• New definition of Google verb may be, ‘to show defiance’ 
The Daily Sentinel (Grand Junction, CO) Atlas Shrugged  Google went John Galt on the Chinese.     Share on Facebook

• The worst movies depicting witches and other pagans 
Gus diZerega, Beliefnet.com - A Pagan’s Blog I read LaVey's Satanic Bible as Ayn Rand plus magick.     Share on Facebook

• Intiman’s Paradise Lost relights Odets’ flaming sword 
Michael van Baker, The SunBreak (Seattle) Egoism  There's only one radical, really--Mr. Pike, the furnace man (a mountainous Herschel Sparber), radicalized by both unemployment and the First World War. [....] But maybe I shouldn't overlook Pearl and her foreclosed future, which leaves her bitter and fiercely self-interested--shades of the "Some days I'm very Randian" quote from local Tea Partier Keli Carender. She's not her mother's daughter. Clara Gordon [...] will offer hungry drop-ins food until the end of time.     Share on Facebook

• Health insurance companies failed to stand up for ... 
Michael Gordon, Associated Content Ayn Rand once referred to corporations, or a conglomeration of such companies, that receive a benefit, not because they have provided a good or service to a customer, but rather through lobbying government officials, as an "aristocracy of pull."     Share on Facebook

• Reading up on the right 
Steven F. Hayward, Claremont Review of Books Conservative intellectuals [...] are in eclipse at the moment. The leading public figures on the Right today tend to be the media celebrities of talk radio and cable TV, who make up in decibels what they lack in rigor and depth. We've traded Bill Buckley for Glenn Beck, Irving Kristol for Ann Coulter. The intellectual generating the most enthusiasm on the Right these days is Ayn Rand, the once-marginalized figure whose books have been selling like Shamwows since Obama took office. Neoconservatives remain in the doghouse—and not only among liberals (the Cato Institute's Ed Crane wants them thrown "under the bus"). The Religious Right is said to be a spent force.     Share on Facebook

• Getting to know Kyle Munkittrick 
Mike Treder, Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies [Q:] Do you consider yourself a libertarian, and if so, how does that fit in working with a politically progressive organization like the IEET? [A:] Oooooh boy. I’m a left-libertarian, which is shorthand for “I support free market economics and limited government, but I think Ayn Rand is crazy, recognize social and institutional disparities, and support liberal social goals, like marriage equality, reproductive rights, and drug legalization.” It’s better to think of me as a liberal who supports free market and small government solutions.     Share on Facebook

• • When books inspire action 
Alyssa Rosenberg, The Atlantic Atlas Shrugged  My friend, the blogger Bamber, writes that her own youthful stabs at romance were unduly influenced by Gone With The Wind and Ayn Rand novels. "I've spent a lot of time getting over them," she joked in her book list. Nobody actually wants to date the unholy fusion of Scarlett O'Hara and Dagny Taggart." Perhaps not, but at least the novels gave her a sense of where to start.     Share on Facebook

• Excerpt from Sean Hannity’s new book, Check Out the Rack On Freedom 
Andy McDonald, Huffington Post Humor."Hello there," I said. She turned her head to see me, got an initial estimate of "the goods," then put down the Ayn Rand novel she was reading.     Share on Facebook

• Rush, Charlebois inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame 
Mike Barber, The Province (Vancouver) Peart, as [Rush]’s principal lyricist, eschewed typical hard-rock fare about girls, booze, and the intersection of the two in favour of a more literary approach steeped in science fiction and Ayn Randian philosophy.     Share on Facebook

• Hedging my bets by dating a libertarian hedge-fund manager 
Daily Caller Despite our vastly different political views, and despite the fact that the online advice column I’d found when I googled “dating a Libertarian” advised anyone in my situation to “run for the hills,” I decided to keep seeing Lobster Salad. I rationalized that his were not blind beliefs, but ones arrived at through extensive critical thought (or at least the consumption of a couple of Ayn Rand books).     Share on Facebook

• • Unnecessary swamp-dwelling 
Bradley Rees, Tenth Amendment Center Atheism  Atlas Shrugged  The Founders’ stipulation that we should strive to maintain a moral society can be summed up thusly: That, as free men, we are endowed with certain rights which confer NO obligation on our fellow man, save one: that they refrain from violating them. And we likewise refrain from violating their rights, whether through force or fraud. The former was the basis for Ayn Rand’s great anti-statist novel, Atlas Shrugged, and was the underpinning of her Objectivist philosophy. Yet, it should be noted here, she was an avowed atheist. The concept of man’s rights being derived from our Creator did not hold any weight with her. She argued that, simply by virtue of being human, these rights belong to us. The point is, we can find broad agreement on these simple points, across typical dividing lines of race, religion, and even political loyalty.     Share on Facebook

• Bracing brew 
Myron Magnet, City Journal (Manhattan Institute) The New York Times triumphantly quoted the discomfited ambivalence of 30-year-old Keli Carender, organizer of the first Tea Party, about Medicare and Medicaid. “Some days I’m very Randian. I feel like there shouldn’t be any of those programs,” she said. “Sometimes I think, well, maybe it really should be just state, and there should be no federal part in it at all.” But these journalists don’t understand that to the Tea Partiers, saying that we’ve already replaced the Founders’ limited government with a medium-sized welfare state is no argument for scaling it up to a European-sized one.     Share on Facebook

• • When utopianism is shattered by reality 
Tim Case, LewRockwell.com Atlas Shrugged  In Starving the Monkeys Mr. [Tom] Baugh lays out the case for free market economics in a manner that is easy to read and rife with personal experiences. If you enjoyed Atlas Shrugged you will find in Mr. Baugh gives an up-to-date and no-nonsense "examination of the problems, and solutions that are more practical than hoping to run away to a prepared Galt's Gulch retreat or community."     Share on Facebook

• • Remembering the ladies 
Audrey Pietrucha, Bennington Banner Anthem  Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  We The Living  Capitalism  Personal life  Ayn Rand inspires adoration in some and abhorrence in others, but seldom do readers come away from her works complacent and neutral. Rand wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. [....] Her clear and well-reasoned arguments in favor of individualism, laissez-faire economics and constitutionally limited government helped fuel a conservative backlash against collectivism and also formed the foundation of her philosophical movement, Objectivism.     Share on Facebook

•Games over, but strong ties endure 
Ronald M. Bosrock, Star-Tribune (Minneapolis) The Fountainhead  It never ceases to amaze me how little Americans know about countries that mean so much to our economic and strategic survival. That certainly includes Canada. To paraphrase Ayn Rand, it's not that we think badly of our Canadian neighbors, it just that we don't think of them at all.     Share on Facebook

• More government largesse 
Jim Bispo, Beaufort Observer (NC) Atlas Shrugged  In the 2008 budget, OMB estimated tax expenditures as $878B. [....] It is interesting that we are complaining about spending about about that amount for the Prez' health care program over 10 years (if you can believe the administrations' spear carriers and their projections - which you can't) and here is about the same amount in a single year and no-one seems terribly exercised over it (except me and John Galt, that is).     Share on Facebook

• Pages see legislative process up close 
Christinia Crippes, Pages see legislative process up close (The Hawk Eye) Atlas Shrugged  [Caytlin] Hentzel said meeting new people who have different philosophical beliefs and interacting with them has been a learning experience in itself. She said they share books -- Rep. Christopher Rants, R-Sioux City, passed around copies of "Atlas Shrugged" for the students' edification -- and discuss them, as well as reading pending legislation and debating that among themselves.     Share on Facebook

• TV soundoff: Sunday talking heads 
Jason Linkins, Huffington Post [On Meet the Press, Jon] Meacham says that the reform bill is "to the right" of Nixon's own reform bill, but that can't be true because I just heard that Obama governs as a columnist from LEFT TURN magazine in a world where Ayn Rand reigns supreme and Alex Cockburn is cloned and hunted for sport.     Share on Facebook

• • Drinking the tea 
Michael Weymouth, Newburyport Current (Beverly, MA) Perhaps [the Tea Party followers] believe that macro results will be achieved by pursuing our individual goals, ala the Ayn Rand theory of Objectivism, which contends that when every citizen is a plus sign, the society as a whole is a plus sign. (I wonder if her theories would work with an NFL team where each player is allowed to follow his own game plan instead of playing as a unified team.)     Share on Facebook

• Beast master: Animator Ray Harryhausen’s special effects on a genre 
Stephen Whitty, Star-Ledger (Newark, NJ) The Fountainhead  [Harryhausen] still has the romantic movies he loved as a young man, too (“Now, Voyager” and “The Fountainhead” are particular favorites).     Share on Facebook