• Qui est John Galt? 
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Atlas Shrugged  | In completely unexpected news, the fourth richest man in the world, the richest man in France, Bernard Arnault, is reportedly applying for a Belgian passport. Arnault emigrated to the United States during the last Socialist presidency in 1981. For some unexplained reason, the business magnate hasn’t picked our country this time around.      View blog reactions

• The Morality of Capitalism 
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Capitalism  |Paul Ryan  | Rev. Robert A. Sirico is president of the Acton Institute, a Michigan-based think tank that works to integrate "Judeo-Christian Truths with Free Market Principles." In his new book "Defending the Free Market: The Moral Case for a Free Economy," Sirico argues that capitalism is not only compatible with Christianity, but that even the most derided aspects of the free market – consumerism, international trade and “unfairness” – help create the most moral economic system available. Sirico talks about Paul Ryan, Ayn Rand, Jane Fonda, Obamacare and the — sometimes unseen — morality of free markets.      View blog reactions

• • • What Would Ayn Rand Do? 
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Atheism  |Capitalism  |Syndicated  | Also published at reason.com.
Rand’s influence may induce Republicans to stray from the Lord Almighty, but it is doubtless that most liberals find Rand’s anti-theist views the least distasteful aspect of her philosophy. I am no objectivist, either, not even close, and though I doubt her ideas contradict the Bible (well, except the ones in which she denies the existence of God and all), I do know they are in direct disagreement with the doctrines of liberal morality. For the casual Rand fan, it’s the rigid and idealistic conviction about individual freedom and capitalism that is most seductive. For ardent detractors, people who believe that compassion and charity are best meted out by economic systems and government policy, this is depravity.      View blog reactions

• Lights, camera, liberty 
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Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  | It is a matter of time before concerns about liberty begin to filter into mainstream popular culture. The clues are everywhere: A remake of the greatest film of the 20th century, “Red Dawn,” is underway. As is a production of “Atlas Shrugged.” Is “Toy Story 3” part of that movement? Let me engage in a bit of wishful thinking and say: Of course it is.      View blog reactions

• The geeks had a word for it ... 
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Atlas Shrugged  | Like other books Americans have a duty to own — the Bible or "Atlas Shrugged," for instance — the dictionary does not require an absurd marketing ploy to sell itself. Yet, every year a barrage of cockamamie "word lists" are unveiled by publishers seeking to bring attention to the evolving English language.      View blog reactions

• Thou shalt not organize 
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Atheism  | Last year [...] atheists -- along with humanists, secularists and a gaggle of other "ists" -- gathered in dozens of cities to celebrate a holiday called HumanLight. The festivity, according to the organizers, envisions "a future in which all people can identify with one another, care for each other, behave with the highest moral standards, and work together toward a happy, just and peaceful world." The whole enterprise sounds like Gandhi channeling Ayn Rand -- or suspiciously like Mass. What happened to the good old days, when nonbelievers were in a perpetual non-celebratory mood?      View blog reactions

• Buckley an entertaining intellectual 
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Atlas Shrugged  | [National Review] would continue to purge kooks, as they saw them, for more than 50 years. On hyper-individualist author Ayn Rand, the National Review's Whittaker Chambers famously wrote, "From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: 'To a gas chamber — go!' "      View blog reactions

• •City should adjust its volume 
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On the "One Book, One Denver" public reading program.
In 1998, The Modern Library conducted a poll of the 100 best novels published in the English language since 1900. [....] Readers [...] voted Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged (a novel that takes place, partly, in Colorado) first overall. Do I expect the Denver library to stock 6,000 copies of a book celebrating radical individualism and capitalism - not to mention painfully stilted prose? No.      View blog reactions