Joan Kennedy Taylor, one-time associate of Ayn Rand, passed away October 29, 2005. (as reported here and here) Ms. Taylor is probably best known for her work: Reclaiming the Mainstream: Individualist Feminism Rediscovered. She also contributed an essay to Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand, edited by Chris Sciabarra and Mimi Gladstein.
Ms. Taylor was interviewed in 2004 for The Objectivist History Project. In the interview, she recalled her first meeting with Rand and the surprising role that many early students of Objectivism played in bringing about the end of the military draft.
On a personal note, I had the opportunity to speak with Ms. Taylor while we waited for flights after TOC’s 2004 Summer Seminar in Vancouver. We spoke more about her association with Rand—of whom she had warm memories. I wish I had known Ms. Taylor better; she will be greatly missed.
Category: The Atlasphere
All things Atlasphere can be found here, columns, podcasts, interesting anecdotes, and more.
Between Jam and Jelly: Government Folly Part 3,326
In a stellar short essay, Uriah Kriegel illuminates a dangerous trend in legislative thinking — adherence to the principle: that which is not explicitly allowed is therefore forbidden.
Kriegel focuses on some absurd recent rulings of the European Commission, but his insights apply equally well to all countries’ regulatory bodies.
He rightly points out that such a principle is entirely antithetical to the American system of government, in principle if not always in practice.
His use of Justice Stephen Bryer’s recent book, Active Liberty, as an example is apropos, especially in light of recent debates over ‘judicial activism’.
Readers of Anthem and Atlas Shrugged will understand the principle already, but Kriegel makes his own case with no explicit reference to Rand’s philosophy.
And make it he does… in spades.
The essay is available on Tech Central Station’s web site.
Atlas Shrugged #3 at UCSB Bookstore
From the Santa Barbara Independent:
THE INDY LIST
Top 10 Sellers at the UCSB Bookstore
In addition to the thousands of textbooks that fly through their doorsâ??such as Chemistry 1Aâ??s super-hot Chemicals and their Principles, which sold 750 copies in just two days on the shelfâ??the UCSB Bookstore also sells books that college students can use and enjoy. Here are the top 10:
1. Globalization: A Very Short Introduction, by Manfred B. Steger
2. Everything Is Illuminated, by Jonathan Safran Foer
3. Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand
4. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
5. Cliffâ??s Notes for Othello
6. Harper-Collins Latin Concise Dictionary
7. Oxford American College Dictionary
8. Better Homes and Gardensâ?? New Cookbook
9. An Insiderâ??s Guide to Santa Barbara, by Karen Hastings
10. The Guide to Getting It On, by Paul Joannides and Daereick Gross
Atlas Shrugged Film Closer?
According to a recent article in BoxOffice Mojo:
“…Howard Baldwin, [who] tells me that he is closer to bringing Ayn Rand’s epic to the screen. ” writes editor and publisher Scott Holleran.
There’s some reason to hope the screenplay will be faithful to the spirit of the novel.
“Based on a reading of the Atlas Shrugged script, producer Baldwin promises that Miss Rand’s essential principlesâ??reason, selfishness, capitalismâ??are integrated in the plot and that, as in the novel, businesswoman Dagny Taggart struggles to operate a transcontinental railroad in a nation run by preachy socialists, while looters and moochers pick at the remains.”
That would be welcome news, indeed.
Liberty Film Festival: "Was Communism a Threat to Hollywood?
As was announced on this Meta-Blog item, the upcoming Liberty Film Festival will honor Ayn Rand with the screening of We the Living. The festival will feature an additional item of interest to Ayn Rand fans: a panel discussion on the blacklisting of the Hollywood Ten, titled: “Was Communism a Threat to Hollywood?”
In 1947, Ayn Rand testified before the House of Un-American Activities Committee, who was investigating the Communist inflirtation of the Holloywood film industry. Rand, who testified on the false portrayal of life under Communism in the movie “Song of Russia,” had been vilified for her support of the HUAC. The recently published Ayn Rand and Song of Russia: Communism and Anti-Communism in 1940s Hollywood provides a detailed re-examination the role of communism in Hollywood, the nature of the HUAC, and the famously blacklisted Hollywood Ten.
PANEL DISCUSSION ON THE BLACKLIST:
“Was Communism A Threat to Hollywood?”
Moderator: Film historian/journalist John Meroney
Panelists: Richard Schickel (TIME film critic, noted film historian), James Hirsen (best-selling author, Hollywood Nation), Ron Radosh (Red Star over Hollywood), Patrick Goldstein (LA Times film critic, columnist), Ed Rampell (author, Progressive Hollywood) and Jeff Britting of the Ayn Rand Institute (producer of the Oscar-nominated Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life). Authors Richard Schickel, Ron Radosh, James Hirsen, Ed Rampell and Jeff Britting will do book signings after the panel.
EVENT 7 – Saturnday, October 22, 6:00PM – 7:15PM
Ticekt price – $8
007's Tony Oats Parts with Dog-Eared Copy of CUI
Is Bond Corporation (as in, “James Bond 007”) Director Tony Oates an Ayn Rand fan? Sounds like it:
CURIOUS buyers from the ranks of Perth’s elite to suburban family battlers yesterday converged on a $5 million Swan Valley horse stud to pore over the goods and chattels at the former home of Bond Corporation director Tony Oates.
From the gleaming Rolls Royce to the rusty Japanese pick-up, the vehicle line-up outside the sprawling estate was testament to the broad appeal of the upmarket garage sale.
The high-profile status of the disgraced businessman helped pull in more than 500 punters, all eager to get a glimpse of the lifestyle once enjoyed by Oates, a man whose name is synonymous with 1980s corporate greed and the era known as WA Inc.
Bargain hunters Steve Good and Wendy Quinn, hobby farmers from Mandurah, thought the stud farm would have been a “grand place” to live.
But apart from a few knick-knacks, a tatty old horse rug emblazoned with the moniker, “The Bond Australia Show Jumping Championship South Australia – 1986” and a dog- eared copy of Ayn Rand’s Capitalism – The Unknown Ideal lying on top of a cardboard box of household junk, there were few hints to Oates’s private world.
Keep reading for more.
Liberty Film Festival to Honor Ayn Rand
From a press release we received yesterday:
As part of its “100th Birthday Tribute to Ayn Rand,” the Liberty Film Festival will be screening the 1942 Italian classic, “We the Living,” based on Ayn Rand’s novel of the same name. Preceding the film will be special introductions by co-producer Duncan Scott, and by Jeff Britting of the Ayn Rand Institute.
The 2005 Liberty Film Festival will be held the weekend of October 21-23, 2005 at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood, California. The Liberty Film Festival showcases films that celebrate the traditional American values of free speech, patriotism, and religious freedom. This yearâ??s festival includes over two dozen feature films, short subjects, panel discussions, and special events. The tribute to Ayn Rand will be the grand finale of the three-day festival.
â??We the Livingâ? was originally produced in Italy during World War II without the knowledge or consent of Rand. The film premiered in Rome, Italy, in 1942 in two parts entitled, NOI VIVI and ADDIO KIRA. Long thought to be lost, the film was rediscovered many years later by Randâ??s attorneys, Henry Mark Holzer and Erika Holzer. Rand authorized the film’s restoration and Scott will talk about that process and of the embattled production history of the film.
Drawing from her early years as a young woman in Russia, â??We the Livingâ? is, perhaps, the most personal expression of Randâ??s ideas. New York Newsday said the film â??Stirs the soul… dazzling performances… qualifies in every respect as film treasure… one of the best movies of the year”. In his review of the film, movie critic Michael Medved called it “An amazing piece of cinema… I loved every minute of it…Valli has the same kind of quality as Garbo– just magical.” Medved will be at the Festival, moderating a panel discussion on Sunday afternoon.
For more information about the movie, visit www.wethelivingmovie.com.
100th Birthday Tribute to Ayn Rand with screening of â??We the Livingâ?
Event 13 â?? Sunday, October 23rd 2005 at 6:15pm
Ticket Price: $10
Pacific Design Center
SilverScreen Theatre, 2nd Floor Center Green,
8687 Melrose Avenue,
West Hollywood, CA 90069
For tickets to the â??100th Birthday Tribute to Ayn Randâ? or for other Liberty Film Festival events, go to www.libertyfilmfestival.com. Please note that tickets are only available for purchase on-line at the Liberty Film Festival website (Please do not contact the Pacific Design Center for tickets).
Atlas Shrugged Mentioned in Crichton Novel Review
In a column from last December, conservative pundit George Will mentions Atlas Shrugged, semi-favorably, in a piece discussing Michael Crichton’s latest novel.
State of Fear is the story of the hunt for a group of radical environmentalists planning a ‘natural’ disaster for publicity purposes. Along the way a naïve, moderately left-leaning attorney has his eyes opened by a professor-cum-government operative who interrupts the plot occasionally to deliver miniature lectures.
Will writes:
“State of Fear,” with a first printing of 1.5 million copies, resembles Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” — about 6 million copies sold since 1957 — as a political broadside woven into an entertaining story. But whereas Rand had only an idea — a good one (capitalism is splendid), but only one — Crichton has information.
See Will’s full article for more information about Crichton’s book.
Weighing the Columbus Cargo
An op-ed, in today’s Washington Times, by Ed Hudgins of The Objectivist Center on why we should celebrate Columbus.
Many critics argue Christopher Columbus gave us a devil’s bargain. In October 1492 that Italian explorer, working for Spain, opened America to his fellow Europeans. The result: We got a prosperous New World by impoverishing, enslaving and murdering the natives who were already here.
But this fails to distinguish between two types of exploitation, one over other humans and the other over nature. The former should be expunged from our moral codes and civilized society, the latter is the essence of morality and civilization.
Human exploitation was suffered especially by the tens of millions of inhabitants of the pre-Columbian lands from Mexico through South America. Cortes the Conquistador, for example, defeated the Aztec rulers of Mexico. Many of the tribes that were subject to the Aztecs sided with Cortes; they hated the Aztecs for, among other things, their practice of cutting the living hearts out of members of tribes they subjugated, as sacrifices to their gods. Cortes imposed his rule on the Aztecs and their subjects alike, replacing one tyranny with another. The natives were treated harshly and many forced to work as de facto or actual slaves for their new masters.
On the other hand, many settlers, especially in North America which had far fewer natives, took a different path. They came to the New World to build their own lives. They did not prosper by conquering other men but, rather, by conquering nature.
They had to clear the land, plant and sow crops. They had to practice the trades of carpenters, masons, loggers, miners, blacksmiths and tailors to build their towns and to create the necessities for life and prosperity. In the centuries that followed, their descendants — including Americans today — built the richest, most prosperous country on Earth.
Today it is chic among back-to-nature types to idealize the pre-Columbian natives and question whether what we have today constitutes real progress. This silliness was given philosophical credence by the 18th-century thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s notion of the “noble savage.” No doubt many individual natives were as noble as one could be in savage circumstances, but America before Columbus was no Eden.
Let’s put aside the wars between tribes, the outright brutality and the like, and just look at the daily lives of the Indians before Columbus. Life was lived simply, in primitive cycles. Natives inhabited crude hovels and hunted or used subsistence farming to sustain themselves. Yes, they could enjoy family and friends, tell tales of bringing down buffalo, and imagine that the stars in the sky painted pictures of giant bears and other creatures. The ancestors of Europeans did the same.
But true human life, either for an individual or society, is not an endless, stagnant cycle. Rather, it is a growth in knowledge, in power over the environment, and in individual liberty.
Perhaps many pre-Columbian natives were content with their lot in a simple, animal-like existence. But what of young Indian children who wondered why family members sickened and died and if there were ways unknown to the shamans to relieve their pain or cure them; if there were ways to build shelters that would resist bitter winters, stifling summers and the storms that raged in both seasons; whether there were ways to guarantee food would always be abundant and starvation no longer a drought away; why plants grow and what those lights in the sky really were; and whether they could ever actually fly like birds and observe mountains from the height of eagles? Where were the opportunities for these natives?
Three ideas from Enlightenment Europe provided keys to true human life. First was the idea we as individuals have a right to our own dreams and desires, that we are not simply tied to a tribe or the wishes of others, that civilization means individuals are free to live their own lives, as long as they acknowledge the similar freedom of others.
Second was the understanding that through the rational exercise of our minds we can truly discover the nature of the world around us, replacing myths — no matter how beautiful or poetic — with real knowledge.
And third was the appreciation such knowledge allows us to bend nature to our wills. Through our thoughts and actions, we gain the pride of achieving the best within us.
The clash between the cultures of pre-Columbian natives and European immigrants certainly produced injustices for natives. But it would have been unjust for those natives to expect the immigrants to hold themselves to the level of primitive cultures and beliefs. The true long-term tragedy is that so many descendants of the pre-Columbian peoples in North America ended up on reservations rather than integrated into a society that offers opportunities for each individual to excel.
Columbus opened a whole new land for those who would tame nature and build a new, free and prosperous nation. We should celebrate the opportunity for America that he gave us — not apologize for it.
This article is also available on TOC’s website.
The Movie 'Serenity' and Ayn Rand
Writing for Blog Critics, Marty Dodge gives an overall favorable review of the new movie Serenity (which we’ve discussed many times before).
His review ends by noting the Rand-esque features of Serenity‘s hero, Malcolm Reynolds:
It is not the best film I have ever seen (Apollo 13 and Bullitt rank as the tops for me) but it is nevertheless a very good 2 hours+ entertainment. I hope that the success of the film encourages Whedon to have another crack at continuing Firefly, or if not, that the fine bunch of actors in this movie go on to other things. I particularly like Nathan Fillion, who looks like an Ayn Rand hero with a wonderfully dry sense of humour, like Clint Eastwood or Spencer Tracy in their pomp.
Two additional parallels with Ayn Rand’s novels:
– Nathan Fillion’s character, Malcolm Reynolds, is a Ragnar-esque pirate who makes his living stealing from a tyrannical government regime
– The entire theme of Serenity is ‘the individual versus the state’
I too enjoyed the movie, and concur with Dodge’s rating of 8-out-of-10. I’d recommend it for anyone who is not disturbed by moderately intense violence.
Even better is the TV series, about which you can learn more by reading the Ascendance of Firefly.