• • • Understanding Objectivism: A Guide to Learning Ayn Rand’s Philosophy 
,
Ayn Rand Institute  |Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  |Egoism  |Leonard Peikoff  |Image  | Seizing on the uptick in interest in Rand, New American Library has recently published a series of edited lectures by Leonard Peikoff, founder of the Ayn Rand Institute, to help expand our understanding of objectivism. Peikoff also helpfully answers the burning pop-culture question: If the movie E.T. is anti-adult and anti-science—as, by objectivist philosophy, it clearly is—does that make it inherently evil and irrational?      View blog reactions

• • The Times They Are A-Changing – again 
,
Altruism  |Atlas Shrugged  |Individualism  | I am struck by the power of observing individual voters and small groups in some detail. If I just confine my analysis to extended family, friends and workmates, the following was evident starting last weekend: [....] growing anger at the Ayn Randian ‘Dagny Taggart objectivism’ of [Wildrose Party leader] Danielle Smith, which tolerated and excused unacceptable statements by Wildrose candidates. It is always a mistake to defend the indefensible.      View blog reactions

• Romney's gamble on conservatism 
,
Capitalism  | Even though both candidates in this year’s presidential election were once described as moderates, this will be as polarized a battle as we’ve ever seen: between a minimum-government conservative who sounds increasingly like Ayn Rand and a newly unreconstructed liberal who sounds increasingly like Rachel Maddow.      View blog reactions

• • Emery calls B.C.'s leaders 'uninspiring' 
,
Capitalism  | Emery absolutely loves libertarian U.S. Republican candidate Ron Paul, who also calls the so-called war on drugs a total failure. “What a great man! I’ve known of him since 1980 when I read about him in Reason magazine a year after I read Ayn Rand and became a convert to rational capitalism,” he noted. “But I’ve been promoting him for president since 2006.”      View blog reactions

• • Ayn Rand fans not good for nation 
,
(Objectivist Harry Binswanger replies in the comments.)
I find it odd that you would choose to quote Ayn Rand at the top of the opinion page on Saturday. A vehement anti-Christian whose “philosophy” does not stand up to even the slightest intellectual scrutiny, Rand’s destructive moral vision underlies much of what is dysfunctional in America today. That we have an increasing number of Rand devotees in the Congress does not bode well for the country.      View blog reactions

• • • AYN RAND: The question 
,
Atlas Shrugged  |The Fountainhead  |Personal life  |Image  | Ayn Rand (1905-1982) was a Russian-American writer and philiosopher. She’s famous for her two novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and creating a new system of philosophy called Objectivism. I didn’t know anything about her before adapting this quote but she seems to have lived a very interesting life. Rand grew up in Russia during the Russian Revolution and later moved to America where she worked as a screenwriter in Hollywood before gaining fame with her first novel, The Fountainhead. After success as a novelist she focused on philosophy and formed a new system called Objectivism, a way of thinking that places reason above everything else. Rand was a strong, out-spoken woman who definitely lived by the words in this quote.      View blog reactions

• • Exposing the small government fallacy 
,
Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  | To her credit, novelist Ayn Rand warned against government complicity with big business. Too bad she didn’t know enough about human nature to realize that her virtuous fictional character John Galt is a creature that does not exist in the real world of business. All John Galt pretenders are causalities to vice or corruption of one kind or another. That’s why we need a government that’s accountable to the people and has enough muscle to deal with giants without being intimidated or stomped into submission.      View blog reactions

• • "The Hunger Games" and freedom 
,
Egoism  | Throughout [The Hunger Games] I wondered if I was reading something Ayn Rand might have written if she were a better writer. It is a scathing depiction of big government (and big Hollywood). More importantly the book offers a moral dimension about love, sacrifice and loyalty that is absent in the missives of Libertarianism. The protagonists in The Hunger Games would not recognize the unbridled caricature of self-interest that animates Rand’s philosophy. The Hunger Games celebrates humanity under the most difficult of circumstances. It is powerful stuff.      View blog reactions

• The Difference Between You and Me,’ ‘Radiant Days,’ ‘The Miseducation of Cam 
,
Madeleine George’s “The Difference Between You and Me” takes on a lot (homosexuality, cancer and loss, family, corporate business vs. small towns), but at its core it’s a funny and warm book about a romance between a 15-year-old who accepts who she is and her classmate who has let others’ expectations define her. [....] George sometimes defies character clichés (e.g., Wyatt, Jesse’s gay best friend, worships Ayn Rand instead of Judy Garland), but other times, embraces them: Emily is a pretty girl with problems, and her friends are mean clones.      View blog reactions

• • Liberating Education (Part Two): How Home-Instruction Can Elevate Income, Competence, and Social Har 
,
Capitalism  | Only a neo-pagan, crypto-Nietzschean misanthrope like Ayn Rand could believe that the common man would instantly revert to a helpless ape without an elite body of Supermen to give him employment and instruction.      View blog reactions

• • The 7 internet political principles 
,
Atlas Shrugged  | [T]he more libertarian strain of internet philosophy has people looking to move more of the economy under internet sovereignty and away from traditional jurisdictions. In a sense, we may look to those individuals as trying to reject some of the ways in which developed countries operate and create their own virtual version of Galt’s Gulch, after the fictional place in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.      View blog reactions

• • Paul Ryan walks back support of Ayn Rand 
,
Atheism  |Video  | Earlier this week Republican budget author Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) walked back his support for author and atheist Ayn Rand, saying “I reject her philosophy... It’s an atheist philosophy.” For many years however, Mr. Ryan had praised her. In fact, he said “The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand.”      View blog reactions

• • Paul Ryan’s faith-based lesson 
,
Egoism  |Syndicated  | Your budget,” a group of Jesuit scholars and other Georgetown University faculty members wrote to Ryan last week, “appears to reflect the values of your favorite philosopher, Ayn Rand, rather than the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Her call to selfishness and her antagonism toward religion are antithetical to the Gospel values of compassion and love.”      View blog reactions

• • • Like oil and water, Jesus Christ and Ayn Rand just don’t mix 
,
Atheism  |Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  |Individualism  |Image  | While Rand was correct in her theory that reason was the only true way of gaining knowledge as opposed to faith and religion, Rand took her ideas into the political realm and went off track. Supporting laissez faire capitalism, Rand led the charge of an “everyone person for themselves” society. A type of society where if you can’t make it all on your own, you are destined to fail. Any Rand’s political form of natural selection goes against the morals of human nature and the greatest emotion of them all, compassion.      View blog reactions

• • Paul Ryan: “Ayn who?” 
,
Atheism  | [T]his whole saga gave Rep. Ryan a chance to debunk that noxious myth that he is a disciple of the goddess of all things libertarian and irreligious, Ayn Rand. As he told National Review this week, it’s an “urban legend”      View blog reactions

• 1984 comes knocking in Laguna Beach 
,
How troubling it is to read that Laguna Beach blatantly trampled the property rights of the homeowner who went through every procedure, from purchasing the property to obtaining permits and did everything correctly until the “few” on the City Council decided to “change the rules.” [....] Yes, there are some big names behind the history of the Halliburton house: William Levy, Frank Lloyd Wright, Ayn Rand. But George Orwell and his novel “1984” come to mind with these events.      View blog reactions

• Aging stylishly, online and in the streets 
,
"I'm amazed at how in this late stage I'm getting all this attention," 92-year-old Ilona Royce-Smithkin said. Royce-Smithkin was interesting before she met [street style photographer Ari Seth] Cohen on the street two years ago. She spent most of the 20th century as an acclaimed painter with illustrious subjects such as Tennessee Williams and Ayn Rand. But it wasn't until the last five years that she truly came into her own and became comfortable with herself, she says.      View blog reactions

• The Saturday Quiz 
,
King George V, Franklin Roosevelt, Ayn Rand, and Freddie Mercury (right) were all enthusiastic collectors of what?      View blog reactions

• • • Paul Ryan Is Anything But an Ayn Rand Disciple 
,
Atheism  |Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  | A hilariously ignorant new meme has arisen amongst the left-wing chattering class: Paul Ryan is apparently covertly trying to smuggle Ayn Rand’s radical philosophy into the federal government.      View blog reactions

• • • Did Paul Ryan Really Just ‘Reject’ Ayn Rand? 
,
Atheism  |Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  |Individualism  | Here is a list of things Ryan is not saying: 1. He thinks Ayn Rand is wrong about economics. 2. He thinks Ayn Rand is wrong about politics. 3. He thinks Ayn Rand is wrong about ethics. 4. He thinks Ayn Rand is right about religion.      View blog reactions