• • • Right, wrong on Rand 
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Altruism  |Atlas Shrugged  |The Fountainhead  |Capitalism  |Egoism  |Individual Rights  | In an April 14 article on two rallies held on the previous day, Ayn Rand was referred to as a “conservative.” Wrong! Rand was, in the true sense of the word, a radical. Her philosophy, delineated in her fiction and nonfiction, opposed the philosophical traditions of over 25 centuries.  

• • Dangers of guns and taxes prompt separate roadside rallies on Saturday 
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The Libertarian Party of Collier County [...] hosted a pre-Tax Day rally against big government along U.S. 41 North, north of Pine Ridge Road. [....] Various groups set up tents along the road to spread the word about everything from conservative author and philosopher Ayn Rand to a push to replace federal income and payroll taxes with a national sales tax.  

• • • Free thinking shrugged 
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Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  | The recent letter criticizing FGCU for teaching Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” in the Economics and Finance department is missing the major point of what universities are designed to accomplish. They are supposed to introduce students to all sides of an issue and not limit free thinking as the previous writer wants to do.  

• • Worth reading 
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Atlas Shrugged  |The Fountainhead  |The Fountainhead movie  | I agree most wholeheartedly with Henry S. Kolesinski’s April 7 letter, “Signs of Life.” This is why I am rereading Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged.” I first read this book when Rand’s “The Fountainhead” was made into a movie. It was the time when railroad travel began to decline, and I had a funny feeling that it all might come true.  

• • • Don’t just shrug — act 
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Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  | The Tampa Bay Times, in an editorial called “Ayn Rand’s formula for hoops success,” notes that the highly overrated pulp fictionalist’s unfortunately huge best-seller “Atlas Shrugged” is required reading for all undergraduate economics and finance majors at FGCU. Thank God Rand’s five-pound pile of insipid, sophomoric, oh so badly written baloney isn’t required reading in the literature curriculum. But even so, what this means (for those of you in Rio Linda, CA) is that Florida taxpayers are funding crazy people masquerading as professors of economics and finance at a Florida university.  

• • More than that 
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Atheism  |Paul Ryan  | After voters overwhelmingly rejected his budget last November, U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan offers the same old plan. The impractical foundation for his philosophy is an Ayn Rand novel he read in high school. And while she may be a hero to him, she was an avowed atheist, advocating objectivism, greed and indifference, at odds with our Judeo-Christian and American values. This is where Ryan’s conundrum begins and ideology festers.  

• • People, Places and Things 
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The Distinguished Scholars Program of the Ayn Rand Society will discuss the practical need for legal ideals from 6 to 8 p.m. Friday at the Renaissance Academy. The Academy is at 1010 Fifth Ave. S., Naples.  

• • • Strike up the Rand 
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Ayn Rand Institute  |Atlas Shrugged  | Re: Jean Hewitt-Taylor’s Nov. 11 letter. Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” has been selling like hot cakes lately. According to the Ayn Rand Institute of Irvine, Calif., millions of copies have been sold in the last few years alone. This is unprecedented for a novel published 55 years ago. Even more astounding in this anti-intellectual age is that “Atlas” is a book of ideas, and it challenges the prevailing morality of the last two thousand years. Unlike Hewitt-Taylor, those who know Rand’s work well are neither surprised nor “bemused,” as they watch European societies crumble under the dead weight of stultifying statism.  

• • On Election Day – Atlas Shrugged 
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Atlas Shrugged  | After seemingly endless negative campaigning, a deeply divided America narrowly voted for “more-of-the-same.” President Barack Obama was re-elected. The Senate remains Democrat. The House remains Republican. [....] Bewildered conservatives are threatening to “drop out” like Ayn Rand’s heroes in “Atlas Shrugged.” [....] But American exceptionalism and our liberties cannot be destroyed by a few elections. If ways are found to better educate all citizens, America will remain the greatest, most prosperous, and most generous nation on earth. We must reach deep and embrace this challenge and this belief. The alternative is unacceptable! There is no John Galt, no Atlantis to which one can escape.  

• • Now just a darn minute! 
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Atlas Shrugged  | Jean Hewlitt-Taylor, on Nov. 11, has managed to insult millions of readers of romance, the largest segment of book sales by a mile, and to display her ignorance of "Atlas Shrugged" in one snarky sentence.  

• • • ‘Totally bogus’ 
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Atheism  |Atlas Shrugged  |Personal life  | Jean Hewitt-Taylor’s attack Ayn Rand’s best selling book “Atlas Shrugged” on the basis of the author’s religious beliefs is absurd. Rand’s fiction in “Atlas Shrugged,” written in 1957, has proved her foresight in analyzing how America would evolve once socialism’s seeds were planted and began to sprout.  

• • • Right and wrong 
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Egoism  | Remarkably, Jean Hewitt-Taylor’s Nov. 11 letter misrepresents Ayn Rand’s position on every topic. On selfishness: Rand embraces “rational selfishness,” which requires neither self-sacrifice nor sacrifice of others. Hewitt-Taylor seems to equate selfishness with trampling the rights of others to achieve personal goals. Nothing could be further from Rand’s beliefs.  

• • • All about ethics 
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Altruism  |Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  |Don Watkins  |Egoism  |Yaron Brook  | Re: Jean Hewitt-Taylor’s Nov. 11 letter. Jean, I am saddened by your lack of understanding of “Atlas Shrugged”! “Thinly veiled,” you say. I think not! “Atlas Shrugged” is an explosive call for reason in the establishment of ethics in our world. It is a heroic stand for life filled with success and happiness so sought by our Founding Fathers as described in the Declaration of Independence.  

• • • Read all about it 
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Atlas Shrugged  |Egoism  | It is obvious from Jean Hewitt-Taylor’s letter of Nov. 11 that she has not read the “Atlas Shrugged,” which I have read over a dozen times. Instead, like Ayn Rand’s other critics, she has set up a straw man with no connection to Rand or to reality.  

• • Wrong on Rand 

The Virtue of Selfishness  | What Ayn Rand diametrically opposed is using police power to obliterate personal, voluntary charity. If your friends, neighbors and/or community leaders cannot convince you to help alleviate the needs of others, they do not have the right to empower the government to force you. They may have the political might, but they do not have the moral right.  

• • • Letter: Oh, please 
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Atlas Shrugged  |Egoism  |Personal life  | I was bemused to see yet another letter in your newspaper peddling "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand. This Harlequin-style romance novel is a thinly veiled defense of selfishness and greed. Rand believed in the survival of the fittest and stood diametrically opposed to the central message of Christianity. I suggest that a much better required reading at this time in U.S. history might be the Sermon on the Mount.  

• • Sequel and preview 
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Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  | If you want to know what President Barack Obama's second term would be like, see the movie "Atlas Shrugged Part II."  

• • Not synonymous 
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Altruism  |Atlas Shrugged  |The Virtue of Selfishness  |Egoism  |Objectivist author  | Ayn Rand underscores in "The Virtue of Selfishness" and amply concretizes and dramatizes in "Atlas Shrugged" the moral canyon separating benevolence and altruism and demonstrates how benevolence and rational self-interest go hand in hand contributing to everyone's life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.  

• • • Straight? 
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Let me get this straight. If guest columnist Barry Knister thinks that Ayn Rand’s philosophy of objectivism is anything like social Darwinism, then he knows nothing about objectivism. Rand created a philosophy for those who want to live a life proper to human beings. Social Darwinism is the misapplication of the so-called “law of the jungle” to human relationships.  

• Guest column: Barry Knister ... Let Me Get This Straight » 
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Capitalism  |Paul Ryan  | [Paul Ryan and Grover Norquist] and their ideas — especially Representative Ryan — take their inspiration from the key Social Darwinist in our time, Ayn Rand.