• • What goes into the ‘essential DNA’ of Bioshock: Infinite [VIDEO] 
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BioShock  |Video  | [Q:] Previous versions of the game borrowed heavily from ideas related to Ayn Rand objectivism, but in this game, I’m told we’re dealing with something called American Exceptionalism.  

• • • Terence Corcoran: Why Obama’s big government plans will hinder, not help, the middle class 
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Capitalism  | The President mentioned the middle class eight times in his speech, citing the need to foster, protect and nurture this ladder-climbing, growing, thriving sector of the U.S. population. Occasionally he sounded like he was channeling the radical capitalist writer Ayn Rand, who once said:

“A nation’s productive and moral, and intellectual top is the middle class. It is a broad reservoir of energy, it is a country’s motor and lifeblood, which feeds the rest. The common denominator of its members, on their various levels of ability, is: independence. The upper classes are merely a nation’s past; the middle class is its future.”  

• • Sopranos creator changes tune with Not Fade Away 
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Atlas Shrugged  |The Fountainhead  | [David Chase] says he learned to embrace his feminine side when he became a creative soul, and he translates this tension to the screen in Not Fade Away. “(Douglas) is interested in poetry, intellectual discussions, and he’s got long hair. The macho male descended at that time (the early ’60s]. … And there are a lot of people who would say that creating art is a feminine enterprise because creating babies is a creative enterprise — although that wouldn’t go for skyscrapers and railroads.” Indeed, Ayn Rand ensured both types of erections were celebrated as manly. Chase, however, isn’t so fastened to gender assumptions or, for that matter, traditional models of success.  

• • Ayn Rand vs. the Taliban 
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Individual Rights  |Individualism  | Ayn Rand Vs. The Pygmies, Eric Michael Johnson, Oct. 9; The Girl The Taliban Couldn’t Kill, Oct. 10. Published one day apart, I found these two articles striking in their juxtaposition. Eric Michael Johnson repeats Ayn Rand’s thoughts that collectivism “is the tribal premise of primordial savages who, unable to conceive of individual rights, believed that the tribe is a supreme, omnipotent ruler, that owns the lives of its members and may sacrifice them whenever it pleases.” If that doesn’t describe that actions of the Taliban against Malala Yousufzai, a brave young woman advocating for female education in Afghanistan, then I don’t know what does.  

• • Pygmies need to read more Ayn Rand 
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Altruism  |Individualism  |Personal life  | Eric Michael Johnson suggests that anthropological studies of the social and altruistic behaviour of Mbuti (Pygmies) in Central Africa prove novelist and proponent of “rugged individualism” Ayn Rand, wrong. [....] My own encounters with Pygmies whilst making a documentary film in Burundi, found these people to be marginalized and living along the fringes of the modern world in abject poverty as hunter gatherers. Has their lack of individual leadership and enterprise subjugated them to an almost prehistoric existence? Equally absurd is Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism, which quite specifically excludes altruism as a central part of her social ideal. Altruism and individualism are not in conflict, as some of the greatest acts of altruism have come from “rugged” acts of individualism.  

• • • The United States needs Ayn Rand's ideas more than ever 
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Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  |Egoism  | Terence Corcoran's column was titled, "Most dangerous woman in America." In fact, Rand's ideas are just the opposite. Selfishness is a virtue, relativism is nonsense, free markets are moral. Once one looks beyond the plain exterior and develops a more nuanced understanding of Rand's philosophy, they learn to appreciate that she is fundamentally right on all counts. That's why you get so many people say, "Atlas Shrugged changed my life."  

• • The United States needs Ayn Rand's ideas more than ever 
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Atlas Shrugged  | Far from there being an awakening of interest in Ayn Rand's writings, interest has continually grown for almost 50 years; Atlas Shrugged has never been out of print.  

• • • The United States needs Ayn Rand's ideas more than ever 
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Capitalism  |Egoism  |Objectivist author  | Ayn Rand is only dangerous to the dangerous. Her comprehensive philosophy, Objectivism, champions reason against blind faith and other species of emotionalism. It advocates rational self-interest - neither sacrificing oneself to others nor others to self. It abhors statism and promotes laissez-faire capitalism in which the proper function of government is to protect the rights of every individual.  

• • The United States needs Ayn Rand's ideas more than ever 
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Reading Ayn Rand expecting to gain insight into humanity is like consulting Humpty Dumpty for a perspective on walls. Give me a break.  

• • • The United States needs Ayn Rand’s ideas more than ever 
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Atlas Shrugged  |Personal life  | At age 30, I read Atlas Shrugged and it changed my life. I became the determiner of my life, not the church, the government or anyone else. I am not surprised that every book she published is still in print, with hundreds of thousands sold every year.  

• • Not much to fear in a Wildrose victory 
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[Wildrose leader Danielle] Smith’s personal philosophy - she cites author Ayn Rand as her literary hero - smacks of the purity that comes before a rude awakening. Rand’s philosophy, like that of Friedrich Nietzsche, is bracing stuff for late-night talk in the dorm when you’re 22 - less useful for grown-ups.  

• The heck with Debbie Bosanek, where is John Galt? 
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Atlas Shrugged  | To say that the President needs to focus more on how to grow the pie than on how to slice it is an understatement. At this point, we should be asking: “Where is John Galt”?  

• • • Object lessons 
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Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  | Atlas Shrugged opened in April on a handful of U.S. screens and has taken a beating from critics and moviegoers alike, but fans of Rand should enjoy the philosophical pontificating. Then again, they may want to wait for the Nov. 8 DVD release. The film has a small-screen, miniseries feel, all the more intensified by the cliffhanger ending. Rating 2.  

• Something special about hotel bar java 
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After settling into the kind of chair you might find in a film version of an Ayn Rand novel, my coffee was delivered respectfully in a two-cup urn with a bowl of brownsugar cubes and a pot of milk.  

• • A country held hostage to right-wing purists 
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Atheism  |Individualism  |Inaccurate  | When not reading aloud from centuries-old documents, the Partiers are incanting passages from Ayn Rand’s blunderbuss screeds. They love Rand’s uncompromising vision of the supremacy of the individual and the tyranny of government. They gloss over the fact that the only individuals Rand respected were Nietzschean übermen. She referred to people who actually work for a living as “savages.” And she held religion in greater contempt than even Karl Marx did.  

• Debt-limit madness 

As David Brooks and others have pointed out, surveys show that most Americans realize that taxes on some Americans are going to have to go up in order to for the country to cure its massive budget deficit. But such is the state of populist agitation in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, that GOP leaders don't feel powerful enough to take on their own angry, Ayn-Randian fringe.  

• A narrow view of the libertarian creed 
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As for [Stephen] Metcalf 's critique of Robert Nozick, it should be noted that Nozick actually is not a towering figure of libertarianism. [....] The Libertarian Reader— the collection of libertarian works that Metcalf cites —devotes a mere 16 of 458 pages to an excerpt of Nozick’s book. In setting up the excerpt, the editor states that “philosophers who seek to justify a more extensive state have been compelled to address Nozick’s arguments, though they still often avoid responding to the different arguments of Mises, Rand, and Rothbard.” And this is exactly what Metcalf has done.  

• • Time to expose the destructive left 
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Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  |Individual Rights  |Objectivist author  | Robert Fulford neglected to mention Atlas Shrugged, the new movie that is based on Ayn Rand’s classic novel. It portrays successful businessmen, who are the creators of wealth and prosperity, as heroes. Ms. Rand correctly identified that the primary motivation of leftists like Rick Salutin is a vehement hatred of success, especially in business. Such hatred is often disguised as concern for the poor, the weak or the environment. But the logical consequence of their positions is the destruction of prosperity, made possible by capitalism, which in turn is based on the protection of individual rights.  

• • Let’s look at this objectively 
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Anyone who reads what Ayn Rand foresaw in the mid 20th century, has only to change the names of the characters, in order to recognize what is going on in our own times. The threat is clearly greater than that of shared financial poverty alone.  

• • Who Is John Galt? 
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Atlas Shrugged  | A famed clock hangs in the sky above Manhattan in Ayn Rand’s novel, Atlas Shrugged. The clock stops working and people shrug and ask, “Who is John Galt?” a catch-all reference to the civilizations’ fundamental powerlessness to halt a steady decline.