• • • Strike up the Rand 
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Ayn Rand Institute  |Atlas Shrugged  | Re: Jean Hewitt-Taylor’s Nov. 11 letter. Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” has been selling like hot cakes lately. According to the Ayn Rand Institute of Irvine, Calif., millions of copies have been sold in the last few years alone. This is unprecedented for a novel published 55 years ago. Even more astounding in this anti-intellectual age is that “Atlas” is a book of ideas, and it challenges the prevailing morality of the last two thousand years. Unlike Hewitt-Taylor, those who know Rand’s work well are neither surprised nor “bemused,” as they watch European societies crumble under the dead weight of stultifying statism.      View blog reactions

• • How, why we have grown 
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Atlas Shrugged  |Objectivist author  | I had never demonstrated in public before last year, when I decided it was time for me to stand up publicly to be counted. I had heard Chicagoan Rick Santelli, a financial reporter on CNBC, make his famous statement on the air that he and his colleagues were going to protest the movement of the U.S. government toward statism by dumping tea into Lake Michigan. He had frequently made public reference to Ayn Rand’s famous novel, “Atlas Shrugged,” and how she had, 50 years ago, shown how and why this statist trend occurred. Being an objectivist myself, I could not agree with him more. I went out to the first local tea party and have been to every one since.      View blog reactions

• • Conservative view 
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Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal  |Capitalism  | Re: "Rules for capitalism," Joseph Gormley, Jan. 29. Congratulations to Mr. Gormley for recognizing the hypocrisy of religious conservatives who advocate self interest in economics and self sacrifice in morality. He is dead wrong, however, to believe that our economy has ever been unregulated, that conservatives stand for capitalism, and that Ayn Rand is one of their heroes. In 1957, devout Catholic William F. Buckley, conservative icon and publisher of National Review, published Whittaker Chambers' vicious review of Ayn Rand's newly published "Atlas Shrugged." More recently, John Podhoretz in his The Weekly Standard review of Alan Greenspan's memoir "The Age of Turbulence," denigrated Greenspan's earlier association with Rand. As Federal Reserve chairman, Greenspan himself repudiated the principles of laissez-faire he once shared with Rand, thereby repudiating her philosophy, Objectivism.      View blog reactions

• • Defending freedom 
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Capitalism  | As philosopher and freedom fighter Ayn Rand said, "If the 'conservatives' do not stand for capitalism, they stand for and are nothing; they have no goal, no direction, no political principles, no social ideals, no intellectual values, no leadership to offer anyone."      View blog reactions

• • Escaping looters of society 
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Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  | Letter to the editor.
Re: "Sad road ahead," David Marcum, Nov. 6. Mr. Marcum refers to a novel he read at the age of 16, which although he did not name it, I infer that he means Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged." Mr. Marcum's last sentence states that he would "gladly hitchhike my way to Galt's gulch, but I don't know where it is anymore." I can help him find it. There is a small group of us like-minded people who meet informally once a month. We call ourselves the Southwest Florida Objectivists. There is no fee or any requirement other than a common interest in the ideas of Ayn Rand.      View blog reactions