• Chill, bro. $50B swindle ain’t no thang 
Foster Kamer, Village Voice - Runnin’ Scared (New York) [A] banker said [Lehman Brothers’ masking of $50 billion in debt] just wasn't "that big of an event," and then compared the supposedly unnecessary outrage at Lehman to the leadup to the American invasion of Iraq. [....] If you're intelligent enough to understand why the outrage building up to Iraq was so ridiculous, why're you still working at a bank making the world worse? The answer, obviously, is cash, and because "worse" is a very subjective term in this context, and probably invokes Ayn Rand at some point.     Share on Facebook

• Health care, Dennis Kucinich, and being a decent country 
Zaid Jilani, True/Slant Atlas Shrugged  What this [health care] bill would declare — other than our government is far too beholden to the very industries it’s supposed to be standing up to while making legislation — is that we aren’t going to let people die anymore because they literally can’t afford to live. It’s a gigantic blow against the idea that we’re on our own, that we aren’t our brother’s keepers, and that we should all pick up copies of Atlas Shrugged and simply look out for ourselves.     Share on Facebook

• • • Keep looking out for the self during college years (the pitt news) 
Giles Howard, Pitt News (U of Pittsburgh) Altruism  Egoism  Dr. Allan Gotthelf, a visiting professor in Pitt’s Department of History and Philosophy of Science and an expert on Rand’s philosophy of objectivism, explained the relevant part of Rand’s view of morality in two principles: First, “Each person has a right to pursue his own rational self-interest,” and second, “We will benefit from [others] pursuing their own self-interest, just as they will [benefit] from our pursuing ours,” Gotthelf said. These pillars of objectivism constitute the morality of that segment of the political Right that values individual responsibility, free markets and small government. It is this morality that is largely absent from college campuses today whereas the Leftist morality of altruism pervades higher education.     Share on Facebook

• Duncan Campbell and the Bruce High Quality Foundation take a bumpy ride to Utopia 
Martha Schwendener, Village Voice (New York) There's a kind of utopian/dystopian strain running through South Soho right now. I use those terms sparingly, since Thomas More, 16th-century author of Utopia, didn't mean what we think of by a good society (slaves: no problem), and if you consult a selective bibliography of Utopian Lit compiled by the New York Public Library—a good read in itself—everyone from William Morris and Martin Buber to Ayn Rand is included.     Share on Facebook

• • Too righteous for facts 
Daniel McCarthy, The American Conservative - @TAC Atlas Shrugged  Michael Lind is a smart guy, but he’s also an ideologue so hellbent on the righteousness of his social-democratic worldview that he doesn’t let niggling things like facts get in the way of his proclamations. In his amusingly titled “ Bring it on, Ayn Rand geeks,” Lind tells us Ron Paul is such an acolyte of the Atlas Shrugged author that he “named his son Rand Paul.” Devastating, except that Randal Paul, known to his family as Randy, isn’t actually named after Ayn, and while the Pauls may appreciate the novelist, the Texas congressman’s plan for transitioning away from the welfare state hardly evokes the pitiless ethos of Objectivism.     Share on Facebook

• • David Frum’s Satanic girliemen 
Richard Spencer, Alternative Right - District of Corruption Altruism  Evidenced by his constant use of "collectivism" and "altruism" as cusswords, my guess is that Alex [Knepper] is really a devotee of a philosophy followed by many a 20-year-old, Ayn Randianism. (Most everyone I know was a Randian at some point during their undergraduate years. Thankfully, there was no David Frum around at the time to publish our embarrassing polemicizing.) And I don't think it's a coincidence that Alex's writings about me have taken the form of the typical Randian fantasy of the principled intellectual being persecuted by the irrational, violent mob.     Share on Facebook

• More attacks from Richard Spencer 
Alex Knepper, FrumForum I find Richard Spencer’s latest attack on me [...] be rather odd. Below a two-year-old picture of me in a gender-bending outfit at a concert, he lists a slew of my sins: opposition to religion, admiration for Ayn Rand and tongue-in-cheek Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey, support for voluntary, non-racial eugenics — and, most of all, my age, which is an endless obsession of his.     Share on Facebook

• Epix inks deal with Larry Charles 
Cynthia Littleton, Variety [Pay cable network Epix is] developing a mini based on Ayn Rand's epic novel "The Fountainhead."     Share on Facebook

• The value of a [sunshine] dollar 
Todd Greene, Huffington Post When I was in my early twenties and living in Philadelphia for the better part of a year, I read many books by Ayn Rand and Paulo Coelho, and allowed all of them to become very significant in my life.     Share on Facebook

• While you were away: Economic issues that bite while we’re distracted by Tiger 
Jon Talton, Seattle Times The Great American Freak Show continues with all the media oxygen being sucked up by Tiger Woods and the estate of the late Michael Jackson. It's almost as if certain interests didn't want the American people paying attention to things that mattered. Financial reform, to be sure, can't compete with the Jersey Housewives. The proposal by Sen. Dodd, D-Financial Services, does include some kind of consumer protection agency -- a plus. But no new Glass-Steagall, no meaningful derivative oversight, etc. etc. And regulators must regulate, after all, rather than have their heads in Ayn Rand novels.     Share on Facebook

• College Tea Party groups boost campus conservative ranks 
Matt Vasilogambros, Politics Daily Senior Courtney Hunter attended the tea party that was not organized by College Republicans because she did not agree with bringing in party candidates to speak. She said that the Tea Party movement isn't just for Republicans, but for a wide range of political backgrounds. [....] Hunter said that because Texas A&M has so many conservative organizations -- including the Aggie Libertarian Club, Aggie Objectivists Club, College Republicans and Young Conservatives of Texas -- they would not have to look to an outside source like Campus Tea Parties to organize events.     Share on Facebook

• Tax time number crunching adds up to columns of confusion 
Neil Crone, durhamregion.com (ON) Atlas Shrugged  I'm going through a bit of an insane dance with my accountants right now. We're faxing and e-mailing back and forth, trying to get my books and theirs to some kind of resemblance to one another. We're still a little ways apart. And by 'a little ways' I they're reading Atlas Shrugged and I'm looking at Goodnight Moon.     Share on Facebook

• • • Morality of war 
Patti Roscoe, The Rotator (Rotary Club of San Diego) Ayn Rand Institute  Yaron Brook  (Link is to PDF file.)It’s been a long time since a speaker evoked such a buzz once we were adjourned. [....] When Dr. Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute began his presentation with a quote from General Sherman – War is Hell – we knew we were in for quite a ride. [....] “Provocative, challenging, offensive, infuriating, thought provoking and bone chilling” were just some of the words and impressions I heard and felt as I walked from the room. Groups of people, in twos and fours, were in serious discussion everywhere, agreeing and disagreeing; expressing their beliefs or disbelief in the speech; or just trying to grasp the concept of it all.     Share on Facebook

• Craving legitimacy: Just shut up and play! 
Leigh Alexander, PC World Magazine Those raised on the original Super Mario Bros. never thought about who the Princess “was” or why the mushrooms made you big — back then, gamers would never have guessed they might one day discuss Randian Objectivism in BioShock.     Share on Facebook

• Reading Tea Party leaves 
Jonah Goldberg, Los Angeles Times The tea partyers certainly aren't "dropping out" of the system; if they were, we wouldn't be talking about them. And they aren't reading Marxist tracts in a desire to "tear down the system" either. They're reading Thomas Paine, the founders and Friedrich Hayek in the perhaps naive hope that they'll be able to restore the principles that are supposed to be guiding the system [....] The restorationists have any number of hero intellectuals (from Buckley and Thomas Sowell to Hayek and Ayn Rand).     Share on Facebook

• • • Bring it on, Ayn Rand geeks 
Michael Lind, Salon Atheism  Capitalism  The public has repeatedly rejected any attempts to privatize Social Security or slash Medicare benefits. Reagan denounced both entitlements, but as president he raised taxes to support Social Security and refused to touch Medicare. Under George W. Bush, a Republican Congress passed the Medicare drug benefit, which, for all its concessions to the pharma lobby, was the biggest expansion of socialized medicine in the U.S. since Lyndon Johnson signed Medicare into law. [....] So bring it on, geeky disciples of Ayn Rand. Gird thy loins and put on thy Spock ears. Demand the abolition of Social Security and Medicare! Call for reducing the U.S. military to the Coast Guard! Insist on tolling every highway and street in America and selling America's infrastructure assets to foreign corporations and foreign sovereign wealth funds! Go Galt! Bring it on! Even confined to a wheelchair, Franklin Roosevelt can defeat Ayn Rand.     Share on Facebook

• • Montgomery County PR firm’s tongue-in-cheek congressional bid lampoons corporate rights 
Daily Record Capitalism  Murray Hill Inc., a Silver Spring public relations firm and admitted corporate entity, is vowing through its handlers to continue its bid for the 8th District congressional seat. [....] Murray Hill’s campaign video [....] is nearing 190,000 views on YouTube — Murray Hill’s profile lists two Ayn Rand titles under its favorites and identifies “capitalism” as its only hobby — and almost 6,000 people have signed up on the campaign’s Facebook fan page.     Share on Facebook

• • • Who is John Galt? No, really. 
Stephen Herrington, Huffington Post Atheism  Atlas Shrugged  Capitalism  Egoism  Personal life  Ayn Rand was a drawing room capitalist, a theorist on a subject with which she had no practical experience (other than with its opposite). She could not understand, or ignored, the fact that the stifling of creativity and the seizure of work product is not the exclusive prerogative of communism. It happens every day in capitalism. Corporate monopolies act to break the will of competition. Corporations stifle creativity with things like planned obsolescence and the withholding of known solutions from markets in all fields. Corporations buy legislation, passing the cost on to consumers, and stack the legal deck against the public interest with impunity. Corrupt bureaucracy can be found at Wal Mart as easily as the Politburo.     Share on Facebook

• Borderland Speakeasy #5: Mirror image murders 
Oliver Ho, PopMatters Despite their individual passions for expanding the possibilities of comic book storytelling, [Steve] Ditko and [Bernard] Krigstein each eventually left the industry (or vice-versa) over their storytelling philosophies. Ditko developed an infamous fondness for Ayn Rand and Objectivism, which distanced him from audiences and publishers, while Krigstein’s insistence on pursuing his vision for a comic, in spite of the script, led to his exit from EC Comics.     Share on Facebook

• The Glenn Beck insanity watch 
Oliver Miller, The Faster Times It’s pretty crazy of Mr. Beck to attack Christians, since about 50% of Fox News’s audience is made up of fundamentalist Christians. (The other 50% is made up of people who think that Ayn Rand was the greatest writerever.)     Share on Facebook