• • County’s wealth 
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Atlas Shrugged  | With our current president and governor both vilifying success, it is easy to see why the most liberal factions of our society are looking to add their weight to the backs of the ever-shrinking population of individuals who carry the burden for society. Maybe Ayn Rand was a visionary after all?  

• • Educators’ inaction 
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Atlas Shrugged  | Where are the decisionmakers and common sense educators? Reading your coverage of the McInerney-King Trial, I am coming to believe the world Ayn Rand created in her well read classic “Atlas Shrugged” has come true. Nobody will make a decision.  

• • A different view 
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Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  | [Atlas Shrugged] speaks to an exaggerated version of what can happen when dishonest government leaders over-regulate and take away the incentives to do business. This book, written in the ’50s, is even more relevant to our present time than it was then, and besides having a message it is a very good novel.  

• A dose of reality 
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Re: Terry Paulson’s Feb. 14 column, “Choice, not compromise”: Paulson, using excerpts from books by Glenn Beck and Ayn Rand, makes a statement that before any right is proposed, you should ask “at whose expense.” As a veteran of the Korean War, we soldiers were an “expense.”  

• A dose of reality 
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Re: Terry Paulson’s Feb. 14 column, “Choice, not compromise”: Paulson, using excerpts from books by Glenn Beck and Ayn Rand, makes a statement that before any right is proposed, you should ask “at whose expense.” As a veteran of the Korean War, we soldiers were an “expense.”  

• • • Ayn Rand references 
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Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  |Egoism  |Inaccurate  | Terry Paulson has finally gotten around to citing as a beacon of hope the queen of the “greed is good” philosophy, Ayn Rand. Rand’s novels, we will remember, promoted her philosophy of Objectivism, in that the moral purpose of one’s life is the pursuit of one’s own happiness and self-interest.  

• • Choice, not compromise 
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Individual Rights  | In Glenn Beck’s new book, “Broke,” he challenges conservatives to focus the fight on the Constitution and core principles. Our founding fathers fought for equal rights, not rights to benefit some at the expense of others. Beck points to novelist Ayn Rand for an easy way to distinguish whether a right is in accordance with the Constitution. After any right is proposed, simply ask the question “at whose expense?” Is there a universal right to healthcare? At whose expense? Your right to life and liberty was not to come at expense of anyone else. As Rand wrote: “The government was set to protect man from criminals, and the Constitution was written to protect man from the government.”  

• Now playing - New movies out this week 

Unlike Oliver Stone’s vastly superior “W.,” “Casino Jack” never bothers to examine the shark-like worldview of [lobbyist Jack] Abramoff, which mixed nods to altruism with rapacious greed. He thought he was a figure out of an Ayn Rand novel, when in fact he only had an especially loud ego that felt like a conscience and that just needed more energy to be neutralized.  

• Hot time had by all at Piru Fest 
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Atlas Shrugged movie  | Dan O’Connell, film liaison between Piru and Ventura County, said [Piru] was the scene of films, TV shows and videos during the past 12 months. [....] ‘Atlas Shrugged’ by Ayn Rand was filmed downtown and at the mansion.  

• • Healthcare plan foes fill Thousand Oaks corner to protest 
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Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  | [Protester] Dr. Stuart Fischbein, an obstetrician-gynecologist who quoted from author Ayn Rand’s opus on capitalism, “Atlas Shrugged,” said he thinks healthcare needs reform, but that the government shouldn’t be running it.  

• • Read ‘Atlas Shrugged’ 
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Atlas Shrugged  | Letter to the editor.
This was an excellent essay by [Terry] Paulson. I have been urging friends to read “Atlas Shrugged,” an amazingly relevant book written about 50 years ago. Please, Star readers, do not criticize Paulson’s essay without having read “Atlas Shrugged.” This should be a must-read.  

• • • What would we do if Ayn Rand’s novel were real? 
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Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  | Imagined address of John Galt to Americans today.
John Galt, the fictional protagonist in Ayn Rand’s classic novel “Atlas Shrugged,” responded to the growing regulations and taxation in Rand’s fictional socialist America by convincing “the rich” to leave and let socialism fail. How would you respond if John Galt wrote this letter today?  

• Uphold your right to read 

Authors whose books have been the victims of attempts to remove them from library shelves and schools include Harper Lee, James Joyce, George Orwell, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, A.A. Milne, Margart Mitchell, James Baldwin, J.R.R. Tolkien, Ayn Rand, Virginia Woolf and Frank L. Baum.  

•Character counts: Who are we to judge? 
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I was an ethical relativist, convinced that ideas of ethics and morality simply reflect social conventions or personal opinions. Of course, this was pretty convenient. Relativism made no demands on me and it instructed me to refrain from making demands on others. It's what Ayn Rand called an exchange of moral blank checks: 'I won't judge you if you don't judge me.'  

•Collective knowledge 

Profile of the band Collective Soul.
The name: The group took its moniker from a line in Ayn Rand's book "The Fountainhead."