• • TWiST #46 with David Heinemeier Hansson 
Jason Calacanis, This Week In Startups Capitalism  Video  (Relevant section begins at approximately 1:03:30.)[Q:] Are you, like, an Ayn Rand guy or something? Is there some Objectivist thing that I need to know about? [A:] No.

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• • Going Galt on Medicaid 
Don Surber, Daily Mail (Charleston, WV) Atlas Shrugged  [Dr. Marc Siegel is] not really going John Galt because that fictional character simply stopped working in order to stop paying taxes to a socialistic state. Such a protest would not really work. The government simply prints more money and the ruling party likes it.     Share on Facebook

• • Inside the Beltway 
David Frum, FrumForum Ayn Rand Center  Yaron Brook  PJTV has a super-sarcastic (and longggg) video up in which Bruce Bartlett and I are mocked and derided as out of touch with ordinary Americans for questioning the knowledgeability of tea party protesters. A lot of chortling on set. I chortled along with the hosts, but for different reasons: Irony #1: Among those chortling at our lack of connection to everyday politics – the head of the Ayn Rand Center! Now there’s a movement with grand appeal to everyday working Americans.     Share on Facebook

• • The politically correct libertarian 
American Thinker Atlas Shrugged  Atlas Shruggedremains popular for a reason. All isn't lost.     Share on Facebook

• • Say ‘yes’ to capitalism 
Walter Block, LewRockwell.com Capitalism  Every word we use to describe ourselves is precious. We must keep them all, jettison none of them. And this includes (classical) liberals, free enterprisers, libertarians, Austro-libertarians, anarchists, anarcho-capitalists, laissez faire capitalists, and, yes, plain old unadorned "capitalists." Ayn Rand, bless her heart, never failed to rally to the banner of capitalism. I do not of course agree with everything she ever wrote, but on this matter I am very grateful to her. There were few wordsmiths in our movement better acquainted with the importance of language.     Share on Facebook

• • Banking on a conservative majority 
David Turner, The Inter-Mountain (Elkins, WV) The present day American right had demonstrated a tendency to embrace a notion that not only a majority exists to prevent any further expansion of government, but that a large group yearns to roll it back. The Tea Party devotees of Ayn Rand's ideas are sure that the time to dismantle the state is nigh. Others like Amity Schlaes openly advocate the dismantling of Social Security and Medicare. [....] Naked Ayn Randism has never been tried, although Goldwater came close. Ronald Reagan burned his fingers when he tried to make drastic adjustments to Social Security as did George W. Bush. But never did these two presidents exhibit a callous view toward the unemployed.     Share on Facebook

• • Search for truth crumbling into hot-air hysteria 
Bradley Harrington, The Bulletin (Philadelphia) Back in Galileo’s era, and for most of the centuries afterward, hypotheses were adjusted to fit the facts. Now, in a more pliable time, we reverse that process: we alter the facts to fit the desired hypothesis. As Ayn Rand once observed, “It is on the basis of this kind of stuff that you are being pushed into a new Dark Age.” (The Anti-Industrial Revolution, 1971.)     Share on Facebook

• • 4 of the 10 books that influenced me most 
Matt Steinglass, True/Slant Anthem  Ayn Rand, Anthem. [....] I read this on a bike trip through Cape Cod when I was 15, and found it so stupid and inferior (I’d read Animal Farm the week before) that it put me off Ayn Rand and any form of libertarianism forever. So I’d consider that pretty influential.     Share on Facebook

• • Could Atlas be about to shrug? 
David Hudson, Associated Content Atlas Shrugged  In [Atlas Shrugged], Ayn Rand has described three classes of people; the producers (business owners and those who provide services for profit), the moochers (those who use the services provided by the producers, but spurn and vilify them for their "greed"), and the looters (typically politicians, who loot the producer's of their wealth for the purpose of re-distributing it to the moochers... usually at their request).     Share on Facebook

• • Progressives hate individual rights 
Stephen Grossman, Standard-Times (New Bedford, MA) Atlas Shrugged  Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal  Objectivist author  When the latest socialist pie-in-the-sky unravels, as it must, progressives gratefully fall into another coma. They awaken, mercifully free of memory and free to plan other peoples' lives again. Throw the bums out! Vote Tea Party. Get "Atlas Shrugged" and "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal."     Share on Facebook

• • Letter to the editor 3/19 #1 
Tamar Toledano, Pitt News (U of Pittsburgh) I am concerned about the potentially dangerous messages conveyed in Giles Howard’s March 17 column entitled “Keep the focus on yourself in college.” Howard’s theory, via Ayn Rand’s objectivist creed, would resonate if mainstream societal norms were already geared toward social, economic and political justice and equality. So perhaps it is important to note that the culture at many American universities runs counter to the larger American culture geared toward individualism, wealth and consumerism.     Share on Facebook

• • Per Ayn, lights in California are going out 
Stephen Schork, CNBC Atlas Shrugged  [California’s] politicos are carrying on like the antagonist out of an Ayn Rand novel. [....] Jeez, what’s next…? Thought Police? To paraphrase Ayn, the lights in California are going out.     Share on Facebook

• • NeoCon progressive Michael Lind gets it wrong on Rand Paul’s name change 
Eric Dondero, CCN News Online I was there when [Rand Paul] formally announced to everyone that he wanted us all to refer to him as “Rand.” His motivation was two-fold; his admiration for Ayn Rand, and the distinction of Rand as unique and more formal sounding.     Share on Facebook

• • Intellectual journal jousts Web commenters—in print 
Jared Keller, AtlanticWire High-minded cultural journal New Criterion has had a strange adjustment to Internet age. The monthly intellectual review boasts heady criticism on piano recitals, Matisse, and ballet--and has no pictures or illustrations. Yet in the March issue, the editors made an unusual stab at engaging the Web: they responded to commenters in print. The editors got so flustered by comments on a critical piece about Ayn Rand that they devoted their monthly editorial to addressing them. They cited these online guerrillas as proof of the selfishness of Rand's followers.     Share on Facebook

• • Eating wrong 
Zane Fischer, Santa Fe Reporter Atlas Shrugged  In Ayn Rand’s free-market bible Atlas Shrugged, it’s suggested that Atlas—and by metaphorical extension any “pillar” of society and industry—shrug off a planet that has become unbearable to hold. But the prevailing attitude at the food summit suggested that the world only becomes unmanageable as a result of our mismanagement. If we all throw a shoulder in, Atlas can stop feeling like an exploited migrant worker in New Mexico’s industrial agribusiness machine and become part of a process in which responsibility and wealth are shared.     Share on Facebook

• • A halo of virtue 
Sandy Telcocci, The Oklahoman (Oklahoma City) Atlas Shrugged  In response to Walter Williams’ "Is health care a right?” (Commentary, March 10): Williams is apparently familiar with the premise of Ayn Rand’s "Atlas Shrugged,” which should be required reading (or rereading) for all our politicians prior to even running for office. Below is a partial quote from the book made by the character Ragnar Danneskjold about Robin Hood and why he wanted "the last trace of him wiped out of men’s minds.”     Share on Facebook

• • Weird press releases, Volume IV: Libertarians don’t want to be counted, dammit. 
Sarah Fisch, San Antonio Current - Curblog Image  Dude. [Congress is] not asking us what we're reading, who we're hooking up with, or whether we're Communists (although Ayn Rand was totally in favor of that type of interrogation, having appeared as a friendly witness in front of the House UN-American Activities Committee in 1947). If "additional information to fine tune its control over the lives and money of the American people" is required by the Census Bureau to determine, say, how many homeless people there are and how many of us aren't the assumed-default White Guy, that's cool by me.     Share on Facebook

• • Too righteous for facts 
Daniel McCarthy, The American Conservative - @TAC Atlas Shrugged  Michael Lind is a smart guy, but he’s also an ideologue so hellbent on the righteousness of his social-democratic worldview that he doesn’t let niggling things like facts get in the way of his proclamations. In his amusingly titled “ Bring it on, Ayn Rand geeks,” Lind tells us Ron Paul is such an acolyte of the Atlas Shrugged author that he “named his son Rand Paul.” Devastating, except that Randal Paul, known to his family as Randy, isn’t actually named after Ayn, and while the Pauls may appreciate the novelist, the Texas congressman’s plan for transitioning away from the welfare state hardly evokes the pitiless ethos of Objectivism.     Share on Facebook

• • David Frum’s Satanic girliemen 
Richard Spencer, Alternative Right - District of Corruption Altruism  Evidenced by his constant use of "collectivism" and "altruism" as cusswords, my guess is that Alex [Knepper] is really a devotee of a philosophy followed by many a 20-year-old, Ayn Randianism. (Most everyone I know was a Randian at some point during their undergraduate years. Thankfully, there was no David Frum around at the time to publish our embarrassing polemicizing.) And I don't think it's a coincidence that Alex's writings about me have taken the form of the typical Randian fantasy of the principled intellectual being persecuted by the irrational, violent mob.     Share on Facebook

• • Montgomery County PR firm’s tongue-in-cheek congressional bid lampoons corporate rights 
Daily Record Capitalism  Murray Hill Inc., a Silver Spring public relations firm and admitted corporate entity, is vowing through its handlers to continue its bid for the 8th District congressional seat. [....] Murray Hill’s campaign video [....] is nearing 190,000 views on YouTube — Murray Hill’s profile lists two Ayn Rand titles under its favorites and identifies “capitalism” as its only hobby — and almost 6,000 people have signed up on the campaign’s Facebook fan page.     Share on Facebook