• ‘The Battle’ of culture and genes 
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Capitalism  | People more disposed to be “traders” rather than “raiders” may also be operating on more than just principles learned whilst reading the Federalist papers or Ayn Rand. We may have trader DNA or some complex inborn structure that makes it more likely that we’re less interested in envy and more interested in enterprise. This reality changes the game a little, because it means that no individual is reducible to a single model of human nature.      View blog reactions

• • That funny old dogma—Ian Fletcher’s ode to mercantilism 
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Capitalism  | Fletcher’s recent article in the Daily Caller isn’t so much a defense of mercantilism as a guerrilla assault on free trade launched from the thorny bushes of fallacy. [....] Ad Hominem — If you can’t dissect the argument, attack the man: “Their fundamentalist sect is the old Ayn Rand cult, whose members call themselves ‘objectivists.’” The implication is that those who understand free trade are somehow dogmatic or cultists. We don’t reflect on our advocacy of open exchange, we follow it blindly. Like the tactics used by the Soros left, Fletcher’s shtick is not so much to argue at all, but to use innuendo and call names.      View blog reactions

• Keynesian creationism: Part II of ‘A curious resurrection of libertarianism’ 
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Libertarianism was never really dead. [Jacob] Weisberg was drumming on the casket of a straw men made vaguely in the form of Ayn Rand and Fed pooh-bahs. He wove together a number of disparate narratives from prominent leftish intellectuals and passed it off as something epic.      View blog reactions

• • •Ayn Rand by the fireside 
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"A new collection of Rand commentaries lets us reminisce about her -- the good, the bad and the ugly."
I was delighted recently to receive a copy of Ayn Rand Answers: The Best of Her Q&A, a brand new collection of extended quotes from Rand’s various interviews and radio appearances.  For me, it was a trip down memory lane and a reminder of the world I once saw in primary colors.      View blog reactions