• • • 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

• • How’s the Republican party doing? Frank Rich cites ‘extremism,‘ ‘nihilism,‘ racism 
Frank Rich, Media Research Center Inaccurate  Transcript of interview of Frank Rich on Rachel Maddow's MSNBC talk show. MADDOW: [....] There is this issue of Republicans trying to make unemployment benefits themselves seem like a bad thing. People like [G.O.P. Senate candidates] Sharron Angle, Jim DeMint, not only voting to not extend it or saying they would vote to not extend it, but trying to argue against it, arguing that unemployed people are lazy and spoiled. How significant is that? RICH: Well, I think it`s just -- I don’t know how significant it is beyond sort of the really far right-wing fringe. We’re talking about, really, the far right of that party in terms of office holders and candidates. But it is significant and it’s a return to sort of the classic kind of John Birch Society Republicanism of just -- you know, pure Ayn Rand. No government, no regulation. Let business do what it wants. Let people fend for themselves.     Share on Facebook

• • Ends justify means every time 
Val Van Brocklin, Officer.com Inaccurate  The rigid rejection of all lies is [...] a cornerstone of Kantian moral philosophy. With less specificity, Ayn Rand philosophized, “Any compromise between good and evil only hurts the good and helps the evil.”     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

• • Ayn Rand’s lie of government bad market good at center of Tea Party 
Patrick Patterson, The Examiner Atlas Shrugged  Capitalism  Image  Inaccurate  These men who worship at the alter of "The Market" and deregulation are the offspring of the "thinkers" who follow the ideals of Ayn Rand which proclaim that all government is bad. Their bible is her novel Atlas Shrugged where the Captains of Industry go on strike in protest of taxes and regulations. The novel follows Dagney Taggart the scion of a railroad family who sees her company run into the ground by excessive regulations and goes on a quest to find the mysterious John Galt. Ultimately, the striking "heroes" are found having created their own utopia that is a monument to the dollar. In a long winded spiel Galt lays out the conditions of their return to society, which is also a long treatise on Rand's personal philosophy. This philosophy comes down to "government and taxes are evil, and the only true virtue is profit."     Share on Facebook

• • Are compassion and community evil? 
Mike Lux, Huffington Post Egoism  Inaccurate  the compassion-equals-evil argument didn’t really get laid out in detail until Ayn Rand’s writings, where she actually did argue that people with compassion and concern for others were leeches who drained society of its competitive life blood. Just as Ayn Rand took the Social Darwinist argument and made it more virulent, the conservative author Jonah Goldberg brought a new, more extreme twist to the argument, literally saying that progressives like FDR were ideological soul mates of Hitler and Mussolini’s brand of fascism.     Share on Facebook

• • • At last, a fair and balanced view of Ayn Rand 
Roddy Matthews, Tribune (London) Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  Capitalism  Personal life  Inaccurate  Review of Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right, by Jennifer Burns.Goddess of the Market traces Rand’s irresistible rise from bourgeois Russian origins to fame and fortune in America and shows how the success of her two blockbuster novels – The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957) – which both glorified heroic individualism – allowed her to use her celebrity as a platform for her subsequent career as political ideologue and philosopher. She invented an abstract rational system called objectivism, which was designed to keep the world safe from communism by proving (mostly by assertion) that capitalism was the most rational and moral form of human society.     Share on Facebook

• • • Dumbertarian: Rand Paul latent racism exposes dark heart, juvenile logic of objectivism 
D.K. Jamaal, The Examiner Egoism  Inaccurate  Rand Paul and his objectivist supporters will tell you that the individual has a right to be a murderer. That is the logical end conclusion of their Ayn Rand inspired, greed is good philosophy which prizes selfishness and extremist individualism, character traits they share with toddlers and teenagers in skinny jeans. For objectivists anyone can do anything they want, individuals have no responsibility to the communities to which they belong – and thus even murder is justified as an individual desire.     Share on Facebook

• • • Atlas Shrugged movie starts in June, even with no actors in it 
Katey Rich, Cinema Blend Atlas Shrugged movie  Atlas Shrugged  Inaccurate  It’s been 17 years since exercise equipment magnate John Aglialoro paid $1 million for the rights to Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand’s totemic novel about capitalism and free will and all that other Ayn Rand stuff. Since then we’ve seen a whole host of names come and go from the film, with the latest incarnations finding either Angelina Jolie or Charlize Theron playing the central character Dagny Taggart. As right now neither of them-- no stars at all, for that matter-- are still attached, but Aglialoro has decided enough is enough. Deadline reports that he plans to start production on the film on June 11 regardless of which actors are on board, and it will just be the first of four films based on the gigantic book.     Share on Facebook

• • • Ayn Rand, Rand Paul and utopian schemes 
J.C. Hallman, The Millions Atlas Shrugged  Personal life  Inaccurate  Atlas Shrugged is “known” ideas delivered in a “known” way. By Rand’s definition it’s “popular trash,” which pretty well describes the book’s publishing history.     Share on Facebook

•Rand Paul wins Kentucky sen. GOP primary: Now Democrats will want to make him the issue 
Howard Fineman, Newsweek Inaccurate  Paul, named for libertarian radical writer Ayn Rand, favors shutting down the IRS, the Fed, the American military presence overseas, the Department of Education, and much of the rest of the federal government.     Share on Facebook

• • If Atlas Shrugged, will Facebook buckle? 
Ron Callari, InventorSpot Atlas Shrugged  Inaccurate  In [Atlas Shrugged], while economic conditions worsen and government agencies continued to enforce their control on successful businesses, the naive, yet weary mass of citizens are often heard reciting the new, popular street phrase, "Who is John Galt?" While seemingly Christ-like, this savior-like character is markedly different from a spirtual leader. Instead of compassion, Rand's Galt is motivated by "selflessness" or an enlightened self-interest. Similar to the latter-day fictional character of Gordon Gekko ("Greed is Good").     Share on Facebook

• • Pariahs at your back door 
Julian Delasantellis, Asia Times Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  Capitalism  Inaccurate  Circling around the Internet's finance-related content late in April was what became known as the "dinosaur post" or "John Galt post" after Ayn Rand's proto-deity lone hero, John Galt. After financial market personnel, especially Goldman Sachs financial market personnel, had been dragged from pillar to post all winter long, indeed, since the start of the current crisis, apparently a hero of the markets' had arisen.     Share on Facebook

• The thrill is gone 
Monika Mitchell, OpEdNews Capitalism  Inaccurate  In the quest for money, is there anything at all that we won't or can't do? Libertarians or Randian greed-mongers would say no. In the purity of the "free market," there is nothing we should not be able to do. Theirs is a Wild West philosophy of lawlessness, predatory mortgage lending, and under-the-radar "derivatives" sales.     Share on Facebook

• • • Tea Party followers are ignorant 
Eva Knapp, Gazette-Mail (Charleston, WV) Altruism  Atheism  Atlas Shrugged  Capitalism  Egoism  Inaccurate  Rand, a right-wing guru whose philosophy aligns with libertarian politics, is championed by Tea folks -- the very people she despised. (She characterized average people as "ugly, stupid and irrational," and denounced democracy as "a totalitarian manifestation.") She believed only "absolute individual freedom" separates superior beings from lesser ones, and only "free-market capitalism" rewards the cream of the crop -- all others deserve their lot. [....] Rand contended that selfishness is the highest moral good. Altruism is, in her words, "moral cannibalism." The worthy person "produces," makes money, and lives without regard for others. He stands alone -- contemptuous of government and lesser beings. Such is the "superman" John Galt in her novel "Atlas Shrugged," a hero Tea Partiers honor in their "Go Galt" slogan.     Share on Facebook

• • The 10 worst wives and girlfriends in literature 
Zack Barangan, Guyism The Fountainhead  Inaccurate  5. Dominique Francon (The Fountainhead). Perhaps a controversial choice to some, but let’s look at the facts: for most of the novel, Dominique works to destroy the work her love, Howard Roark. She goes as far as to marry Toohey, Roark’s greatest rival, to assist him in his battle against the idealistic young architect. Even if she was determined to do so to spare him from a public destruction by society, it’s still a really terrible way to show your love     Share on Facebook

• Who’s ignoring health and safety orders? 
Edmonton Journal Inaccurate  Even the most libertarian inclined among us -- those who passionately believe in small, strictly curtailed government -- agree that the state has a signal role to play in public safety. Ayn Rand had no problems with fire departments or the constabulary.     Share on Facebook

• • Greenspan’s testimony: Will the ‘maestro’ face the music? 
Richard Eskow, Huffington Post Altruism  Atlas Shrugged  Inaccurate  [Alan] Greenspan's a lifelong disciple of Ayn Rand, the anti-government radical who rejected altruism and believed that "Man's ... own happiness as the moral purpose of his life." Charity was contemptible to her. She once wrote, "What are your masses but mud to be ground underfoot, fuel to be burned for those who deserve it?" Rand believed in self-interest as the prime motivating force in the world, and her book Atlas Shrugged celebrates a world where the fortunate refuse to help others.     Share on Facebook

• • • Who is Ayn Rand? 
Gillis J. Harp, Review Messenger (Sebeka, MN) Atheism  Atlas Shrugged  Personal life  Inaccurate  Review of Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right, by Jennifer Burns.Rand and her circle consistently demonized the state as the principal source of evil in the world. Such a caricature has been alien to Christian political theology from Thomas Aquinas, to Richard Hooker, to Leo XIII and Reinhold Niebuhr. Rand's anti-government stance can lead to troubling contradictions in a representative democracy, and Burns notes how Rand often slipped into an arrogant elitism. The rational faculty she increasingly emphasized in her thought was best exhibited by "the better species, the Superman," and not by that group of mindless citizens she dismissed as mere "human ballast."     Share on Facebook