Author: TeamAtlas

WE THE LIVING, THE FILM: 70 YEARS LATER

Posted on by TeamAtlas

BY DON HAUPTMAN

This month marks the 70th anniversary of the first public exhibition of the great Italian film version of Ayn Rand’s first novel, We the Living. The story of how the movie was originally made, and of the events that followed, are as dramatic and compelling as fiction. Here’s an insider’s account.

On September 14, 1942, the Italian film version of Ayn Rand’s We the Living premiered at the Venice Film Festival. It won a major festival award, a standing ovation, and considerable praise from reviewers.

This month is, therefore, the 70th anniversary of the movie’s debut. It’s an appropriate occasion to celebrate this superb film, its “lost years” and rediscovery, and its subsequent restoration and theatrical release here in America in the late 1980s. I’ve been involved with the project since that last stage, and the following is my look back at a remarkable cinematic odyssey.

We the Living, first published in 1936, was Ayn Rand’s first novel. Set in Russia during the 1920s, the chaotic years following the Communist Revolution, it’s a powerful love story on an epic scale.

The plot involves a passionate romantic triangle that unfolds against a background of world-changing events. Kira, an engineering student, is fiercely independent, determined, and rebellious. She’s at odds not only with a corrupt, collectivist society, but also with her conventional, middle-class family. Kira is torn between Leo, a counter-revolutionary fugitive, and Andrei, a disillusioned captain of the secret police. A forbidden love affair, jealousy, deception, and betrayal ensue.

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Movie poster from the original Italian release in 1942

Those are the concretes of the story. But as with all great literature, the book has wider and more profound implications. As Rand wrote in her foreword to the 1958 edition of the book: “It is a novel about Man against the State. Its basic theme is the sanctity of human life….” These ideas are important, universal, and enduring.

In 1926, Rand had arrived in America, having escaped the bleak tyranny of Soviet Russia. The world she depicted in the novel was based on her own first-hand experiences, although the characters and plot were largely the products of her imagination. Still, she called it “as near to an autobiography as I will ever write. It is not an autobiography in the literal, but only in the intellectual, sense.”

The book did not sell well initially, and became successful only decades later, after Rand became famous as author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.

How an “impossible” film came to be.

If these events were presented as fiction, they would probably be dismissed as too far fetched.

 

Mussolini’s cronies thought it would be a good idea to authorize a film that would serve as anti-Soviet propaganda, whipping up its citizens against its enemy.

The time: World War II. The place: Italy, led by Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. Back then, America and Soviet Russia were allies, fighting the Axis powers, Italy and Germany.

Mussolini’s cronies thought it would be a good idea to authorize a film that would serve as anti-Soviet propaganda, whipping up its citizens against its enemy. An Italian translation of the novel had been published in 1937 and had been popular, so the notion must have seemed logical.

In 1940, Cinecittà, a major Italian studio, negotiated with Ayn Rand’s representatives for the film rights to the novel. Not surprisingly, the rights were denied. The following year, Italy and America were at war, which created an obstacle to further negotiations. The authorities were unconcerned, though, and the year after that, production began at another studio, Scalera. The film, then, was made without authorization. To phrase it more bluntly, Rand’s intellectual property was stolen.

But a wonderful irony was at work — a twist that ultimately defeated the Fascists at their own game.

What the officials didn’t understand was that, as noted above, Rand wrote in universal terms. She called We the Living “a story about Dictatorship, any dictatorship, anywhere, at any time….” Thus, the ideas expressed in the film had the potential to undermine the Fascists’ own totalitarian regime.

We’ll get to that dramatic turn of events momentarily. First, let’s introduce the film’s performers and creative people, most of whom were assembled by Massimo Ferrara, Scalera’s general manager and legal counsel.

The film was superbly cast. Kira was played by Alida Valli, Leo by Rossano Brazzi, Andrei by Fosco Giachetti. It was early in the careers of Valli and Brazzi — both of them young, good looking, talented.

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An off-screen publicity shot. The names above are reversed: Brazzi is at left, Giachetti at right.

As Kira, Valli is gorgeous and enthralling, and her performance has been widely praised. She ultimately made more than 100 films, including Luchino Visconti’s influential Senso. Hollywood tried to turn Valli into an American star, even billing her, like Garbo, by her last name only. Orson Welles and David O. Selznick were both wild about her. But she didn’t become popular here. Among her films in the U.S. were The Paradine Case, perhaps Hitchcock’s least interesting production, and the treacly Miracle of the Bells, which usually shows up on TV every Christmas. She appeared in one English-language film that has become a classic: The Third Man.

Brazzi also had a long performing career. He is best known to American audiences as the star of South Pacific, the film version of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. His other English-language films include The Barefoot Contessa, Summertime, and Three Coins in the Fountain.

Giachetti, though never well known in America, was at the time Italy’s number-one box-office star, which is probably why he was cast. But at 38 — or perhaps 42, as accounts of his birth date vary — and looking even older, he was well beyond the age of the Andrei in Rand’s novel. Still, his performance is so compelling that you quickly suspend disbelief.

Though the officials were evidently clueless about the story’s message, the people making the film knew exactly what they were doing.

Minor roles were also well cast. Some extras and crew members were White Russians, former members of the Czarist nobility who were living in exile in Italy. Their contributions surely lent authenticity to the film. Raf Vallone had an uncredited bit part as a sailor, his first film role.

The director was Goffredo Alessandrini. Aside from We the Living, Alessandrini is best remembered today for being married to Anna Magnani. The fine musical score (containing two dramatic leitmotifs I often find myself humming) was by Renzo Rossellini, brother of famed director Roberto.

In an interview, Ferrara told a surprising story. When he experienced difficulty getting the project approved by the Fascist officials who controlled the movie industry, he enlisted the aid of his friend Vittorio Mussolini, son of the dictator and a film producer himself. With the intercession of this VIP, the necessary approvals were obtained.

Though the officials were evidently clueless about the story’s message, the people making the film knew exactly what they were doing.

An earlier screenplay had departed from the book so egregiously that the director had rejected it. There was no time to commission a new one. Decades later, Brazzi recalled, “We made the picture without a script — just following the book. Majano [Anton Giulio Majano, credited as screenwriter] and Alessandrini wrote the day before what we were going to do the day after.”

This expedient technique had an unintended but ultimately happy result: It made the film far more faithful to Rand’s novel than if teams of scriptwriters had had the opportunity and time to tinker with the original source.

The schedule was grueling: four and a half months of shooting, sometimes requiring 14-hour days. When censors visited, a set of innocuous scenes was quickly cobbled together and screened for them. Reportedly, they were always satisfied and departed without suspicions.

Italian audiences flock to a surprise hit.

In November of 1942, when We the Living opened in Rome — and then throughout Italy — audiences were entranced by the story of three young people courageously defying the state.

The original film ran four hours — so long that it was released in two parts, with the titles Noi Vivi and Addio, Kira. After a few weeks, both were playing simultaneously in different theaters in Rome. People watched the first part, then raced across town for the second, some wearing buttons depicting the film’s stars. We the Living was a huge box-office success. Moreover, it was promptly “accepted as a masterpiece,” Ferrara recalled.

In perhaps the most amazing turn of events, the film was screened in Berlin for Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t much like it. But his main objection was that the Soviets weren’t portrayed negatively enough.

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From the Italian publicity campaign: Kira (Alida Valli) and Andrei (Fosco Giachetti)

Back in Italy, audiences got the point. They quickly recognized that the film was a clever indictment of the Mussolini regime. But it was too good to last. Several months later, the authorities finally figured things out. They issued an injunction ordering the film’s seizure and destruction.

Fortunately, however, the original negatives were hidden in the cellar of one of the crew members. According to one version of events, someone cagily pulled a switch, substituting another film among those en route to be burned.

Lost … and found.

Fast forward to May of 1946. The war had ended the year before. Ayn Rand learned that her book had been ripped off. Understandably, she was furious and contacted her attorney to discuss taking legal action.

A year later, she saw the film for the first time. Then, in July of 1947, Valli and Brazzi visited America and gave her a first-hand report. In 1950, Rand filed a claim against the Italian government. It took until 1961, but she finally received an out-of-court settlement of $23,000 (more than $300,000 in today’s dollars). She decided to use the windfall extravagantly, buying a mink coat and other luxuries. For more details on these events, in her own words, see Letters of Ayn Rand (Dutton, 1995).

In 1966, Rand told Henry Mark Holzer and Erika Holzer, who were her lawyers and friends, about the film. They were intrigued and excited, and they resolved to track it down. They made several trips to Italy, meeting with various intermediaries and “fixers.” Finally, two years later, their search paid off. They were connected with a pair of Romans who claimed to possess the film.

Hank and Erika wanted proof, so one of the Romans offered to drive them to a screening room. Not until they reached their destination did they discover that the film was in the car’s trunk — and that they had been traveling on Rome’s bumpy roads with a dangerous passenger: nitrate film stock. Common at the time but later abandoned, nitrate film is highly flammable and capable of “auto-igniting.”

Ayn Rand wrote, “The picture is quite good and the performance of the girl in the starring part is magnificent.”

Fortunately, everyone survived, as did We the Living. The Holzers purchased the negatives, immediately had them duplicated on “safety film,” and brought them back to America.

What did Ayn Rand think of this pirated version of her novel? In a letter to her friend Isabel Paterson in February of 1948, she wrote: “The picture is quite good and the performance of the girl in the starring part is magnificent….” She discussed the possibility of exhibiting the film in America, as long as certain changes were made. And she recognized the drama inherent in the unintended demonstration of the parallels between Italian Fascism and Soviet Communism, shrewdly suggesting that this would make a good publicity hook.

In 1969, restoration and re-editing began. Rand personally supervised the process, working with Duncan Scott, a young Objectivist who later became a Hollywood producer-director. Together, they watched the film on a Moviola — a now-antique device, equipped with a tiny screen, that allows a film to be viewed and spliced, frame by frame. Rand, a former screenwriter, instantly understood the craft of editing and offered intelligent guidance on cuts and other changes. Once again, she expressed her admiration for the film and for Valli’s performance as Kira, telling Duncan, “The girl is perfect.”

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Casting photo of Rossano Brazzi

But why did the film need to be edited?

First, as mentioned above, it was almost four hours, and American theater owners weren’t receptive to films of that length. Rand’s view was that that if cuts had to be made, it was preferable to remove the subplots and keep the main storyline intact. Even more important, some Fascist propaganda had been inserted after all. To rectify that problem, Duncan flew to Italy and hired an actor to re-record the audio in problematic scenes to be consistent with the novel. And of course, all the dialogue had to be translated into English and turned into subtitles.

In the early 1970’s, Rand, for personal reasons, found it difficult to continue collaborating on the editing. Duncan and the Holzers were reluctant to proceed without her participation. Because the film was initially made without her involvement or approval, they were hesitant to, in effect, repeat that offense. So everything was put on hold.

After Rand died in 1982, work on the project resumed.

This is where I come in. I’m a longtime admirer of Ayn Rand’s fiction and philosophy. In 1984, We the Living, still a work in progress, was to be screened privately in New York City, where I live. I had encountered mentions of the film in Objectivist publications, but knew almost nothing about it. A friend of mine, Dyanne Petersen, who was also a friend of the Holzers, invited me to the screening. I still remember Dyanne’s words: “Hank and Erika told me I can bring one guest — and you’re it!”

The film had not yet been subtitled. For close to three hours, Duncan stood in the back of the screening room and recited the English dialogue, working from a bilingual script. Occasionally, the audience saw red and green splotches appear on frames — temporary marks used in the editing process.

Yet even viewed under these less-than-ideal circumstances, I knew that this film was extraordinary. Afterward, Dyanne and I asked the Holzers if they were seeking investors. They were. We each took a small stake. (Dyanne, a longtime libertarian activist, worked tirelessly on the film’s distribution and promotion. She died unexpectedly in 2003. Many of us loved her and still miss her.)

My career is advertising, so it made sense for me to volunteer to write copy and handle some of the film’s marketing and publicity. Once a mere cinephile, I was suddenly behind the scenes of an important motion picture. It turned out to be one of the most exciting intellectual adventures of my life.

The show goes on.

Initially, We the Living was screened to acclaim at several major film festivals — in Boston, Miami, and Telluride, Colorado. The objective of filmmakers who attend these events is to find distributors and exhibitors.

In 1988 and ’89, the restored version of the film played in theaters in 75 cities. Not a bad run for a little-known independent movie, almost three hours long, in black-and-white and a foreign language.

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Movie poster from the American release in 1988

A young fellow visiting from Australia was such a enthusiastic fan that he followed the film from city to city, just as groupies trail their favorite touring rock bands.

Here in Manhattan, it played for several months at two small indie theaters or “art houses”: the Bleecker Street Cinema in Greenwich Village and the Carnegie Hall Cinema, both now sadly gone.

Having recently watched the film several times, I didn’t need to see it again. But the evening it opened at the latter venue, I walked a few blocks from my apartment to a restaurant directly across the street. (Yes, the theater was in the same building as that Carnegie Hall.) At 7:30, I found a table near the window, ordered coffee, and watched the queue. Toward 8, I strolled to the box office, asked for a ticket, and was told, “I’m sorry, sir; this screening is sold out.” I waited a beat, then said to the befuddled clerk: “Good!”

How about the reviews?

Predictably, critics at a few liberal newspapers in New York and Los Angeles panned the film. But in America’s “heartland,” reviewers were far more positive. Indeed, when I wrote the advertising materials, it was often difficult to select blurbs to quote, because so many were ecstatic. Here’s a sampling:

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s William Arnold raved: “A lush, romantic, bigger-than-life epic filled with movie-star performances.” The Cleveland Plain Dealer’s Joanna Connors called it “one of the two big film history events of the year.” The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Carrie Rickey praised the film as “a passionate epic” with “wonderful performances.” New York Newsday’s Mike McGrady noted the “dazzling performances” and wrote that the film “qualifies in every respect as film treasure…. Director Alessandrini brilliantly blends glamour, romance, politics, intrigue and danger.” Michael Medved called it “an amazing piece of cinema. I loved every minute of it.”

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Kira (Alida Valli) and Leo (Rossano Brazzi)

Many of the reviews contained this accurate statement: “They don’t make movies like We the Living anymore.”

The film was exhibited in other countries — Canada, England, Australia — also to favorable media notices. Duncan even took it to Moscow. That, in a way, brought the film and the book full circle. Unfortunately, Rand didn’t live long enough to witness the end of the Soviet Union she so abhorred, nor to see the film in its final restored form.

As for viewer reactions, my impression is that most people love the film, even those who aren’t admirers of Ayn Rand’s ideas or her later novels.

Over the course of more than a quarter of a century, I’ve often speculated about this phenomenon. Why does We the Living, both novel and film, resonate with so many? My theory: Rand wrote the book before she had developed the philosophy she called Objectivism, some of the tenets of which are, to say the least, controversial. But who could object to the inspiring story of three young people struggling to find happiness and freedom in a soul-crushing collectivist society? Of all Rand’s works, We the Living may be the most accessible and appealing.

In 1993, I was introduced to Jerry Vermilye, an editor at TV Guide. Jerry was writing a book called Great Italian Films (Citadel, 1994). We supplied him with background information and stills. When the book was published, there was Noi Vivi/We the Living in the company of the classic films of Bertolucci, De Sica, Fellini, and others.

Video keeps the film alive.

After the theatrical run ended, We the Living was released on VHS and LaserDisc. In 2009, the DVD came out, including a bunch of special features — see the description below.

Reviews for the video were equally enthusiastic. At Forbes.com, Cathy Young wrote: “Valli is luminous…. Brazzi is perfect as the dashing, arrogant, charismatic Leo. Their onscreen chemistry sizzles, and this pair alone makes the film worth watching…. The story’s central themes of individual freedom, the power of the human spirit and resistance to tyranny are truly timeless.”

This is certainly the best film version of an Ayn Rand novel.

I may be biased, but I think We the Living is one of the best films ever made. I’ve seen it at least ten times and it gets better with every viewing. The dramatic arc, the performances, direction, cinematography, music — everything is beautifully done.

This is certainly the best film version of an Ayn Rand novel. It’s yet another strange irony in a story filled with ironies. After all, it was made without Rand’s permission or participation. In contrast, she wrote the screenplay for The Fountainhead, was frequently on the set, and had at least some influence on that production.

As a tyro movie producer of sorts, I may never recoup my investment. Still, if I were offered a magical way to undo my involvement, I wouldn’t agree. Having played a small role in bringing this masterpiece to new audiences, and in the process disseminating Ayn Rand’s ideas and vision, was an honor and a high point of my life.

Consider all the elements….

A riveting, heroic story of the eternal battle for individual liberty against the oppressive fist of the state. Filmed illegally under the noses of tyrants unconsciously sabotaging their own regime. Banned. Lost. Rediscovered and restored. It’s a tale no one could have invented. Ayn Rand’s epic film romance lives on, 70 years later. If you haven’t yet seen it, I envy you for your first experience of We the Living on screen.

IMPORTANT NOTE: I want to express my gratitude to Duncan Scott (see his 2003 Atlasphere interview about the film) as well as Erika and Henry Mark Holzer, all of whom have put an enormous amount of time and effort into the rediscovery and restoration of We the Living, entirely as a labor of love, over the course of half a century. From all of us who treasure this magnificent film: Thank you!

HUNTER: A THRILLER

Posted on by TeamAtlas

BY ROGER DONWAY

Robert Bidinotto’s new novel has been accumulating rave reviews at Amazon.com. Does it live up to expectations for discerning enthusiasts of Ayn Rand’s novels, as well? Fortunately, it does.

I demand a sequel.

That, in a sentence, is my review of Robert Bidinotto’s first novel, Hunter: A Thriller (2011, Avenger Books). But let me elaborate.

I am not a reader of thrillers, spy stories, or detective novels. I confess to having read some Mickey Spillane in my youth. I began Donald Hamilton’s Matt Helm series but gave it up fairly soon. I read all of the James Bond novels, but saw only the early movies.

They’re just not my style.

So, I don’t know what fans of Spillane, Hamilton, and Fleming would think of Hunter. And I certainly don’t know what fans of the more recent thriller writers would think. Is Bidinotto accurate when he describes the characteristics of particular guns? Particular types of ammunition? Particular silencers? I have no idea, and I do not care.

Hunter: A Thriller by Robert Bidinotto

I come to Hunter as a reader of Jane Austen and Anthony Trollope — which is to say: as a reader of straightforward romance novels that take human decency as their outlook, yet understand that conflicts often occur between decent people. And coming to Bidinotto’s Twenty-first Century thriller novel from the perspective of Nineteenth Century romance novels, I found it to be a joy.

To say that Hunter is a well-structured novel is an understatement. Its 462 pages are divided into 40 chapters, grouped into three parts. Each of the chapters comprises between one and four “scenes,” with each scene being given a precise locale, a precise date, and a precise time, such as: “Falls Church, Virginia, Saturday, September 20, 9:35 a.m.”

From these scene directions, we know that virtually all the novel takes place around Washington, D.C. From the days and dates, we can infer that the novel takes place in 2008. There is one flashback to 2006, but most of the backstory is set during the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan; the deeper backstory is set in the hero’s childhood and college years.

The central conflict in Hunter is easily stated. A crime-fighting journalist (Dylan Hunter) turns vigilante, while a CIA huntress of moles (Annie Woods) falls in love with him — and he with her. United by their passion for justice, and for each other, Dylan and Annie are torn apart by their inability to be honest with each other — an inability imposed on them by the secretive nature of their respective crusades. Things get worse, and the page-turning gets faster, when Dylan’s and Annie’s crusades begin to cross.

Bidinotto has introduced us to a coterie of folks that we love, that we yearn to meet again, that we want to know better.

There is nothing of philosophizing or pontificating or preaching in Hunter. Nevertheless, it is this philosophical conflict between the two main characters’ passion for the virtue of justice — treating people as they are — and their thwarted desire to be honest with each other — to be loved for who and what they are — that drives the novel’s plot.

Yes, there are villains to be overcome — the novel’s subtitle A Thriller must be honored — and the villains are far from cartoonish. The profound harm that evil men wreak on good people is portrayed here in the most heart-wrenching terms. On occasion, it brought me to tears.

But Bidinotto shows, by drawing on his own long career as a crime journalist, that the magnitude of the harm evil men perpetrate would not be possible without those intellectually and morally confused enablers who blithely allow human fiends to escape punishment again and again. Such enablers are here treated by Bidinotto, depending on the degree of their culpability, with a varying mixture of contempt and mordant derision, the latter often being laugh-out-loud funny.

This is the first reason that I am impatient for a sequel to Hunter: I want to return to the exhilarating moral atmosphere of Bidinotto’s story. I confess that a day or so after I had finished the novel I noticed that I seemed to be “a little down” emotionally. The reason was obvious: I was back in the real world, where justice is a scarce commodity. Of course, it does not help that my main job is uncovering and writing about injustice: businessmen who are being persecuted by the government for actions they did not commit or for actions that should not be crimes.

Although that is not the particular type of injustice emphasized in Hunter, injustice it certainly is. And it is worth noting that my emotional reaction to Hunter exposes the nonsense of the conventional distinction between being “soft on crime” and “tough on crime.” The Innocence Project and Death Wish are both manifestations of the impulse for justice.

Even the minor evil characters, whom we meet only as they are about to be dispatched, are memorably etched with a few deft strokes.

But the second reason that I want a second helping of Hunter has to do with its characters. I have noted that the action in this novel has been precisely plotted, down to the minute. Some authors say that when they write a novel they merely create a bunch of characters, place them in a situation, and then sit back to watch what happens. Not Bidinotto. He clearly takes his stand with Valdimir Nabokov, who declared: “My characters do exactly what I tell them.”

But that is from the author’s perspective. From the reader’s perspective, characters must not appear as mere chess pieces. They must seem like real people, acting from internal motives of character and personality, and Bidinotto’s characters always do.

For example, the well-plotted actions that occur when Dylan’s crusade and Annie’s crusade conflict would not be believable unless you first believed — not only that their crusades are right — but that their passion for each other is no less right. And you do believe it. I said that I approached Hunter not as a thriller reader but as a romance reader, and so I cannot tell you that this is a great thriller. But I can assure you that it is one of the great romances.

Going beyond the main protagonists, even the lesser characters are vividly realized. Even the minor evil characters, whom we meet only as they are about to be dispatched, are memorably etched with a few deft strokes. Bidinotto seems incapable of creating a cardboard figure. An author who, just by the way, gives us a cat’s tail swaying “like a wobbly periscope” is clearly a born poet.

And this points to the second reason that I demand a sequel. In creating the benevolent characters of Hunter, both major and minor, Bidinotto has introduced us to a coterie of folks that we love, that we yearn to meet again, that we want to know better. When I found myself feeling a little down after finishing Hunter, it was in some part because I missed the moral atmosphere of the novel. But it was in much greater part because I missed the new friends that Bidinotto had given me — and I still do.

I miss Dylan. I miss Annie. I miss Danika and Wonk and Bronowski. I miss Grant Garrett and Ed Cronin. Hell, I miss the cat.

The book is available from Amazon.com in paperback ($15.95) and Kindle ($3.99) editions. See author Robert Bidinotto’s blog for additional information and updates about the book.

Roger Donway is Program Director of the Business Rights Center at The Atlas Society.

ENTREPRENEURS UNDER ATTACK

Posted on by TeamAtlas

BY JOHN STOSSEL

Small businesses are and always have been the lifeblood of any healthy economy. However, high-level cronyism increasingly threatens to stifle nascent entrepreneurs at every turn.

Every day, federal, state and local governments stifle small businesses to privilege well-connected incumbent companies. It’s a system of protectionism for influential insiders who don’t want competition. Every locality has its share of business moguls who are cozy with politicians. Together, they use the power of government to keep competition down and prices high.

The Institute for Justice, a libertarian public-interest law firm, works to free entrepreneurs from such opportunity-killing regulations. Here are four cases from IJ’s files.

Case No. 1. The monks at St. Joseph Abbey had to take the state of Louisiana to federal court to defend their right to make money selling handmade caskets. That’s right: empty wooden boxes. But as soon as the monks started selling them, they were shocked to receive a cease-and-desist order from something called the Louisiana State Board of Funeral Directors. The funeral directors had managed to get their state to pass a law decreeing that only “licensed funeral directors” may sell “funeral merchandise” like caskets.

To sell caskets legally, the monks would have to obtain a funeral director’s license. That required a year-long apprenticeship, passing a funeral industry test and converting their monastery into a “funeral establishment” by installing embalming equipment, among other things.

The state board and the Louisiana Funeral Directors Association — the profession’s lobbyist — say the law is designed to protect consumers. But that’s what established businesses always say about absurd regulations they demand. An unusually candid funeral director told The Wall Street Journal, “They’re cutting into our profit.” Well, yes, free competition does do that. That’s the point.

Another funeral director said that the law must remain unchanged because casket-making is a complicated business: “A quarter of America is oversized. I don’t even know if the monks know how to make an oversized casket.” Does that even deserve a comment?

Case No. 2. Hector Ricketts wants to offer New York City residents an alternative to New York’s slow and clumsy public transportation. He employs drivers who offer commuters rides in minivans. The vans serve mostly low-income neighborhoods and typically charge $2 a head. People like the vans. They’re more convenient than unionized government-run public transit — and cheaper, too. The subways and buses charge $2.25.

So the city’s public transit union used its political connections to regulate the vans to death: The politicians have decreed that vans may not drive routes used by city buses or provide service to a passenger unless it is prearranged by phone; and the vans must keep a passenger manifest on board and enter the name of everyone to be picked up.

“Government makes it easier to get on welfare than to grow my business,” Ricketts says.

The fight continues.

Case No. 3. Melony Armstrong of Tupelo, Miss., wanted to expand her African hair-braiding business. But Mississippi bureaucrats told her that to teach workers how to braid she needed a full cosmetology license. That required 1,200 hours of classes. Next, she needed a cosmetology instructor’s license — 2,000 more hours.

The courses and license had little to do with her profession. They were simply barriers to entry favored by her competition. Fortunately, IJ won that case.

Case No. 4. Dennis Ballen has a bagel shop located far off the main roads in Redmond, Wash. He couldn’t afford to advertise on radio or TV, so he paid someone (typically unemployable people with quirky personalities) to stand on the road with a sign directing traffic to his store. It worked. The sign brought him two or three new customers a day.

Then Redmond police slapped him with a cease-and-desist order, warning he could face a year in jail or up to $5,000 in fines if he didn’t stop displaying the sign. Ballen estimates that he would lose at least $200 a day in business if he complied. He and IJ sued the city and won the right to employ the sign-holder.

It’s great that IJ and some determined entrepreneurs win a few victories for free enterprise. But in a country with a real free market, such lawsuits would be unnecessary.

John Stossel is host of “Stossel” on the Fox Business Network. He’s the author of “Give Me a Break” and of “Myth, Lies, and Downright Stupidity.” To find out more about John Stossel, visit his site at johnstossel.com

O. HENRY: A BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE

Posted on by TeamAtlas

BY DON HAUPTMAN

The short stories of O. Henry continue to entertain and delight readers. Of course, he was the master of the twist or surprise ending. But there’s much more to O. Henry, which is why his work endures, almost a century and a half after his birth.

Prior to the tragic events of September 11, 2001, admirers of O. Henry recognized that date each year as his birthday. Today, such celebrations would appear inappropriate. But perhaps it’s acceptable to recall a time when September 11 had a different and more positive association. The following article is based on a talk I prepared for an Objectivist group that met in New York City on that date in 1999.

Born in Greensboro, N.C. on September 11, 1862, O. Henry’s original name was William Sidney Porter. After all, O. Henry would have been a rather strange name for an infant. Three decades later, he changed the spelling of his middle name to Sydney. As for the pen name O. Henry, he told several versions of its origin.

I discovered and loved O. Henry’s stories well before I encountered the works of Ayn Rand. I was gratified, however, to learn that she shared my admiration of his talents. Specifically, she praised “the pyrotechnical virtuosity of an inexhaustible imagination projecting the gaiety of a benevolent, almost childlike sense of life” (The Romantic Manifesto, p. 110, paperback).

William Sydney Porter, a.k.a. O. Henry

O. Henry’s curiosity and ingenuity were boundless. He could glance around a restaurant and instantly find the premises for half a dozen stories. That knack most likely helped inspire Rand’s own clever story, “The Simplest Thing in the World” (also reprinted in The Romantic Manifesto), in which a struggling writer attempts to produce a hack piece for a quick buck, but is constantly distracted by imaginative ideas he knows won’t sell.

The O. Henry trademark, is, of course, the twist or surprise ending that delights the reader because it’s unexpected yet logical. The device provided memorable denouements to his most familiar stories, including “The Gift of the Magi,” “The Cop and the Anthem,” “The Ransom of Red Chief,” and “The Last Leaf.”

But some of his best stories are not as famous. One of my favorites is “After Twenty Years.” It’s also one of his shortest, fewer than three printed pages. Lest I spoil your enjoyment, I will say only that it contains all of his characteristic touches.

Although O. Henry didn’t invent the surprise ending, he certainly perfected and popularized it.

The literati disparage O. Henry’s work as, among other things, superficial and sentimental. As with criticism of Ayn Rand, many of the accusations are ignorant and unjust.

In the early 1970s, I was in the Navy. I carried The Complete Works of O. Henry to three continents. Rather than read the volume straight through, I returned to its 1,700 pages intermittently over several years. (The title of this volume isn’t strictly accurate; it contains 250 stories, but O. Henry scholars estimate that the number of stories he wrote is closer to 300.)

Not everything O. Henry wrote is of equally high quality. Indeed, he often recycled themes and plots, and some of the situations rely excessively on contrivance and coincidence.

At his best, however, O. Henry is terrific. He’s a superb stylist; his use of language is skillful and often gorgeous. And he’s a master of character and dialogue. Even the speech of his “street people” is witty, humorous, and literarily romantic — not the way people talk, but the way they should talk.

O. Henry lived in New York City for eight years, drawing upon its colorful neighborhoods and characters for his best-known stories. But many of his works have other settings. He was a ranch hand in Texas, where his experiences inspired a group of tales with Western settings. (Many fans of The Cisco Kid may be unaware that he is O. Henry’s creation.)

Even the speech of his “street people” is witty, humorous, and literarily romantic — not the way people talk, but the way they should talk.

He was in prison for three years, which supplied fodder for his vivid tales of grifters, con men, and rogues, including safecracker Jimmy Valentine. And a stay in Honduras inspired a series of adventures of a U.S. consul in the backwaters of a fictitious Central American country.

O. Henry worked as a draftsman, a cartoonist, a pharmacist, and a bank teller. It was this latter job that landed him in the slammer, on a charge of embezzlement. He protested his innocence, and indeed some of the evidence exonerates him.

In the biography Alias O. Henry, Gerald Langford notes: “O. Henry’s life has seemed colorful enough to justify his own remark when he was asked why he did not read more fiction…. ‘It is all tame as compared with the romance of my own life.’”

In 1910, O. Henry died at the age of 48. He was penniless and dissolute — an ironic turn worthy of one of his own stories.

His works have often been dramatized on stage, on television, and in films. The 1952 film O. Henry’s Full House is an excellent adaptation of five of his stories, each by a different director, and with a cast of big-name stars, including Charles Laughton, Marilyn Monroe, and Richard Widmark. It was long unavailable on home video, but now it’s on DVD, along with several bonus features.

Ayn Rand praised “the pyrotechnical virtuosity of an inexhaustible imagination projecting the gaiety of a benevolent, almost childlike sense of life.”

Although O. Henry didn’t invent the surprise ending, he certainly perfected and popularized it. His legacy pervades popular culture—from The Twilight Zone to the short stories of Jeffrey Archer to a long list of movies, including The Sixth Sense, The Others, The Usual Suspects, and The Crying Game. I suspect that the “twist in the tale” is largely responsible for the word-of-mouth success of such films.

O. Henry’s home in Austin is now a museum. Each May for the past 34 years, an annual “O. Henry Pun-Off World Championships” contest has been held in the adjacent park. As a wordplay enthusiast, I’ve always liked the idea. True, O. Henry played with language, but even the creators of the event concede that the connection is a bit tenuous.

In 2012, the U.S. Postal Service will issue a stamp honoring O. Henry. Appropriately, given the author’s enduring appeal, it’s a “Forever” stamp that will always be valid as one-ounce first-class postage. The design shows a portrait of O. Henry, with the skyline of New York City in the background.

I hope I’ve motivated you to savor the rewards of this outstanding yet often underrated writer — whether for the first time or as a rediscovery.

On his birthday, then, let’s toast him with the O. Henry cocktail. You don’t know the recipe? It’s a Manhattan, with a dash of saccharine, served with a twist.

Don Hauptman is a New York City-based advertising copywriter and humorist, and a longtime Objectivist. He writes a weekly online column on language. He is also author of The Versatile Freelancer, an e-book that shows creative people how to diversify into public speaking, consulting, training, and other profitable activities.

RACIAL STUPIDITY AND MALEVOLENCE

Posted on by TeamAtlas

BY WALTER E WILLIAMS

Many do-gooders and race hustlers insist that the black-white achievement gap in the US today is the product of racism.  But how do you explain black students’ stellar performance during Jim Crow?

The white liberal’s agenda, coupled with that of black race hustlers, has had and continues to have a devastating impact on ordinary black people. Perhaps the most debilitating aspect of this liberal malevolence is in the area of education.
Recently, I spoke with a Midwestern university engineering professor who was trying to help an inner-city black student who was admitted to the university’s electrical engineering program. The student was sure that he was well prepared for an engineering curriculum; his high school had convinced him of that and the university recruiters supported that notion.

His poor performance on the university’s math placement exam required that he take remedial math courses. He’s failed them and is now on academic probation after two semesters of earning less than a 2.0 grade point average.

The young man and his parents were sure of his preparedness. After all, he had good high school grades, but those grades only meant that he was well behaved. The college recruiters probably knew this youngster didn’t have the academic preparation for an electrical engineering curriculum. They were more concerned with racial diversity.

This young man’s background is far from unique. Public schools give most black students fraudulent diplomas that certify a 12th-grade achievement level. According to a report by Abigail Thernstrom, “The Racial Gap in Academic Achievement,” black students in 12th grade dealt with scientific problems at the level of whites in the sixth grade; they wrote about as well as whites in the eighth grade. The average black high school senior had math skills on a par with a typical white student in the middle of ninth grade. The average 17-year-old black student could only read as well as the typical white child who had not yet reached age 13.

Black youngsters who take the SAT exam earn an average score that’s 70 to 80 percent of the score of white students, and keep in mind, the achievement level of white students is nothing to write home about. Under misguided diversity pressures, colleges recruit many black students who are academically ill equipped. Very often, these students become quickly disillusioned, embarrassed and flunk out, or they’re steered into curricula that have little or no academic content, or professors practice affirmative-action grading.

In any case, the 12 years of poor academic preparation is not repaired in four or five years of college. This is seen by the huge performance gap between blacks and whites on exams for graduate school admittance such as the GRE, MCAT and LSAT.

Is poor academic performance among blacks something immutable or pre-ordained? There is no evidence for such a claim. Let’s sample some evidence from earlier periods. In “Assumptions Versus History in Ethnic Education,” in Teachers College Record (1981), Dr. Thomas Sowell reports on academic achievement in some of New York city’s public schools. He compares test scores for sixth graders in Harlem schools with those in the predominantly white Lower East Side for April 1941 and December 1941.

In paragraph and word meaning, Harlem students, compared to Lower East Side students, scored equally or higher. In 1947 and 1951, Harlem third-graders in paragraph and word meaning, and arithmetic reasoning and computation scored about the same as — and in some cases, slightly higher, and in others, slightly lower than — their white Lower East Side counterparts.

Going back to an earlier era, Washington, D.C.’s Dunbar High School’s black students scored higher in citywide tests than any of the city’s white schools. In fact, from its founding in 1870 to 1955, most of Dunbar’s graduates went off to college.

Let’s return to the tale of the youngster at the Midwestern college. Recruiting this youngster to be a failure is cruel, psychologically damaging and an embarrassment for his family. But the campus hustlers might come to the aid of the student by convincing him that his academic failure is a result of white racism and Eurocentric values.

Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. He has authored more than 150 publications, including many in scholarly journals, and has frequently given expert testimony before Congressional committees on public policy issues ranging from labor policy to taxation and spending.

SIMPSON AND THE SACRED COW

Posted on by TeamAtlas

BY JACOB SULLUM

A classic and cowardly defense tactic when one’s ideas have failed logically is to shoot the messenger with pointless ad hominem attacks. Let’s observe a recent example of this behavior.

Alan Simpson violated a taboo last week when he likened Social Security to “a milk cow with 310 million tits.” But contrary to the dictionary-deprived critics who accused him of sexist vulgarity, the former Wyoming senator’s transgression had nothing to do with his use of a perfectly acceptable synonym for teat. Simpson’s real sin was “belittling a bedrock program,” as the AARP put it — i.e., showing insufficient reverence for a sacred cow.

To Simpson’s detractors, it is self-evident that a man who supports entitlement reform has no business serving on, let alone co-chairing, a presidential commission devoted to fiscal responsibility. But anyone who takes an honest look at the federal budget can see how crazy that position is.

Just three entitlement programs — Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security — account for two-fifths of federal spending, representing 10 percent of gross domestic product. Without reform, they are expected to consume half of the budget and about 20 percent of GDP by 2050.

It’s true that the fiscal outlook for Social Security, which has about $18 trillion in unfunded liabilities, is not nearly as bad as the fiscal outlook for Medicare, which has a long-term shortfall five times as big. Simpson’s controversial comments nevertheless reflect some important truths.

First, Social Security is neither a pension fund nor a means-tested assistance program for the needy. It is a pay-as-you-go system of transfer payments that takes money from relatively poor workers and gives it to relatively affluent retirees.

Second, despite all the talk of a “$2.5 trillion surplus,” Social Security is indeed “in trouble,” thanks to a shrinking ratio of workers to retirees and repeated raids on its revenue by legislators looking for easy spending money. The year of reckoning is not 2037, when the program’s imaginary “trust fund” is expected to run out — it is now, since the cost of benefits already has begun to exceed annual revenue. There is nothing in the trust fund but IOUs from the federal government, which can be redeemed only through cuts in other programs, more taxes or more debt.

Third, entitlement reform — including Medicare cuts as well as changes to Social Security — will be fought tooth-and-nail by the AARP, the National Organization for Women and other denialist defenders of the status quo. That much was confirmed by the reaction to Simpson’s complaints about charges of “ageism” and “sexism,” which were cited as further evidence of his ageism and sexism.

Yet this self-hating senior citizen, who turns 79 this week, is right to question a retirement age that was set at 65 in 1935 and has been raised by only two years (for people born after 1959) since then. Meanwhile, life expectancy at 65 has gone from about 13 more years for men and 15 for women to 17 for men and 20 for women, and those numbers are projected to continue rising.

Simpson is also right to point out that Americans receive Social Security (and Medicare) benefits regardless of how wealthy they are. You might think progressives would welcome means testing. But as Trudy Lieberman explained in the Columbia Journalism Review, they worry that targeting benefits to people who actually need them would undermine “the program’s social solidarity.”

Translation: Voters love middle-class entitlements, but they hate welfare. That’s why progressives were so upset about Simpson’s cow comparison, with its implication of unseemly dependence. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.,  and Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., claimed to find the simile “beyond comprehension” but nevertheless concluded that it was both “false” and “demeaning.”

Transforming Social Security into a true pension program by letting workers invest part of what they now see disappear in payroll taxes is likewise anathema to the “social solidarity” crowd, since it would let people go their own way instead of forcing them to participate in the government’s Ponzi scheme. Simpson is not suggesting anything nearly so radical, which makes the silly, sanctimonious storm over his comments all the more depressing.

Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at Reason magazine, and his work appears in the new Reason anthology Choice (BenBella Books). Sullum is a graduate of Cornell University, where he majored in economics and psychology. He lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and daughter.

DEMOCRACY SOCIETY

Posted on by TeamAtlas

BY JOHN ENRIGHT

This new dystopian political thriller by freshman novelist John Christmas is fast paced and funny, and explores important social and philosophical problems with the misguided ideal of unlimited democracy.

Imagine an America where people still vote to elect their government, but where the government has abandoned the Constitution and embraced redistribution of wealth and rule by rioting mobs. Do you think you have already caught glimpses of such an America? Well, you haven’t seen anything yet. That, at least, is the message of Democracy Society, the scary but funny new novel by John Christmas.

The novel opens with a historical prologue featuring secret plotting by some of the American Founders. But that goes by quickly, and we are plunged abruptly into a society where democracy has degenerated into a nightmare of seized assets and enslaved entrepreneurs.

Just to get an idea of how scary this society is, here is an excerpt from a scene in which the President of the United States, Roberto Rojo, campaigns for re-election:

“The Great Deal Party gave you a new human right. Free cash!

“These hundred-dollar bills have a picture of me instead of Benjamin Franklin since you don’t know who he was anyway!”

Rojo paused and made a mental note to ask an aide to figure out who Benjamin Franklin was, just in case the question ever came up.

This level of thinking may remind you of the 2006 film Idiocracy, in which society has become incredibly and comically “dumbed down.”

Democracy Society by John Christmas

Fortunately, all is not lost. There are intelligent and virtuous people fighting to restore the system of governance envisioned by the Founders, heroes who understand that the protection of property rights is one of the keys to the establishment of liberty and prosperity.

One such hero is David Goldstein, a free market economist, who is running a last ditch campaign for the Presidency, doing his best to explain the need for property rights to a citizenry low on economic literacy.

Leading the heroic charge for action, adventure, and romance are Jack Cannon and Valentina Zaiceva, an international pair who seem prepared for any physical challenge that life can thrown at them. They have been recruited for a dangerous mission by a secret society — a secret society which traces its roots back to the time of the American Founders.

The story is quite fast paced and often very funny; at least, it was very suited to my sense of humor. As befits a political thriller, the story is a roller coaster of twists and turns, with a big final twist which I did not see coming.

As befits a political thriller, the story is a roller coaster of twists and turns, with a big final twist which I did not see coming.

The author is focused upon a political theme. He is raising the alarm about what he calls “universal-suffrage democracy,” a term he uses to describe a political system where the many are allowed to oppress and loot from the few, a political system where all constitutional protections for individuals have been cast by the wayside, and in a nation where economic ignorance is widespread.

He goes so far as to contemplate the question of whether a wise hereditary monarchy might sometimes provide a freer system of governance. The huge problem of how a monarchy could be kept on a wise path, however, is not explored. Granted that contemporary democracies show many institutional and philosophical weaknesses, it seems obvious to me that historical monarchies showed a grim tendency to sink into tyranny. But it’s also true that monarchy was a dominant form of government for much of human history, and speculative fiction has repeatedly imagined its return. See, for example, Niven and Pournelle’s classic The Mote in God’s Eye.

As an aside, it is worth noting that the authors of The Federalist Papers tended not to use the word “democracy” to describe the form of representative government they were endorsing. They tended to see the word as having negative connotations of the dangers of mob rule. But over time connotations often shift, and de Tocqueville’s Nineteenth Century study Democracy in America is devoted to explaining how well democracy worked out in the U.S.

While our author is critical of trends in American democracy, there is another country whose democratic trends he finds even scarier. His fictional Russian president declares: “I decided to go for the presidency instead of just a seat in the Duma because my supporters told me that I was extremely popular because of my corruption.”

Author John Christmas (from his website)

The story line veers around the United States and around the world, and while the descriptions are not lengthy, they were very particular, giving the sense that the author had been to most of these places himself and taken note of their distinctive features.

While a number of the characters exhibit interesting personal outlooks and intriguing value conflicts, the pace of the story necessarily keeps us from getting into a great deal of psychological depth. This is not a book to take up if you insist on multidimensional character studies, or if literal believability is high on your list of literary virtues.

It’s more of a high-speed trip through a Looking-Glass dystopia, with the illogical villains showing off thinking processes reminiscent of Lewis Carroll’s Alice stories. Fortunately, the heroes demonstrate the common sense logic which Alice herself displays, and you have the sense, from the beginning, that the heroes will emerge triumphant.

John Enright is the author of More Fire and Other Poems and the novel Unholy Quest. He lives in Chicago with his wife, Marsha Familaro Enright, and works as a computer consultant. His regularly-updated blog is titled “Rhyme of the Day.”

I AM JOHN GALT: BUY THE BOOK!

Posted on by TeamAtlas

BY STEPHEN BROWNE

The new I Am John Galt is a rare and well-written book, shining a spotlight on the many ways in which Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged explains not only today’s headlines, but also the people behind those headlines.

I accepted a review copy of I Am John Galt, by Donald Luskin and Andrew Greta, with some trepidation. I was recommended to the publisher by a friend, and agreed to read and review the book on the explicit understanding they’d have my honest opinion — i.e., that if I thought it stank, I’d pan it. This is the kind of thing that can strain friendships.

I’m happy to say, my misgivings were unfounded. This is a good, readable, and vitally important book.

I was afraid the book would be meaningless to anyone who had not read Atlas Shrugged and was steeped in Objectivist literature. No such thing. One does not have to have read the novel, though I’d bet money a lot of people who read I Am John Galt will be motivated to read Atlas Shrugged.

This is not a book for archetypical heroes of fiction, titans of industry, or giants of philosophy. This is a book for you and me: People who produce, rather than steal, their living. And the book explains how this is our fight, too.

But this is no abstract, unreadable philosophical or economic tract. The authors, to put it bluntly, kick ass and take names. They take issues you’d expect to be as dull as ditchwater, make them vitally interesting, and put faces on them.

Cui bono? Who became wealthy beyond dreams of avarice from policies that have all but wrecked the economy of the richest nation on earth?

Meet Angelo Mozillo, who spent billions of our money to inflate the subprime mortgage housing bubble. (“Subprime” is an economic term that means “probably can’t pay it back.”) And meet the politicians who benefited from his largess in extending sweetheart real estate loans. They’re in here, names and all.

Meet Barney Frank, the politician and serial liar, corrupt to the core, who wields the power of a commissar over an economy he neither understands nor gives a damn about, so long as he can satisfy his basest appetites.

Meet economist, New York Times columnist, and toady to would-be tyrants Paul Krugman, who has been wrong in every single significant prediction he has ever made, but whose reputation as an economic pundit somehow remains undiminished.

And meet Alan Greenspan, the economist who was actually a friend and associate of Rand’s for many years, who at a crucial time inexplicably turned his back on his own principles and better judgment when he could have been a voice of opposition people might have heeded.

And how did incompetent nebbishes like Frank and Mozillo get the power to destroy wealth on a scale unmatched by any barbarian invasion of civilization?

The astounding revelation in the book is, largely because they wanted it. Men who can produce wealth — do. It is through the sheer indifference of the producers to political power that tends to cause it to fall into the hands of those whose only talent is networking with the like-minded. You’ll see this in the parable of Microsoft and the Lobbyists.

On the subject of Ayn Rand herself, Luskin and Greta are concerned with her ideas, and her almost-prescient picture of a collapsing civilization.

So who stands against them? Who’s on our side, in a conflict that increasingly looks like the beginnings of a revolution?

Meet Steve Jobs, who helped invent the modern world, from the sheer joy of creating technological marvels that were fun toys. And find out what they did to him.

Meet Bill Gates, who more than any other man made the personal computer into something more than “the world’s most expensive etch-a-sketch.” And find out what they did to him.

Meet John Allison, the banker who made Objectivist principles into rules for mind-boggling corporate success. A man of integrity who built one of America’s strongest banks, and actually attracted more business by making it the bank’s policy to extend no loans whatsoever for financing private property seized by eminent domain. And find out what they did to him.

Meet Milton Friedman, the brilliant economist who cogently explained how the principles of economic freedom translate into the greatest good for all — and, yes, how Ayn Rand dismissed this as “collectivist propaganda.”

My initial misgivings about I Am John Galt resulted from the fact that it compares characters and events from a novel with their counterparts from the real world. I feared it would land too close to what I call “the great book fallacy” — the notion that, at a critical moment of history, a single book comes along that rallies a vast inchoate resistance to tyranny around a central set of ideas. Tom Paine’s Common Sense or Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin are often given as examples.

A close examination of history shows that, in each of these cases, there was a long period of discussion in the marketplace of ideas before the issue crystallized around a brilliant summation. Historian of the American Revolution Bernard Bailyn showed the issues that the revolution was fought over had been disseminated and discussed in hundreds of now-obscure pamphlets that circulated on both sides of the Atlantic for fifty years before Common Sense and the Declaration of Independence.

Some have long hoped Atlas Shrugged would be one of those world-changing books, if only enough people could be persuaded to read it, or see a movie made from it. But after fifty years and millions of copies it’s evident something more is needed — including more books like I Am John Galt that help bridge the gap from fictional archetypes to real-world examples. They show Rand had actual, living people in mind when she created characters like Wesley Mouch and Robbert Stadler — perhaps even people she’d seen in Soviet Russia.

And now we’ve learned to our shock and horror that they aren’t caricatures, but living breathing men and women. And they have power over us, just as she tried to warn us, almost in vain.

What this book does is actualize the principles in the novel, pins them down and shows how they relate to what is going on all around us.

On the subject of Ayn Rand herself, Luskin and Greta are concerned with her ideas, and her almost-prescient picture of a collapsing civilization. They neither ignore nor dwell upon her faults as a human being, because they just aren’t relevant in the context of a discussion of her ideas. Likewise the schisms among her followers are not dealt with because they simply have no relevance to the discussion at hand.

I Am John Galt is readable, and this is the first criterion for a book written to take on the entrenched power supported by media whores endlessly repeating what “everybody knows.” There are graphs and sets of numbers, but they’re presented in a way that is easy to understand and does not get in the way of the narrative. This is, by itself, an impressive accomplishment — and I speak as a journalist who specializes in explaining policy, financing, and engineering infrastructure issues for general audiences.

So is it going to preach only to the choir? I have to step back and think carefully about this, because I am familiar with Ayn Rand’s writings, and have been since I was a teenager.

In the half-century since its publication, Atlas Shrugged has never been out of print, with sales each year jumping from the tens of thousands yearly, to the hundreds of thousands in the 1980s and ’90s. All told, with pass-around readership, that’s tens of millions of people who’ve been exposed to the book and the ideas therein.

However, one can’t help but notice there aren’t tens of millions of Objectivists or even libertarians around. Ayn Rand’s effect on the culture is undeniable; but if even half the people who’ve read Atlas were converted to the philosophy therein, we wouldn’t be in this mess.

That’s where this book, and others like it, come in. What this book does is actualize the principles in the novel, pins them down and shows how they relate to what is going on all around us.

As I read the book, each time I thought “Yes but…” my objection was answered within a page or two. Eventually I realized that what these two men have done is take the organizing tools defined by leftist Saul Alinsky and use them to advance a message of Capitalism and Freedom — the title of Milton Friedman’s work for laymen.

And it’s about time, too!

The book is available for immediate purchase, in traditional as well as Kindle editions, from Amazon.com.

Stephen W. Browne is a writer, editor, and teacher of martial arts and English as a second language. He is also the founder of the Liberty English Camps, held annually in Eastern Europe, which brings together students from all over Eastern Europe for intensive English study using texts important to the history of political liberty and free markets. In 1997 he was elected an Honorary Member of the Yugoslav Movement for the Protection of Human Rights for his work supporting dissidents during the Milosevic regime. His regularly-updated blog is at StephenWBrowne.com.

ATLAS SHRUGGED AND THE COMPOUND EFFECT

Posted on by TeamAtlas

BY  MARK LEWIS

Success magazine Publisher Darren Hardy discusses his Ayn Rand roots, his reactions to the Atlas Shrugged movie, the role of “the compound effect” in achieving real success, and what it means to live the good life.

Darren Hardy is publisher and editorial director of Success magazine and regularly appears on national radio and TV shows for CNBC, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and FOX.

A self-made millionaire, entrepreneur, and avid admirer of Ayn Rand’s novels, he is also author of The Compound Effect: Multiplying Your Results One Simple Step at a Time — which has been hailed as a modern-day version of Napoleon Hill’s classic Think and Grow Rich.

In this interview, Hardy answers questions from Atlasphere columnist Mark Michael Lewis about what it takes to be truly successful, his insights about America’s cultural heritage, his thoughts about leading the good life, and his reactions to the new Atlas Shrugged movie.

Mark Michael Lewis: Darren, I understand you saw Atlas Shrugged – Part 1 on its opening night. What did you like most and what did you like least about the movie?

Darren Hardy: I enjoyed revisiting the characters and Ayn Rand’s basic philosophy, particularly in the context of our current political and economic climate.

I was disappointed in the direction and production. A work of this magnitude deserves the quality of talent — direction, production, financing, distribution, and acting — that is personified in the book itself. I applaud whoever was behind getting something out; but in my opinion, it didn’t meet the standards of the material itself.

When I read Atlas Shrugged, it was like coming home. Finally someone was saying what I have always felt, but hadn’t put into words myself.

I’m sure it was a difficult task, but Dagny, Hank — my favorite character — and particularly Francisco did not live up to my mental picture. Thus the movie fell below my expectations. I am certain Rand’s vision is even grander, more strict, and more sensitive; and I am certain this version would have fallen significantly short from her vision.

At the same time, I enjoyed a movie based on the philosophy, character, and attributes of Atlas Shrugged, even though it didn’t match my mental pictures.

MML: How did you come across Atlas Shrugged? What impact did reading it have on your commitment to success and your confidence in your right to achieve it?

Hardy: It was recommended — no, promoted — to me with great fervor, by someone I admired greatly. When I read it, it was like coming home. Finally someone was saying what I have always felt, but hadn’t put into words myself. I felt understood. I no longer felt like I was the odd one. It really was the mass, or the mob, that was odd.

This was comforting and emboldening to me. It liberated me to be me, 100% me, as I am, as an individual, not as society would have me be. Even more so in The Fountainhead with Howard Roark. He is who I identify with the most.

MML: Your book The Compound Effect praises the cumulative power of making smart choices and taking confident action through time. What are you hoping to inspire in your readers?

Hardy: Number one, that you are 100% responsible for your life. No one or nothing has power over you. Only you determine your outcomes. The economy, the President, policies in Washington, the weather, the traffic, your spouse, your boss … no one is responsible for how you feel, how you perform and what results you create (or don’t) in your life but you.

You, at all times, in every circumstance, at every moment, are 100% responsible — by what you do, don’t do, or how you respond to what has been done to you. Disease, tragedy, heartbreak? Tell me your excuse and I will point out hundreds of people who had it far worse and chose to respond differently and today have blessed, abundant, beautiful, and wonderful lives.

And when it comes to taking 100% responsibility for your life it all comes down to your choices. Your life at this very moment is the cumulative effect of all the choices you have made, or didn’t make, up to now.

Your choices created your waist line, bank balance, relationship status, the success or failure of your business, etc. If you want to change the direction of your life, it starts by making different choices and then acting on those choices, consistently through time, each action building on the last like compound interest. The longer it builds, the more your results multiply, until the compound effect kicks in and you materialize exponential growth results.

You, at all times, in every circumstance, at every moment, are 100% responsible — by what you do, don’t do, or how you respond to what has been done to you.

MML: You say Hank is your favorite character in Atlas Shrugged. What do you admire most about him? How have you striven to be like him?

Hardy: I am most inspired by Hank’s unwavering strength, his consistent and steadfast holding to his principles. He does the right thing, because it is the right thing, without fanfare. I would like to say John Galt, but that dude is above my head, as that is essentially Ayn Rand herself. Hank, and Hank’s world, I understand and can identify with.

MML: Reading The Compound Effect made me think of Hank Rearden and his ten years of dedication to creating Rearden steel, or Dagny Taggart, as she worked diligently year after year to master the railroad business so that she could one day run Taggart Transcontinental. What is the role, in success, of sowing and reaping?

Hardy: This is one of the reasons I wrote The Compound Effect. I was ticked off. I witness a real injustice taking place in our society. People are being misled, tricked, bamboozled, and taken for fools. We are constantly bombarded with increasingly sensational claims to get rich, get fit, get younger, get sexier — all overnight with little effort — for only three easy payments of $39.95.

These repetitive marketing messages have distorted our sense of what it really takes to succeed. Then those with the sincere interest in learning what it takes to be more successful continually get distracted, frustrated, and disappointed when they don’t experience the results they are after. I was tired of watching it happen!

I wrote this book to return people to the basics, the truth and the core fundamentals of what it really takes to succeed. I wanted to clear the clutter, demystify the truth, and tell it straight, with no fat, bull, or fluff included.

MML: What is the difference between the focus on smart actions through time, that you promote in The Compound Effect, and the “law of attraction” or “magic of manifestation” approaches to self-help that have become so popular over the past decade?

Hardy: The law of attraction — or the way it has been explained, promoted, and exploited — is a bunch of crap. You cannot sit on your couch imagining checks coming into your mailbox. If you do, the guys in the white coats will come and haul you off, and bankruptcy court will come to get that couch. Look, you have to get off the damn couch, walk out the front door and make something happen. Action, not delusion, is the answer.

When it comes to explaining, practically, how all of the sudden you start to see things “drawn” into your reality, here’s how that works: You only see, experience, and get what you look for.

If you aren’t looking for something, you often won’t see it, even if it’s been under your nose the whole time. We are surrounded with billions of sensory inputs each day. To keep ourselves from going insane, we ignore 99.9 percent of them. You only really see, hear, or experience those you focus your mind on.

The Law of Attraction — or the way it has been explained, promoted, and exploited — is a bunch of crap. You cannot sit on your couch imagining checks coming into your mailbox

Did you ever start car shopping and then you started to see the model and make of that car everywhere? All of the sudden it seems like there are tons of them on the streets. More likely, they have been there all along, but you weren’t paying attention to them, and thus they didn’t really “exist” to you before.

So, when you define your goals, and start focusing on something, you give your brain something to look for. You give your mind a “new set of eyes” to see all the people, circumstances, conversations, ideas, creativity, and other resources, so it can go about matching up on the outside with what you want on the inside — your goal.

Suddenly it looks like you are attracting all this stuff into your life, when in actuality you are simply seeing, hearing, and paying attention to what has been swirling around you all along.

MML: What is the role of the mind in the continual refinement and unrelenting focus on those disciplines? How important is a consistent rationality in creating success? How important is it to train your mind?

It is critical to feed your mind positive, inspirational, and supportive input and ideas

Hardy: It is critical to feed your mind positive, inspirational, and supportive input and ideas. This includes stories of aspiration — people who, despite challenges, are overcoming obstacles and achieving great things. Strategies of success, prosperity, health, love, and joy. Ideas to create more abundance, to grow, expand, and become more. Examples and stories of what’s good, right, and possible in the world.

Most importantly, you choose what you feed your mind. You do it to yourself. No one has you locked up forcing you to watch the morning news, read the newspaper, listen to drive time radio or watch the ten o’clock news before you go to bed. All the garbage that is dispensed into your ears and in front of your eyes happens because of what you put your head in front of.

That’s why we work so hard at Success magazine. We want to provide you with those examples, those stories, and the key take-aways you can use to improve your view of the world, yourself, and the results you create. That’s also why I read something inspirational and instructional for thirty minutes in the morning and evening, and have personal-development CDs playing in my car.

I’m feeding my mind high quality fuel and compensating for the garbage and self-doubt that the media tries to feed us, and will succeed if we are not vigilant! Does this give me an edge over the guy who gets up and first thing reads the newspaper, listens to news radio on his commute to and from work, and watches the evening news before going to bed? You bet it does! And it can for you, too.

MML: The USA has always been the place to come for those who want a chance to succeed. Perhaps Jim Rohn said it best: People haven’t plotted and schemed for 50 years saying, “If only we could get to Poland, everything would be okay!” What is the role of choosing to create your life in the face of difficulties and disagreement?

Hardy: I think we have lost sight of our roots, what made us great as a burgeoning nation, society, and culture. Our character was chiseled and forged by hard work, discipline, and even struggle and strife that pushed us to become more and do more than we thought possible.

For the past 60 years we have lived in sheer abundance. It has made us lazy and slothful. You have heard the observation that money tends to skip generations. Why? Because the discipline, character, persistence, and determination that was forged in making the money to begin with, when shared or handed to the next generation, cripples them by not getting the benefit of that same journey upward. This is the same reason why every great empire ultimately failed: They failed to continue to do what got them there in the first place.

Here is a small dose of the truth: The process of success is mostly mundane, unexciting, unsexy, laborious, frustrating, tedious, and many times defeating. Success requires hard work, constant and continual effort, determination, persistence, discipline, mixed with a little pain, hurt and frustration — oh and also sheer exhilaration, joy, and utter elation.

The latter comes far more infrequent that the former, but it more than makes up for the difficulty. It makes the whole journey fun, exciting, and fulfilling.

MML: In Atlas Shrugged the heroes come together in community so they can inspire and work with one another to create the life they want. How important are our relationships and the associations we make with the people around us — our “personal politics” — to creating a thriving life?

Hardy: Have you ever been walking with someone and then suddenly realized you are walking much slower than you normally walk, to match their stride? Have you had the opposite experience where you found yourself walking at a much faster clip just to keep up with the person you are walking with? This is what happens in our lives. We end up matching the pace of the people around us.

Success requires hard work, constant and continual effort, determi- nation, persistence, discipline, mixed with a little pain, hurt and frustration — oh and also sheer exhilaration, joy, and utter elation.

Jim Rohn taught that we become the combined average of the five people we hang around the most. Rohn would say we could tell the quality of our health, attitude, and income by looking at the people around us. The people with whom we spend our time determine what conversations dominate our attention, and to which attitudes and opinions we are regularly exposed.

Eventually, we start to eat what they eat, talk like they talk, read what they read, think like they think, watch what they watch, treat people how they treat them, even dress like they dress. The funny thing is, more often than not, we are completely unaware of the similarities between us and our circle of five.

The influence your friends have over you is subtle and can be positive or negative; either way, the impact is incredibly powerful. According to research by Harvard social psychologist David McClelland, your reference group determines as much as 95 percent of your success or failure in life.

Zig Ziglar puts it even simpler. He says, “If you want to fly with the eagles you can’t continue to scratch with the turkeys.” Watch out! You cannot hang out with negative people and expect to live a positive life.

So, who do you spend the most time with? Who are the people you most admire? Are those two groups of people exactly the same? If not, why not? What is the combined average income, health, or attitudes of the five people you spend most of your time with? Does the answer frighten you?

If so, the best way to increase your potential for whatever traits you desire, is to spend the majority of your time with people who already possess those traits. You will then see the power of influence working for you, rather than against you. The behaviors and attitudes which helped them acquire the success you admire will begin to become part of your daily routine. Hang around them long enough and you’re likely to realize similar successful outcomes in your life.

The best way to increase your potential for whatever traits you desire, is to spend the majority of your time with people who already possess those traits

MML: You say that you like it when you face a steep challenge. What is the role of self-esteem in the compound effect?

Hardy: If change were easy, and everyone were doing it, then it would be much more difficult for you and me to stand out and become an extraordinary success. Ordinary is easy. Extra-ordinary is what will separate you from the crowd.

This is why, personally, I’m always happy when something is hard. Why? Because I know that most people won’t do what it takes; therefore, it will be easier for me to step in front of the pack and take the lead.

I love what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said so eloquently: “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge.” Only when we are presented with those challenges do we get to separate ourselves from other men. Jim Rohn said: “Time will either promote you or expose you.” I also think that, in times of challenge, you will either be promoted or exposed.

When you press on despite difficulty, tedium, and hardship, that’s when you earn your improvement and gain strides on the competition. If it’s hard, awkward, or tedious — so be it. Just do it. And keep doing it, and the magic of the compound effect will reward you handsomely.

MML: Over the past 20 years, you have used the principles you describe in The Compound Effect to build businesses, make millions, and create a tremendous platform from which to impact the world. What are you looking to create in the next 20 years on top of that foundation? What is the vision with which you inspire yourself?

In times of challenge, you will either be promoted or exposed.

Hardy: My highest value in life is significance. I want to know that what I do matters, that it has a positive impact. Not because I am altruistic and am self-sacrificing for other people. Quite the contrary. I measure my contribution by the reach and depth of the impact I am having in other people’s lives for my own soulful reward.

I also measure that value by the rational exchange of money people are willing to trade for my contribution. I don’t do it for the money; I do it for my personal “contribution score card” and personal achievement.

MML: Thank you, Darren, for spending time with us today. I look forward to discovering what you create.

Hardy: My pleasure.

To learn more about Darren Hardy, follow him on his blog, Facebook, or Twitter.

Mark Michael Lewis — also known as “The Thrive Coach” — is a productivity and profitability catalyst who coaches entrepreneurs, executives, and salespeople to get more done, have more fun, and make more money.

Mark is an author, speaker, and entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience in the life optimization field. In that time, he has been a consultant for hundreds of businesses, helped train thousands of people, and provided one-on-one coaching to hundreds of individuals and couples.

To learn more about Mark and his work, check out his Atlasphere profile and his videos.

BOOK RECOMMENDATION: THE LIEUTENANT

Posted on by TeamAtlas

BY KURT KEEFNER

How often do you find literary fiction portraying a principled and intellectually gifted “geek” with respect and even admiration? Kate Grenville’s new novel The Lieutenant does just this — with enjoyable results.

Ayn Rand was right. There’s a type of person who is an Atlas upon whom the world rests. This sort of person is usually ignored or made fun of. In high school he is likely to get stuffed in his locker by the jocks. And yet our “new economy” is carried on his skinny shoulders.

I am referring, of course, to the math/logic/science geek. Now I don’t like terms such as “geek,” “dork,” and “nerd,” and I hope you don’t either, but we all must admit that we know exactly who I mean when I use the word.

We know that I mean Bill Gates and Stephen Hawking and a lot of other programmers, engineers and physicists. These guys — and they are usually guys — are talented, ingenuous, naïve, playful and usually manage not to become resentful of less intellectual people despite the way they have been treated by them.

Such characters are fairly common in fiction genres such as sci-fi and mysteries — Sherlock Holmes comes to mind — but I haven’t seen him show up much in literary fiction. This is probably due in part to literary fiction being written mostly by verbal, rather than mathematical, people.

 

This is why it is all the more extraordinary to see this type as the hero of a recent literary novel, The Lieutenant, by Kate Grenville. The title character is Daniel Rooke, a lieutenant in the British Royal Marines in the Eighteenth Century. We follow his life, with one long gap, from childhood to death.

As a seven-year old, we see Daniel discover prime numbers and seek a pattern in them. This is noticed by his teacher and he gets sent off to the junior naval academy, where he is trained as a navigator and an astronomer. The two went hand-in-hand since, in those days, ships were steered by the stars.

He is abused by the other boys because of his middle-class background and, presumably, because he is shy and intellectual. He trains himself to make eye-contact and carry on with his peers, but he is more comfortable on his own. In a sort of Newtonian metaphor, he comes to see languages — at which he is also good — and the cosmos as types of “machines.”

Daniel definitely grows over the course of the story and that growth is tied to the plot and the theme, which is reason and openness versus conformity and prejudice.

When he is grown, Daniel is made a lieutenant and is sent on the original prisoner-transport colonization of Sydney, Australia. Discipline is strict, not only for the prisoners, but for the officers. Once in his career already he has seen an officer hanged for merely discussing the possibility of disobeying an order.

Daniel is the expedition’s astronomer, and he is allowed to set up a small observatory with living quarters up on a cliff. Here he meets an aboriginal family and establishes a friendship with their ten-year-old daughter.

It is vitally important to the survival of the colony that the British learn to communicate with the aborigines, lest they starve from not knowing how to find food in a strange land. Daniel takes it upon himself to learn the aboriginal language from the sociable girl.

Daniel doesn’t, however, see her or the other aborigines as most of the British do — as little more than animals. He sees their humanity. The girl reminds him of his sister, the only person in the world he can be himself with.

This difference between himself and the British commanders will bring him to a terrible, possibly life-or-death, disagreement with his superiors, and how he handles it forms the climax of the novel.

I won’t lie and say this is a great novel. It’s quite good, but it is not driven enough by action and conflict. The climactic clash is worthy, but could have been given more weight and drama.

It is eerie how much Daniel echoes Rand’s description of the reason-versus-people dichotomy from her essay “The Comprachicos”

I won’t lie and say this is a great novel. It’s quite good, but it is not driven enough by action and conflict. The climactic clash is worthy, but could have been given more weight and drama.

The real joy of the novel, however, is the character of Daniel Rooke. It is eerie how much he echoes Rand’s description of the reason-versus-people dichotomy from her essay “The Comprachicos” in The Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution, and it is very gratifying to see this type of person treated with respect and sympathy, and without an ounce of condescension.

Daniel definitely grows over the course of the story and that growth is tied to the plot and the theme, which is reason and openness versus conformity and prejudice. This would be a good novel for Objectivists and for math gods.

Kurt Keefner is a writer and teacher who has been published in The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies and Philosophy Now magazine. He is currently working on a book about mind-body wholism. He lives near Washington, D.C., with his wife, author Stephanie Allen.

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