Category: The Atlasphere

All things Atlasphere can be found here, columns, podcasts, interesting anecdotes, and more.

Celebrity Rand Fan: 'Shogun' Author James Clavell

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

Atlasphere member Marsha Enright sent the following note after perusing the new Ayn Rand Library auction:

I noticed that she had a book by James Clavell, Noble House! For those who don’t know him, he wrote Shogun, Taipan and a number of other wonderful historical novels. From his second novel, businessmen are depicted as adventurous, amazing heroes [e.g., see his novels Taipan, Noble House, Whirlwinds]. I always wondered if he was influenced by Rand, and his inscription to her in the book he sent her proves that!

According to the item description, Clavell inscribed the following in Ayn Rand’s copy of Noble House:

This is for Ayn Rand
–one of the real, true talents on this earth for which many, many thanks
James C
New York
2 Sept 81

Ayn Rand Matters to Ethicist Elaine Sternberg

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

In honor of Rand’s Centennary, Elaine Sternberg, a research fellow at the University of Leeds (U.K.), delivered an address titled “Why Ayn Rand Matters: Metaphysics, Morals and Liberty” to the Adam Smith Institute. An adapted version of Dr. Sternberg’s address is posted on the Adam Smith Institute‘s weblog, The Social Affairs Unit. With quotes from Atlas Shrugged and The Virtue of Selfishenss, Sternberg’s address is a remarkable tribute to Rand’s groundbreaking achievements in the realms of metaphysics, ethics, and politics.
Anticipating the academic preconceptions about Rand, Sternberg begins her address with an apt statement:
“Ayn Rand deserves to be taken seriously, because she was right about three things of immense importance: metaphysics, morals and individual liberty.”
The address concludes with a compact but thorough summary of Rand’s achievements:

Challenging most philosophers since Aristotle, she outlined a comprehensive, realist metaphysics. And challenging both philosophical and conventional ethics, she presented strong arguments against altruism in its various forms, and in favour of a realist morality based on happiness and rational self-interest. Finally, in drawing out the implications of her realist philosophy, and demonstrating the proper relations between morality and freedom, she provided an extremely robust defense of both individual liberty and laissez-faire capitalism.

To read the entire address, check The Social Affairs Unit.

New Auction: The Library of Ayn Rand

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

Via member Michael Montagna:
On June 28, 2005, tony West Coast auction house Bonhams & Butterfields will hold an auction of The Library of Ayn Rand in San Francisco and Los Angeles, possibly also NY. Materials include items from Rand’s personal library, many with her own marginalia, as well as signed first editions of Rand’s own books, signed documents, photographs and other Randabilia. This is the most important Rand auction since Butterfield’s 1998 auction of “The Papers of Ayn Rand”. The inventory for this auction appears on bonhams web site and goes from lot # 3129 to #3200. Please let collectors and admirers know about this.

Surviving a Crisis by Thinking for Yourself

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

The new article “Question Authorities” at Wired Magazine raises some interesting points, not the least of which is the value of thinking for oneself:

For more than four years – steadily, seriously, and with the unsentimental rigor for which we love them – civil engineers have been studying the destruction of the World Trade Center towers, sifting the tragedy for its lessons. And it turns out that one of the lessons is: Disobey authority. In a connected world, ordinary people often have access to better information than officials do.
Proof can be found in the 298-page draft report issued in April by the National Institute on Standards and Technology called Occupant Behavior, Egress, and Emergency Communications. (In layman’s terms, that’s who got out of the buildings, how they got out, and why.) It’s an eloquent document, in many ways. The report confirms a chilling fact that was widely covered in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. After both buildings were burning, many calls to 911 resulted in advice to stay put and wait for rescue. Also, occupants of the towers had been trained to use the stairs, not the elevators, in case of evacuation.
Fortunately, this advice was mostly ignored. According to the engineers, use of elevators in the early phase of the evacuation, along with the decision to not stay put, saved roughly 2,500 lives. This disobedience had nothing to do with panic. The report documents how evacuees stopped to help the injured and assist the mobility-impaired, even to give emotional comfort. Not panic but what disaster experts call reasoned flight ruled the day.

Keep reading for more info. Found via InstaPundit, who also has additional thoughts of his own worth reading.

New Zealanders Come to Shania Twain's Defense

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

From a press release by the New Zealand Libertarianz:
RMA Surely Don’t Impress Shania Much
“Shania Twain’s proposed home doesn’t impress Queenstown’s busybodies, but their personal views should not be the business of law,” says Libertarianz spokesman to deregulate the environment, Peter Cresswell. “Unfortunately the RMA has given them that power. It doesn’t say to property owners ‘Come on Over,’ instead it screams ‘I’m Gonna Getcha Good’!”
“The Resource Management Act (RMA) has given unelected power to busybodies who now consider they have rights over other people’s property,” says Cresswell. “It seems nothing will allow Twain’s house past Andrew Henderson, the planning stickybeak from CivicCorp who rejected the application and Julian Haworth, head busybody from the Upper Clutha Environmental Society, who between them have decided that ‘the complex would not be in harmony with the surrounding landscape,’ and ‘man-made mounds to screen the house’ were ‘not appropriate.'”
“I guess even a camouflage net wouldn’t have satisfied these meddling arseholes,” says Cresswell. “Remind me again how the RMA is “permissive” as Owen McShane has called it, and “far-sighted environmental legislation” as Nick Smith has described it. The RMA is neither,” says Cresswell. “It has destroyed property rights in this country, and it is time that the RMA itself were now destroyed.”
As author Ayn Rand once observed, when the productive have to ask permission from the unproductive in order to produce, then you may know your culture is doomed. “Time to put a stake through the heart of the RMA,” concludes Cresswell.
The Libertarianz advocate abolition of the RMA, replacing it with common law protection of property rights and the environment.

Ed Hudgins Reviews Revenge of the Sith

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

In an e-mail op-ed for the Objectivist Center, Ed Hudgins provides this review of the new Revenge of the Sith movie. I’ve not seen the movie, but the review makes some interesting points.
With Revenge of the Sith George Lucas faced the same problem as did the classical Greek playwrights. Their audiences already knew the stories and myths on which their dramas were based. Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides had to make their plays interesting, enlightening or instructive, usually by offering lessons about hubris, unchecked emotions or moral failing.
While the Greeks were not keen on happy endings, Lucas has already given one with the first Star Wars trilogy and we know what to expect in the prequels. We know that Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker becomes Darth Vader, apprentice to the evil emperor; that Vader’s son Luke joins the rebellion; that the Empire is overthrown by pro-Republic heroes; that Vader saves Luke from the emperor, abandons the Dark Side of the Force, and before dying, is redeemed.
To make the prequels interesting Lucas offers us political and moral lessons, but with mixed results.
In Sith Lucas continues the story of the fall of the Republic. Chancellor Palpatine — secretly the evil Sith Lord Darth Sidious — accumulates power in the name of fighting a long war against separatists — a war that he himself is secretly behind. Curiously, we are told that the Senate of the Republic is corrupt and in the text crawl that starts every Star Wars film we’re told that in the war “There are heroes on both sides.” Lucas seems to be backing away from the clear-cut black-and-white, good-vs.-evil themes that so characterized the original trilogy. As he obscures that distinction he also obscures his theme.
Continue reading “Ed Hudgins Reviews Revenge of the Sith”

Pro-Democracy Movement In Cuba Assembles Today

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

The battle for men’s minds is still alive in Cuba.
From MSNBC: Defying Castro, activists plan open-air meeting.
Today the Assembly for the Promotion of a Civil Society in Cuba meets. It is an effort to re-unite the fractured pro-democracy movement that Castro?s regime all but demolished in 2003.

Approximately 500 people have been invited to attend the Assembly to Promote Civil Society in Cuba, representing over 300 groups on the island opposed to the Castro government including illegal political parties, human rights organizations and independent libraries.

Castro has wasted no time in trying to stifle the resurgence of this movement, using his usual intimidation tactics to keep the delegates away from the meeting. There are reports that several delegates have been arrested and detained. But they still have hope and the movement is growing. They have not given up and hopefully never will. Even under the suffocating weight of Castro’s regime, the heroes are struggling on? and gaining ground.
Elizardo Sanchez, a longtime activist in the movement:

Times have changed, though. ?Twenty years ago, there were less than 10 of us involved in open political action. Today, there are thousands standing up to this totalitarian government.?

As one Cuban-American blogger (BabaluBlog) put it:

This civil society assembly is one thing Castro cannot stand for. It’s too subversive, too contrary to his twisted values of oppression, ruin and indignity. Free men and women associating freely to decide for themselves how they will live their lives is too much for his tyranny to handle? this is the power of the human spirit.

For more information see Accion Democratica Cubana.
Viva Cuba Libre!

Anti-Life Opposition to Stem Cell Research

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

An incisive new Op-Ed from David Holcberg and Alex Epstein, writing for the Ayn Rand Institute, begins:

In the name of the sanctity of human life and the inviolability of rights, embryonic stem cell research must be allowed to proceed unimpeded.
It is widely known that embryonic stem cell research has the potential to revolutionize medicine and save millions of lives. Yet many Congressmen are frantically working to defeat a measure that would expand federal financing of this research. Why are they (and so many others) opposing embryonic stem cell research–and doing so under the banner of being “pro-life”?
The opponents of embryonic stem cell research claim that their position is rooted in “respect for human life.” They say that the embryos destroyed in the process of extracting stem cells are human beings with a right to life.
But embryos used in embryonic stem cell research are manifestly not human beings–not in any rational sense of the term. These embryos are smaller than a grain of sand, and consist of at most a few hundred undifferentiated cells. They have no body or body parts. They do not see, hear, feel, or think. While they have the potential to become human beings–if implanted in a woman’s uterus and brought to term–they are nowhere near actual human beings.

See the full article for more details.

Letter to Ayn Rand Gets Award from NJ Governor

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

A fascinating announcement via the Free State Project:

Lucille Davy, Special Counsel to the Acting Governor of New Jersey, Richard J. Codey, presented a Governor’s Proclamation to Ethan Nappen, State Finalist in the national reading-writing contest sponsored by the Library of Congress, Center for the Book. The contest is called Letters About Literature. After reading Anthem by Ayn Rand, Ethan composed a letter to the author as required by the contest rules. The Library of Congress received and judged over 50,000 entries. There were over 2,300 entries submitted from students across New Jersey. Ethan, who is in eighth grade, was one of 34 Level II (7th-8th grade) finalists.
New Jersey, which was just named the third most-indebted state in the U.S., is infamous for its overregulation of business, political corruption, erosion of personal freedom, distain for individual rights, aggressive enforcement of Malum Prohibitum laws, legal embrace of political correctness, and high taxation. Rand’s Anthem deals with a future society in which collectivism and the good of the State reign supreme over the individual and even the concept of individuality. It is therefore quite ironic that the Acting Governor of New Jersey “recognizes and commends” Ethan for an essay in praise of Ayn Rand’s philosophy of objectivism.

See the Free State Project’s original announcement for links to the winning letter, the governor’s proclamation, and a photo of the award ceremony.

'The Only Path to Tomorrow' by Ayn Rand (1944)

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From William Dwyer:
I just received a hard-to-find copy of the January 1944 Reader’s Digest with an article by Ayn Rand entitled “The Only Path to Tomorrow.” The article is condensed from a project that Rand began in 1943 entitled “The Moral Basis of Individualism,” which she eventually abandoned.
I am taking the liberty here of transcribing the article, which is not very long, since it is virtually impossible to find a copy of it. I was very lucky to locate the January ’44 issue from an obscure book seller. You won’t find it on the internet.

The Only Path to Tomorrow
by Ayn Rand

The greatest threat to mankind and civilization is the spread of the totalitarian philosophy. Its best ally is not the devotion of its followers but the confusion of its enemies. To fight it, we must understand it.
Totalitarianism is collectivism. Collectivism means the subjugation of the individual to a group – whether to a race, class or state does not matter. Collectivism holds that man must be chained to collective action and collective thought for the sake of what is called “the common good.”
Throughout history no tyrant ever rose to power except on the claim of representing “the common good.” Napoleon “served the common good” of France. Hitler is “serving the common good” of Germany. Horrors which no man would dare consider for his own selfish sake are perpetrated with a clear conscience by “altruists” who justify themselves by – the common good.
No tyrant has ever lasted long by force of arms alone. Men have been enslaved primarily by spiritual weapons. And the greatest of these is the collectivist doctrine that the supremacy of the state over the individual constitutes the common good. No dictator could rise if men held as a sacred faith the conviction that they have inalienable rights of which they cannot be deprived for any cause whatsoever, by any man whatsoever, neither by evildoer nor supposed benefactor.
Continue reading “'The Only Path to Tomorrow' by Ayn Rand (1944)”

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