• • High Society 
Todd Vanderwerff, The Onion A.V. Club TV series review.If nothing else, High Society should be the final nail in the coffin of Randian objectivism. I have no problem with the idea that people who rise from rags to riches are smart, hard-working, capable individuals. I'd say, in my experience, that that's often the case. I just am not so sure that's the case with their children, who often seem like some of the worst people to ever have lived, if the presentation of them on television is any indication. The CW's High Society is just the latest series to attempt to turn the lives of young, lithe, hot women in the big city into something approaching compelling television.     Share on Facebook

• • Economist: Financial crisis result of idea failure 
Stacey Mieyal Higgins, Hotel News Now Atlas Shrugged  Capitalism  Egoism  In a sober discussion of the origins and consequences of the global financial crisis, Roger Bootle, managing director of Capital Economics Limited, explained Monday during the International Hotel Investment Forum why regulators were to blame and how capitalism will change as a result. [....] Why it happened: [....] Alan Greenspan’s “Atlas Shrugged” influence. “We can’t leave self-interested bankers and markets to their own devices,” Bootle said.     Share on Facebook

• • SXSW 2010: The Low Anthem 
Jesse Ship, Spinner Anthem  Interview with Ben Knox Miller of the folk rock band The Low Anthem.[Q:] Where did the name come from? [A:] The name comes from an Ayn Rand book by the same title. We didn't realize this until we had been together for quite a while because it was thought up by one of the original members, an old childhood friend, who no longer plays with us. I have actually read the book and I don't like it much at all, so it is a bit strange to have that name, but at least the name is abstract enough to be interpreted in different ways.     Share on Facebook

• • Letting the left claim the cerebral high ground 
Tasha Kheiriddin, National Post (Toronto) Atlas Shrugged  From bank bailouts to government health care, not in recent memory has socialism garnered such a toehold in American political discourse. Ayn Rand would recognize much of the statist nightmare of her famous Atlas Shrugged in Mr. Obama’s America: government ownership of lending institutions and car companies, increasing demonization of the rich, and an unelected “czar” in Washington for every policy area under the sun.     Share on Facebook

• • What Washington state does about its budget deficit is a taxing mess 
Jon Talton, Seattle Times Americans face a future where even the basic government services they long took for granted are in doubt. This may be heaven for some acolytes of Ayn Rand. But she wrote fiction.     Share on Facebook

• • Bob Barr visits Cartersville 
Kursten Hedgis, Six Mile Post (GA Highlands College, Rome) Inaccurate  Libertarian Bob Barr arrived eight minutes late with smiles and waves for his Feb. 16 appearance sponsored by [Georgia Highlands College]'s Libertarian Club. [....] [He] spoke about the new RFID chips that are placed in passports so travelling will be, as he said with sarcasm, "easier for you." However, he explains this convenience often comes at a price, the ultimate price in his eyes: an individual's privacy. These trends and examples all lead to his main point, for which he quoted Ayn Rand, "The right to privacy is the basis of our freedom and liberty."     Share on Facebook

• • Undermining 1st Amendment from the top 
The Times and Democrat (Orangeburg ,SC) Ayn Rand Center  Don Watkins, an analyst with the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, writes: “You might think this radical call for government control of the media is at odds with the First Amendment and the ideals of its authors. Not according to [Federal Communications Commission Chief Diversity Officer Mark] Lloyd and his fellow travelers, who portray their vision of a government-funded press as a continuation of the American tradition. The founders, they say, weren’t committed to protecting a profit-seeking press from government control. Instead, their primary concern was making sure the press could effectively educate and inform Americans, and they obsessively sought to subsidize the press in order to achieve that goal.” Lloyd’s approach is dangerous in a country founded on the ideal of free speech, with the founders even writing into the Bill of Rights the guarantee of a free press.     Share on Facebook

• • Not quite a bull’s-eye 
Daniel M. Ryan, Enter Stage Right Personal life  Review of the book Panderer to Power: The Untold Story of How Alan Greenspan Enriched Wall Street and Left a Legacy of Recession, by Frederick Sheehan.[Frederick] Sheehan goes out of his way to highlight Ayn Rand's first impression of [Alan Greenspan] when they met: "'Do you think Alan might basically be a social climber?'" (p. 9.) This quote serves as a leitmotif of the book as Sheehan digs into Greenspan's later life. He decided that the other Greenspan – the man who hitched his wagon to Arthur Burns's star early on – was the real Greenspan. The impression he conveys is that Greenspan wasn't even much of an Objectivist, although Sheehan doesn't intimate that Greenspan was drawn into Rand's inner circle out of a desire to rub shoulders with a popular novelist. He presents Greenspan as a man who did believe in Rand's philosophy in his own way, but shed it while ascending the socio-political heights. Like many libertarian critics of Greenspan, Sheehan brandishes "Gold And Economic Freedom" as a reproach – even if he holds his nose a little while doing so.     Share on Facebook

• • From the Martian desk 
Gilles d'Aymery, Swans Atlas Shrugged  When asked how she would "cut the deficit without cutting Medicaid and Medicare," [Tea Part activist Keli] Carender answers, "Let's see. Some days I'm very Randian. I feel like there shouldn't be any of those programs, that it should all be charitable organizations. Sometimes I think, well, maybe it really should be just state, and there should be no federal part in it at all. I bounce around in my solutions to the problem." ("A Young and Unlikely Activist Who Arrived at the Tea Party Early," by Kate Zernike, The New York Times, February 28, 2010.) Charitable organizations... Is there a mention of them in Atlas Shrugged, the Libertarian bible? Does she really believe in the generosity bequeathed by the Founding Fathers?     Share on Facebook

• • Video poker won’t solve anything 
Guy Turnbull, Daily Herald (Arlington Heights, IL) The Daily Herald recently selected a quote from Ayn Rand for its word puzzle, "The upper classes are a nation's past, the middle class is its future." That says a lot about why change is so difficult.     Share on Facebook

• • Ideas for modern living: Mutuality 
Mark Earls, The Guardian (London) Inaccurate  Many prefer to see human life as one long competitive struggle for dominance. Philosopher Edmund Burke, Darwin's champion Herbert Spencer (who coined the phrase "survival of the fittest") and Ayn Rand (high priestess of the American idea of rugged individualism) are among those who characterise human life in terms of the struggle between individuals for the spoils of humanity.     Share on Facebook

• • Suspenseful accounting of economic disaster 
Ted St. Godard, Winnipeg Free Press Atlas Shrugged  Capitalism  Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, a fictionalized panorama of economic philosophy, famously opens with the question, "Who is John Galt?" One must read a great deal of a fairly heavy-handed book to learn the answer, but it puts one in mind of a question surely asked by a number of lay observers of the recent economic melt-down south of the border: "Who are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac?"     Share on Facebook

• • Robbing the GOP of credibility 
Mark Davis, Tracy Press (CA) Atheism  After Aquila’s Feb. 27 column (“Democrats: Fulfilling the Communist agenda”), I realized the brilliance of Aquila’s efforts. You see, Mr. Aquila is part of a communist fifth column that has infiltrated the GOP and is intent on destroying the party from the inside. [....] He tries to misdirect with contradictory quotes from figures of authority. Aquila thoroughly understood that Ayn Rand’s radical libertarianism and anti-communism was also tinged by the strongest form of atheism. Aquila thoroughly understood that Ayn Rand’s radical libertarianism and anti-communism was also tinged by the strongest form of atheism. One of her quotes: “Faith is the worst curse of man, as the exact antithesis and enemy of thought.” Yet he strategically chose to quote Rand, thus undermining his previous claims about the ungodliness of the communist agenda. With that signal quote, he thereby managed to thoroughly derail any chance at GOP ideological coherence while simultaneously calling into question any commonality of purpose with libertarians.     Share on Facebook

• • BB&T has donated $1 million to High Point University 
Winston-Salem Journal (NC) Capitalism  High Point University said yesterday that it has received a $1 million contribution from BB&T Corp. in support of its entrepreneurship program. [....] Cynthia Williams, a spokeswoman for BB&T, said that the gift to High Point University is separate from the grants given from the bank's charitable foundation for programs geared toward the moral foundations of capitalism. The foundation, established by John Allison, the bank's retired chairman and chief executive, has provided $1 million-plus gifts to at least 10 universities in North Carolina. Those programs typically have had a connection to author Ayn Rand and objectivism, which extols rational individualism, creativity, independent thinking and a limited role for government as a protector of the peace.     Share on Facebook

• • Sports and social justice with David Zirin 
Timothy Braun, Austin Chronicle Atlas Shrugged  [Q:] This June your book Bad Sports: How Owners Are Ruining the Games We Love will be published. We have two vivacious owners in Mark Cuban and Jerry Jones here in the Lone Star State. Should I expect to be reading about one or both of these men when I review your book? [A:] Well, they both certainly come up because they're never boring. If you are entertaining as opposed to shadowy and nefarious, it goes a long way when we're talking about owners. But the public dollars that went to the Jerry Dome is unconscionable. Cuban is an interesting guy: an Ayn Rand populist, who supports some very dynamic left-wing films and documentaries while simultaneously preaching the gospel of Atlas Shrugged. I wrote about him here.     Share on Facebook

• • Morning must reads—Now that I think about it, Kathleen Sebelius does kind of look like Ayn Rand 
Chris Stirewalt, The Examiner (Washington, DC) Atlas Shrugged  Writers Janet Adamy and Avery Johnson tell us about the administration’s effort to impose health insurance premiums by fiat and a meeting with health insurers summoned to the White House for a whipping that was so over the top that it could have been a scene in Atlas Shrugged.     Share on Facebook

• •From canyon to cove: A visit to Hangover House 
Cindy Frazier, Coastline Pilot (Laguna Beach, CA) Ayn Rand Archives  Ayn Rand Institute  The Fountainhead  Personal life  As one might expect of such an old and notable dwelling [Hangover House] has its mysteries and urban legends. One such legend surrounds a purported visit that Ayn Rand made to the home before writing her monumental novel about a modernist architect, “The Fountainhead,” where she allegedly interviewed [architect William Alexander] Levy about his theories of architecture. Levy apparently believed that some of his words and ideas were used in Rand’s book, and that scenes in “The Fountainhead” were set in Hangover House. But Benec said this is now being debunked by a representative of the Ayn Rand Archives in Irvine who responded to Benec’s original house listing with a letter citing various facts to prove that Rand “did not set foot in California” from 1934 to 1943 and therefore could not have visited the house or used it in her novel. The archivist also said there is no written evidence, such as notes, in her papers indicating a link between Rand and Levy. “They said it is not possible,” Benec said. But the story persists.     Share on Facebook

• • Oil exec urges industry to take political actions: Obama administration ... 
Rod Walton, Tulsa World Atlas Shrugged  Capitalism  [Mike Cantrell] talked about the irony of his reading "Atlas Shrugged" — the libertarian novel that details the gradual, passive collapse of a capitalist, competitive society — during the last presidential election. "That's the option we make when we don't engage politically," he said. "We have to fight for our right to make money."     Share on Facebook

• • A year ago, when the Dow was tanking and the WSJ knew why 
Jay Bookman, Atlanta Journal-Constitution - Jay Bookman Atlas Shrugged  [The market] closed today at 10,444, up 54 percent from the low noted by the Wall Street Journal. So much for a capital strike. So much for going Galt. Apparently those capitalists think a lot more of Obamanomics than the experts at the WSJ believed.     Share on Facebook

• • Fresh media, stale ideas 
Kyle Francis, FFWD Capitalism  The first Bioshock was an unrelenting satire of video games and the people who play them, set against one of the most creative, thoughtful backdrops ever seen in the medium — a crumbling utopia beneath the sea built upon the principles of (and destroyed by) Objectivism, Ayn Rand's personal brand of hyper-capitalism. It was the first mainstream, multimillion-dollar video game to ever use the mechanics and conventions of the medium to build its themes (basically, will and choice are central to Objectivism, and games, with their fairly limited range of interactivity, rob you of both).     Share on Facebook