• • • The ‘Ayn Rand vs. Jesus Christ’ Campaign 
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Atheism  |Ayn Rand Institute  |Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  |Individual Rights  |Individualism  |Objectivist author  | The American Values Network, a left-wing group, with considerable funding by George Soros, has launched a media blitz under the banner “Ayn Rand vs. Jesus Christ.” As an Institute founded by Ayn Rand’s heir and devoted to advancing her philosophy, Objectivism, we would like to respond. Since this is an issue Rand faced repeatedly in her lifetime, our response is basically to let her speak for herself.      View blog reactions

• • • Books: I Am John Galt 
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Alan Greenspan  |Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal  |The Fountainhead  |The Virtue of Selfishness  |Objectivist author  | Book review: I Am John Galt, by Donald Luskin and Andrew Greta.
Judging this book is rather like judging the movie version of Atlas: both could have been better but both also could have been so much worse. By the standard of what an Objectivist intellectual would write, the book is thin and, at times, offensive in its comparison of people to Ayn Rand’s unique, grand-scale, life-loving heroes. (E.g., as creative as Steve Jobs surely is, there’s no way on God’s green earth that he is remotely comparable to Howard Roark). On the other hand, by the standard of what you would expect to see in such a book, I Am John Galt is surprisingly good.      View blog reactions

• • Altruism: Why The Republicans Will Lose The Budget Cut Battle 
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Altruism  |Atlas Shrugged  |Objectivist author  | The Ryan budget proposal reveals a culture still caught in the death-grip of altruism. A culture trapped between “we owe to them” and “we can no longer afford to give it to them.” Either one of two things will happen. Either nothing will change until the financial situation gets much worse, with paper money kaput and riots in the streets—or people will begin to take notice that that Ayn Rand person they’re hearing so much about makes a good case in favor of a non-sacrificial morality. So far, they haven’t even noticed that Atlas Shrugged goes deeper than politics. We aim to change that.      View blog reactions

• • Stupid and stingy: How the left and right see each other 
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Objectivist author  | What about [...] those who disagree with Kant and can refute him, can defend reason and egoism? That’s a minority of one: Ayn Rand. Except that, thanks to Ayn Rand, there are now a growing legion of New Intellectuals to carry on and extend her anti-Kantian revolution.      View blog reactions

• • Economic fallacies concerning tax cuts and government spending 
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The Virtue of Selfishness  |Capitalism  | Ultimately, all taxation has to be abolished. See "Government Financing in a Free Society," in Ayn Rand's The Virtue of Selfishness.      View blog reactions

• • • The Tea Party movement 
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Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  |Individualism  |Objectivist author  | Objectivists should recognize and value what is a startling, unprecedented phenomenon: the rise, in an eyeblink, of a pro-freedom, pro-American, avowedly *individualistic* political movement--a movement friendly to Ayn Rand, favorable to Atlas Shrugged, and popularizing the phrase “Who is John Galt?” This is more--far more--than we had a right to expect at this stage in history.      View blog reactions

• • Vote Republican rather than Tea Party? 
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Altruism  |Atlas Shrugged  |Egoism  |Objectivist author  | Talking about liberty is all to the good, but Tea Partiers don’t have the idea of moral principles mandating absolute freedom. And at a deeper level, they don’t understand two key points: 1) the issue is freedom vs. force, and 2) force is anti-mind. And they are nowhere near to grasping that the mind is the instrument of human survival. They don’t even recognize that point when they read Atlas Shrugged, which not only states it explicitly but dramatizes it throughout. Further: egoism vs. altruism is an issue they don’t want to touch.      View blog reactions

• • The Tea Party Movement 
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Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  |Yaron Brook  |Objectivist author  | Objectivists should recognize and value what is a startling, unprecedented phenomenon: the rise, in an eyeblink, of a pro-freedom, pro-American, avowedly *individualistic* political movement--a movement friendly to Ayn Rand, favorable to Atlas Shrugged, and popularizing the phrase “Who is John Galt?” This is more--far more--than we had a right to expect at this stage in history.      View blog reactions

• • • Robin shrugged 
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Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology  | (Article requires subscription.) Reply to Corey Robin’s “Garbage and Gravitas.”
Corey Robin [...] quotes some important Ayn Rand passages, but his critique raises ad hominem to a new level: Rand favored some classical composers over others and preferred operetta to opera, so her ideas are invalid. More shocking is this argument: Ayn Rand held that whether you live or die is of fundamental importance to you, and Adolf Hitler held that whether the state “lives” or “dies” is of fundamental importance to you, so Rand and Hitler are the same. We are asked to equate Hitler with the modern era’s greatest defender of the individual’s right to his own life. Rand, the creator of a morality based on one’s life as one’s ultimate value and reason as one’s only guide is equated with the anti-individual, obedience-demanding, death-worshiping Nazi ideology. How about responding to Rand’s arguments, for key Objectivist tenets, notably: reason is man’s only means of knowledge, reason is man’s means of survival, the choice to think or not is the locus of man’s free will, rational thought cannot be coerced, man’s life as a rational being is the standard of morality, rationality is man’s primary virtue, individual rights are moral principles of social interaction following from the preceding. [....] Rather than rely on dubious anecdotes about Rand’s personal life, a serious intellectual would investigate her nonfiction and consult the best of the secondary literature by philosophy professionals.      View blog reactions

• • Justice for Goldman Sachs 
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Capitalism  | Yet another injustice towards Goldman Sachs is circulating on the web. It's the publication of the fact that Goldman Sachs has financially supported Democrats over Republicans. The implicit or explicit conclusion is that Goldman is buying pull. Some bloggers have said that the firm is known as "Government Sachs." This is total context-dropping. The facts omitted from consideration are: [....] 2. Businesses have to contribute to political parties to buy protection. At least they think they do. Even [Hank] Rearden [a character in Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged] thought so: "Rearden disliked the subject. He knew that it was necessary to have a man to protect him from the legislature; all industrialists had to employ such men."      View blog reactions

• • Will religious conservatives hijack the Tea Party movement? 
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Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal  |Objectivist author  | The phrase "limited government" has suddenly become prominent. This is not exactly an Objectivist term, but Ayn Rand did use it in "The Roots of War," (in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal), and its growing use is a good sign.      View blog reactions

• • Collective shrug 
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Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  |Personal life  | Adam Kirsch’s review repeats a story from Bennett Cerf’s 1977 autobiography, “At Random,” about Rand’s response when Cerf asked her to cut Galt’s speech: “Would you cut the Bible?” she supposedly said. When Cerf’s book came out, I asked Rand about the story. With obvious indignation, she replied, “I never said that — the Bible needs cutting.” In general, the portrait of Rand contained in the review clashes dramatically with the Rand whom I first met in 1964 and with whom I was good friends in her final years. The Rand I knew was a unique combination of disciplined rationality and emotional intensity. Well, not completely unique: there are also the fictional heroes she created.      View blog reactions

• • • Ayn Rand Answers 
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Capitalism  |Objectivist author  | I've just finished reading Ayn Rand Answers: The Best of Her Q & A, edited by Robert Mayhew. It's a superb collection, and I want to re-read it soon. In reading it, I was wondering how impressed a non-Objectivist reader might be--and certainly should be--by the range of issues Ayn Rand had thought about. Let me give some examples, giving only the question and the start of her answer. In each case, try to project what any other intellectual--from John Kenneth Galbraith to David Brooks to any contemporary philosopher--would say (or sputter) in response to such questions.      View blog reactions

• • David Brooks—A modern day Peter Keating 
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The Fountainhead  |Harry Binswanger  |Objectivist author  | "Reason is weak," [Brooks] writes, "and emotions are strong." I grant that that is true in his "idiosyncratic world." But my response is to quote the hero in Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, Howard Roark, "Peter, why betray so much?"      View blog reactions

• • • Alan Greenspan vs. Ayn Rand and freedom 
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Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal  |Capitalism  |Personal life  |Objectivist author  | I can't say I knew Alan Greenspan, though, being an associate of Ayn Rand, I met him a few times in the 1960s. But by 1970--almost 40 years ago--I and a couple of other Objectivists in that circle already realized that Greenspan was compromising on her philosophy. Little did we know how far his anti-Rand journey would take him.      View blog reactions

• • Religion is the enemy of morality 
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Atlas Shrugged  |Harry Binswanger  |Objectivist author  | Letter to the editor in response to “Morals without religion possible”.
Religion amounts to the claim: in order to have morality, you must play “Let’s Pretend.” Ayn Rand and other advocates of reason think otherwise--that there are damn good reasons why you must guide your choices by long-range principles. Your survival requires proper action.      View blog reactions

• Just pay for CEOs: Why some CEOs deserve huge salaries 
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Ayn Rand Institute  |Objectivist author  | As I explain in my lectures "Philosophical Issues in Economics," given at this summer's Ayn Rand Institute conference, capitalism represents not "consumer sovereignty," but the sovereignty of reason.      View blog reactions

• • • William F. Buckley, Jr.: The witch-doctor is dead 
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Atlas Shrugged  |Harry Binswanger  |Objectivist author  | Ayn Rand told me that in the years following her public condemnations of Buckley, he sent her more than one letter "crawling on his knees" (her words) trying to get her approval and/or a rapprochement. Needless to say, he failed in this attempt.      View blog reactions

• •Thanks to the council 
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Objectivist author  | Letter to the editor.
Stuart Appelbaum can see "gouging" in Wal-Mart's low prices and "exploitation" in creating jobs for which people queue up to apply [...]. How come? The premise of such terminology is the doctrine that the alleged needs of some create a moral claim on the property — and lives — of others. [....] How, at this late date, can Mr. Appelbaum still chant the Marxist line and pretend that Ayn Rand never wrote?      View blog reactions

•Open immigration 
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Objectivist author  | Here is a short list of some great immigrants: Alexander Hamilton, Alexander Graham Bell, Andrew Carnegie, most of the top scientists of the Manhattan Project, Igor Sikorsky (the inventor of the helicopter), Ayn Rand. Open immigration: the benefits are great. The right is unquestionable. So let them come.      View blog reactions