• • Morality and the libertarian non-aggression principle 
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Reason-based libertarians might accept this basic (i.e., “lay simple”) understanding of Ayn Rand’s Objectivist philosophy. Human morality requires being “human.” Being “human” means being alive; otherwise you’re just rotting meat. Hence, human morality means that which tends to promote human life is moral; anything tending to degrade or destroy human life is immoral.  

• • Definition of oxymoron: Coercing kids to learn non-coercive 
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Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  | According to Douglas French, writing for the Laissez Faire Club [...] an Idaho state Senator wants to "require every Idaho high school student to read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and pass a test on it to graduate from high school." Coercing people to learn about non-coercion? Can you say oxymoron?  

• • 'Twilight', Adam Sandler & Rihanna take home honors at 33rd annual Razzie awards 
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Atlas Shrugged movie  | In terms of certain nominees like The Oogieloves, it’s a dishonor just to be nominated. The colorful, children’s picture had the distinction of having the worst opening-day box office ticket sales in recorded history for a wide release film. Similar disdain was awarded to Atlas Shrugged: Part II (now renamed Atlas Shrugged II: The Strike on video), which made a failed attempt to reboot its franchise with an entirely new cast and crew after its predecessor bombed at the box office.  

• • How to focus on self without becoming selfish 
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The Virtue of Selfishness  |Egoism  | 4. Explore your self-interests. There is a very interesting book called, The Virtue of Selfishness. Its author, Ayn Rand, points out that that it’s rational to act in your own self-interest. On the flip side, it’s irrational to sacrifice who you are in order to serve others. We serve others because we believe it’s in our best self-interest to do so.  

• • Video games illustrate differences between atheists, agnostics, and theists 
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Atheism  |Egoism  | Researchers at St. Jerome’s University in Canada discovered that atheists and theists are significantly different in their preferences and enjoyment of certain kinds of games. [....] Here's how it works. Atheists, generally speaking, "are less capable of internally simulating vivid, emotionally evocative experiences" than theists. [....] It's probably no coincidence that some atheists are drawn to Ayn Rand's philosophy, which requires a great deal of emotionally detached self-interest to fully embrace.  

• • When your child begins reading on her own 
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Atlas Shrugged  | I don't know what my father would have told me about Ayn Rand when I read Atlas Shrugged in college--because I didn't mention to him that I was reading it and I didn't consider it controversial. But I didn't need him to evaluate it and figure out that Rand doesn't have much to say that is "addressed to my condition." In other words, I found her pretentious, tedious and self-absorbed, and I didn't need my father to point that out.  

• • The week ahead: 'Argo,' 'Sinister,' 'Anna Karenina' and more 

Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  | February 19, 2013: "Atlas Shrugged II: The Strike" (Same day as DVD, weeks before Netflix and redbox releases) Rated PG-13. This drama is the sequel to "Atlas Shrigged," which is pased on Ayn Rand’s groundbreaking novel. In the movie, the global economy is on the brink of collapse. And brilliant creators, from artists to industrialists, continue to mysteriously disappear.  

• • Super Corporate Heroes: not so much what you were expecting 
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Capitalism  | In the first issue a hero negotiates with a man hanging from the ledge of a building that is ablaze over payment in full before rescuing him. In another exchange in issue #3 between a man about to get mugged and a Corporate Superhero the intended victim realizes that paying to be saved would cost him $175.00, while if he gets mugged, the crook will only take what’s in his wallet, which is $80.00, so he chooses to be robbed. This then is the Ayn Randian world in which these people live; nobody rides for free, everyone must pay their own way or suffer to their own fate.  

• • Unrated Oscar-nominated animation shorts safe for the whole family, despite MPAA 
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[In “The Longest Daycare”] Maggie Simpson [is] dragged off to the Ayn Rand School for Tots, where their motto is, “Your freedom assured by our probing.”  

• • C. S. Lewis questioned evolution 
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Atlas Shrugged  | “A code of values [that one accepts by choice] is a code of morality.” So Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged) would say. But decades earlier, C. S. Lewis knew that evolution could not account for morality. The same accidents that produced moral values, would produce the immoral “anti-values” by which a thief or a murderer would act. And who could say that one was right and the other wrong? (Thus the thief or murderer is often the most honest, or straightforward, moral agent. Lewis never said so, but no evolutionist will admit that.)  

• • • Ayn Rand’s speech on Americas persecuted minority 
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Atlas Shrugged  |Egoism  | The following quote is from a lecture Ayn Rand gave at The Ford Hall Forum, Boston on December 17, 1961.

“If a small group of men were always regarded as guilty, in any clash with any other group, regardless of the issues or circumstances involved, would you call it persecution? If this group were always made to pay for the sins, errors or failures of any other group, would you call that persecution?... If this group were penalized, not for its faults but for its virtues, not for its incompetence but for its ability, not for its failures but for its achievements, and the greater the achievement the greater the penalty---would you call that persecution?

If your answer is “yes”---then ask yourself what sort of monstrous injustice you are condoning, supporting or perpetrating. That group is the American businessmen.”

In 1961, businessmen were not persecuted nearly as much as they are today. In 1961, a president had not yet said of businessmen’s accomplishments, “You didn’t build that.”  

• • Squatting, Nine-Tenths of the Law, and Hannah Dobbz 
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Dobbz’s writing is personal, she speaks about how people who are foreclosed on become dehumanized by the banks and society. Having personally experienced foreclosure recently, I too noticed how some people’s reactions were on par with the Ayn Rand mentality of responses such as, “You should have paid your bills.”  

• • Les Miserables as a veiled parable of America 2012 
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In the end one can only know God through loving others and it is in doing so that Jean Valjean finds absolution and his sins are forgiven. What Les Miserables considers virtues, Ayn Rand, the philosophical guide for modern Conservatives, would consider weakness. In America this is the fundamental ideological battle of our politics. Class Warfare confronts each of us every day with a set of moral choices and the resolution of this conflict will determine if America finds absolution or dissolution in the coming years.  

• 'Bioshock: Ultimate Rapture Edition' coming January 14 
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BioShock  | Although there is no relation between the games of "Ultimate Rapture Edition" and the much anticipated "Bioshock: Infinite" the games are still incredibly fun to play. In addition, the games give a unique interpretation of Objectivist Ayn Rand's philosophy if it were to be applied in reality.  

• • First gay speaker of the House opens legislative session 
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[Mark] Ferrandino said he supports homosexuals’ right to marry. “Ayn Rand, wrote: 'The political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities.' "In that spirit," he said, "we must acknowledge that all committed couples deserve equal protection under the law, forever end Colorado's 'hate state' nickname, and, with bipartisan cooperation, pass civil unions this year."  

• • Connecticut School Shooting 
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Atlas Shrugged  | The novel Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, tells a story of a community hidden in the Colorado mountains where people go to get away from all the craziness going on in the world. On days like today I wish such a community did exist. I wish there was a place for sane loving parents to take their kids to keep them safe. Unfortunately this book portrays an unattainable Utopian ideal. We have to do our best to take care of our kids in the world that we have.  

• • Silver Circle: Inspiring Heroism 
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Individualism  | The Silver Circle Rebels are an all together different type of hero. They have no super powers, and neither are they the pillars of infallible virtue we see in Ayn Rand’s writing. They are human in their flaws, which makes their standard of heroism attainable by readers. They are also not isolated in their heroism, but part of a vast and varied support structure that makes their activism possible.  

• • • Randian Irony at the ICNA dinner 
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Atheism  |Atlas Shrugged  |The Virtue of Selfishness  |Egoism  |Image  | I’ve never written about Ayn Rand before. I have plenty of problems with her ideas, but she tackled a neigh insurmountable philosophical task. She tried to root human ethics in something objective, specifically human survival, which I find intellectually riveting. My problem is when she is mischaracterized, not when she’s disagreed with. So, I think a well-deserved deference to her intellect warrants at least a brief explanation of what “selfish” means in the Objectivist ethic.  

• • Where do libertarians come from? 
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[Nobody] can predict what brings people to libertarianism. Philosophically inclined intellectuals may have been inspired by Mises, von Hayek, Rothbard or Ayn Rand and then decided to get active in one way or another, maybe politically.  

• • Taoism 101.72: Tao Te ching chapter 72 - Tao of Ayn Rand 
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Atheism  |The Fountainhead  |Image  | In Ayn Rand’s book “The Fountainhead”, she defined freedom in a Way of which Lao Tze would have probably highly approved. “To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.” Although Ayn Rand was purportedly an Atheist, this “nothing” that she was writing about might have well been the Tao!