• • • Economic policy isn't baseball, it's war 
Zev Golan, Jerusalem Post Atlas Shrugged  |The Fountainhead  |Capitalism  |Individualism  | Some people want to fend for themselves and others prefer to let others – whether rabbis or social scientists or governments or newspaper commentators – think for them or support them financially.

In the United States, American history and culture provide role models for both sides of the game. In good schools, teenagers learn about the arguments among the country’s founding fathers on some of these issues. Books that deal with controversial presidencies, during which these debates were strong, sell well. And books by writers like Ayn Rand continue to sell millions of copies half a century after their original publication, affording new generations examples of different kinds of people.

A common critique of Rand is that she simplified things, portrayed the conflict in black and white. She described the individualist who thinks and works for his own happiness as heroic and the person who adopts other people’s values or wants a share of money he hasn’t earned as a failure or a villain. But this black-and-white view provides a simple scorecard making it obvious what the argument is about.   Published: 2013-04-24

• • The shortest Tennessee legislative session: the good, the bad and the ugly 
Richard Locker, Commercial Appeal (Memphis) Less than a month after the Sandy Hook massacre, there were scores of Tennessee bills to arm teachers, nullify federal gun laws, criminalize federal officers enforcing gun laws and prohibit employers from banning guns from their parking lots. There were bills to outlaw college diversity programs, ban programs and scholarships based on race, gender or ethnicity, and dock welfare payments to families whose children don't make satisfactory progress in school. [....] Those were the kinds of bills, a continuation from last year, that prompted liberal Mother Jones magazine to call Tennessee's legislature the worst in America and progressive writer Les Leopold to call Tennessee "Ayn Rand's vision of paradise" in a Salon.com article.   Published: 2013-04-28

• • For the rare and unusual, head to the Times Colonist book sale’s collectibles corner 
Katherine Dedyna, Times Colonist (Victoria, BC) Atlas Shrugged  | Every year, Donna Davis chooses to spend two weeks enmeshed in “the cage”— also known as the collectibles corner of the Times Colonist book sale. The wire-enclosed section in the Victoria Curling Club separates the long rows of books priced at $1 to $3 at this weekend’s sale from those rated as especially attractive, valuable, rare, fun or fascinating. [....] The volunteer staff has been funnelling their best bets to the cage for nearly two weeks now and there are hundreds if not more that rate special consideration. One of the most noteworthy is a first edition of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, still with its tattered 1957 jacket. A pristine and autographed copy can be had for $17,500 online, but here, the 1,168-page tome is a lot less.   Published: 2013-05-01

• • Sun Down 
Now (Toronto) Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  | Sun News Network is making the case to the CRTC for why cable providers across the country should be mandated to carry it. [....] Check out the people and organizations Sun News has selected to make presentations on its behalf • THE FREE THINKING FILM SOCIETY puts on an annual festival of conservative-friendly movies in Ottawa. The most recent fest included such films as Why Is It Hate? (about “why singling out and demonizing Israel at Gay Pride is hateful”) and Atlas Shrugged: Part I (the first instalment of a three-part adaptation of Ayn Rand’s book).   Published: 2013-05-01

• The White Wall 
Ben McGrath, The New Yorker While training in the past twelve months, [Dallas Seavey] burned through nearly fifteen hundred dollars' worth of audio books: nonfiction (biographies of Thomas Jefferson, for example) during the day, and fiction (Hemingway, Cormac McCarthy, Ayn Rand) at night.   Published: 2013-04-22

• ‘Wanderer’ falls flat 
Callie Sutton, The Advocate (Baton Rouge, LA) Atlas Shrugged  | Novels focused on dystopian societies have been around for ages. Many have become famous for their depictions of what society could become in the future. “Atlas Shrugged,” “1984” and “The Handmaid’s Tale” are only a few among the many classics. Though the first dystopian novels were written centuries ago, their popularity for both novelists and readers has skyrocketed in the past 15 years.   Published: 2013-05-01

• • My summer of so-so movies 
Scott Dickensheets, City Life (Las Vegas) The setting for Elysium (Aug. 9) — an Earth in which the super-rich live on a luxe space station while everyone else slags it out on the trashed planet below — is so damn Ayn Rand that I guarantee Mitt Romney will cream his jeans if he sees it. Into the film’s lofty paradise barges Matt Damon, a poor man with a condition that can only be cured by rich people’s medicine, which, in a completely unbelievable twist, the rich aren’t willing to share. Unlike the 1 percenters of our own time, who indulge a haughty animus toward the poor, I indulge an utterly reasonable animus toward the rich, so this is a must-see.   Published: 2013-05-01

• Game Review: ‘Bioshock Infinite’ 
Carl Lyon, FEARnet BioShock  | 2007’s Bioshock was a once-in-a-lifetime title, a game that revitalized the long-stagnant FPS genre with deeper mechanics and one of the most compelling and original stories ever coded.  Ayn Rand-inspired objectivism was folded deftly into an introspective narrative that explored identity, destiny, and free will.   Published: 2013-05-01

• • Rats, Student Blocs and Solidarity Swarms: What to Expect on May Day 2013 
Sarah Jaffe, In These Times - Uprising Atlas Shrugged  | This year's Immigrant Worker Justice Tour, like last year's, departs from Bryant Park at noon and will stop at locations around the city where immigrant workers and others are fighting for their rights. Stops will include Atlas Media, where workers have been waiting over two years for a contract after winning their vote to organize with the Writers Guild of America East (the company's named after Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, which might explain the delay) [...].   Published: 2013-04-30

• Netflix Originals nabs prison drama Orange is the New Black as online exclusive 
Thomas Newton, Recombu Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  | Taylor Schilling, who starred opposite Zac Efron in The Lucky One (and in, er, Atlas Shrugged Part I) heads up the cast as Piper Chapman, who finds herself behind bars after selling drugs with her long-time partner Alex (Laura Prepon).   Published: 2013-04-30

• • Hard Times and Huge Profits 
Graydon Carter, Vanity Fair Capitalism  | In the decade-long run-up to the mortgage crisis, hedge-fund traders came to embody the glittering new age of Wild West capitalism ignited by Ronald Reagan’s and Margaret Thatcher’s initial moves to deregulate the financial markets in the 1980s. At the time, nobody seemed to notice or care that these heirs of Ayn Rand were the prime beneficiaries in the dismantling of safeguards that had been put in place during the Great Depression, when a huge swath of the population was made destitute by the follies of Wall Street. These were the very regulations that, tightly enforced, had made Western capitalism so safe and productive during its golden age of the 1950s and 60s.   Published: 2013-06-01

• • Phyllis Schlafly: Bible's compassion mandate does not apply to immigrants 
Michael Ross, The Examiner Egoism  | [T]he dilemma is that so many Republican politicians are trying to pretend that [...] it's possible for them to indulge in the selfishness praised by Ayn Rand while still declaring themselves to be good Christians.   Published: 2013-05-01

• • What Republicans will never acknowledge 
Chris Swindell, Charleston Gazette (WV) Atheism  |Paul Ryan  | What Republicans and West Virginia red state Democrats will simply not admit is that we are, in fact, our brother's keeper. However, unlike Roosevelt, Eisenhower and Reagan, that motivating principle is no longer our North Star.

We cannot agree because we no longer share a vision for America's poor, sick and elderly. Budget negotiations are fruitless as long as Ayn Rand is guiding Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan. That the Tea Party supports the notion of independent gain, luck of one's own making, and other disincentives to collective welfare, simply proves my point.   Published: 2013-04-30

• • • 5 loners who changed the course of history 
Robert Taylor, The Examiner Atheism  |Personal life  | 2. Ayn Rand. The Russian-born Rand undoubtedly fit the qualification of a loner and introvert. While authoring essays on philosophy, logic and writing several books that continue to be some of the most popular in the world, had few friends, and drove away most that stayed long enough to know her.   Published: 2013-05-01

• • Lessons from Pakistan to help 
Pornpimol Kanchanalak, The Nation (Bangkok) Atlas Shrugged  | As Ann Rand fittingly said in her “Atlas Shrugged”: “Power-lust is a weed that grows only in the vacant land of an abandoned mind.”   Published: 2013-05-02

• The techie novels of Nevil Shute 
Mark Frauenfelder, Boing Boing Fun fact from Wikipedia: "Trustee from the Toolroom was voted #27 on the Modern Library Readers' list of the top 100 novels. The top ten in that poll, though, included four works by Ayn Rand and three by L. Ron Hubbard -- according to David Ebershoff, Modern Library's publishing director, 'the voting population [was] skewed.'"   Published: 2013-05-01

• • • Ayn Rand in Hollywood—and Her Greatest Love Affair (With the Atomic Bomb) 
Greg Mitchell, Huffington Post Atlas Shrugged  |The Fountainhead  |Capitalism  | It may surprise many to learn that, like many famous novelists, Ayn Rand had a period when she "went Hollywood." In 1943, Rand sold the rights for The Fountainhead to Warner Bros., and wrote the screenplay. She was then hired by top producer Hall Wallis as a writer, idea generator and script doctor. Her screenplays included the Oscar-nominated Love Letters and You Came Along. Right after the war she became involved in the anti-Communist movement in Hollywood and appeared as a friendly witness before Congress in testifying about the Red influence there.

At the same time, I’ve learned, she also had a kind of love affair -- with the atomic bomb.   Published: 2013-05-01

• • The Sad Decline Of The Word "Capitalism" 
Alejandro Chafuen, Forbes Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal  |Capitalism  | During my college years I was more than satisfied with the arguments in favor of capitalism provided in “Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal” by Ayn Rand, and Ludwig von Mises’ The Anti-Capitalist Mentality.   Published: 2013-05-01

• • Are online sales taxes only fair? 
Jacob Sullum, Reason The Marketplace Fairness Act, which Congress is expected to approve soon, sounds like something out of an Ayn Rand novel. But it reflects understandable complaints from brick-and-mortar retailers who believe their online competitors have been enjoying an unfair advantage for way too long, thanks to Supreme Court rulings that bar a state from requiring a business to collect sales tax unless the company has a physical presence in that state.   Published: 2013-05-01

• Stanley Cup runneth over with political cash: NHL owners scored big for GOP 
Louis Serino, Philadelphia Inquirer Below are profiles of some of the NHL's more noteworthy political activists: [....] Ed Snider, Ayn Rand acolyte and CEO of Comcast Spectacor which owns the [Philadelphia Flyers], ponied up $42,500 for Republican candidates, including $7,500 to Romney, $5,000 to Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va; $5,000 to House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and $2,500 to Texas Gov. Rick Parry.   Published: 2013-05-01