• • From Buckley to Reagan (1960 - 1988) 
Fred Hutchison, RenewAmerica Altruism  Atheism  Egoism  Part 13 of a history of conservatism.John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spenser, and Ayn Rand made important contributions to the corpus of individualist libertarian ideas. Of these, Rand ran the farthest afield. A student of Aristotle, Rand determined that human rights are grounded in man's rational faculties. Therefore, the individualist libertarians are not utterly devoid of metaphysics. However, her principle of the virtue of selfishness is a metaphysical impossibility. No coherent design for human nature can make the self the chief end of the self. Full human flourishing must include reaching out to something that is transcendent to the self. The renaissance man might start a school or rule a republic. The Christian reaches up to God and out to his neighbor. 06:53 AM    View blog reactions

• Old heads on young shoulders 
The Economist A report published on June 26th by Opinionpanel, a research outfit that specialises in polling students, documents a big shift in political allegiances on campus since 2004. In those days the Liberal Democrats were the students’ favourite; support for the Tories hovered between a fifth and a quarter, and a third supported Labour. Now fewer than a quarter support Labour, and the Conservatives have soared to 45%. [....] As well as changing today’s political landscape, this shift will have consequences in future years—albeit ones that are hard to predict. If these hard-headed youngsters shift rightward as they age, the nursing homes of the future could be filled with wild-eyed disciples of Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman. 06:49 AM    View blog reactions

• • Jihad by the numbers 
Edward Cline, Family Security Matters The Fountainhead  To be a true, loyal, above-suspicion Nazi meant the near total surrender of one's ego, mind and self, and to substitute them with Hitler's own. Of course, an Ellsworth Toohey might say that the joke was on the rank-and-file Nazi: he would claim that Hitler was essentially selfless, and that what little mind Hitler possessed was founded on what he thought his followers and "the people" wanted and expected of him as prophet and dictator. 06:44 AM    View blog reactions

• Virago Alameda announces play reading series 
Ken Bullock, Berkeley Daily Planet (CA) [The Virago Theatre Company] started their reading series in the summer of 2006 [...] with The Death of Ayn Rand by John Byrd and A Bed of My Own by Berkeley’s Robert Hamm, which were premiered in full stagings by Virago last summer. 06:37 AM    View blog reactions

• Bradford Cox re-releases expanded Atlas Sound album, covers Jay Reatard 
Brock Thiessen, Exclaim! Atlas Shrugged  [A] seven-inch single featuring Cox will be out August 5 via with K Records. On this one, Atlas Sound will provide the track "Atlas Shrugged" on the A-side and Selector Dub Narcotic will fill the B-side with a rendition of the same track, which they’re renaming "Shrug-a-Dub-Dub.”  07:13 AM    View blog reactions

• ABC encourages viewers to get Lost in books 
Rick McGinnis, Metro (Toronto) The Fountainhead  Books have been a prominent prop and plot device on Lost over its four seasons [....] The selection [...] is hard to characterize, and ranges from obvious [...] to interesting (Philip K. Dick’s Valis, Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History Of Time, Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, Lewis Carroll’s Through The Looking Glass and Alice In Wonderland and Henry James’ The Turn Of The Screw) and outlandish [...]. 07:10 AM    View blog reactions

• Going out: Live music 
Jennifer Van Evra, Globe and Mail (Toronto) The Fountainhead  Collective Soul. These American rockers, who first formed in 1992, took their name from a line in Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. 07:07 AM    View blog reactions

• High profile: Kristi Lea Harrington 
Schuyler Kropf, Post and Courier (Charleston, SC) Atlas Shrugged  Profile of a SC Circuit Court judge.Books on my nightstand: "Atlas Shrugged." 07:05 AM    View blog reactions

• • Concern 
Rev. Laura Spangler, Winston-Salem Journal (NC) Atheism  Letter to the editor.I hope others will share my concern about the millions of dollars that BB&T Corp. is giving in grant money to Wake Forest University and other N.C. universities to study the moral foundations of capitalism. The moral foundations that BB&T want our young people to study are based on philosophical inspiration from objectivism. Objectivism is closely associated with the author Ayn Rand, an atheist. This self-centered theory extols individualism and limited government, which has made some people very rich and others very poor. What about the biblical values of community and serving the common good? 06:59 AM    View blog reactions

• Civilised societies need subsidised arts - but the state shouldn’t do it 
Simon Heffer, The Telegraph (London) The Fountainhead  [Composer James] MacMillan's article [on leftist dogma in the arts world], and [composer] George Lloyd's heroic life, [...] have echoes of Ayn Rand's novel The Fountainhead - a byword in American culture, but hardly known here - in which an architect refuses to depart from his artistic and moral principles despite hardship and suffering. 06:43 AM    View blog reactions

• • Cry havoc 
Dwayne A. Day, Space Review Various people have read Jonah Goldberg’s book Liberal Fascism and started applying his (flawed) definition of fascism to everything that they blog about. Like a college student who gets his first taste of Ayn Rand and then starts interpreting everything—his government, his professors, his girlfriend—from an objectivist viewpoint, they’ve taken an ideological interpretation to the extremes. But most college students tend to emerge from their Randian phase and learn to view the world from a more nuanced and less antagonistic perspective. 06:42 AM    View blog reactions

• • Put on your XXL Sunday clothes 
Ann Lewinson, Hartford Advocate (CT) Movie reviews.Hancock may seem like an Incredibles rip-off (or a summer movie scripted by Ayn Rand), but when a PR man (Jason Bateman) gives Hancock an image makeover it turns out the movie is not about Objectivist heroics at all, but about playing well with others. 06:38 AM    View blog reactions

• An icon’s farewell work salutes another 
James E. Person Jr., Washington Times Review of Flying High: Remembering Barry Goldwater, by William F. Buckley Jr.[Buckley’s] prose catches fire when he describes Mr. Goldwater awaiting his moment on the convention floor: "Although the spirit of defiance was not fully aroused in Goldwater in the days leading to his nomination, the spirit was alive in his mind, and it was bursting for air. He was careful not to appear like a Randian superego, strutting his individualism by scaling local skyscrapers. In San Francisco Barry appeared, mostly, as a complaint organization man in Sunday dress, the tiger properly dormant." 06:51 AM    View blog reactions

• • Democracy vs. capitalism 
Thom Hartmann, The Thom Hartmann Program (Air Americia) Ayn Rand Institute  Capitalism  Yaron Brook  Audio  “Thom debates Dr. Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute about which is better...democracy or capitalism?” 06:27 AM    View blog reactions

• Embracing the uncertain 
Sinclair Stewart, Globe and Mail (Toronto) Capitalism  Interview with George Soros.“We have to recognize – and this is a rather shocking thought – that these powerful institutions, these regulators and everything, have been guided by a false interpretation of how markets operate,” Mr. Soros insisted at his New York office. He pointed an accusatory finger at Alan Greenspan and his “Ayn Rand-inspired politics,” faulting the former Federal Reserve chairman for failing to control the availability of credit – and thwart a massive bubble in the bargain. 06:24 AM    View blog reactions

• • Two readers elect to tackle same subject 
Jenny Moore, Brazil Times (IN) Letter to the editor.I suggest you read "Atlas Shrugged," by Ayn Rand, philosopher. Though a work of fiction, it clearly demonstrates what can happen to a society when the determination that the minimum is good enough for all is made and forbids those with more personal drive to advance to their full potential.  06:22 AM    View blog reactions

• • Libertarian’s issue: Personal privacy 
Harry Esteve, The Oregonian (Portland) Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  [Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr] spoke to about 150 people at an annual conference of The Atlas Society, a Washington, D.C.-based group that promotes Ayn Rand's libertarian principles. Rand, the author of "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged," founded a philosophical movement called "objectivism," which focuses on individual rights and achievements as the cornerstone of a great society. Barr said he agrees entirely with that outlook.  06:20 AM    View blog reactions

• Government or anarchy? 
George Dance, Nolan Chart Libertarians have historically stood for a proper government. A proper government is one that recognizes and respects individual human rights. [....] That is the main line of libertarianism, both academically (e.g., Robert Nozick) and popularly (e.g., Herbert Spencer or Ayn Rand). However, other libertarians reject this conclusion. 06:15 AM    View blog reactions

• • The books that changed your lives 
Jason Fitzpatrick, Lifehacker Anthem  Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  Several authors had multiple works mentioned by our readers, but none had such a strong showing as Ayn Rand. Most influential was The Fountainhead, followed by Atlas Shrugged and Anthem. 12:52 PM    View blog reactions

• Saving the (real) world 
Sean Ewing, Star-Ledger (Newark, NJ) Video games as an art form is a relatively young field. But despite that youth, we've seen some very potent displays of social awareness. "Metal Gear Solid 4" explored the idea of a war economy, "Bioshock" tackled objectivism and "Call of Duty 4" looked seriously at military service. 12:49 PM    View blog reactions