• • Capitalism advocate will deliver message at Wheeling Jesuit 
Linda Harris, State Journal (Charleston, WV) 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

• • Paul Ryan’s redistributionism 
New York Times - Evaluations Jonathan Chait has a long post about how [Paul] Ryan’s roadmap “clarifies the essence of the Republican Party’s approach to domestic policy issues,” which involves “opposition to the downward redistribution of income.” Noting that Ryan has said kind words about Ayn Rand, he writes that “the core of the Randian worldview, as absorbed by the modern GOP, is a belief that the natural market distribution of income is inherently moral, and the central struggle of politics is to free the successful from having the fruits of their superiority redistributed by looters and moochers.” And he argues: “Every major element of Ryan’s plan reflects this commitment … Ryan would retain some bare-bones subsidies for the poorest, but the overwhelming thrust in every way is to liberate the lucky and successful to enjoy their good fortune without burdening them with any responsibility for the welfare of their fellow citizens.” This strikes me as an overstatement, to put it mildly. Ryan’s proposed changes to the tax code — his reduction in the highest rates, and his addition of a consumption tax — would shift the tax burden down the income ladder, just as Chait says. But nearly every other major element of the roadmap would make the American welfare state more redistributionist, rather than less so.     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 wrath of independence 
William J. Derosa, Jr., Guru Focus The Fountainhead  Going it alone certainly has its advantages. Standing apart from the crowd gives one a unique perspective provided one has the courage. Being able to assert one’s opinion can be very gratifying indeed. Famed and controversial author Ayn Rand has written extensively about this topic. To paraphrase her words - Most people can accept anything except a person who stands alone. They can forgive criminals and violence. These harsh critics are consumed by fear of the loner. They relish the mutual dependence of the relationship and independence destroys that relationship. However, for the independent spirit there is no dependence. There is no sense of social community. If one were to take notice, there is resentment against any idea that espouses independence.     Share on Facebook

• Google CEO says company doesn’t care about profits 
Jackson West, NBC Capitalism  Jackson West wonders how a company full of libertarian engineers who love Ayn Rand could be interested in anything but money.     Share on Facebook

• Winding rhymes 
Jason Bracelin, Review-Journal (Las Vegas) On his latest mixtape, "Nuclear Winter Vol. 1," stalwart MC Sole (Tim Holland), a fixture of the indie hip-hop underground for a decade and a half now, sounds like a street preacher warning of the apocalypse on one track, a wily scene veteran confident of his lofty perch in the progressive-rap pecking order on the next. He turns sacred cows into T-bone steaks, name checking Timothy Geithner and the works of Ayn Rand before the disc's intro is over and critiquing the current administration in particularly bayonet-sharp terms.     Share on Facebook

• NBC’s Castro-driven journalism 
Humberto Fontova, American Thinker It was also fascinating to hear Andrea [Mitchell], wife of former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman (and early Ayn Rand disciple) Alan Greenspan, explain that Communist economics has nothing to do with Cuba's crumbling buildings.     Share on Facebook

• ‘BioShock’ sequel shockingly good 
Mark Riechers, The Daily Cardinal (U Wisconsin - Madison) We have traded villains from Andrew Ryan, the runaway objectivist from the first game, to Sofia Lamb, a runaway socialist hell-bent on making Rapture a utopia.     Share on Facebook

• • Hollywood honors American values 
Wayne Murray, Arizona Republic (Phoenix) Atlas Shrugged  James Cameron would be wise to consider picking up the rights to make his next epic picture "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand. He may even consider asking his ex-wife, [Kathryn] Bigelow, to collaborate in directing. Now, that would be an Oscar sweep.     Share on Facebook

• • Paul Ryan and the Republican vision 
Jonathan Chait, The New Republic Capitalism  The core of the Randian worldview, as absorbed by the modern GOP, is a belief that the natural market distribution of income is inherently moral, and the central struggle of politics is to free the successful from having the fruits of their superiority redistributed by looters and moochers. What's telling about Ryan's program is not so much that a hard-core ideologue like him would advocate it. It's that virtually the whole of the conservative movement has embraced him. [....] The rise of Ryan is a sign that the possibilities for bipartisan cooperation on domestic issues are, at the moment, essentially nil. This point is obscured by the figure of Ryan, a cheerful and courteous man who gives every sense of wanting to deal in good faith. But his goals, which are now fully the goals of the conservative movement and the Republican Party, are diametrically opposed to the liberal vision of capitalism shorn of its cruelest edges. His basic moral premises are foreign, even abhorrent, to liberals. He seems like a person you'd like to negotiate with, but there's nothing to negotiate over. Ryan is waging a zero sum fight over resources on behalf of the most fortunate members of society and against everybody else.     Share on Facebook

• • Mike Daisey reveals secrets of the world order 
Chris Kompanek, Flavorwire The Fountainhead  [Q:] Who are some of the guests we can expect on [your] show? [A:] [....] I believe we’re going to have someone who’s starring in a film adaptation — this is fascinating — a musical film adaptation of Ayn Rand’sThe Fountainhead. They’re going to be singing some really fantastic songs about libertarianism and female submission. The actress is just charming. A little freaky but charming. I think that’s going to be tremendous. It’s really a wide range of things that I feel capture where we are as a country and a people.     Share on Facebook

• Ignore socialist label 
Jeff Gadt, Kansas City Star (MO) Capitalism  On banks and the financial markets, Obama’s economic advisers and Treasury Secretary are staunch free-market advocates. Unless you’re comparing them to Ayn Rand, Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner cannot be accused of being market obstructionists. Regulating Wall Street’s ruinous greed is balancing "too big to fail" and "too small to care about." It is not socialism. For the sake of our country, tune out the fear mongers and turn on the brain.     Share on Facebook

• ‘What’s the Matter With Kansas’ liberal filmmakers get a dose of Wichita 
Robert W. Butler, Kansas City Star (MO) Capitalism  “I’m a natural-born pessimist,” [documentary author Thomas Frank] said. “People shouldn’t be waving pictures of Ayn Rand and cursing liberals when we’re sinking into a worldwide recession. But the Democrats can’t seem to get a handle on it.     Share on Facebook

• • The good work of government 
William J. Linn, Star-News (Wilmington, NC) Capitalism  The lessons learned from the 19th century robber barons are sufficient to reject [the] naive Ayn Randian notion that the “businessman would never willfully harm his customers and thereby hurt his own future business prospects.” Tell that to the tainted peanut butter “businessman.”     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

• Charlottesville gears up for Va. Festival of the Book 
News Leader (Staunton, VA) Hundreds of writers and millions of words will flow through Charlottesville during the 16th annual Virginia Festival of the Book, which runs from March 17 to 21. This year's schedule includes more than 40 University of Virginia faculty members and alumni, speaking on topics as diverse as Ayn Rand, living through war and examining historical times.     Share on Facebook

• • Bioshock 2 
Jacob Muncy, San Antonio Current The opening of Bioshock 2 feels like coming home. You awaken in ruins in the old part of Rapture, an underwater city and objectivist paradise created by John Galt archetype Andrew Ryan. [....] Rapture feels alive. Every environment you visit is the ruined remnant of some part of Rapture prior to its collapse, the highlight of which is an amusement park full of objectivist propaganda (seemingly exaggerated unless you’ve read Ayn Rand).     Share on Facebook

• • Tequila sunrise & into the sunset 
Kasmin Fernandes, Mid-Day The Fountainhead  "I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline," author Ayn Rand wrote in The Fountainhead, "The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need?" she asked. "Come to Mumbai," we say.     Share on Facebook