• • Supreme Court must rule against insurance mandate 
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Atlas Shrugged  |Individualism  | Rene Descartes postulated, “I think, therefore I am,” and unwittingly acknowledged his own existence (the first “I”) in the premise before concluding, as if revelation, that he exists. It was an unsuccessful attempt at a philosophic axiom, flawed by its circularity and its logical inversion of the fact that thought presupposes existence. Ayn Rand counter-postulated, through the voice of hero John Galt in Atlas Shrugged, “I am, therefore I’ll think,” in which she recognized and removed Descartes’ error and then followed the axiom contained in the premise by consciously embracing the fundamental choice and concomitant responsibility of using one’s mind in the service of one’s own life. Rand’s premise and avowal is the epitome of individualism--the core precept of the U.S. Constitution.  

• • CERN, CLOUD and the madness of crowds 
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Freeing oneself from subtle mob hysteria is as simple as asking oneself, “How would I know if I’m wrong?” With respect to free-market anarchism, the relevant question is: “How would I know if a preponderance of people get a kick out of coercing others, and see the loss of utility it entails as a price they’re willing to pay for the thrill?” With respect to Objectivism, one should ask: “How would I know if Miss Rand secretly assumes that man’s other characteristics, apart from his rationality, are merely accidental or contingent?” With respect to goldbugism, one should ask: “How would I know if the predictions of hyperinflation turn out to be as wrong now as the equally-confident ones in the ‘70s were in the 1980s?”  

• A new media slant detector 
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So how do conservatives and independents combat media ideological contamination? They can start with Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind, by Tim Groseclose a professor of political science and economics at UCLA. Groseclose uses a complicated mathematical model to analyze print and broadcast media to arrive at what he terms a “slant quotient” or SQ. A score of 100 for a news outlet indicates the product resembles Nancy Pelosi’s constituent newsletter and a score of 0 means that news organization generates fan mail from Ayn Rand.  

• It wasn’t about Medicare: Jack Davis’ message for the Republican Party 
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Atlas Shrugged  | In the May 24 special election of the NY 26th Congressional District, Democratic Kathy Hochul, with 47% of the vote, won a seat in an area that has consistently voted Republican. [....] Tea Party candidate Jack Davis, a 78-year-old self-made manufacturer like the ones celebrated in Atlas Shrugged, focused the campaign on American manufacturing.  

• • What would the Founders say? 
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Leonard Peikoff  | Book review.Dr. Leonard Peikoff, Ayn Rand’s intellectual heir, once asserted that in the continuum between freedom and tyranny the United States was over the halfway mark towards the latter – ostensibly in large part due to an activist federal government that moved beyond its constitutional mandate. While most would brush away the comment as an extremist point of view, it has often prompted others to wonder how far away the United States has moved from the original design the Founding Fathers has for it. We know what they thought on the topics of their day, but how could we possibly divine what they would have thought about environmentalism, health care or TARP? Judging by Dr. Larry Schweikart’s What Would the Founders Say? A Patriot’s Answers to America’s Most Pressing Problems, the more things change, the more they stay the same.  

• Don’t play with the nice alligator 
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Liberal internationalism is strangely parochial: everything seems to relate to recent American politics. Poor third-world nations? They must be in need of government aid, like the American unemployed! Demonstrators out on the streets? They must be like those nice and gracious civil-rights protestors back in the good old days! Kleptocracies? Savages? What are you, a right winger? It should be no surprise that those unpleasant facts about the wider world have the same effect on American liberals as would a screening of O Lucky Man! on an audience of full-bore Objectivists. Being the bearer of unpleasant lens-cracking facts is the easy way to put oneself in the “right wing” part of the liberal divide. The one where Hosni Mubarack is “obviously” a regular listener to the Rush Limbaugh Show.  

• • The unholy alliance between Barack Obama and Wall Street 
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Capitalism  | Ayn Rand once warned that among the great dangers to capitalism were businessmen who appealed to government in an attempt avoid competition, using the power of the state to enrich themselves. Indeed, she even argued that “crony capitalism” was a term composed of two mutually exclusive words, that the former couldn’t truly exist in a philosophical system that promotes liberty and free exchange. Whatever term one prefers to use, be it “kleptocracy” or “business as usual”, it would appear that Bought and Paid For has illustrated that it’s the preferred way of business on Wall Street and the people paying the freight live on another street altogether.  

• The enemy within 
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The theme of [Pamela Geller ’s book] The Post -American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America, is how Obama has at best changed, at worst destroyed the presidency; he has taken American exceptionalism (which ironically got him where he is today) and replaced it and the concepts of good and evil with equivocation and moral relativism. (p. xiv) In characteristic Geller style, the book is sprinkled throughout with predictions from Ayn Rand that are now taking place.  

• • Join the majority… 
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Atlas Shrugged  |Egoism  | It would be trite of me to categorize the theme of Atlas Shrugged as "if you can't beat 'em, blend in with 'em," but there is that message inculcated therein. For most readers, the take-away is that it's okay to be concerned with one's own interests. There is a subset, though, which come away wondering if they too should go on strike by blending in with – joining - the working poor as Galt did.  

• • Not quite a bull’s-eye 
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Personal life  | Review of the book Panderer to Power: The Untold Story of How Alan Greenspan Enriched Wall Street and Left a Legacy of Recession, by Frederick Sheehan.
[Frederick] Sheehan goes out of his way to highlight Ayn Rand's first impression of [Alan Greenspan] when they met: "'Do you think Alan might basically be a social climber?'" (p. 9.) This quote serves as a leitmotif of the book as Sheehan digs into Greenspan's later life. He decided that the other Greenspan – the man who hitched his wagon to Arthur Burns's star early on – was the real Greenspan. The impression he conveys is that Greenspan wasn't even much of an Objectivist, although Sheehan doesn't intimate that Greenspan was drawn into Rand's inner circle out of a desire to rub shoulders with a popular novelist. He presents Greenspan as a man who did believe in Rand's philosophy in his own way, but shed it while ascending the socio-political heights. Like many libertarian critics of Greenspan, Sheehan brandishes "Gold And Economic Freedom" as a reproach – even if he holds his nose a little while doing so.  

• • Benjamin’s children 
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Atlas Shrugged  | If there's one way to make yourself widely disliked in Silicon Valley, it would be to dump all over Ayn Rand. The connection between Atlas Shrugged and the tycoons of the Information Age is too evident to be dismissed – moreso for the lesser lights who've achieved sub-tycoon wealth. As evidence of the cultural influence of Rand, I point to the fact that Objectivists are basically left alone nowadays. To use taxman's lingo, Objectivists are now one kind of golden goose.  

• Lingua publica 

Quotes on US politics.
"And now, on top of everything else, Obama has irritated John Galt." -- political analyst Rich Galen.  

• “What could he have meant by that?” 
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[Phil Gramm] would not have had much of a career at all had he recurrently acted out in a manner more befitting a college student with his/her head full of Ayn Rand than a professional politician would have.  

• The Earth is Flat Award 
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Along with Ayn Rand's writings and Rush Limbaugh's television and radio programs, it was issues of National Review which served as the higher education of a young man, prompted him to begin writing for his university newspaper and eventually launch this web site.  

• Forward to compromise! 
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Review of the book The Genius of America, by Eric Lane and Michael Oreskes.
In politics, compromise is a dirty word. Margaret Thatcher once famously declared that compromise was the antithesis of leadership while philosopher Ayn Rand argued that in the compromise between food and poison, the later always wins. Those unwilling to fight to the death, rhetorical or otherwise, for their political beliefs are viewed as weak and not worthy of our support. [....] Except, write Eric Lane and Michael Oreskes, that isn't how politics in the United States was practiced for much of its existence and the current climate is due to a lack of compromise.  

•The Tory tradition in Canada from the 1980s to today ??? Part Seven 
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The aristocratic man of commerce is frequently seen in Ayn Rand's writing.  

•It began in the Nineteenth Century 
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Review of Radicals for Capitalism, by Brian Doherty.
Every libertarian intellectual of note is discussed here, and several of them whose works have been forgotten. Ayn Rand; Isabel Paterson; Murray N. Rothbard; Milton Friedman, with mention of David; Ludwig von Mises; Friedrich von Hayek; and, quite a few others.  

•Four arguments for canceling Christmas 
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Humor.
4. Christmas makes people addicted to happiness. "Happy men are free men." (Ayn Rand.) Why should they be either?  

•I, politico 
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This spoof is a take-off from Leonard Read's classic essay, "I, Pencil.", with conclusion left for you to draw. It is offered in the spirit indicated by Ayn Rand's words, "When the first creator invented the wheel, the first second-hander responded. He created altruism."  

•Thank you 
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On the tenth anniversary of the founding of Enter Stage Right.
What started out as a little vanity effort on the World Wide Web – complete with articles written by yours truly that were an odd mish-mash of Rush Limbaugh and Ayn Rand – today is a reasonably respected effort with some of the best writers donating their efforts week in and week out.