• • • Ayn Rand: Queen of the Universe 
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Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  |Egoism  | Relevant sections begin at 29:10 and 47:45.
[I]n tonight’s Daily Take, Thom discusses how teaching Ayn Rand’s philosophy to our nation’s children is a very bad idea.      View blog reactions

• • On the News With Thom Hartmann: Civil Liberties Were Once Again Defeated in the Senate on Thursday,  
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Video  | Sounds to me like a newly discovered Earth-clone is the perfect place for Libertarians to try to start up their Ayn Rand paradise far, far away from the rest of us who actually care for one another. When do the first space ships leave??      View blog reactions

• • • Libertarianism Is Dead 
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Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  |Paul Ryan  | Ed Hudgins of The Atlas Society interviewed about Objectivism and Paul Ryan.
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• • On the News With Thom Hartmann: CISPA Might Be Another Example of Bought and Paid-For Legislation, a 
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Capitalism  |Paul Ryan  |Video  | [M]ulti-millionaire Congressman Paul Ryan – author of one of the most radical hard-right budgets to ever pass the House of Representatives – has a little Ayn Rand problem on his hands. After catching flak from the Catholic Bishops, who said his budget is more in line with his favorite philosopher Ayn Rand than Jesus Christ, millionaire Congressman Paul Ryan has tried to distance himself from previous remarks he’s made supporting Ayn Rand. But the Ayn Rand think tank The Atlas Society is applauding the Ryan budget as being, “very much in line with the direction that we stand for and would like to see the government go.” The Atlas Society also released a 2005 speech by Paul Ryan in which Ryan brags that the one person who most inspired him to seize power over our government was Ayn Rand. Now that explains a lot.      View blog reactions

• • • The president strikes back 
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Altruism  |Ayn Rand Institute  |Capitalism  |Personal life  |Yaron Brook  |Video  | Interview with Gary Weiss, author of Ayn Rand Nation: The Hidden Struggle for America's Soul.
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• Study Shows That Long-Term Unemployed Americans Die Younger 
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Currently – 40% of America’s unemployed have been out of work for more than six months. And they’ll be dying younger because the social safety net that used to catch them has been cut away after thirty years of Reaganomics, Clintonomics, and Ayn Rand’s trickle-down morality.      View blog reactions

• • On the News With Thom Hartmann: Congress’ Disapproval Rating at an All-Time ... 
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Capitalism  |Video  | New pictures show what look to be dark streams on the Martian surface that appear to change seasonally – indicating that salt water may be present on our nearest planetary neighbor. NASA Administrator Charles Boldin said about the discovery, “NASA’s Mars Exploration Program keeps bringing us closer to determining whether the Red Planet could harbor life in some form.” Well – as soon as we find out – can we send the Ron Paul and Ayn Rand Libertarians up there so they can start their “free-market” commune? It’s that’s never worked anywhere it’s been tried on Earth, but maybe the lower gravity on Mars will change the laws of economics there.      View blog reactions

• On the News With Thom Hartmann: Taliban Attack in Kabul, Florida Slashes Unemployment Benefits 
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Video  | That’s the Republicans deficit reduction strategy at work – balance budgets by killing off the poor and the sick. Ayn Rand would be proud.      View blog reactions

• • • Thom Hartmann Program - 21 April 2011 
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Atlas Shrugged  |The Fountainhead  |Egoism  |Personal life  |Audio  |Inaccurate  | Discussion of Ayn Rand and the Atlas Shrugged movie with James Hirsen.
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• • Right-wingers ask for reparations for the rich? 
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Ayn Rand Institute  |Don Watkins  |Video  | Thom Hartmann confronts Don Watkins, analyst with Ayn Rand Institute.      View blog reactions

• Put Lou Dobbs out to pasture 
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Alan Greenspan  | [Jack] Welch is cut from the same cloth as Alan Greenspan, the Ronald Reagan–appointed Federal Reserve Chairman, a devotee of Ayn Rand and a promoter of outsourcing as well as “talent insourcing.”      View blog reactions

• • Stop them from eating my town 
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Egoism  |Inaccurate  | In the worldview of Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman, everybody in the world is motivated purely by “self-interest.” There are the “smart” people pursuing their own self-interest (also known as “the rich”) and the “lazy” people pursuing their own self- interest by using an instrument of force (government regulations, minimum-wage laws, collective bargaining laws, and the like) to extract wealth from the “smart” people for themselves. These latter people are labeled by Randians and Friedmanites as “parasites” or “moochers.”      View blog reactions

• Want to stimulate the economy? Lower the retirement age to 55 now! 
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Capitalism  | [Alan] Greenspan is still preaching that now-discredited and anti-American philosophy he learned from Ayn Rand.      View blog reactions

• • Are nanoparticles safe? 
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Ayn Rand Institute  |Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  |Egoism  |Yaron Brook  |Video  | Interview with Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute.
[Brook:] Objectivism is about reason, it’s about a morality of self-interest, of pursuing one’s own happiness and one’s own well-being as one’s highest moral purpose, in a rational, long-term way. And as a consequence [it’s] about a political system that leaves individuals to make decisions for themselves and to gain the rewards when they make right decisions and suffer the consequences when they make wrong decisions.      View blog reactions

• The real criminals are neither Lynndie England nor the AIG traders 
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Capitalism  | The intellectual forefathers and mothers of the insane conservative economic policies that have brought us to where we are include Ludwig Von Mises, Freidrich Von Hayeck, Milton Friedman, Alan Greenspan, Tom Freidman, Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, and Ayn Rand.      View blog reactions

• • Toxic toys 
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Ayn Rand Institute  |Atlas Shrugged  |The Fountainhead  |Capitalism  |Yaron Brook  |Audio  | Interview with Yaron Brook on dangerous toys imported from China.
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• • • Tip of the iceberg 
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Ayn Rand Institute  |Capitalism  |Personal life  |Yaron Brook  |Audio  | (Audio.) Interview with Yaron Brook on Alan Greenspan and the causes of the financial crisis.
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• • Democracy vs. capitalism 
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Ayn Rand Institute  |Capitalism  |Yaron Brook  |Audio  | “Thom debates Dr. Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute about which is better...democracy or capitalism?”
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• • Killer tomatoes 
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Ayn Rand Institute  |Capitalism  |Yaron Brook  |Audio  | “Thom and Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute debate who should be keeping us safe from food borne illnesses, the government or the free market.”
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• Ha-Joon Chang’s ‘Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism’ 
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Capitalism  | Book review.
Chang shows how countries that rose to become industrial or trade superpowers did so only by totally repudiating the Milton Friedman/Tom Friedman "free trade" and "small government" mythos, and instead following Alexander Hamilton's tried-and-true formula [of protectionism and government funding of industry]. [....] America held such policies, too, until the 1980s when Ronald Reagan became president and his economic advisers began advancing the radical Libertarian views of Milton Friedman, and the (Ayn Rand) Objectivist views of Alan Greenspan (who had been inducted into Rand's cult in her New York apartment in the 1960s).      View blog reactions