• • Walker’s aggressive memoir 
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Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  | The tenacious producers of “Atlas Shrugged: Part I” and “AS: Part II” are going for the third and final installment in their project, based on the blockbuster novel by Ayn Rand. “Atlas Shrugged: Part III” will be released just prior to the 2014 midterm elections, geared to fiscal conservatives, libertarians and anyone else alarmed by the intrusion of government regulation and high taxes on the U.S. economy.  

• • Sacred mystery: Blockbuster ratings for ‘The Bible’ confound Hollywood 
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Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  | Some capitalists do remain unencumbered by any ideological baggage that might deflect them from their undeviating course of profit-maximization. And your Hollywood capitalist would be of this type, a more pure strain of capitalist — almost, you might even say, a Randian. Pervaded as Hollywood is by near-Randians, it will, naturally, surprise some that it ultimately fell to an outsider — fellow by the name of John Aglialoro, a fitness equipment executive without a prior film credit to his name — to bring Ayn Rand’s own defining work “Atlas Shrugged” to the screen independently [...].  

• • • All about libertarians: Group’s mystique increases as profile is raised 
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Altruism  |Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  |Individual Rights  |Paul Ryan  | If you’ve ever observed a group of libertarians at a bar — perhaps discussing objectivism, the Second Amendment, or marijuana, all with reverence — then you know that they are a species of political being unlike the rest of us. But they are an important group to understand this election cycle, as topics such as the economy, the size of government and entitlements take center stage (and “Atlas Shrugged: Part II” opens in movie theaters nationwide).  

• • Rand was right 
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Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  | The brilliance of Ayn Rand in 1957 was to write prophetically about the outcome of a government that suppresses capitalism and demonizes individual achievement. Rand’s writings exemplify the catastrophe she foresaw taking place if we diminished the rights of the “world’s smallest minority — the individual.”  

• • • Inside the Beltway: The presidential purse 
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Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  |Paul Ryan  | The strategic release is timed to get American minds thinking, some 25 days before the election. That would be “Atlas Shrugged, Part II,” the second installment of an ambitious movie project based on Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel of the same name. The film opens in 850 theaters Friday.  

• • Nat Geo denies ‘SEAL Team Six’ film is timed to affect vote 
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Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  | Harmon Kaslow, the producer of the forthcoming “Atlas Shrugged: Part II,” has been fairly straightforward in acknowledging that the pro-capitalist movie sequel’s Oct. 12 release date, just weeks before Election Day, is intentional. Having part two of the cinematic adaptation of Ayn Rand’s classic novel — the first installment flopped big time last year — in theaters “will give like-minded people an opportunity to get together and sort of discuss the issues, and the course of action that they’re going to take in connection with those elections,” Mr. Kaslow told The Washington Times earlier this year.  

• • • Inside the Beltway: The long aftermath 

Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  |Individualism  | The nation’s capital is about to get shrugged: the Atlas Shrugged Society’s “Atlas Summit” begins Friday to laud individualism, freedom, reason and respect for human achievement — all hallmarks of Ayn Rand’s epic 1957 novel of the same name. The victory of Obamacare in the Supreme Court has added urgency to the three-day event; organizers are already citing the “chilling parallels” between the novel and the “current state of the world.”  

• • • Inside the Beltway: A vial matter 
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Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  |Image  | “Now available by popular demand — or perhaps better stated, individual request — the official ‘Who is John Galt?’ T-shirt,” say the tenacious producers of “Atlas Shrugged Part II,” who finished shooting the second installment of this ambitious project and plan a nationwide commercial release a few weeks before Election Day. John Galt, incidentally, is the iconic protagonist of Ayn Rand’s original 1,100-page novel “Atlas Shrugged.”  

• • • Inside the Beltway: Ayn Rand, Part 2 
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Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  |Individual Rights  | It’s on the way: “Atlas Shrugged Part II” is now filming in Los Angeles, the second installment of an ambitious independent movie project — due for commercial release in October, just as the presidential election looms. A source says some of the film’s background extra roles will be played by persons of note who, uh, get the significance of Ayn Rand’s original 1957 novel, and this determined undertaking.  

• Inside the Beltway: Reading Romney 
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“I am afraid that Chairman [Paul] Ryan’s budget reflects the values of his favorite philosopher, Ayn Rand, rather than the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Survival of the fittest may be OK for Social Darwinists, but not for followers of the gospel of compassion and love,” [...] Jesuit Father [Thomas J.] Reese [wrote].  

• • Should English departments throw in the towel? 
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[Alan] Jacobs counters the canonical approach with his “commitment to one dominant, overarching, nearly definitive principle for reading” - the description of which alone would have driven Ayn Rand around the bend: “Read at Whim.” Read because it brings you “pleasure and joy,” not because it brings you intelligence, moral certitude or increased social standing.  

• Obama’s bogus rules 

The White House is pushing the idea that President Obama is a business-friendly regulation cutter. That’s about as likely as the works of Ayn Rand showing up in the first lady’s book-club reading list.  

• • ‘Act of Valor’ and an alternative movie culture for Red America 
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Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  | Consider last year’s “Atlas Shrugged: Part 1,” which grossed less than $2 million, despite its adaptation from a source novel with a vast, intensely loyal following that, owing to American economic distress under a liberal Democratic president, was surging at the time of the film’s release. Critics and audiences, including many from the right wing, agreed that “Atlas Shrugged” just wasn’t any good. The movie’s producers have no one to blame but themselves.  

• • • Holding out for a political hero 
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Altruism  |Egoism  |Individual Rights  |Objectivist author  | Bastiat attributed the willingness to engage in legalized plunder to either “egotism” (essentially, self-interest) or “false philanthropy.” He observed that men believe it is reasonable to take the fruits of others’ labor if the system has established a free-for-all. But no such systems or the politicians that establish them are willing to admit that they have erected kleptocracies. “All for all,” they say, “fair is fair.” Ayn Rand would instead place the blame on altruism, the belief that “man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue and value.” It is false philanthropy, because it has nothing to do with charity or benevolence. It means one must literally put others before himself.  

• • Inside the Beltway 
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Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  | The determined producers of “Atlas Shrugged” have promising news. They’re ready to start filming the second installation of the film based on Ayn Rand’s 1957 blockbuster of the same name. “Atlas Shrugged Part 2” begins shooting in Los Angeles, Colorado and New York in April, with a national release scheduled for October.  

• • • Packaging blunder mars home video release of ‘Atlas Shrugged’ 
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Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  |Egoism  |Individualism  |Image  | One probably doesn’t have to wonder what Ayn Rand, the founder of objectivism and hero to millions of libertarian-leaning Americans, would think of the Occupy Wall Street movement were she alive today. It’s the sort of quasi-collectivist, economic-leveling movement for which Rand harbored bottomless contempt. Nor is there much doubt what she would think of the home video packaging of “Atlas Shrugged: Part One,” the film adaptation of Rand’s 1957 novel, an ode to individualism and those who thrive in a capitalist society through ingenuity and hard work. On Tuesday, the film made its DVD and Blu-ray debut. On Friday, its producers acknowledged via the film’s website that the synopsis included on more than 100,000 retail DVD and Blu-ray copies of the release was marred by a glaring error. The promotional copy on the back title sheets fundamentally mischaracterizes the project’s core message with this encapsulation: “AYN RAND’S timeless novel of courage and self-sacrifice comes to life.” Whoops.  

• • Pro-Life and Pro-Choice: Do They Have to be at Odds? Answer is No! 
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Perhaps the Republican hero Ayn Rand said it best: “One method of destroying a concept is by diluting its meaning. Observe that by ascribing rights to the unborn, i.e., the nonliving, the anti-abortionists obliterate the rights of the living.”  

• The principled consistency of Ron Paul 
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Ron Paul is a consistent man. He’s been preaching the same economic gospel for two generations, a gospel based on the teachings of economists Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, leavened by the objectivism of Ayn Rand.  

• • Steve Jobs, billionaire capitalist 
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Capitalism  |Egoism  | Apple exploded onto the national scene in the fateful year of 1984 with the iconic Superbowl halftime commercial featuring a young, rebellious woman demolishing the dystopia created by Big Brother, the personification of an overbearing government in George Orwell’s novel. It may as well have been Jobs himself who hurled that hammer into the video screen and freed us all. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak later spoke of another dystopian novel, this one by Ayn Rand that, like Orwell’s, warned that powerful governments smother individual freedom. Wozniak said of his friend: “I think ‘Atlas Shrugged’ was one of his guides in life.”  

• • Prosperity starts with Americans, not Uncle Sam 
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The Keynesian pump-priming of Mr. Bush and the pump-flooding of Mr. Obama have been unmitigated disasters. The inescapable reality is that the government cannot create wealth and every dollar it spends must be taken from the private sector, which can. As Ayn Rand wrote, “You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.”