• • Fiscal responsibility versus altruism 
Don And Bernice Richmond, Naples Daily News (FL) Altruism  The Virtue of Selfishness  Altruism is the principle “that service to others is the only justification for (one’s) existence, and that self-sacrifice is (one’s) highest moral duty, virtue and value” (Ayn Rand). For well over a century, our politicians have won elections and governed by advocating and practicing this “virtue” — with other people’s money.     Share on Facebook

• • • Finding capitalism’s human side 
Hannah Naiditch, San Gabriel Valley Tribune (CA) Altruism  Atlas Shrugged  Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal  The Fountainhead  The Virtue of Selfishness  Capitalism  Egoism  Inaccurate  Ayn Rand focused on human nature and used it to justify her philosophy. Human nature dictates that man must always act in his own self-interest. She warned that if civilization is to survive, we must reject altruism. She considered altruism incompatible with human nature. Ayn Rand’s philosophy became known as Objectivism. Clubs sprang up across the land where her admirers shared her philosophy. She was a strong believer in pure, unregulated capitalism. Ayn Rand and her philosophy were probably at least partly responsible for our country ending up in dog-eat-dog laissez-faire capitalism. She was part of the move to the political right.     Share on Facebook

• • • Why Anthony Daniels smears Ayn Rand 
Alan Germani, The Objective Standard Altruism  Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  Capitalism  Egoism  Personal life  In his recent New Criterion article “Ayn Rand: Engineer of Souls,”1 Anthony Daniels, better known by his pseudonym Theodore Dalrymple, attacks the well-known novelist/philosopher as being, among other things, prone to “crude” errors, a “rationalist who was not entirely rational,” “adept at self-deception,” “incapable of seeing the contradictions in her own work,” and “seriously deficient in sensibility and discrimination across a wide range of important human activities.” But Daniels’s portrayal of Rand and her ideas is a series of gross misrepresentations and smears.     Share on Facebook

• The old new right 
Randall J. Stephens, The Christian Century Altruism  Egoism  Book Review: Invisible Hands: The Businessmen's Crusade Against the New Deal, by Kim Phillips-Fein.Phillips-Fein tells the full story of the right, with all its weird turns, quite well. Her discussion of the group Spiritual Mobilization, “which took as its mission a theological justification for capitalism,” is captivating. It was just one of many similar crusading groups in the 1950s and the years following. Christianity, its spokespeople warned, had too long been associated with “pink” seminarians, leftist theologians, and intrusive progressives of all stripes. According to the members of Spiritual Mobilization, Christ promoted self-interest and never advocated “disinterested altruism.” It was the sort of faith that might have suited even Ayn Rand.     Share on Facebook

• • • Atlas’s Achilles’ heel 
Howard R. Gold, MoneyShow.com Altruism  Atlas Shrugged  Capitalism  Egoism  Personal life  Unfortunately, Rand, whose work offers a ringing defense of individual liberty and capitalism, as I wrote here last week, went so far in her attacks on altruism and praise of selfishness that she probably turned off thousands, if not millions, of potential followers—ambitious, rational people who believed in free markets but also felt an obligation to give something back to others. Like, say, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. There’s plenty of evidence that altruism (by the common definition, not Rand’s) plays an important role in many areas of human life.     Share on Facebook

• • Denver talk show guests rail against proposed lower Manhattan mosque 
Joseph Boven, Colorado Independent Altruism  Egoism  “[The mosque] is a travesty. It is another attack on America,” said Pamela Gellar, editor at Atlasshrugs.com, a strident Ayn Rand-inspired libertarian politics site and a leader of the group “Stop the Islamicization of America.” She said a mosque built on the site of a building that was crushed by one of the wings of the 9/11 planes would be “the ultimate symbol of victory.” [....] Asked about her personal beliefs, Geller said she followed the teachings of Ayn Rand. “If you act in your own self interest, you will serve the greater good– but it should never be about the greater good… I think that altruism is a cancer. It is a means, it is a psychological means to enslave people. I would never live for the sake of another man. I would never ask another man to live for the sake of me,” Geller said.     Share on Facebook

• Slapstick meets Thai tradition 
Tara Tan, Straits Times (Singapore) Altruism  (Requires subscription.)I have to confess my mouth fell open and my eyebrows rose to the high heavens when four Thai dancers wearing too many sequins pranced onto the stage at the start of Red Demon. [....] This brand of Likay, a modern folk dance-drama style steeped in tradition and contemporary touches, performed by Thai group Makhampom Theatre Group, was rather like a hybrid of the Western musical and the Asian storytelling form. [....] The story was written by Japanese playwright Hideki Noda and adapted by director Pradit Prasartthong, who also played the village braggart, Puglan. Moral teachings about altruism and Ayn-Rand-type individualism were at the root of the production, which was snappily paced and interjected with moments where the graceful Anukoon Rotjanasuksomboon as the Red Demon performed traditional folk dance gestures and dance steps.     Share on Facebook

• • • Garbage and gravitas 
Corey Robin, The Nation Altruism  Atheism  Atlas Shrugged  Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal  The Fountainhead  The Virtue of Selfishness  Capitalism  Personal life  Reviews of Ayn Rand and the World She Made, by Anne C. Heller and Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right, by Jennifer Burns.Where Goebbels talked of violence and war, Rand spoke of commerce and trade, production and economy. But fascism is hardly hostile to the heroic individual. That individual, moreover, often finds his deepest calling in economic activity. Far from demonstrating a divergence from fascism, Rand's economic writings register its impression indelibly.     Share on Facebook

• • • Peterson’s deficit “budgetball”: The Fountainhead meets Death Race 
Richard (RJ) Eskow, Huffington Post Altruism  The Fountainhead  Egoism  Conservatives consider Rand's novel The Fountainhead the story of a heroic man of integrity who refuses to participate in the shared community of altruistic-minded weaklings, as represented by the "lesser people" who believe in paying taxes and helping others. It's really something very different: it's the story of someone who was educated at public expense, kept healthy through government sanitation measures, protected from murder by police, and saved from enemy hordes by a government military -- and who refuses to help others when these services, his own talents, and a lot of good luck allow him to become wealthy.     Share on Facebook

• • How Twitter + dopamine = better humans 
Scott Brown, Wired Magazine Altruism  Atlas Shrugged  Man, what a bunch of selfish bastards we are. Gold hoarding abounds. Tea parties rage. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand’s gospel of self-interest, is outselling The Audacity of Hope on Amazon.com.     Share on Facebook

• • • Queen of the cult 
Jeff Madrick, moment Altruism  Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  Capitalism  Review of Ayn Rand and the World She Made, by Anne C. Heller.What attracted acolytes to Rand’s totalitarian way of thinking? Over-simplification, perhaps. Certainty. If her economic prescriptions were more than merely articulate dogma, Heller does not convey it, except in occasional snippets of argumentation. Rand died in 1982, still the darling of a certain segment of conservatives. Guards were posted to keep Nathaniel Branden from attending the memorial service. He never abandoned Randianism, however, though he did finally recognize the importance of emotions. To Rand, all that mattered was rationality, or so she claimed.     Share on Facebook

• • • Tea Party followers are ignorant 
Eva Knapp, Gazette-Mail (Charleston, WV) Altruism  Atheism  Atlas Shrugged  Capitalism  Egoism  Inaccurate  Rand, a right-wing guru whose philosophy aligns with libertarian politics, is championed by Tea folks -- the very people she despised. (She characterized average people as "ugly, stupid and irrational," and denounced democracy as "a totalitarian manifestation.") She believed only "absolute individual freedom" separates superior beings from lesser ones, and only "free-market capitalism" rewards the cream of the crop -- all others deserve their lot. [....] Rand contended that selfishness is the highest moral good. Altruism is, in her words, "moral cannibalism." The worthy person "produces," makes money, and lives without regard for others. He stands alone -- contemptuous of government and lesser beings. Such is the "superman" John Galt in her novel "Atlas Shrugged," a hero Tea Partiers honor in their "Go Galt" slogan.     Share on Facebook

• • • New ‘rights’ are wrong 
Don Richmond, Naples Daily News (FL) Altruism  Atlas Shrugged  Objectivist author  The Declaration of Independence holds that rights are “self-evident.” However, it is the failure to grasp the true nature of rights which has brought this country to its current condition. It remained for the 20th-century philosopher Ayn Rand to explicitly identify rights as “moral principle(s) defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context.”     Share on Facebook

• • • 8 reasons why I love Ayn Rand 
Casey McGlasson, Indiana Daily Student (Indiana U, Bloomington) Altruism  The first time I picked up an Ayn Rand novel, I wasn’t reading about economics or politics or even philosophy. I was reading about humanity — about the qualities of mind that characterize our daily interactions and the phenomenal power of the ability to think.     Share on Facebook

• • • Epideictic oratory in Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead” 
Tori E. Gibbs, Student Pulse Altruism  The Fountainhead  Egoism  Student essay.In his speech to the jury in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, Howard Roark uses epideictic—not forensic—rhetoric. His speech, designed and delivered as a presentation of values instead of a deliberate defense, nonetheless awards him with a verdict of innocence. Roark’s demonstration of highly effective epideictic rhetoric in a courtroom suggests that the three rhetorical settings are perhaps more interchangeable than Aristotle and fellow rhetoricians present them to be. If an wholly epideictic speech can serve the same purpose (regardless of whether or not this is intended) as a forensic speech, the lines between deliberative, forensic, and epideictic oratory become distinctly blurred, leading us to question the applicability and relevance of ideas thousands of years old.     Share on Facebook

• • Government has duty to promote general welfare 
Bob Fuller, Las Vegas Sun Altruism  Atlas Shrugged  Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal  The Virtue of Selfishness  Carl Parrillo — in his Monday letter to the editor [....] mentions the novel “Atlas Shrugged” as a guide. The author, Ayn Rand, basically contrasted capitalism and communism. She also wrote “Virtue of Selfishness,” a critique of altruism, and “Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal,” an excellent history of economics. In an ideal world, all people would be self-supporting and responsible citizens. In the real world, we have people who cannot reach these goals for a variety of reasons.     Share on Facebook

• The case for enlightened self-interest 
Bharat Joshi, Wall Street Journal - India Realtime Altruism  Egoism  [The] nuanced subject of enlightened self interest has been studied by various (and varied) thinkers from Ayn Rand to Adam Smith, so its understandable if we don’t have unanimous consensus in the short term. But I will maintain that it’s not such a bad thing to have enlightened self interest, and not altruism, as the engine of reform or betterment at India’s and the world’s biggest companies. It’s often the best way to do good by doing well.     Share on Facebook

• • • The beauty of selfishness 
Monika Halan, LiveMint.com Altruism  Night of January 16th  We The Living  Capitalism  Egoism  Personal life  In her biography Goddess of the Market—Ayn Rand and the American Right, Jennifer Burns manages to do the unthinkable: She keeps her opinion out of the book so that the reader has the liberty to react to facts, to the contradictions and the duality. Burns brings out Rand’s grandeur of thought but poverty of emotion, without overpowering the narrative with her own voice.     Share on Facebook

• • Greenspan’s testimony: Will the ‘maestro’ face the music? 
Richard Eskow, Huffington Post Altruism  Atlas Shrugged  Inaccurate  [Alan] Greenspan's a lifelong disciple of Ayn Rand, the anti-government radical who rejected altruism and believed that "Man's ... own happiness as the moral purpose of his life." Charity was contemptible to her. She once wrote, "What are your masses but mud to be ground underfoot, fuel to be burned for those who deserve it?" Rand believed in self-interest as the prime motivating force in the world, and her book Atlas Shrugged celebrates a world where the fortunate refuse to help others.     Share on Facebook

• In vitro debate: Is it wrong to sell donor eggs at high prices? 
Nikhil Arora, Christian Science Monitor Altruism  When not opposing [egg donation] on health grounds, [regulators] instead argue that “it trivializes altruistic donation, whether of eggs, sperm or embryos", as the British Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority said. However, if the regulators are so confident of the European ‘culture of altruism’ (Ayn Rand fans in the readership should know they have my sympathy), why is there consistently a shortage of eggs available for donation? This culture of altruism is obviously not pervasive enough to ensure results.     Share on Facebook