• • Should Ron Paul Accept Matching Funds? 
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Atlas Shrugged  | Ragnar Danneskjold, one of the heroes of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged [....] knew full well and so should we, that the state (in my view, any state, in his view, any government that exceeded its proper limited bounds) is a thief, and should forthwith be relieved of its ill gotten gains.  

• • The agenda: Wrap-up 
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Ayn Rand was once asked to define her philosophy while standing on one foot. I’ve never been one for balance, but I like the principle of being specific.  

• • The agenda, Part II: The individual as hero 
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Atlas Shrugged  |The Fountainhead  |Individualism  | A few years ago I read most of Ayn Rand’s work, especially the novels Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. While I don’t identify with all of her values, I think she made a very good case for the individual as hero, and the belief in oneself as an end result instead of a means to something else. (In modern times, Ayn Rand’s novels have become like the Bible, the Koran, or any other controversial work: loved by many, hated by many, and actually read by a few.)  

• Embrace your pace 
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Atlas Shrugged  | Interview with Sharon Good, author of The Tortoise Workbook: Strategies for Getting Ahead at Your Own Pace.
Q: Can you give examples of well known authors who are tortoises? A: A sort of tortoisy individual was Ayn Rand who took 12 years to write Atlas Shrugged.  

• • Love, sacrifice and the prisoner’s dilemma 
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Altruism  | "The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master." - Ayn Rand. Growing up in the swell of women's lib, I once thought that's what sacrifice in relationships meant too, but there's something missing here. Sacrifice does involves surrender of something important or desirable - for the sake of something considered as having a higher or more pressing claim". If the higher claim is a dominating partner's selfish gratification, Rand was right. That kind of sacrifice gives someone power over you. But what if the more pressing claim is your partner's wellbeing - and you know they endorse the same deep value? Then you have power with someone.  

• •IQ: Precocity on parade 

"Geniuses tend to be enfants terribles who suffer no fools," says Martin Seligman. Author and philosopher Ayn Rand fell in that category. She was a bigot about brains, says her biographer Barbara Branden.