• • • Atlas Shrugged Part III To Roll, It’s Officially Official 
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Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  |The Fountainhead  |Capitalism  |Image  | Hostile jokers on the Internet who haven’t bothered to read Rand and understand her as some sort of prophet of profit above all seem to find a snickering irony in these filmmakers following their muse. The entire point of her 1943 novel The Fountainhead was of the prime importance of the creative artist, who should and will do the work they want to do, whether or not the world rewards them for it. The Atlas film project, whatever your opinions of its merits, is in a very Randian spirit all the way.  

• • Science Fiction Is for Socialists? 
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Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  |Individualism  | SF author China Mieville (The City, Embassytown) lists 50 science fiction titles of particular interest to socialists. [....] “Ayn Rand—Atlas Shrugged (1957). Know your enemy. This panoply of portentous Nietzcheanism lite has had a huge influence on American SF. Rand was an obsessive “objectivist” (libertarian pro-capitalist individualist) whose hatred of socialism and any form of “collectivism” is visible in this important an influential—though vile and ponderous—novel.”  

• • Capitalist Pig Jonathan Hoenig: Immigrants are “Unquestionable Economic Benefit” 
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Personal life  |Video  | [W]atch Hoenig's interview with Reason TV, where he talks about why hedge funds are good for America and how Ayn Rand (who could have been deported as an illegal alien) has influenced his thinking.  

• • A.M. Links: WTO Chief Thinks Cutting Red Tape Might Be a Good Idea 
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Atlas Shrugged  |Ron Johnson  | Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) believes that there are strong parallels between contemporary America and Atlas Shrugged. No word on who he thinks our own John Galt might be.  

• • • Special Edition Reason Atlas Shrugged Part II DVD Now Available for Order! 

Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  | You’ve read the novel. You’ve seen the film in theaters. Now don’t miss your chance to own Atlas Shrugged Part II as a special, limited-release DVD featuring unique Reason content!  

• • Ayn Rand! Hilarious! Yet Sinister! Yet Hilarious! 
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Capitalism  |Egoism  |Image  | Oh, The Baffler! [....] I want to see a one-act play about this pack of geniuses cracking themselves up as they invent this super cute and clever (and also bitingly politically relevant!) idea and hash it out. Workshop it, as it were. Reason on Baffler bigwig Thomas Frank, a man who seems to already think he lives in a world where Ayn Rand is running a libertarian dictatorship.  

• • GOP Too Libertarian, Free-Market-y, Say Anti-Libertarian, Anti-Market Pundits 
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Capitalism  |Paul Ryan  | Paul Ryan was supposed to be the Ayn Rand acolyte, but campaign coverage was heavily salted with descriptions of him as a neutered “mini-Mitt.” The most interesting part of his presence on the campaign trail was when he briefly endorsed federal respect for state-level marijuana policy — before backtracking.  

• • • Obama Thinks Ayn Rand is For Teens (For Predictably Childish Reasons) 
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Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  |Egoism  |Individualism  |Nathaniel Branden  |Personal life  |Image  |Video  | Reducing Rand’s message of liberty and achievement to one of a narrow “you’re on your own” individualism shouldn’t be a surprise coming from the president, though it’s still sad that the leader of the nation that attracted Rand to escape the Soviet Union at some risk would say such a thing. There is nothing “narrow” about Rand’s vision except in that it created moral boundaries in which most of the functions of Obama’s government would be seen as illegitimate, because they use threats and violence against non-aggressors to achieve social goals. As Rand summed up her own philosophy once, it really amounts to: “Gentlemen, leave your guns outside!”  

• The Cure For GOP’s Economic Illiteracy: More Julian Simon, Along With Ayn Rand 
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Capitalism  |Paul Ryan  | Perhaps along with Ayn Rand, Paul Ryan could require his fellow GOPers to read some Simon too.  

• • • Ask an Objectivist! Say No to Paul Ryan! 
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Capitalism  |Paul Ryan  |Image  | Both I right here yesterday (I'm a Rand fan and historian, but not a full-fledged Objectivist) and Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic have been counseling the world of pundits and political professionals that it doesn't make a lot of sense to lay the burden (or the benefits) of Ayn Rand on Paul Ryan. But we are just outsiders looking in. Let's let the true believers at the Objectivist Standard lay out for you as well why Ryan does not equal Rand.  

• Peter Schiff In the Octagon with Furious Congressbots 
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Capitalism  |Video  | Peter Schiff, the investment seer and radio show host best known around here for engaging with Occupy Wall Street scenesters, got a chilly reception at a House hearing on Oversight of Federal Housing Administration’s Multifamily Insurance Programs the other day, and has posted a highlight reel at the Youtubes. Schiff breaks out his plays of the day: [....] 30:38 - "Maybe that happens in an Ayn Rand novel..." - [Brad] Sherman (D) 
Congressman [Brad] Sherman asserts that as a practical matter the federal government, in one way or another, insures all homes, and that only characters in an Ayn Rand novel would believe otherwise.   

• • Reason “Hero of Freedom” Larry Flynt’s Latest Stunt? 
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In 2003, Reason celebrated its 35th anniversary by compiling a list of “Heroes of Freedom” who we thought had helped to “make the world groovier and groovier since 1968,” when the magazine started publishing. [....] Some of the entrants were obvious jokes (John Ashcroft and Richard Nixon, for instance, were cited for their ability to fire people up to protect their rights), some were libertarian superheroes (Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand), and others were just controversial picks, even for our core audience.  

• • Reason.tv: Author David Brin on Dogmatic Libertarians, Transparency, and Uplifting Dolphins 
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Capitalism  |Video  | Brin sat down with Reason.tv’s Tim Cavanaugh to discuss his recent critiques of the libertarian movement, which he believes is being pushed in the wrong direction by dogmatic followers of Ayn Rand and Murray Rothbard.  

• • • Forget Paul Ryan: 7 Pols (Make it 8!) Who Still Dig Ayn Rand! 
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Atlas Shrugged  |The Fountainhead  |Capitalism  |Individualism  |Image  |Video  | As longtime readers of this site and of the print magazine know, I’m not the world’s biggest Rand fan, though I think she (along with Jack Kerouac) remains the most influential American novelist of the 1950s and possibly the entire post-war era. Folks who dismiss her because they say she wrote bad sentences or don’t share her views on the hippies she helped catalyze are missing the point, I think. Rand was one of the great anti-conformist voices of the past 70 years and the fact that she still moves hundreds of thousands of books, movies, and spin-off material is nothing less than incredible. Sneer at her if you must (typically, it seems, because you went through an adolescent Rand phase that you are now ashamed of), but if you can’t understand why she resonates, you’re not really in touch with the country you live in.  

• • Tim Cavanaugh Islamism, Obamacare and Stagflation on PJTV 
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Ayn Rand Institute  |Elan Journo  |Video  | Reason.com managing editor Tim Cavanaugh sat down Friday with the Ayn Rand Institute’s Elan Journo and host Allen Barton for a very special episode of PJTV’s Front Page.  

• • • Atlas Shrugged: Part II Greenlighted, In Theaters Next Fall 
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Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  |Individualism  |Video  | “It’s a poetic moment that today [February 2, 2012] Ayn Rand was born 107 years ago and we are greenlighting Atlas Shrugged: Part II,” announced producer John Aglialoro at Reason Weekend 2012, which was held in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Aglialoro was joined by his partner Harmon Kaslow in making the announcement. Filming is set to begin in April and the movie will hit theaters this fall, before Election Day. “In October,” said Kaslow, “hopefully we’ll have people from Reason, from FreedomWorks, people who believe in what this book represents, [standing] in front of the...theater to tell people not only how important the movie is but what they’re going to do in November and hopefully effectuate some positive changes.”  

• • Shikha Dalmia on Ayn Rand, Illegal Immigration, and the GOP 

Individual Rights  |Personal life  |Image  | Earlier this month was the birthday of Ayn Rand, the controversial philosopher and novelist, who emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1926. Regardless of what one thinks of her ideas, there is no denying that she was a great American. When the American intelligentsia was playing footsie with Soviet communism, Rand unabashedly defended liberty and individual rights.  

• • Reason Writers Around Town: Shikha Dalmia on Ayn Rand and GOP Restrictionists 

Personal life  | Last week was Ayn Rand’s birthday, the Russian emigre who did more to restore the faith of Americans in America than any contemporary figure, regardless of where one stands on her philosophical ideas. But Reason Foundation Senior Analyst Shikha Dalmia notes in her latest column, if anyone from the current field of GOP candidates had been president then, Rand would have likely been booted out of the country. Why? Because Rand lied and bent every rule to gain entry into the United States.  

• • • Ayn Rand, Defender of Corporate Welfare 
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Ayn Rand Institute  |Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal  |Capitalism  |Image  | I am not a huge fan of Ayn Rand, and Lord knows her novels are hard to get through, but this analysis of her economic thinking by Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, is head-smackingly clueless. [....] Baker, author of Taking Economics Seriously, evidently does not realize that the rap against Randians is supposed to be that they would heartlessly and shortsightedly stand by as banks fail, depositors lose their savings, and the financial system collapses. Here, for example, is the Ayn Rand Institute condemning both bank bailouts and federal deposit insurance, two of the government interventions that Baker claims are consistent with Rand's philosophy.  

• • • Reason.tv: If John Galt is Bill Gates, Who is Paul Krugman? An Interview with Donald Luskin 
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Atlas Shrugged  |The Fountainhead  |Video  | “What you really have in Atlas Shrugged is an unholy alliance of corrupt crony capitalists and corrupt government.” says author Donald Luskin. “Now that isn’t a narrative that conservatives like to tell, [but] that ought to be a narrative libertarians like to tell.” In his newest book, I Am John Galt: Today’s Heroic Innovators Building the World and the Villainous Parasites Destroying It, Luskin finds modern parallels to Ayn Rand’s characters. From Bill Gates to Paul Krugman, Luskin analyses the Randian heroes and villains of today and examines the impact of Rand’s ideas on America.