• Is the US self-interested? 
Tibor Machan, Sun Journal (New Bern, NC) Egoism  as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and others have maintained — but recently with only a few such as Ayn Rand and quite a few psychotherapists joining them — the virtues are necessary to advance one’s proper self-interest. Morality for these thinkers is about making it possible to succeed in one’s human life, doing well at living as a human individual.     Share on Facebook

• • • Letter to the editor 3/19 #2 
Phil DiCicco, Pitt News (U of Pittsburgh) Altruism  Egoism  I am writing in regard to Giles Howard’s March 17 column, “Keep the focus on yourself in college.” Howard praised the objectivist philosophy of Ayn Rand and stated that it’s the most logical philosophy for man to pursue. Rand, in espousing this belief that altruism is error, makes the assertion that all altruism is anathema and must be eliminated from human nature. And yet, Aristotle notes that man is a social being. As an example of this social need, if altruism is abhorrent to true human nature, how does one explain the fact that human beings still marry and reproduce?     Share on Facebook

• • • Keep looking out for the self during college years (the pitt news) 
Giles Howard, Pitt News (U of Pittsburgh) Altruism  Egoism  Dr. Allan Gotthelf, a visiting professor in Pitt’s Department of History and Philosophy of Science and an expert on Rand’s philosophy of objectivism, explained the relevant part of Rand’s view of morality in two principles: First, “Each person has a right to pursue his own rational self-interest,” and second, “We will benefit from [others] pursuing their own self-interest, just as they will [benefit] from our pursuing ours,” Gotthelf said. These pillars of objectivism constitute the morality of that segment of the political Right that values individual responsibility, free markets and small government. It is this morality that is largely absent from college campuses today whereas the Leftist morality of altruism pervades higher education.     Share on Facebook

• • • Who is John Galt? No, really. 
Stephen Herrington, Huffington Post Atheism  Atlas Shrugged  Capitalism  Egoism  Personal life  Ayn Rand was a drawing room capitalist, a theorist on a subject with which she had no practical experience (other than with its opposite). She could not understand, or ignored, the fact that the stifling of creativity and the seizure of work product is not the exclusive prerogative of communism. It happens every day in capitalism. Corporate monopolies act to break the will of competition. Corporations stifle creativity with things like planned obsolescence and the withholding of known solutions from markets in all fields. Corporations buy legislation, passing the cost on to consumers, and stack the legal deck against the public interest with impunity. Corrupt bureaucracy can be found at Wal Mart as easily as the Politburo.     Share on Facebook

• The ultimate contradiction-in-terms: Right-wing christianity 
Huffington Post Egoism  The point [Glenn Beck] makes about "social justice" is in keeping with conservative ideology: it is all about a self-focused view of religion and politics that, like Beck's ideological hero Ayn Rand, proclaims selfishness as the ultimate virtue.     Share on Facebook

• • Capitalism advocate will deliver message at Wheeling Jesuit 
Linda Harris, State Journal (Charleston, WV) Ayn Rand Institute  Atlas Shrugged  Capitalism  Egoism  [Eric] Daniels will be on the Wheeling Jesuit University campus to discuss the “Morality of Capitalism” at 7 p.m. March 17 and explore the most common arguments in favor of capitalism. Sponsored by the BB&T Charitable Foundation, it’s part of the college’s annual Institute for the Study of Capitalism and Morality (ISCM) speaker series and is offered to provide a series of forums for discussing issues regarding capitalism and morality, business ethics, and related issues. Wheeling Jesuit Business Professor Ed Younkins, executive director of ISCM, said Daniels finds that those arguments “all break down in the face of the popular argument that capitalism is immoral and destructive because it is selfish.” “Dr. Daniels explains that only Ayn Rand's crucial insight — that capitalism is the only moral social system because it is based on "the virtue of selfishness" — can truly defend capitalism. He illustrates the need for a moral, and not just an economic, defense of capitalism,” Younkins said. Rand was a 20th century author who wrote “Atlas Shrugged” and other books that extolled the virtues of capitalism.     Share on Facebook

• • For the love of business 
Monika Mitchell, OpEdNews Atlas Shrugged  Capitalism  Egoism  A senior manager in finance explained to me that he functions equally on "Christian principles" and devotion to the theories of Ayn Rand. The author of the 1957 novel, Atlas Shrugged, Rand influenced a generation of market making economists including the two decade Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan. Rand's belief of self-interest over self-sacrifice defined the deregulation doctrine of the last thirty years of government. Yet "Christian principles" revolve around the antithesis of self-interest and focus on community and common good. I asked my friend how he reconciled both conflicting interests, he replied, "self-interest is self-love." Self-interest is indeed self-love, yet the doctrine leaves out an essential part of the contract, love for one's neighbor.     Share on Facebook

• • • The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism (1964) 
David Wilson, South China Morning Post The Virtue of Selfishness  Egoism  Personal life  (Requires subscription.)Nowhere in Rand's ascendant nicety-free canon is her take on politics expressed with more verve and venom than the essay collection The Virtue of Selfishness. The Neocon bible expounds Rand's philosophy, which she called "objectivist" in a foretaste of the equally dubious Fox News slogan: "The Spin stops here". About as objective as The Narnia Chronicles, Rand's gut-instinct tract exalts egotism as a rational code of ethics and slams socialism as a vice. A selfish, non-sacrificial way of life is possible and the only way to be, according to Rand, whose individualist take on how to live could be seen as an affront to Christianity, Confucianism and several other belief systems that place hope in community. Rand's Darwinian outlook, which makes Britain's Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher appear warm and fuzzy, must stem from her upbringing in Soviet Russia. [....] Rand can be so short on rigour that she resembles a crazed cult leader. Her claim that extremity equates with consistency is just one example of her borderline lunacy, which can be toxic. Elsewhere in the book, she is even more virulent. Despite Rand's fanaticism, The Virtue of Selfishness remains a compelling reflection of her spectacularly dysfunctional mind and a masterclass in the waspish art of polemic. Stinging.     Share on Facebook

• • Editors’ picks 
C. Rollyson, Choice Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  The Virtue of Selfishness  We The Living  Capitalism  Egoism  Personal life  Review of Ayn Rand and the World She Made, by Anne C. Heller.Although not stinting a concern with Rand's ideas, Heller is mesmerized by Rand the novelist and the person. The biographer pores over Rand's early years in Russia with brilliant results, showing how much Rand (born Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum) drew on her experience in the 1920s Leninist state for her impressive novel We the Living.     Share on Facebook

• • • The Ayn Rand follies 
The New Criterion Altruism  Atlas Shrugged  The Virtue of Selfishness  Capitalism  Egoism  Inaccurate  It was always, we suspect, Rand’s effort to make a “virtue of selfishness” (as she puts it in the title of a collection of essays) that accounted for a large part of her appeal. The shocking quality of advocating something so widely deprecated guaranteed an eager audience. Most human beings do not need special encouragement to be selfish. They come by it naturally enough. How welcome, then, to stumble upon a writer of long books who, far from criticizing selfishness, as everyone from your mother on down has done, tells you that you should be as selfish as possible.     Share on Facebook

• • • Internal affairs: How Ayn Rand followers rationalize “welcomed” rape 
Amanda Hess, Washington City Paper - The Sexist (DC) Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  Capitalism  Egoism  Rand reportedly had this to say about the [rape] scene [in The Fountainhead]: “If it was rape, it was rape by engraved invitation.” But for young people with no practical experience with sex, Rand doesn’t provide any instruction on how exactly to seal the note. If your sex partner is biting you and beating you in the face, how can you be sure they’ve consented “internally”? Between Rand’s idealized heroes and heroines, why is the ideal sexual scenario a violent rape that the woman only privately desires? And for Rand, who was fond of invoking the tautological principle that “A is A,” when is rape not rape?     Share on Facebook

• • Economist: Financial crisis result of idea failure 
Stacey Mieyal Higgins, Hotel News Now Atlas Shrugged  Capitalism  Egoism  In a sober discussion of the origins and consequences of the global financial crisis, Roger Bootle, managing director of Capital Economics Limited, explained Monday during the International Hotel Investment Forum why regulators were to blame and how capitalism will change as a result. [....] Why it happened: [....] Alan Greenspan’s “Atlas Shrugged” influence. “We can’t leave self-interested bankers and markets to their own devices,” Bootle said.     Share on Facebook

• • • Ayn Rand, the philosophy of freedom, and a serial killer 
Gus diZerega, Beliefnet.com - A Pagan’s Blog Atheism  Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  We The Living  Egoism  Rand's admiration for a sociopathic murderer is an eye-opener as to the moral sensibility that appeals to all too many 'conservative' and 'libertarian' Americans. She was one very disturbed and deeply wounded person, as her biographies show.     Share on Facebook

• • • Ayn Rand’s excellent proposal 
Ernest Partridge, Online Journal Atlas Shrugged  Capitalism  Egoism  In Ayn Rand’s sprawling novel, Atlas Shrugged, ubermensch industrialist, John Galt, infuriated over the “theft” of his property by the parasitic government, calls upon his fellow “captains of industry” -- the “producers of wealth” -- to go on strike which, we read, brings down the entire economy. He then proposes that these elite “producers” leave the wreckage of the old “collectivist” order behind and establish their own utopian society. What a splendid idea! I’m all for it! So let’s suppose that each and every CEO of the fortune 500 companies suddenly disappeared, along with Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, Robert Benmosche of AIG, and all those other bankster executives who claimed $150 billion in bonuses last year. (Supplied, by the way, by us taxpayers). Would the US economy collapse? Well, maybe not.     Share on Facebook

• • • Beast of conviction would be much better protagonist 
Claire Luchette, The Doings Hinsdale (IL) The Fountainhead  Capitalism  Egoism  Emerson wrote, "...believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men -- that is genius." Howard Roark, then, according to Emerson's criteria, was a genius. He saw his own principles as the only ones fit for architecture and mankind. He sacrificed the need to be admired and took upon himself the burden of originality. In exclusive settings, the one who is outcast but not downcast is the one I find most respectable.     Share on Facebook

• • • Debating merits of Ayn Rand philosophy 
Spencer Case, Idaho State Journal (Pocatello, ID) Anthem  Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  Capitalism  Egoism  I think of Objectivism as a kind of intellectual chicken pox; most smart people get it when they're young, but usually it runs its course before causing any permanent damage. Don't get me wrong, I think "Atlas Shrugged" is well worth reading , just not as Holy Scripture.     Share on Facebook

• • The sequel to Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged is Lord of the Flies 
Tim McCown, The Examiner Atlas Shrugged  Egoism  As an employee [...] taking Ayn Rand at her word, it is in my self interest to pursue making the most money I can get paid. It is in the Capitalists self interest to make the largest profit possible. To accomplish my self interest it is in my individual self interest to unionize to aggregate my money and power to off set that of the Capitalists money otherwise I might as well just be a serf. From my self interested stand point joining a Union is not being a Communist or collectivist it is just being smart. By myself I have no power in this system thus no way to attain my self interest.     Share on Facebook

• • At the Tea Party 
Jonathan Raban, New York Review of Books Atheism  Atlas Shrugged  Capitalism  Egoism  It's one thing for pro-life evangelicals and secular libertarians to march shoulder to shoulder behind banners saying "Kill the Bill!" and "Oust the Marxist Usurper!" or displaying a portrait of Obama rouged up and kohled to look like Heath Ledger's Joker in the Batman movie Dark Knight. It's quite another to coop up the same people for three days in a hotel, where they must talk to each other through breakfast, lunch, and dinner. At the march on D.C., there were T-shirts proclaiming "I am John Galt" and "Atlas Has Shrugged" alongside others that said "Obama Spends—Jesus Saves" or had the legend "Yes, He Did" beneath a picture of Christ on the cross. At Opryland, devout, abstemious Christians were breaking bread with followers of Ayn Rand's gospel of unbridled and atheistic self-interest. The convention, designed to unite the Tea Party movement, was helping to expose fundamental differences of belief and mindset between people who, before Nashville, had appeared as interchangeable members of a single angry crowd.     Share on Facebook

• All the tales of the fair 
Ed Lake, The National (Abu Dhabi) Anthem  Egoism  For the past three years, Yann Martel, the author of the Man Booker-winning novel The Life of Pi, has been mailing a book a fortnight to Stephen Harper, the prime minister of Canada. The idea, says Martel, is “to make suggestions to his stillness” and generally relieve the hysteria of high political office. Given the stated goal, some of the selections have been surprising. Book number 38 was Ayn Rand’s hymn to radical selfishness, Anthem. Book 54 was The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea, a short and unpleasant tale of murderous children written by the suicidal Japanese militiaman Yukio Mishima. Number 46 was a book of Paul McCartney lyrics. Martel claims that each of these titles “has been known to expand stillness”, but looking down his list, the suspicion grows that he’s just throwing wads of paper at a wall to see what sticks.     Share on Facebook

• The cookie club 
Harish Bhat, LiveMint.com Egoism  [The Grabber] has absolute clarity on what he wants in life and will waste no time getting there. Indeed, his philosophy finds both its origin and destination in Ayn Rand’s belief that selfishness is the ultimate virtue.     Share on Facebook