• The Pro Life Movement at a Crossroads 
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Capitalism  | The [Republican] Party elders were willing to put up with the pro-lifers when it seemed they could deliver elections by persuading large segments of the white working class to vote against their economic interests in the name of social values. But a leadership obsessed with Randian economics will not long tolerate a movement that brings discredit and defeat to its side.  

• • • Ayn Rand Book Pushed For Idaho Schools 
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Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  | A Republican state senator in Idaho has introduced legislation that would require all high school students in the state to read an Ayn Rand novel that has become popular with the Tea Party movement.  

• As Public Makes ‘Hard Choices’ on Social Security, Alan Simpson Ducks His “Moment of Truth” 
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The Fountainhead  | The rich CEOs of "Fix the Debt," another [Pete] Peterson shell organization, [....] created a deficit-reduction "game" called "Budgetball," which we preferred to describe as The Fountainhead meets Deathrace 2000.  

• • Ron Johnson: Obamacare 'Greatest Assault On Freedom In Our Lifetime' 
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Atlas Shrugged  |Video  | [Sen. Ron] Johnson told [the Atlas Society] that he "absolutely" saw parallels between the plot of the Ayn Rand novel "Atlas Shrugged" and current events, citing CEOs' support for the group "Fix The Debt," which favors raising taxes on the rich. Johnson said that major CEOs would get paid more to cover their higher taxes, while CEOs of smaller companies would be hit hard.  

• • Republican Freethought 
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Capitalism  | [Robert G. Ingersoll] identified with the tradition of freethought that included Paine’s “Age of Reason,” not with that of the social Darwinists of the 19th century, whose thinking, observes [Susan] Jacoby, “continues through the ‘objectivism’ and exaltation of the Übermensch preached by the twentieth-century atheist and unregulated market idolator Ayn Rand.”  

• • Abortion Rights Are Pro-life 
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Individual Rights  |Objectivist author  | That tiny growth, that mass of protoplasm, exists as a part of a woman's body. It is not an independently existing, biologically formed organism, let alone a person. That which lives within the body of another can claim no right against its host. Rights belong only to individuals, not to collectives or to parts of an individual. ("Independent" does not mean self-supporting -- a child who depends on its parents for food, shelter, and clothing, has rights because it is an actual, separate human being.)

"Rights," in Ayn Rand's words, "do not pertain to a potential, only to an actual being. A child cannot acquire any rights until it is born."  

• New Year’s Resolutions for Television in 2013 
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Atlas Shrugged  | With a new year comes a blank slate. That's the beauty of New Year's resolutions -- sure, I probably won't follow through on my vow to exercise five days a week, or to finally read Atlas Shrugged, or to stop counting Nutella as my daily serving of vegetables (hazelnuts grow from trees, okay?) but for those first few weeks of 2013, anything is possible.  

• • New Year Baby Names: Unique Ideas For January Babies 
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Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  | Dagny: Dagny, a Scandinavian name meaning ‘new day,’ was brought to the attention of the international book-reading and movie-going public via the powerful character Dagny Taggert, in Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged. With the newfound interest in Scandinavian names going on, Dagny is accessible and appealing enough to catch on.  

• • ‘Right-Wing Social Engineering’ Still Strong Despite Democratic Gains in 2012 
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Capitalism  |Paul Ryan  | For decades the Beltway yacking class has been calling for “entitlement reform,” which really means cutting Social Security and Medicare. Now we hear calls for a “chained” CPI instead of reducing benefits. These are rhetorical euphemisms that our “leaders” have devised to fool and befuddle us. Given the economic uncertainty we’ve faced over the past 10 years few people want to follow the Republicans’ path forward, which is increasingly modeled on Ayn Rand’s dystopian “vision.”  

• • • US Army Officer and Marxist Chris Helali on Buddhism, Marx and the Democratic Left 
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The Fountainhead  |Capitalism  |Egoism  |Individualism  | [Q:] I want to ask about this term “ethical egoism” that you mentioned. In particular, how do you conceive the relationship between ethical egoism and the kind of economic system that we have today?

[Christopher Helali:] I think that the perfect example is at the beginning of The Fountainhead, one of Ayn Rand’s seminal works. There’s a scene in which a young man, an aspiring architect, goes against the architectural establishment in his school. He basically says that he, himself, will redefine architecture, and the principal, the leader of the school, says something to the effect of, “You can’t do that. Architecture is a group project, created when people come together. Architecture doesn’t happen with one person.” But the young man is adamant that he, himself, will create architecture for himself. Ayn Rand was very loose in how she understood morals and ethics. In the society she envisions, individuals make themselves. It’s the individual who propels him- or herself forward. The problem is that individuals do not exist on their own. It’s a fallacy; it’s an illusion.  

• Katherine Patke: '30 Rock' Recap: Liz Lemon Tied The Knot 
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The Fountainhead  | A few disjointed thoughts and decontextualized highlights from the episode: [....] Jack's reading choice for the wedding: Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead"  

• '30 Rock': Liz Lemon Gets Married In A TV Wedding To Remember (VIDEO) 
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The Fountainhead  | Yes, Liz Lemon got married as Princess Leia. And why not? Her ex-boyfriend was there, with his ditzy wife taking pictures, while Jack read from The Fountainhead.  

• • Pen Names You May Have Thought Were Real 

Atlas Shrugged  |Personal life  |Image  | It's no secret Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, and George Eliot was actually a woman named Mary Anne Evans. But you may not realize that Ayn Rand, Pablo Neruda and George Orwell are also noms de plume.  

• GOP Wants Disabled People To Stop Being Such Takers 

Atlas Shrugged  | Senate Republicans defeated ratification of a treaty urging nations to grant disabled people the same rights as non-disabled people because... um... er... uh... John Galt?  

• The End of Conspiracy Theories for a While? 
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The debates produced a few new conspiracy theories involving the debate moderators: one that Jim Lehrer slept through his assignment and allowed Romney to run roughshod over the president; another that Martha Radatz had some nerve to bet at least as well prepared and knowledgeable as Biden, and especially Ryan, who could not quite get away with his Randian turns on the Truth; and finally that Candy Crowley was a secret member of team Obama when she backed up the president's transcript quote about "acts of terror" the day after Benghazi. And yet the media and the moderators survived the debates better than the candidates.  

• • Box Office Flops: 2012's Biggest Turkeys 

Atlas Shrugged movie  |Video  | 'Atlas Shrugged Part II.' Opening Weekend: $1.7 million (Oct. 12). Audiences shrugged.  

• • Bob Cesca: The Conservative Post-Election Tantrum Continues 
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Atlas Shrugged  |Going Galt  | Four years ago, when the president won the first time, fringy Republicans merely threatened to "Go Galt," in reference to the John Galt character in Atlas Shrugged who accumulates a group of wealthy disciples to stop contributing to the economy, thus bringing it to its knees. This time around it seems as if this conservative whiny freak-out is a futile extension of that initial effort. It won't work and, in the final analysis, it will only serve to further embarrass and discredit a conservative movement that's already in serious trouble. Not that there's anything wrong with that.  

• • Eric Cantor Reheats, Serves Story Of Montana Builder-Turned-Cook 
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Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  | When Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) explains why Congress shouldn't raise taxes, lately he tells the story of an airport restaurant cook dreaming of better times. [....] [Timothy] Thomas said he's conservative but not a Republican. He said Obama's plan for higher taxes will make it even harder to find a good job. He argued that if Obama gets his way, America's future could look something like Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, in which productive capitalists go on strike, leaving the world's loafers to fend for themselves. Societal collapse ensues.  

• • The politics of privilege 
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Capitalism  |Egoism  |Individualism  | Republicanism rests on the idea that individual achievement in a global society is the sole result of personal effort. It's not. Republican economic policy allows individuals -- and now, corporations -- to act as Darwinian agents in an Ayn Rand fantasy. Their great myth is that if you sit back and let people fight it out in a free-market brawl of self-interest, the have-nots will have just as much chance as anybody to become haves. There is no compelling evidence -- empirical, personal or moral -- to support this nihilistic worldview, one more extreme than Republicans have ever espoused before. Before Bush's economic catastrophe, you could perhaps make these arguments earnestly. Now, they ring hollow and false.  

• • God's Stimulus? It'll Take More Than Just Money to Recover From Sandy 
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Capitalism  |Egoism  | Free-market ideologues promote the idea that the individual pursuit of self-interest leads to the betterment of all. But that idea didn't originate with an economist. It came from a far-right author named Ayn Rand. The concept was useful to wealthy interests, who quickly poured funds into the academic pursuit of her ideas.