• • • 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

• Two brainiac oddballs and one mean bastard 
Steven Wishnia, The Indypendent Capitalism  [George] Steinbrenner epitomized the Ayn Rand arrogant capitalist. He never swung a bat or threw a ball at anything close to a professional level, but he was quick to claim credit for the Yankees’ victories and to insult players publicly when they lost, in terms like “fat toad,” “he spit the bit,” and “Mr. May.” Like every other baseball owner, he found ignoring steroids highly profitable.     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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• Unstable platform 
Ed Kilgore, The Democratic Strategist Capitalism  I strongly suggest a reading of the Iowa Republican Party Platform by anyone who accuses "liberals" or "the media" of exaggerating the extremism of today's conservatives. [....] It’s hard to miss principle number seven, which would have satisfied Ayn Rand even on one of her crankier days: “The individual works hard for what is his/hers. Therefore, the individual will determine with whom he/she will share it, not the government. No more legal plunder. Legal plunder is defined as using the law to take from one person what belongs to them, and giving it to others to whom it does not belong. It is plunder if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what that citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.” Given that principle, it’s not surprising that elsewhere the platform flatly calls for the abolition of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid (along with minimum wage laws), and of the federal departments of Agriculture (!), Education and Energy. It also appears to oppose any anti-discrimination laws of any sort.     Share on Facebook

• The continuing crisis in the New World Order 
Jacob Steelman, LewRockwell.com Atlas Shrugged  Capitalism  The sub-prime meltdown spread like a wildfire throughout the financial industry in September 2008 with what were then unprecedented central bank and government interventions and bailouts attempting to put out the fire storm. [....] Events unfolded like a chapter out of Ayn Rand’s popular novel, Atlas Shrugged.     Share on Facebook

• Capitalism as a cultural system? 
Alexander Saxton, Monthly Review - MR Zine Capitalism  Book review: The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism, by Joyce Appleby.I was a colleague of Joyce Appleby’s for eight or ten years at UCLA. I regard highly her work as a historian and know her to be an outstanding teacher. I was impressed by her openness to students; even more so by those “left-leaning” tendencies (read: social consciousness) which, for me, locate her at the opposite end of the moral/political spectrum from most libertarians I have encountered. If Appleby is a libertarian, she is one who has repudiated the self-serving individualism expounded by Ayn Rand.     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

• • • 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

• • Tea Party, meet religious right. Everybody meet Ayn Rand. 
Adele M. Stan, AlterNet Capitalism  In two major speeches and in the scuttlebutt of break-out sessions, Tea Party movement activists yesterday witnessed a subtle melding of their ideology with the sensibilities of the religious right and the cold capitalism of libertarian she-ro Ayn Rand. Along the way, more nakedly than before, presenters spoke of their clear-eyed plan to take over the Republican Party from within.     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

• • Capital strike? 
Greg Moses, Counterpunch Atlas Shrugged  Capitalism  The problem with the capitalists who are on strike now is that they are living under an antiquated paradigm of exotic genius, channelled communication, and crony networks. Their secret hero is John Galt of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged who privately invented the secret to prosperity but refused to share it with the workers who would be needed to make it so. The appropriate answer to this calculating heart of striking capitalists is to say, but John Galt you are not.     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

• • Deadbrains 
Dan Popp, RenewAmerica Capitalism  Government “help” to business is just as disastrous as government persecution... the only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off. — Ayn Rand.     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

• The many bottom lines of businesses 
Michael Arrington, TechCrunch Capitalism  This post was written by guest contributor Leila Janah, the CEO of the nonprofit outsourced services firm Samasource. Leila continues to argue with me over whether or not pure capitalism can solve what ails us. I tend to take a Randian view of the world. Janah argues that capitalism can often lead to evil, and points to the massive Taiwanese firm Foxconn as an example of capitalism going wrong. That’s certainly a crowd pleaser, but I think most of the problems with capitalism stem from government regulation.     Share on Facebook