• • • The Cultists Lose Their Minds After Barack Obama Says Ayn Rand is for Teenagers 
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Capitalism  |Egoism  |Nathaniel Branden  | The election’s tight, so the racket is to yell “we’re winning” in a loud voice till the votes are counted. (And if you have a little lung power left over, bitch about the liberal media.) We that have free souls, it touches us not, and we take our pleasures where we can. I’m enjoying the brethren’s reaction to Obama’sRolling Stone interview -- especially the Ayn Rand bit.      View blog reactions

• After Batman Theater Shooting, Rightbloggers Rush to Defend What's Important: Guns, Themselves 
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Atlas Shrugged  | Pre-Aurora, rightbloggers were psyched to celebrate the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises, as an important work of conservative philosophy -- like Atlas Shrugged, only less cartoonish.      View blog reactions

• • Lights Off for Earth Hour? Rightbloggers Leave Lights On, Declare Victory 
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Ayn Rand Center  |Capitalism  |Yaron Brook  | This year the Ayn Rand Center seems to have mainly skipped the festivities -- though they did offer a video called, “Does laissez-faire capitalism harm the environment?” In this fascinating presentation, the Center’s spokesperson, Yaron Brook, said that, whatever laissez-faire (French for “I live, you die”) capitalism has meant for the “spotted owl environment” (haw!), it has been very good for the “human environment” -- because “there has never been in human history a time where we have been healthier, where we have breathed cleaner air, where we have drunk better water...” Mind you, this had nothing to do with envirofascist meddling such as the Clean Air Act, anti-smog ordinances, etc. -- the Invisible Hand would have cut emissions and dumping eventually, but the stupid hippie lawmakers jumped the gun and stole their thunder.      View blog reactions

• Rightbloggers Denounce Rick Santorum's War on Porn—As a Liberal Conspiracy 
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Randroid site The Objective Standard compared Santorum to the hated Jane Fonda. “Fonda wants to use the power of the federal government to shut down Rush Limbaugh’s radio broadcasts,” they wrote. “Santorum wants to use the same power to shut down internet pornography. Both Fonda and Santorum are enemies of freedom of speech.”      View blog reactions

• • Rightbloggers Celebrate the Unprecedented Success of Sarah Palin’s (10-Theater) Movie Opening 
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Atlas Shrugged movie  | Let’s see what happened with another heavily-politicized film event, the debut of the film version of Atlas Shrugged in April. That film opened in 299 theaters, receipts for which, we were told at the time, promised an epochal hit and an Ayn Rand revival. But in its second weekend, Atlas Shrugged expanded to 465 screens -- and took in about half as much money as it had in its opening weekend. Shortly thereafter, its producer abandoned his plan to bring the film to 1,000 screens.      View blog reactions

• Battle of Birtherism: Rightbloggers Divide on Whether Obama is Foreign-Born or Merely Un-American 
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Atlas Shrugged movie  | Several of the [birther] brethren were as excited about [Jerome] Corsi’s book as Objectivists awaiting the release of the Atlas Shrugged movie or pre-teens anticipating a Justin Bieber concert.      View blog reactions

• • • Rightbloggers on Atlas Shrugged: It’s the feel-good, piece-of-crap movie of the year! 
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Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  |The Fountainhead  |Individualism  |Image  | Perhaps sensing that general audiences might not flock to a movie about the evils of collectivism, the film’s producers have cleverly cultivated a conservative audience, debuting the Atlas Shrugged trailer at the Conservative Political Action Conference and working with tea party and libertarian groups to get the word out. So the brethren were fired up before the lights dimmed, and rightbloggers mostly told them that Atlas Shrugged was a must-see, whether or not they thought it was any good as, you know, a movie. [....] All this is dismayingly reminiscent of the old Soviet attitude toward art -- that its primary importance is to advance a political agenda, to which all aesthetic concerns must take a back seat. Which is particularly strange coming from a bunch of alleged individualists who are always complaining that Hollywood movies are too politicized.      View blog reactions

• • • 10 shameless right-wing tributes to Ayn Rand that should make any sane person blush 
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Atlas Shrugged movie  |Ayn Rand Center  |Atlas Shrugged  |The Fountainhead  |The Virtue of Selfishness  |Capitalism  |Don Watkins  |Egoism  |Yaron Brook  | Once upon a time, you’d find Randian rants only in conservative and libertarian publications, where only true believers would see them. But since the dawn of the Obama socialist menace, Randroids have actually been recruited to spread the gospel of Chairman Ayn in major papers and magazines via op-eds. As overheated as conservative writers have gotten lately, it’s still weirder to see full-on Rand cultists raving in the pages of, say, the Wall Street Journal. It’s like opening the New York Times and seeing the estate tax discussed in terms of the works of Carlos Castaneda.      View blog reactions

• Nashville flood proves to rightbloggers: Obama hates America, white people 
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Rightbloggers believe the Liberal Media unfairly exploited that event to make President Bush look bad, paving the way for President ObamaHitler. They have since prayed ceaselessly to Reagan and Ayn Rand for a way to redress this historic indignity.      View blog reactions

• Jon Kyl continues GOP war on unemployment benefits 
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It would appear the national GOP is trying to pitch a Randian work-or-starve line in the teeth of a recession. We're not sure why they think it's a good strategy.      View blog reactions

• War on Christmas not as warlike this year: Obama to blame? 
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Monroe Rising, normally devoted to upstate politics, offers "Why The Left Hates Christmas." "Two thousand years ago," they assert, "the Christmas Revolution began with the birth of Jesus." Jesus was not all about loving thy neighbor, as the uninformed might think, but "the individual interests and freedom to pursue life, liberty and prosperity." Back in Pilgrim days these "proved harmonious in American communities," but they are now "targeted for defeat by those who believe community interests are more important than are individual interests." It's Christmas as Ayn Rand might have approved of it: You give the presents to yourself, not to parasites like your kids, who produce nothing and probably believe in "witch doctors" like Santa Claus.      View blog reactions

• Rightbloggers mourns Michael Jackson’s death—as good news for Obama, Ahmadinejad 
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Ayn Rand Institute  |Yaron Brook  | In a Pajamas Media video segment, Bill Whittle and his guests, Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Center and Terry Jones of Investor's Business Daily, explored "The Michael Jackson Effect: Shenanigans in DC & Lockdown in Iran."      View blog reactions

• • • Rightbloggers culture-war for John Galt, against Jon Stewart and Meghan McCain 
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Atlas Shrugged  | Galt-Going has been heavily promoted by top bloggers such as Michelle Malkin and Instapundit. The implication is that Galt-Goers will follow the example of John Galt in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, and withdraw their businesses and innovations from an ungrateful American society, leaving it destitute. But no such withdrawals of significance have yet been recorded.      View blog reactions

• • • Galt TV! Randroids explain their budding movement 
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Altruism  |Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  |Going Galt  | On a Pajamas Media video.
[Eric Brunner] says "Going John Galt isn't really essentially a political or economic sort of strike, it's a moral strike, rejecting the moral code of altruism, and accepting and spreading the morality that Ayn Rand puts forth which is rational selfishness." His plan is "following Ayn Rand's morality as much as I can and spreading her philosophy as far as can." So he's not going John Galt so much as going Dorkus Malorkus.      View blog reactions

• • • Rightbloggers say: Go Galt! We’ll catch up with you later! 
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Ayn Rand Institute  |Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  |Going Galt  | The idea [of "going Galt"] mostly lay dormant until the emergence of protests over the stimulus bill, when the Ayn Rand Center announced that sales of Atlas Shrugged had risen dramatically. This canny (and unsourced) piece of book promotion had a predictable effect, and gave rightbloggers a shiny new hook.      View blog reactions

• • • Rich rightwingers threaten to “go Galt,” make less money to thwart Obama 
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Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  |Going Galt  | So far this ["going Galt"] mania has mostly been voiced rather than executed, as at the decidedly un-Randian tea party protests performed across the U.S. last week. Some blog commenters claim to have Galtian action plans [...] but, as the economy is already collapsing, it would be difficult to gauge their effectiveness even if they were effected. Liberals have responded mostly with mockery; a "Go Galt Go!" Facebook group suggests, "Only a universal wingnut blogging strike can bring the moochers to their senses."      View blog reactions

• The official Village Voice election-season guide to the right-wing blogosphere 
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Megan McArdle. [....] Began posting at Live From the WTC (later Asymmetrical Information) as “Jane Galt” shortly after 9/11, with Randian tropes and denunciations of “Lefty Idiocy.”      View blog reactions