• • • Inside the Beltway: Ayn Rand, Part 2 
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Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  |Individual Rights  | It’s on the way: “Atlas Shrugged Part II” is now filming in Los Angeles, the second installment of an ambitious independent movie project — due for commercial release in October, just as the presidential election looms. A source says some of the film’s background extra roles will be played by persons of note who, uh, get the significance of Ayn Rand’s original 1957 novel, and this determined undertaking.  

• Inside the Beltway: Reading Romney 
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“I am afraid that Chairman [Paul] Ryan’s budget reflects the values of his favorite philosopher, Ayn Rand, rather than the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Survival of the fittest may be OK for Social Darwinists, but not for followers of the gospel of compassion and love,” [...] Jesuit Father [Thomas J.] Reese [wrote].  

• • Should English departments throw in the towel? 
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[Alan] Jacobs counters the canonical approach with his “commitment to one dominant, overarching, nearly definitive principle for reading” - the description of which alone would have driven Ayn Rand around the bend: “Read at Whim.” Read because it brings you “pleasure and joy,” not because it brings you intelligence, moral certitude or increased social standing.  

• Obama’s bogus rules 

The White House is pushing the idea that President Obama is a business-friendly regulation cutter. That’s about as likely as the works of Ayn Rand showing up in the first lady’s book-club reading list.  

• • ‘Act of Valor’ and an alternative movie culture for Red America 
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Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  | Consider last year’s “Atlas Shrugged: Part 1,” which grossed less than $2 million, despite its adaptation from a source novel with a vast, intensely loyal following that, owing to American economic distress under a liberal Democratic president, was surging at the time of the film’s release. Critics and audiences, including many from the right wing, agreed that “Atlas Shrugged” just wasn’t any good. The movie’s producers have no one to blame but themselves.  

• • • Holding out for a political hero 
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Altruism  |Egoism  |Individual Rights  |Objectivist author  | Bastiat attributed the willingness to engage in legalized plunder to either “egotism” (essentially, self-interest) or “false philanthropy.” He observed that men believe it is reasonable to take the fruits of others’ labor if the system has established a free-for-all. But no such systems or the politicians that establish them are willing to admit that they have erected kleptocracies. “All for all,” they say, “fair is fair.” Ayn Rand would instead place the blame on altruism, the belief that “man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue and value.” It is false philanthropy, because it has nothing to do with charity or benevolence. It means one must literally put others before himself.  

• • Inside the Beltway 
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Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  | The determined producers of “Atlas Shrugged” have promising news. They’re ready to start filming the second installation of the film based on Ayn Rand’s 1957 blockbuster of the same name. “Atlas Shrugged Part 2” begins shooting in Los Angeles, Colorado and New York in April, with a national release scheduled for October.  

• • • Packaging blunder mars home video release of ‘Atlas Shrugged’ 
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Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  |Egoism  |Individualism  |Image  | One probably doesn’t have to wonder what Ayn Rand, the founder of objectivism and hero to millions of libertarian-leaning Americans, would think of the Occupy Wall Street movement were she alive today. It’s the sort of quasi-collectivist, economic-leveling movement for which Rand harbored bottomless contempt. Nor is there much doubt what she would think of the home video packaging of “Atlas Shrugged: Part One,” the film adaptation of Rand’s 1957 novel, an ode to individualism and those who thrive in a capitalist society through ingenuity and hard work. On Tuesday, the film made its DVD and Blu-ray debut. On Friday, its producers acknowledged via the film’s website that the synopsis included on more than 100,000 retail DVD and Blu-ray copies of the release was marred by a glaring error. The promotional copy on the back title sheets fundamentally mischaracterizes the project’s core message with this encapsulation: “AYN RAND’S timeless novel of courage and self-sacrifice comes to life.” Whoops.  

• • Pro-Life and Pro-Choice: Do They Have to be at Odds? Answer is No! 
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Perhaps the Republican hero Ayn Rand said it best: “One method of destroying a concept is by diluting its meaning. Observe that by ascribing rights to the unborn, i.e., the nonliving, the anti-abortionists obliterate the rights of the living.”  

• The principled consistency of Ron Paul 
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Ron Paul is a consistent man. He’s been preaching the same economic gospel for two generations, a gospel based on the teachings of economists Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, leavened by the objectivism of Ayn Rand.  

• • Steve Jobs, billionaire capitalist 
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Capitalism  |Egoism  | Apple exploded onto the national scene in the fateful year of 1984 with the iconic Superbowl halftime commercial featuring a young, rebellious woman demolishing the dystopia created by Big Brother, the personification of an overbearing government in George Orwell’s novel. It may as well have been Jobs himself who hurled that hammer into the video screen and freed us all. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak later spoke of another dystopian novel, this one by Ayn Rand that, like Orwell’s, warned that powerful governments smother individual freedom. Wozniak said of his friend: “I think ‘Atlas Shrugged’ was one of his guides in life.”  

• • Prosperity starts with Americans, not Uncle Sam 
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The Keynesian pump-priming of Mr. Bush and the pump-flooding of Mr. Obama have been unmitigated disasters. The inescapable reality is that the government cannot create wealth and every dollar it spends must be taken from the private sector, which can. As Ayn Rand wrote, “You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.”  

• Judges seem receptive to health care challenge 
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Individual Rights  | Justice Department lawyer Neal Katyal, arguing on behalf of the Obama administration, said individual liberty is not at issue in the case. “I know my friends try to get a lot of rhetorical force from it, but at the end of the day maybe their arguments violate the constitution of Ayn Rand, but they don’t violate the Constitution of the United States,” he said. Instead, he said Congress is trying to solve the problem of some people without insurance getting emergency care for free today, which shifts burdens to the rest of taxpayers.  

• • ‘Atlas’ film acquires modern significance 
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Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  |The Fountainhead  |The Fountainhead movie  | Have you checked out the film version of “Atlas Shrugged”? After recently watching “The Fountainhead,” the 1949 film with Gary Cooper, I was not expecting much from this latest Ayn Rand novel film adaptation. Unfortunately, Rand pretty much took control of the screenplay and killed the movie version of “The Fountainhead.”  

• • The Marxist in the mirror 
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Atlas Shrugged movie  | Before Mr. Obama declares profits a dirty word, before speculation, investing and profit-taking become a crime in Mr. Obama’s Marxist States of America. It’s time to recognize that this president is anathema to the freedoms and ideals of our Founding Fathers and send this Wesley Mouch (the villain from “Atlas Shrugged,” a typical government bureaucrat who cripples the economy) to early retirement.  

• • • Ayn Rand: The good, bad & obscene or why Objectivism is flawed 
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Altruism  |Atheism  |Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  |Egoism  |Individual Rights  |Individualism  |Image  | Students of philosophy will immediately notice a conflict between Rand’s materialist ontology and her realistic epistemology. It is not a coincidence that virtually all defenders of realism—Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas and Adler, to name a few—have been theists of one kind or another. It is quite difficult to defend any kind of robust conception of human knowledge or reason if all that exists are corpuscles of matter in various associations. Students of philosophy will immediately notice a conflict between Rand’s materialist ontology and her realistic epistemology. It is not a coincidence that virtually all defenders of realism—Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas and Adler, to name a few—have been theists of one kind or another. It is quite difficult to defend any kind of robust conception of human knowledge or reason if all that exists are corpuscles of matter in various associations.  

• • Rand novel testament to dangers of socialism 
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Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  |Personal life  | I was let down by the superficiality of the article titled “Fans nervously await film version of Ayn Rand’s ‘Atlas Shrugged’ ” (Arts, Friday), about the recently released film adaptation of the famous Ayn Rand novel. Has writer Will Wilkinson not read the book? He manages to smear its fans by overlooking exactly what it is that makes Ayn Rand’s novel irreplaceable.  

• • • ‘Atlas’ message: U.S. Not too big to fail 
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Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  | Like so many Ayn Rand enthusiasts, I scrutinized the long-awaited film version of “Atlas Shrugged” for deviations from Rand’s iconic novel extolling the free-market entrepreneur as a type of Atlas, the figure from Greek mythology who was said to support the weight of the world on his shoulders. What would happen, Rand asked, if Atlas shrugged?  

• • Job and liberty destroyers 
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Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  | Perhaps the most vivid description of what happens to a society where the parasites become so numerous and powerful that they destroy their productive hosts is Ayn Rand’s classic novel “Atlas Shrugged.” The just-released movie version is an entertaining, tension-filled struggle between the productive and the parasites who ally themselves with the envious and evil. Go see it.  

• • • Movie review: ‘Atlas Shrugged’ 
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Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  |Image  | Devotees of author Ayn Rand finally get to hear the question, “Who is John Galt?” at their local movieplex. That fact alone should be considered a milestone of sorts. The film adaptation of Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” has been in the works for decades, and injecting Rand’s free market ideology into today’s left-leaning film industry is a heady achievement. How often will you see corporate types as the heroes, not the hiss-inducing villains? The bigger question is if fans of Rand’s 1957 novel will tolerate a deeply flawed screen adaptation, the first of a proposed trilogy meant to capture the book’s voluminous length.