• • • 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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• • Graham Elliot Bowles on haters, pills, and being on Fox 
Joshua David Stein, Eater.com Egoism  [Q:] You [...] mentioned in [a] Nightline piece that you founded a religion in high school? [A:] Well, I had a tough time in high school. Since my dad was in the Navy, I went to three different high schools and ended up in the hospital for manic depression and suicide and all that stuff, on a ton of medications. I’ve always known I was different. In high school I made my own t-shirts. Each one was named after a different day of the week. So I didn’t have to deal with fashion. My religion was called Me-ism. It was inspired by Ayn Rand and objectivism.     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

• • A mad look at philosophy 
Brian Moon, Wisconsin Radio Network Egoism  As fans of Mad Men eagerly await the season premiere Sunday night, a Wisconsinite helps people take a philosophical look at the TV drama, which portrays advertising agencies in the 1960’s. James South, Chair of the Marquette University Philosophy Department, helped edit Mad Men and Philosophy: Nothing is as it Seems. The book takes a closer look at the AMC drama citing the works of well known minds including Ayn Rand. Rand has been referenced on the show as a boss of the main character Don Draper suggested he read her books. Draper’s womanizing and competitive business practices have also been attributed as an example of Rand’s “virtue of selfishness.” However, South says an author in the book dispels this comparison as the Randian principle centers around being a unique individual, making their mark on the world, rather than “do whatever you feel like doing.”     Share on Facebook

• • Reading right: Core curriculum 
Tribune-Review (Pittsburgh) Atlas Shrugged  Egoism  Benjamin Wiker’s “10 Books Every Conservative Must Read: Plus Four Not to Miss and One Impostor” (Regnery) doesn’t list his favorites or those that have sold best. “Rather,” writes Wiker, author of “10 Books that Screwed Up the World” and a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, “the choices were made based upon what conservatives must read in light of our present condition.” [H]is “One Impostor”? “Atlas Shrugged” -- because “Ayn Rand would have agreed that she was no conservative. Rand’s insistence on pure selfishness as the root and branch of her moral system proved irreconcilable with true conservative moral principles.”     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

• Putting into context the loss of a mentor 
Howard Bess, Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman (Wasilla, AK) Egoism  The emerging church appears to be a refreshing reaction against selfish hedonism. A new interest in Jesus, his teachings, his lifestyle and his understandings have become a focus of the discussions. Ayn Rand has lost her luster. A new generation is determined to find what it means to be a Christian with a diverse globalized faith that is intellectually honest and fully functional in a post-modern world.     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

• • • 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

• • • A symposium starring Aristotle and Ayn Rand 
Ellis Washington, WorldNetDaily Atheism  Atlas Shrugged  The Virtue of Selfishness  Capitalism  Egoism  Personal life  Aristotle: As a conservative I accept the world as it is and distrust the politics of abstract reason, unlike the sophists, humanists and liberals whose empiricism views reason separate from experience. Despite her exceeding love of my ideas, I answer “yes” to the question – Is Ayn Rand’s radical atheism a terminal defect of Objectivism philosophy? Conservatism and capitalism aside, the major tenet of Objectivism philosophy effectively is the worship of selfishness and narcissism, which is antithetical to real conservatism and capitalism, which are rooted in the Republic, the free market, morality, assiduousness, veritas, virtue and God.     Share on Facebook

• • Lonely guys 
Peter Lawler, First Things - Postmodern Conservative Egoism  Michael Douglas is the star of A SOLITARY MAN, which is nowhere near as good as A SINGLE MAN or A SERIOUS MAN. Douglas basically plays the same guy he played in WALL STREET and WONDER BOYS–a glib and brilliant womanizing sociopath. He gets himself, once again, in big trouble, as all his women dump him in response to his honestly expressed Randian rational egoism when it comes to sex and his irrational criminality when it comes to business.     Share on Facebook

• • • The good-bad books of summer 
Margaret Wente, Globe and Mail (Toronto) Atheism  Atlas Shrugged  Capitalism  Egoism  Exodus wouldn’t make anyone’s list of literary masterpieces. But it surely ranks among the most influential American novels of the 20th century – not with other writers, but with the public. The same is true of Atlas Shrugged, which, I am embarrassed to say, also made a profound impression on my young and malleable mind.[....] [Ayn Rand’s] book embodied just the kind of rigid, judgmental absolutism that’s irresistible to self-absorbed adolescents who believe society is fundamentally screwed up and their parents are hopeless losers. No doubt, it helped make me more than usually insufferable. Eventually, I forgave my parents. I came to realize that laissez-faire capitalism was not, in fact, the answer to everything, nor were all religious people dupes and fools. Ayn Rand now seems a faintly ridiculous figure.     Share on Facebook

• • Social revolutions 
Asad Zaman, The Express Tribune The Virtue of Selfishness  Egoism  In a college class, we read and discussed an essay entitled ‘The Virtue of Selfishness.’ The author, Ayn Rand, argued that contrary to traditional beliefs, selfishness was a good thing. At that time, the majority of the students in my class were against this idea, though there was a minority that was boldly and shockingly in favour. [....] In a discussion in today’s classes in the US, there would be none to argue the case for generosity against selfishness.     Share on Facebook

• • American cars surpass foreign rivals 
Joseph Szczesny, American cars surpass foreign rivals Egoism  “Do what we want, buy what we want” is supported by the hippie movement, libertarians and followers of Ayn Rand — groups who also draw inspiration from deep-seated American myths about cowboys and frontiersman. In the face of such thinking, which had a substantial, though often underrated, appeal to the baby boomers who have shaped American culture in the past 40 years, the “Buy-American” campaigns really never had much of a chance outside of Michigan and Ohio. Self-interest, in its narrowest terms, is a powerful tool.     Share on Facebook

• • Why can’t novelists make it work in the theatre? 
Alexis Soloski, The Guardian (London) The Fountainhead  Egoism  Over the past few weeks, masochists have been able to gawp at the much-delayed New York debut of Ayn Rand’s 1934 drama Ideal. This endless array of stilted dialogue and pointless pageantry centres on Kay Gonda, a movie star on the run for murder. She calls on six of her greatest fans, seeking someone who adores her enough to offer shelter. Instead of bringing a sensible hostess gift such as flowers or a nice Chilean red, however, she arrives at each door with lectures on the supremacy of art. Even 10 minutes in, my rational self-interest told me to flee.     Share on Facebook

• • • Ayn Rand’s Ideal is no Fountainhead of genius 
Alexis Soloski, Village Voice (New York) The Fountainhead  Egoism  As one might expect, Ideal is a very silly drama—on the one hand, a period murder mystery; on the other, an outlet for Rand’s ideas about objectivism and rational self-interest.     Share on Facebook

• • • Not going well for conservative Christians 
Eric Poole, Ellwood City Ledger (PA) Atheism  Anthem  Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  Egoism  Thanks to participants in the Tea Party movement, Rand’s philosophy, and that’s using a term loosely, of anti-government, pro-business beliefs have been rehabilitated. Among her admirers is Kentucky Republican U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul, who, contrary to Internet rumor, was not named in Ayn Rand’s honor. The central theme of Rand’s worldview is [....] that selfishness is one of the highest human impulses and that society benefits most when everyone is looking out for himself. In short, the word “team” does have an “I” the way Rand spelled it. If you’re searching for a Christian-friendly agenda now, you’re probably looking at the Democratic side of the aisle.     Share on Facebook

• • Baby, it’s a classic 
Darragh McManus, The Guardian - Books Blog (London) Egoism  Lingering traces of student radicalism dictate that I could never read those paeans to shopping, consumerism and materialism that dominate the bestseller lists. So bad luck, Jackie Collins and Candace Bushnell, you’re cut. Even the classics are not without potential peril. For instance, could reading Sophocles induce a literal – and literary – Oedipus complex in baby boys? Would Hamlet confuse the little tyke about appropriate familial dynamics? And do we really want to create a generation of uber-babies, driven to psychotic levels of selfishness by the quasi-philosophy of Ayn Rand, demonstrating their mastery of the world by refusing to pee until just after you’ve opened the nappy for a look-see? Or course we don’t.     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