• • • Paul Ryan vs. Ayn Rand 
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Atheism  |Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  |Egoism  |Paul Ryan  |Inaccurate  | Watch: The religious left will immediately attack Mitt Romney’s choice for vice president and give as one evidence of Paul Ryan’s awfulness the recommendation he made to his staffers that they read anti-Christian novelist/philosopher Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. I showed my concern also in a column last year. My question was whether Ryan recommended the novel because of its broader philosophy or because it “shows young readers how capitalism turns individual self-interest into service to others, and in the process helps the poor far more than socialistic schemes do.” The latter was fine, but I wanted Ryan to be clear about what he agreed with and what he spurned.      View blog reactions

• • • Paul Ryan loves Ayn Rand—not 
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Atheism  |Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  |Paul Ryan  | The New York Times this morning has a surprisingly positive profile of GOP leader Paul Ryan. Meanwhile, NYT columnist Paul Krugman and New York magazine are scathing in their criticism. Among Christians a lot of confusion remains, in part because Ryan [...] has combined admirable budget analysis with troubling esteem for Christ-hating Ayn Rand. Happily, he has now clarified (or changed) his stance concerning Rand.      View blog reactions

• • Stories to come 
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Atlas Shrugged  | What’s the most compelling narrative with which conservatives challenge the left’s storytelling? Seems to be Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, which makes man the center and offers an immediate buzz but no future hope.      View blog reactions

• • • Take a stand against Rand 
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Alan Greenspan  |Atheism  |Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  |Egoism  |Image  | Also published at Townhall.com, on 15 July 2011.
I read Atlas Shrugged recently and respected its support for innovators who pour themselves into their businesses and its disdain for bureaucrats who think entrepreneurialism is easy and automatic. I also was amazed at the viciousness of Rand’s view of Christianity, leading up to its conclusion, where the book’s hero traces in the air the Sign of the Dollar, a replacement for the Sign of the Cross. I didn’t mark every purple passage because I was reading the novel on a treadmill, but Rand’s sneering words got my heart beating faster, and it wasn’t true love.      View blog reactions

• Treadmill religion 
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Conservatism by itself does not stand up to evil as Christianity does, but those whose primary identification is “conservative” should read Benjamin Wiker’s Ten Books Every Conservative Must Read (Regnery, 2010). It’s a pithy introduction to Aristotle, Chesterton, Voegelin, C.S. Lewis, Edmund Burke, de Tocqueville, Belloc, von Hayek, The Federalist Papers and their Anti-Federalist opponents—with material about Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Tolkien, and the Bible tossed in, and a concluding poke at “one imposter,” Ayn Rand.      View blog reactions