• • We’re in a deep hole ... and still digging 
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Atlas Shrugged  | Fallacy 5: This is the “Atlas Shrugged” effect. Productive, well-run businesses are taxed to pay for these long-term unemployment benefits. Rep. Pelosi’s philosophy regarding long-term unemployment benefits reads like a scene out of Ayn Rand’s novel. As the novel suggests, you can only bleed the productive businesses for so long before they rebel and move their production to lower cost states or overseas.  

• • Capitalism advocate will deliver message at Wheeling Jesuit 
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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.  

• At the doorstep of a new millemium? 
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Atlas Shrugged  | [Thomas] Jefferson sounds like Ayn Rand and ready to join John Galt somewhere else when he says: "The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who will not."  

• • Protecting ourselves from prosperity 
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Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  | Cal Kent, professor at Marshall University and a frequent contributor to The State Journal, has offered his perspective on Page 37 of this edition about a new course he will teach through the newly established Center for the Advancement of American Capitalism. His comments come after the university received some backlash. I recommend his column to readers. A $1 million grant from the BB&T Foundation allows Marshall's Lewis College of Business to develop a program that focuses on capitalism. The grant had a caveat -- that the course would include the study of "Atlas Shrugged," the 1957 Ayn Rand novel that stands as a testament to the worth and importance of capitalism. Dr. Kent feels good about teaching the class. He should. The mystery to me is how this became an issue in the first place.  

• BB&T donates $1 million for Marshall capitalism center 
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Capitalism  | [University president Stephen] Kopp said the center would promote some of the concepts that have shaped his life. "I was influenced by Rand," Kopp said. "Rugged individualism is at the core of her philosophy and the ability to do things independently."