, Herald-Sun (Durham, NC) At Internationalist Books on West Franklin Street, Buy Nothing Day was in full swing Friday afternoon. [....] "I actually didn't even realize it was Black Friday," said Jazz Inglis, one of the browsers. "I was just walking down here. I stop here usually once a week because they usually have a cart here with free books. Being next to broke, free books are better than no books." Inglis also noticed a couple of videotapes on the table, including the final episode of "Star Trek," and an unopened box of Ayn Rand tapes. Next to the table was a replica of a red stop sign that said: "Stop Buying. You're Paying Too Much. Celebrate Buy Nothing Day."     Share on Facebook

• • • Objectivism requires dose of humility 
Ryan McCarl, Chicago Maroon (U of Chicago) Atlas Shrugged  Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal  The Fountainhead  The Virtue of Selfishness  I came to realize that most of Rand’s political ideas are cruel, absolutist garbage that leave little room for tolerance and respect for others. Humility is a prerequisite to intellectual discovery and to the sense of reverence, wonder, and gratitude with which we should move in this world. A better worldview would value both the life-affirming confidence displayed by Rand’s characters and the life-affirming humility of a monk, a saint, or Socrates.     Share on Facebook

• Conservatism and the university 
Christa Byker, Cavalier Daily (U of VA, Charlottesville) Education, under the auspices of modern liberalism, has become skill training, not soul training. And so it is no wonder that the modern academy overflows with "progressive" theory and "liberal bias." Professors literally roll their eyes while teaching Burke or other important conservatives, if they have to at all. Ayn Rand, of all people, shapes the backbone of many students' moral philosophy.     Share on Facebook

• The Republican Party’s three difficult pieces 
Howard Fineman, MSNBC Among libertarians – the anti-tax, small-government crowd that worships at the altar of Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman – [Ron] Paul is the baptized hero.     Share on Facebook

• Break on through to the other side 
Eugene McCarraher, Books & Culture Review of The Bourgeois Virtues, a book by Deirdre McCloskey.At Robert Sirico's Acton Institute, neo-classical economics weds scholastic philosophy to produce the love child of Ayn Rand and Thomas Aquinas. Now there's an ugly baby.     Share on Facebook

• • Noah’s Ark, unicorns and the good recession 
Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  [Alan] Greenspan could have cooled the dot-com bubble, but he did just the opposite. Like a teenager on speed, he let it run wild. He was high on the ideology of the queen of free market individualism, Ayn Rand, author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead."     Share on Facebook

• • Atheists defined by recent column 
Rev. Richard E. Pritchard, Wisconsin State Journal (Madison) Ayn Rand Institute  Letter to the editor.Wednesday's guest column by Debi Ghate, a vice president at the Ayn Rand Institute in California, titled "Celebrate our selfishness on Thanksgiving," was right on, a brilliant expose of the atheist mindset. We don't need to thank God for anything. It's we who have produced everything.     Share on Facebook