• • • Tea Party brings Ayn Rand back 
Noah Kristula-Green, FrumForum Atheism  Ayn Rand Center  Ayn Rand Institute  Atlas Shrugged  Capitalism  Essay Contests  Yaron Brook  At least one part of the American economy has enjoyed a boom since the financial crisis: the estate of Ayn Rand and sales of her dystopic door stopper novel, Atlas Shrugged. Until recently interest in Rand represented a small subculture in conservative intellectual life—small, perhaps, because as long as Rand lived, she belligerently chase away anyone who disagreed, even slightly, with her “philosophy” of Objectivism. Rand denounced libertarians as “a monstrous, disgusting bunch of people” and conservatives as “futile, impotent and, culturally, dead.” In return, critics found Rand’s declaration that “The only philosophical debt I can acknowledge is to Aristotle,” laughable. The revelations of Rand’s destructive affair with Nathanial Branden undercut Rand’s writings on “rationally” practicing sex and love. Her acolytes were called “crazy” on the rare occasions they interacted with the outside world. But since the financial crisis, all has changed. The Ayn Rand Institute, which owns the Rand copyrights, claims that sales of Atlas Shrugged tripled between 2009 and 2008.     Share on Facebook

• • • The death throes of pro-IP libertarianism 
Stephan Kinsella, The Death Throes of Pro-IP Libertarianism Atlas Shrugged  The speed of [the] recent [intellectual property] awakening appears to have caught the old-guard libertarian defenders of IP — mostly Randians and older libertarians from a generation or two ago — slumbering, clinging to the tattered remnants of arguments for IP. As they have gradually realized that a revolution has taken place around them, a few have tried to mount a rear-guard defense; but it has been tepid and half-hearted for the most part. You can see it in the quality of their arguments. Most of these are smart libertarians, who usually make much better arguments than they do when talking about IP. Why are their arguments so weak? It is because they are just wrong. There is no defense of IP (see “ There are No Good Arguments for Intellectual Property”). IP law is unlibertarian and unjustified.     Share on Facebook

• • • The big shrug: Why Ayn Rand’s ‘Atlas’ still resonates 
Allen Barton, Pajamas Media Ayn Rand Center  Atlas Shrugged  Capitalism  Egoism  Yaron Brook  Video  The state of the world seems eerily similar to Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. If government created the latest crisis, why are people blaming the private sector? Could it be that conservatives have abandoned individual rights? Front Page with Allen Barton talks to Yaron Brook and Terry Jones about Ayn Rand's classic novel and about whether we are sacrificing responsibility in the name of collectivist irresponsibility.

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• • • Production wraps on Atlas Shrugged - Part One 
Jeremy Kay, Screen International Atlas Shrugged movie  Atlas Shrugged  (Requires subscription.)Production has wrapped on Strike Productions’ Atlas Shrugged – Part One based on Ayn Rand’s rousing 1957 novel about the collapse of American society after leading thinkers and creators go on strike.     Share on Facebook

• • • Atlas Shrugged filming wraps up 
David Kelley, Atlas Society Atlas Shrugged movie  Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  Image  I spoke with Dagny Taggart the other night. “It’s a huge honor to be part of this film,” said Taylor Schilling, who plays the heroine in John Aglialoro’s independent production of Atlas Shrugged. Tuesday evening, July 20, marked the completion of filming. We caught up with Aglialoro and his team in a weary but ebullient mood as shooting wrapped after an intense five-week schedule.     Share on Facebook

• • • LFM visits the set of Atlas Shrugged- Part I 
Govindini Murty, Libertas Film Magazine Atlas Shrugged movie  Anthem  Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  The Virtue of Selfishness  We The Living  Image  Interview with Director Paul Johansson.[Q:] What is your approach to adapting “Atlas Shrugged” as a movie? [A:] You’re talking about an art form, a living breathing art form … “What is a sculpture?” … it’s everything you’ve taken away from it, and what’s left is the sculpture – that’s what a film is. We took some of the densest material available in literature … and we’ve decided that there are certain parts of that story that cannot be told with the amount of time that we have. We’re taking one third of the book – because this is going to be part one of three parts – or perhaps four parts depending on how they’re going to shoot it all – and we’ve taken what we think is the essential part of Part One – which is 127 pages to Wyatt’s Torch. That’s what we’re up to.     Share on Facebook

• • • LFM visits the set of Atlas Shrugged- Part II 
Govindini Murty and Jason Apuzzo, Libertas Film Magazine Atlas Shrugged movie  Atlas Shrugged  Capitalism  Image  Video  Jason Apuzzo and I had the chance last week to visit the set of Atlas Shrugged, the highly anticipated film adaptation of Ayn Rand’s epic 1957 novel. We interviewed the film’s director, Paul Johansson (the first interview he has given to the media about the film). We also spent several hours watching Johansson direct a crucial scene between Atlas Shrugged‘s heroine Dagny Taggart and her antagonist, millionaire playboy Francisco d’Anconia. We saw first hand Johansson’s close working methods with his actors (the actor playing d’Anconia compared Johansson’s hands-on directing style to that of Robert Redford) and the passion he was bringing to the production. The location was the historic Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.     Share on Facebook

• • • Top young historians: Jennifer Burns, 34. 
History News Network Atlas Shrugged  Capitalism  Egoism  Image  Quotes. [....] “Writing my first book, Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right, was like being a detective at the heart of an intellectual mystery story. Though Rand's legend was well established among both her fans and enemies, there was little scholarly work about her life and career. I was the first historian to work in her personal papers, and thus it was essential to document her life with archival evidence. Then came the challenge of fitting Rand into the evolving ideological landscape of the American right, which historians were just beginning to chart. The final step was crafting an analytic narrative that would demystify Rand yet retain the tension and sense of discovery that animated my years of detective work.” -- Jennifer Burns about Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right.     Share on Facebook

• • • Criticism of ‘Atlas’ is misunderstanding 
Marshall Behringer, The Northwestern (Oshkosh, WI) Atlas Shrugged  Egoism  Rand’s is the only system of ideas ever conceived that both treats individuals as ends-in-themselves rather than the means to the ends of others, and claims that morality is declaring “I love my life” and acting accordingly, neither sacrificing oneself to others nor others to oneself.     Share on Facebook

• • • The big news you didn’t read this week: The Atlas Shrugged film trilogy 
Frances Martel, Mediaite Atlas Shrugged movie  Atlas Shrugged  Capitalism  Image  The progress on the set of Atlas Shrugged is a much more important story to both pop culture and the political world than, say, the fact that an anonymous government employee was a little bit racist once, and now is not, but is a socialist agent, or a good samaritan, no one is quite sure. The fact that a film with that kind of ideological baggage is set for release so close to the 2012 elections is something media spinsters should have on their radar. An Atlas Shrugged film means that all the would-be Randians too lazy to read the book or too young to care to watch The Fountainhead now have easy access to her philosophy, which, in large part, is the philosophy of the Tea Party Movement.     Share on Facebook

• • • “Universities, the major battleground in the fight for reason and capitalism” 
Gary H. Jones, Academe Ayn Rand Institute  Atlas Shrugged  Capitalism  Egoism  Essay Contests  Recent donations from the charitable arm of BB&T, one of the nation’s largest banks, have raised the issue of external influence anew, sparking concerns about academic integrity and the role of the faculty in decisions about accepting gifts that come with curricular or other strings attached. At the center of the concerns about these donations is the requirement that objectivist Ayn Rand’s novels be taught in special courses extolling capitalism and self-interest. [....] “A course on the moral foundations of capitalism might include Atlas Shrugged, though it’s not an obvious choice—it’s badly written and simpleminded,” said the University of Chicago’s Brian Leiter, director of the Center of Law, Philosophy, and Human Values. For such a course, he said, the must-reads would include Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations and F. A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom. “There is a large contemporary philosophical literature defending markets by scholars like Robert Nozick, David Schmidtz, and Jerry Gaus. I would think at a serious university and in a serious course, you would look at this kind of work long before you get to Ayn Rand.”     Share on Facebook

• • • Is this curriculum for sale? 
Richie Zweigenhaft, Academe Atlas Shrugged  Capitalism  In accepting [a] ten-year grant for $500,000, Guilford College has signed on to a multimillion-dollar effort to promote the ideas of Ayn Rand and to require some of its students to read Atlas Shrugged. BB&T has persuaded Guilford College to showcase Rand’s ideas about capitalism as if they were among the seminal perspectives in the academic fields of business and economics. How did this happen? Where was the faculty?     Share on Facebook

• • • John Galt to the rescue 
Jay Schalin, The Pope Center Atlas Shrugged  Capitalism  [John] Allison and the [BB&T charitable] foundation have given grants to over 40 colleges and universities, mainly with stipulations to create pro-capitalism classes in which Rand’s writing is included. Sometimes, copies of Atlas Shrugged are passed out to large sections of the student body as well. The latest (July/August) issue of Academe—the house organ of the American Association of University Professors—launched a two-article attack on Allison’s activities. One article is written by Guilford College psychology professor Richie Zweigenhaft, who decries the fact that the entire faculty was not consulted before his school accepted the grant. The other article, by Gary H. Jones, associate professor of business communication at Western Carolina University, gives a more comprehensive overview of the BB&T’s grants and the issue of donations with strings attached. [....] While any conservative or free-market course or program is likely to draw the ire of the faculty, Rand’s inclusion is especially galling to the campus left. In the Academe article by Gary Jones, her work was derided as “badly written and simplistic,” and not something to be included “at a serious university and in a serious course.” While her philosophy of Objectivism has not entered the mainstream, it is hard to imagine it being more erroneous than the ideas spawned by left-wing icon Karl Marx, who based much of his thinking on the thoroughly discredited Labor Theory of Value, and whose ideas have failed the test of time. Yet Marx needs no champion like John Allison to bring him onto campus—he is quite commonplace there.     Share on Facebook

• • • John Galt in skirts in Connecticut 
Stuart Schwartz, American Thinker Atlas Shrugged  Capitalism  John Galt is alive and well and living in Connecticut. And he will be voting for Republican Linda McMahon for the U.S. Senate, if her reception by beleaguered taxpayers during a recent round of campaign tours is an indication. Or he may very well be Linda McMahon, judging by those who oppose her. The government bureaucrats, the political, media and academic elites aligned against her, are one with those who fought the fictional hero who defied “a collectivist system” marked by the “utter incompetence” of those in “governmental power” in Ayn Rand’s classic, Atlas Shrugged.     Share on Facebook

• • • Haters go after the ‘Ground Zero mosque’ 
Justin Raimondo, Antiwar.com Ayn Rand Institute  Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  We The Living  Capitalism  Leonard Peikoff  Inaccurate  How does a mosque, or, more accurately, a Muslim community center, “objectively entail a threat to the rights of others”? According to Peikoff, all manifestations of Islam – the very idea of Islam – is “objectively” a threat to the United States. Therefore, by his “logic,” it’s okay to violate the property rights of Muslims – any and all Muslims. Indeed, killing them all would be a good thing, according to his sick perversion of Objectivism.     Share on Facebook

• • • ‘Atlas Shrugged’ producer sets record straight on upcoming trilogy 
John Nolte, Big Hollywood Atlas Shrugged movie  Atlas Shrugged  Throughout the decades, stars from Barbara Stanwyck to Angelina Jolie have expressed interest in bringing the novel to life, but it’s going to be producers Harmon Kaslow and John Aglialoro who finally break the curse. Directed by Paul Johansson, who also stars as John Galt, and co-starring Taylor Schilling as Dagny Taggart and Matthew Marsden as James Taggart, principal photography wrapped this very day. Which means… Yes, there will be an “Atlas Shrugged” movie. Well, at least a part one.     Share on Facebook

• • • Atlas Shrugged’s timeless moral: Profit-making is virtue, not vice 
Yaron Brook, Investor's Business Daily Atlas Shrugged  Capitalism  Egoism  Image  Many of the heroes in “Atlas Shrugged” are the kind of men and women who built, and continue to build, America into the economic power that it is — inventors such as Edison, industrialists in the mold of Rockefeller and Carnegie, business visionaries reminiscent of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. In logic and justice, the heroes of “Atlas Shrugged” should be admired and appreciated for their efforts; instead, they’re demonized and shackled.     Share on Facebook

• • • We The Living 
John Gray, New Statesman Atheism  Ayn Rand Institute  Atlas Shrugged  We The Living  Capitalism  Personal life  Inaccurate  Book review.Rand's religion - a brand of evangelical atheism so extreme that Richard Dawkins's version sounds almost reasonable - required that everyone think alike and live in the same way.     Share on Facebook

• • • Atlas Shrugged, the movie: The story behind the camera 
Bruce Watson, Daily Finance Atlas Shrugged movie  Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  For actors and producers, Atlas Shrugged is a rich, attractive property with plenty of room for visual flair. For any director or cinematographer with a distinctive vision, it offers the opportunity to do battle with the corpse of a particularly strong-willed iconoclast and her legions of rabid fans.     Share on Facebook

• • • Atlas Shrugged poor doctrine to follow 
James A. Genisio, The Northwestern (Oshkosh, WI) Atheism  Atlas Shrugged  Egoism  I have called ‘Atlas Shrugged’ atheistic, materialistic and selfishness. Perhaps a better criticism of ‘Atlas Shrugged’ is that it treats people as economic units instead of spiritual beings. ‘Atlas Shrugged’ considers John Galt a great man. ‘Atlas Shrugged’ would not think much of St. Francis of Assisi, Mother Theresa or Dorothy Day.     Share on Facebook