• Someday Soon, We’re Going to Need a Lot More Tax Revenue 
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Atlas Shrugged  | If we're going to need more tax revenue in the future, let's deal with it in the future. Maybe political pressure will force Republicans to capitulate. Maybe Democrats will take over Congress. Maybe a latter-day John Galt will come along and invent a free energy machine and none of this will matter.      View blog reactions

• Chris Christie Probably Really Doesn’t Give a Damn About Presidential Politics Right Now 
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Atlas Shrugged  | Why has Chris Christie suddenly embraced President Obama as a long-lost brother in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy? This joins many other great questions of the universe. Who is John Galt? Who promoted Peress? Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?      View blog reactions

• Judicial Restraint Pretty Much Obsolete on the Right These Days 
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Capitalism  | In an otherwise tedious case about milk regulation, Appellate Judge Janice Rogers Brown decided to give her inner Randian free rein last week. "Cowboy capitalism" is dead, she moaned, and courts are at fault for not slapping down legislatures both local and national that infringe on economic rights.      View blog reactions

• • • Hayek and Rand 
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Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  |Image  | If [Atlas Shrugged] had been published in 1937, it would have made a kind of sense. Capitalism was on the ropes, there were lots of serious adherents of central planning, and the NRA was a pretty good example of the kind of law that Rand condemns in her novel. Likewise, even if it had been published in 1947, it might have made a bit of sense in an extravagant sort of way. As Tyler notes, it was unclear how the postwar economy would pan out, lots of people assumed that wartime planning would make the transition to peace, and communist parties in Europe were, at the time, very active and very successful. But it was published in 19 57, and even aside from its train-themed plot it seems wildly out of tune with its times. The United States was firmly capitalist, the New Deal had settled down into a quiet adolescence, the country was rabidly anti-Soviet and anti-communist, and celebration of big business leaders was the order of the day.      View blog reactions