• • • 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

• • • “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

• • • 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

• • • 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

• Karl Rove headed to Steamboat 
Brent Boyer, Steamboat Pilot & Today (Steamboat Springs, CO) Ayn Rand Institute  Yaron Brook  The Freedom Conference, sponsored and organized by the Steamboat Institute, is scheduled for Aug. 27 and 28 at The Steamboat Grand. [....] Confirmed speakers include Rove; Virginia Thomas, founder of Liberty Central; Tony Blankley, a panelist on KCRW-Santa Monica radio show “Left, Right and Center;” Yaron Brook, president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute; Dan Mitchell, senior fellow at The Cato Institute; Peter Brookes, senior fellow for National Security Affairs and a fellow for Policy Studies with the Heritage Foundation; and Jason Mattera, author of “Obama Zombies: How the Liberal Machine Brainwashed My Generation.”     Share on Facebook

• • Spirit of Ayn Rand 
Von Dean Mollenhauer, Star-News (Pasadena, CA) Ayn Rand Institute  Atlas Shrugged  The Virtue of Selfishness  My husband has been with the same land surveying company for 60-plus years, eventually buying the business with partners. More lean years again, but the Mollenhauer Group is now a much respected name in Southern California. But now as government swoops down to take much of what was gained in their compassion for the homeless and downtrodden, I’m supporting the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine and reading her book, “The Art of Selfishness,” again and again.     Share on Facebook

• Founders’ Friday: Lessons from our Founding Fathers 
Glenn Beck, FOXNews - Glenn Beck Ayn Rand Institute  Yaron Brook  TV show transcript.I said earlier this week when Vince Flynn and Yaron Brook from the Ayn Rand Society were on, and I said, you don’t want a revolution. You have a revolution, it’s a nightmare. We turn into France, a bloodbath. You don’t want a revolution. You can’t make this kind of change unless you really know what you are talking about. Unless: A, God is there. And the next thing that you would need is to know who you are. You need to know what you’re fighting for.     Share on Facebook

• • • ‘Glenn Beck’: Is fiction turning into reality? 
Glenn Beck, FOXNews - Glenn Beck Ayn Rand Institute  Atlas Shrugged  Capitalism  Yaron Brook  Image  TV show transcript.BECK: [....] You are really the one representing Ayn Rand at this point. When did she write “Fountainhead,” or “Atlas Shrugged”? YARON BROOK, PRESIDENT, AYN RAND INSTITUTE: ‘57. Fifty-three years ago. BECK: Fifty-three years ago. If I meet one more person who says, oh, my gosh, I just read Ayn Rand. I love this one. Glenn, have you ever read “Atlas Shrugged>”? I’m like yes, I have. They’re like, duh, a friend gave it to me and it’s all happening. I’m like, yes!     Share on Facebook

• • Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea 
Ira Stoll, FutureOfCapitalism.com Ayn Rand Institute  Capitalism  Yaron Brook  “Much of the current popular literature on the neocons is unpersuasively hostile, overwrought, superficial, paranoid, and wrongheaded,” write C. Bradley Thompson and Yaron Brook in their new book, Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea. Professor Thompson, executive director of the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism, was the subject of an interview on this site last year. Mr. Brook is executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute.     Share on Facebook

• • • Interview: Yaron Brook 
Alexander D. Farris & C. James Block, Imagineer Ayn Rand Institute  Capitalism  Yaron Brook  Yaron Brook is president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, an organization focussed on spreading Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Dr. Brook lectures on Objectivism, business ethics, and foreign policy at college campuses, community groups, and corporations throughout the world. The Imagineer discussed how Objectivist philosophy applies to economics, the status quo of the American economic system, and the role democracy should play in society with Dr. Brook.     Share on Facebook

• • • Randed for life 
Nilanjana S Roy, Sify News (India) Ayn Rand Institute  Anthem  Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  Personal life  Review of Ayn Rand and the World She Made, by Anne C. Heller.For all that thousands of readers who outgrow Ayn Rand by their late twenties, the list of the ones who don’t is illustrious — John Hospers, Alan Greenspan, Robert Mayhew and other venerables have all indicated their deep debt to her ideas. The contemporary reception to The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged is telling: many critics slammed the books for their didactic, “offensively pedestrian” style, and they were right. Many readers bought the books anyway, drawn to Rand’s almost comically force-of-nature heroes and her perversely suffering, noble heroines.     Share on Facebook

• ‘Is the real news dead?‘ 
WorldNetDaily Ayn Rand Institute  Yaron Brook  WND managing editor and veteran newsman David Kupelian will be among the speakers at a two-day international conference next week on the future of the press, titled “Is The (Real) News Dead?” Organized by the American Freedom Alliance, the conference will be held June 13-14 at Pepperdine University at its Malibu, California, campus. [....] He will be joined by speakers including: [....] Yaron Brook, president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute and a regular contributor to Forbes.com.     Share on Facebook

• • • Ideal premieres at 59E59 Theaters 6/17-7/3 
Broadway World Ayn Rand Institute  Atlas Shrugged  Night of January 16th  The Fountainhead  Personal life  Idealwas written in 1934, during a time of great professional turmoil in Rand’s life. At the time, her novel We the Living was rejected by a succession of publishers for being “too intellectual” and too opposed to Soviet Russia; her play Night of January 16th had not yet found a producer; and Miss Rand’s meager savings were running out. Ideal was written originally as a novelette and then extensively revised and turned into a stage play.     Share on Facebook

• • Does God have a place in your portfolio? 
Sheryl Nance-Nash, Black Enterprise Ayn Rand Institute  Yaron Brook  Many investors object to investment decisions made with anything other than pure quantitative analysis. Yaron Brook, president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, agrees with that sentiment. “You should evaluate an investment based on whether it achieves its intended goal,” says Brook. “In general, the goal of a business is to make money, not to serve a social agenda. Companies should be left alone to maximize their profits.” While that may seem a bit cold, Brook poses some questions for investors to ponder: “What does socially responsible investing even mean? Is it socially responsible to manufacture the weapons we need to protect ourselves in a time of war? Is selling alcohol socially responsible? And if not, what about Big Macs and M&M’s? Socially responsible is an undefined term that’s tailor-made for people who want to control what businesses can and can’t produce.”     Share on Facebook

• • Hyperinflation Q & A 
Brianna Aubin, Opinion Forum Ayn Rand Institute  Capitalism  Yaron Brook  One of the main reasons I subscribe to PJTV is because of the Front Page, which usually features Terry Jones of Investors Business Daily and Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute. Klavan on the Culture is hilarious, and the other people on PJTV do produce some good stuff, but my favorite program by far is watching Terry and Yaron hash out the economic and political scene with Allen Barton on the Front Page.     Share on Facebook

• A problem like Paul 
Rich Lowry, National Review Online Ayn Rand Institute  [Rand Paul] had hardly won his party’s nomination for U.S. Senate before getting embroiled in a controversy over the 1964 Civil Rights Act, apparently in the belief that it’s never too late to re-litigate 40-year-old historic milestones. Paul doesn’t like that the law forced private businesses to serve blacks, a violation of his libertarian principles. Paul said that he supported the parts of the law that ended state discrimination and he abhors racism. None of which prevented him from getting smeared as a mild-mannered George Wallace. It turns out that a Senate campaign does not offer the same friendly confines for the discussion of libertarian doctrine as a seminar at the Ayn Rand Institute.     Share on Facebook

• Have we learned our lessons? 
Boston Globe Ayn Rand Institute  Capitalism  Yaron Brook  Ford Hall Forum at Suffolk University presents Lessons From the Financial Crisis: More Government or Less? with Yaron Brook, president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, and Peter Kadzis, editor of the Boston Phoenix and former contributor to Money, Forbes, and the Boston Business Journal. May 20, 6:30-8 p.m. Free.     Share on Facebook

• • • Philadelphia lecture addresses health care 
Darwyyn Deyo, Pennsylvania Independent Ayn Rand Institute  Yaron Brook  Health care is neither a right nor a privilege, Yaron Brook, head of the Ayn Rand Institute told an audience at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital and Medical Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. Mr. Brook’s presentation was aimed at addressing the increase in government intervention in the health system.     Share on Facebook

• • • Yaron Brook of Ayn Rand Institute speaks at University of Pennsylvania 
Stacy Litz, The Examiner Ayn Rand Institute  Capitalism  Yaron Brook  Yaron Brook, who is the president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute spoke last night at the University of Pennsylvania on the topic of health care in a discussion titled, "You are Not Your Brother's Health Care Provider" followed by Q&A. When it comes to health care, Brook took the individualist approach, especially of that promoted by Ayn Rand and her works. "First care about yourself and then your brothers, your neighbors."     Share on Facebook

• • Obama’s faith-based programs pushing global warming, climate change, green issues 
Warner Todd Huston, Canada Free Press Alex Epstein  Ayn Rand Institute  The left was out of its mind over Bush’s ideas. In 2004, for instance, the website TheocracyWatch.org hyperbolically said, “Under the Bush administration, our country is experiencing a major transformation from a secular to a religious government. The President’s faith-based initiative is central to this transformation and raises serious questions about church-state separation.” This was the left-wing talking points du jour on Bush’s faith-based programs. It wasn’t just the left, but even from the libertarian side Bush’s ideas were attacked. Alex Epstein of the Ayn Rand Institute said that the faith-based initiative was a “direct violation” of the Constitution. [....] No one can look at Obama’s current policies and see any reason to excuse him from being smeared with the same brush the left used to tar Bush.     Share on Facebook