• • • 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 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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• • Limit Sinquefield’s reach with reason, not finance limits 
Barb Shelly, Kansas City Star Ayn Rand Center  Don Watkins  Should there be a limit on how much wealthy individuals can contribute to issue campaigns in Missouri? That’s the focus of this story in today’s Kansas City Star, prompted by the megabucks that St. Louis multimillionaire Rex Sinquefield has sunk into his statewide campaign the ultimately repeal the earnings tax in Kansas City and St. Louis. [....] The Star’s story quotes Don Watkins of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, a libertarian think tank (as the name would imply): “The basic idea behind these complaints is, instead of speech being free, it should be equal,” Watkins said. “But leveling the playing field means shutting some people up. … The government’s going to take away his audience and give me an audience I didn’t earn. That is outrageous.” Watkins’ statement that “the government’s going to take away (Sinquefield’s) audience and give me (meaning less wealthy people) an audience I didn’t earn” strikes me as pretty elitist.     Share on Facebook

• • Calorie disclosure in store for food chains 
Kim Leonard, Tribune-Review (Pittsburgh) Ayn Rand Center  Don Watkins  “We’ve been preparing for this for quite a while,” said Chris Whalen, vice president of finance, said when asked about a requirement in the federal health care reform law that restaurant chains with 20 or more locations provide calorie counts on menus and signs at drive-throughs. [....] “I don’t think anybody knows the cost right now, but information isn’t costless,” said Don Watkins, an analyst with the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights in Washington. Because restaurateurs will pass on their cost of compliance to customers, “It’s coming out of your pocket, whether or not you want this information.” [....] Watkins of the Ayn Rand center said the problem is that growing businesses may think twice before opening a 20th location, major chains with hundreds of locations can absorb extra costs more easily and "the door is open now" for more government requirements on foods.     Share on Facebook

• • Big money commands attention and protest in Missouri 
Dave Helling And Lynn Horsley, Kansas City Star (MO) Ayn Rand Center  Don Watkins  (Article widely syndicated by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.)Any legislative attempt to rein in issue campaign contributions will meet fierce resistance, said Don Watkins of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, a libertarian think tank. “The basic idea behind these complaints is, instead of speech being free, it should be equal,” Watkins said. “But leveling the playing field means shutting some people up. … The government’s going to take away his audience and give me an audience I didn’t earn. That is outrageous.”     Share on Facebook

• • • Ayn Rand’s curious bloodlust 
Richard Hoste, Alternative Right - Exit Strategies Ayn Rand Center  Atlas Shrugged  Capitalism  Leonard Peikoff  The face that the [Ayn Rand Center] presents to those visiting its website makes what it published in the Times [on October 2, 2001] appear pacific. A page entitled “In Moral Defense of Israel” informs the reader that although the Jewish state isn’t perfect, it, like the US, “retains a significant respect for individual rights. Its citizens, whatever their race or religion, enjoy many freedoms, including freedom of thought and speech, and the right to own property.” Therefore, “Israel has a moral right to exist” in contrast to the absolute collectivists which oppose her.     Share on Facebook

• • The thinker 
James Taranto, Wall Street Journal Ayn Rand Center  Thomas A. Bowden  Earlier this week, “one who was there” told the Washington Post that in an Oval Office meeting, Obama commanded: “Plug the damn hole.” This leak--of the information, that is, not the oil--shows that Obama is doing what he conceives to be his job, namely trying to persuade people that he is thinking about the spill. But for those who would actually like to see the damn hole plugged, the president looks impotent and irrelevant--so much so that this response from the Ayn Rand Center is a model of common sense and clarity: “That's the politician's answer to every intractable problem: give orders, issue threats, and wait for obedience. But the creative human mind cannot take orders like that. Notice I didn't say, ‘refuses to take orders.’ I said, ‘cannot take orders.’”     Share on Facebook

• • UPS to Washington: Please hobble FedEx 
Alan Stock, KXNT-AM (Las Vegas) Ayn Rand Center  Don Watkins  Audio  “What can brown do for you? Well, if you’re FedEx, it can lobby Washington to strangle you with pro-union legislation”, says Don Watkins, an analyst at the Ayn Rand Center. He says that House Transportation Chairman James Oberstar included wording into a 2009 spending bill that would make it easier for teamsters to unionize FedEx. Watkins asserts this was at the urging of UPS. “What we need to be asking is: Why does the government have any say in this matter? Why doesn’t Washington put an end to political competition by returning to the role the founders envisioned for it: the protection of individual rights.” KXNT’s Alan Stock spoke with Don Watkins of the Ayn Rand Center to find out more.     Share on Facebook

• Getting to know Charlotte’s Tea Party 
Mary C. Curtis, Creative Loafing Ayn Rand Center  In Charlotte, an incomplete list of organizations represented at the two-plus-hour rally includes: We The People NC, North Carolina Fair Tax, Get Out of Our House (which, according to its website, plans "to evict the career politicians from the U.S. House of Representatives"), the Ayn Rand Center, the John Locke Foundation and the Campaign for Liberty, whose representatives passed out copies of the "North Carolina Firearms Freedom Act" that it wants the N.C. State Assembly to pass.     Share on Facebook

• • Walking tour of San Francisco protests: Political tourism in the age of Obama 
Pajamas Media Ayn Rand Center  Image  Several objectivist Ayn Rand fans showed up [at the Tax Day Tea Party] to proclaim their fondness for capitalism. Has it really come to this, that it’s necessary to protest in favor of capitalism, because the whole system seems under assault from our own government? Adam Smith help us!     Share on Facebook

• • Inside the Beltway 
David Frum, FrumForum Ayn Rand Center  Yaron Brook  PJTV has a super-sarcastic (and longggg) video up in which Bruce Bartlett and I are mocked and derided as out of touch with ordinary Americans for questioning the knowledgeability of tea party protesters. A lot of chortling on set. I chortled along with the hosts, but for different reasons: Irony #1: Among those chortling at our lack of connection to everyday politics – the head of the Ayn Rand Center! Now there’s a movement with grand appeal to everyday working Americans.     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

• • An honest IPCC scientist warns his colleagues: Don’t dismiss ‘climategate’ 
James G. Lakely, Big Government Ayn Rand Center  Keith Lockitch  The 13th Annual Energy & Environment Conference, held in Phoenix Feb. 1-3, isn’t the sort of place where global warming “deniers” are exactly welcome. In fact, by my observations, the skeptical caucus at the event consisted entirely of: James M. Taylor, a senior fellow for environment policy at The Heartland Institute; Keith Lockitch, a fellow of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights; and me. [....] Lockitch gave a presentation arguing free-market economies are better positioned than socialist societies to deal with any severe weather events caused by climate change — and was called a “denier” and compared to a shill for “Big Tobacco” for his trouble.     Share on Facebook

• • Lockitch says free markets key to climate strategy 
James M. Taylor, The Heartland Institute Ayn Rand Center  Capitalism  Keith Lockitch  Image  Keith Lockitch, fellow at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, told the Thirteenth Annual Energy and Environment Expo in Phoenix, Arizona, that respecting free markets is preferable to government intervention regarding global warming concerns.     Share on Facebook

• • The movement 
Ben McGrath, The New Yorker Ayn Rand Center  Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  As spring passed into summer, the scores at local Tea Party gatherings turned to hundreds, and then thousands, collecting along the way footloose Ron Paul supporters, goldbugs, evangelicals, Atlas Shruggers, militiamen, strict Constitutionalists, swine-flu skeptics, scattered 9/11 “truthers,” neo-“Birchers,” and, of course, “birthers”—those who remained convinced that the President was a Muslim double agent born in Kenya. [....] The involvement of people like Dick Armey in the Tea Party movement led many Democrats, including Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, to dismiss the significance of the activism as a creation of right-wing moguls. FreedomWorks and a host of lobbying firms and think tanks, including Americans for Tax Reform, the Club for Growth, Campaign for Liberty, and the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, sponsored the march in Washington last September. [....] FreedomWorks has an annual budget of only seven million dollars and a paid staff of eighteen, most of whom travel comfortably within the Washington establishment, where debating the sanity of [Glenn] Beck remains a common cocktail-party gambit. Its employees are well versed in the differences between the Austrian and Chicago economic schools, and in the biographical details of Howard Roark and John Galt, but tend to cringe at some of the paranoid elements within the Ron Paul contingent.     Share on Facebook

• Tea party ‘warriors’ take aim at Florida senate race 
David Morgan, Reuters - Front Row Washington Ayn Rand Center  Is the Tea Party movement really without leaders? An article in The New Yorker magazine points out the involvement of former House Majority Leader Dick Armey. It also notes that some well-heeled lobby groups and think tanks, including Americans for Tax Reform, the Club for Growth, Campaign for Liberty and the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, sponsored the Tea Party march in Washington last September.     Share on Facebook

• • Green crusade falls short 
Alexander Hrin, Michigan Daily (U of MI, Ann Arbor) Ayn Rand Center  Keith Lockitch  Objectivist author  It’s time for Americans to re-evaluate their decision to allow the Green Crusaders to become spokesmen for the future of energy, technology and even morality in our country. The Students of Objectivism will be hosting a guest speaker to further discuss this issue. Keith Lockitch, a fellow from the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, will speak on Wednesday, Feb. 3 at 7:30 p.m. in Angell Hall Auditorium C.     Share on Facebook

• Is a one million IPC march possible in Uganda? 
John Njoroge, The Independent (Uganda) Ayn Rand Center  In September 2009, the White House in Washington DC was thrown into panic. About one million Americans flooded Capitol Hill, having matched from Pennsylvania Avenue, shouting ‘Enough, enough’. This massive demonstration, the biggest of its kind since President Obama took up office in January 2008, had been organized by the Conservatives group, the Tea Party Patriots. [....] This nationwide protest was very expensive. Its organizers did not disclose how much they spent, but analysts say it must have costed the Tea Party Patriots not less than US$2million. They (organizers) however disclosed that they got funding from the Conservative Party, the Heartland Institute, Americans for Tax Reform, the Ayn Rand Center for Individuals Rights (Which are very successful and influential organizations in America) and from individual Americans who willingly contributed to the cause.     Share on Facebook

• • Why is it my right to take something from you because I “need” it? 
David Geracioti, Registered Rep. Ayn Rand Center  Capitalism  Don Watkins  Yaron Brook  In an excellent editorial published on 29 December in Investor’s Business Daily (one of my favorite op-ed pages), Yaron Brook and Don Watkins, of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, point out the problem with ObamaCare. Actually, their point is really aimed at the problem, the error, that those opposed to socialized medicine make: They only oppose it on the grounds that it’s too expensive or won’t work. Those against it should be opposing it on a more philosophical, ideological basis. And, that is, you are not your brother’s keeper.     Share on Facebook

• • Just wanted to say… 
Lynn Schroeder, Cavalier Chronicle (ND) Ayn Rand Center  Don Watkins  This is an email I received from the Ayn Rand Center. It fairly well sums up the direction Washington has America heading.....Big Government 24/7. “Suppose you heard of someone who, in spite of its bloody and impoverished history, advocated socialism,” writes Don Watkins, an analyst with the Ayn Rand Center. “Suppose that person thought the key to moving America toward socialism was using government power to ensure the media pushed an anti-capitalist message. Suppose that, in order to achieve this goal, he wrote a book arguing that the Federal Communications Commission should curtail the private media with a crippling array of restrictions and taxes, and then pour tens of billions of dollars into the creation of a government-funded ‘public’ media. Suppose he also advocated subjecting Americans to mandatory ‘media training’ so they would know how to ‘properly’ interpret the media. What would you say of such a person? Well, if you were the Obama administration, you would say, ‘This person deserves a job at the FCC.’” This person is Mark Lloyd, the FCC’s Chief Diversity Officer.     Share on Facebook