Located in Chicago, The New Intellectual Forum is one of the longest-running Objectivist salons in the country. Since 1988, it has been meeting monthly in members homes, with parties twice a year, including a Solstice Celebration this Saturday, December 4.
Get togethers consist of a presentation, usually by one of the members, on topics ranging as far as the members’ imaginations go: from the nature of number to extreme sports, from examining heroes to international law. The discussion assumes a basic agreement with Ayn Rand’s ideas, and reason, civility and good fellowship rule the roost.
Festivities usually begin at a local restaurant where members meet for dinner at 6 PM, usually on the third Saturday of the month. At 8 PM, all retire to a member’s home (most often of late, John and Marsha Enright’s on the South Side), where snacks are shared and drinks are provided. Between 8 and 8:30, participants assemble for the presentation, which may be anywhere from fifteen minutes to one hour, followed by lively discussion.
A break for food and drink usualy follows, and members enjoy continuing conversation, often into the wee hours.
New members and out-of-towners are welcome! Contact Marsha Enright for more information.
Continue reading “New Intellectual Forum's Solstice Celebration”
Category: The Atlasphere
All things Atlasphere can be found here, columns, podcasts, interesting anecdotes, and more.
Andy Reicker: Graphics Entrepreneur Inspired by Atlas Shrugged
Some of the giant banners you saw on the Thanksgiving holiday NFL games were designed by a serious Atlas Shrugged fan named Andy Reicker, owner of the multi-million-dollar firm Project Graphics.
From a profile of Reicker and Project Graphics in Connecticut’s New Times Live:
“I’m pretty surprised at where I am today,” said the New Fairfield bachelor, a self-described optimist and workaholic whose friendly demeanor in no way diminishes his fanatic pursuit of excellence. “I walk in the door sometimes, and I’m, like, shocked.
“It’s cool.”
Eleven years ago, the up-and-coming entrepreneur embarked on a quest to start his own, large-scale, customized graphic design and printing business, skills he fine-tuned after earning degrees in English and literature at the University of Minnesota.
After spending a few years in Colorado working for an established graphics company, he decided it was time to branch out on his own. He leaned on experiences he learned from working in his family’s catering business on how to sell and market his product.
Inspiration came from reading the controversial 20th century American classic, “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand. He said the novel encouraged him to live boldly and make things happen, and ignited in him a yearning to build his own business.
To this day, he embraces certain passages from the novel, reciting lines from it and other works of literature to his employees. The message: Always stretch beyond your comfort zones; always seek the next challenge.
See the full article for additional information.
Michael Milken, Privatizing Medical Research
Michael Milken, whose prosecution for violation of insider trading laws in the early 90s was condemned by many Objectivist commentators, is featured in a terrific cover article in this month’s Fortune magazine.
The article (available to subscribers of that magazine) begins:
The image on the oversized screen behind the podium was of a giant malignant tumor. The discussion was about prognostic indicators?doctorspeak for how much longer people with such tumors had to live. The prognosis wasn’t good, with life expectancy measured in months, not years. The presenter’s manner was cold, but it didn’t matter: This was no hospital bedside but a roomful of physicians, gathered for a seminar on prostate cancer at Houston’s prestigious M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. In the third row sat a tall, slight, unimposing man. The top of his middle-aged head no longer had hair; his eyebrows were thin. His nametag read dr. robert hackel, and all he could think about was how enormous the tumor looked onscreen. A tumor just like his own.
When the speaker, Donald Coffey, an esteemed prostate cancer expert from Johns Hopkins, was finished, Hackel made his way to the front. For 25 minutes he grilled Coffey on his presentation, asking technical questions about the research and its therapeutic implications. At what should have been the end of a friendly exchange between colleagues, Hackel turned to Coffey and said, “I am Mike Milken. I want to be cured.”
Coffey knew the name. It was 1993, and Michael Milken, the once-highflying junk-bond wizard had, a few years earlier, been a familiar face in the newspapers because of his high-profile indictment on securities violations. Only two weeks before, in fact, Milken?now wearing a phony ID badge with his middle name and father-in-law’s surname?had been released from prison, having served 22 months. Coffey was surprised not just by who his questioner was, but by the fact that he wasn’t a doctor. His toupee gone and his toothy grin somewhat modulated, Milken seemed more like a veteran lab scientist than a desperate patient. He knew much about the biology of cancer.
It was only when Milken began to speak rapturously about turning prostate cancer research on its head and starting “a Manhattan Project for cancer” that the financier sounded a bit naive. A real physician would have known better, thought Coffey. “The truth was, at the time, there was so little research?or anything else?going on in the field [of prostate cancer], it was as if Milken was speaking in tongues,” he says. Still, the good doctor listened politely.
Eleven years later many others are listening too. That’s because Milken has, in fact, turned the cancer establishment upside down.
How did he do this? In a word: privatization. Together with other high-profile entrepreneurs such as Intel’s Andy Grove, Milken started a private foundation to aggressively fund innovative research to cure prostate cancer. (Not to “understand” or “promote awareness” of prostate cancer ? to cure it.)
At first, establishment researchers were wary of the funding requirements, which include sharing the results of their research with other researchers before it goes through the lengthy process of getting published in peer-reviewed journals. But prostate cancer research had been mired in bureaucratic red tape for many years, and the prospect of receiving $100,000 in funding within 90 days ? rather than the 2-3 years required for government-funded research ? eventually won the researchers over to the merits of private funding.
Today Milken’s institution has funded so many new treatments and drug therapies that, had it sought to retain ownership of such treatments, it would be the world’s third-largest biotechnology company. (I’m paraphrasing from memory, here; I read the full story this morning but don’t have it handy.)
The result? Deaths from prostate cancer are declining steeply, and Milken himself is in seemingly full remission.
See the full story in Fortune for additional information.
On Calling a Spade a Shovel
An interesting posting to the OWL discussion group by Erik Herbertson, of Sweden:
I have a suggestion for especially those of you who are Americans. When you write about “liberals” of the American variety, i.e. welfare statists, it would be good if you used quotation marks to underscore that it’s a false liberalism. Ayn Rand used to do that. It’s also a point to state, if there’s room for it, the reasons.
In most countries in the world, except apparently in the U.S., the terms “liberal” and “liberalism” can be used in the sense we approve of, namely a position in favour of free markets, individual freedom and limited government.
Sure, “liberalism” can even in Europe (and my country Sweden) be used in the welfare statist meaning, but there’s no problem for me to attach my pro-capitalist, pro-individualist views to the word “liberalism”. The welfare statist variety of liberalism is often called “socialliberalism” in Scandinavia, or “sozialliberalismus” in German-speaking countries.
Free market liberalism sometimes is called neo-liberalism, classical liberalism, old liberalism (confusing for beginners :-)), laissez-faire-liberalism or Manchester liberalism, but also just liberalism or “pure liberalism”.
The Liberal parties throughout the world are not always the same as true liberalism. But in most countries, those parties who call themselves liberal are the most free-market-oriented.
The Liberal Party of Canada and the Liberal Democrats of UK belongs to the left wing of the Liberal International. But in especially the European continent and Eastern Europe, Liberal parties are the parties of low taxes, free markets and personal freedom, even though they are not libertarian (Partito Liberale in Italy is libertarian).
The Estonian Reform Party and Polish Freedom Union have libertarian leanings, and the Costa Rican Movimiento Libertario (libertarian) is a member of the Liberal International.
One can question if it’s wise for free-market-oriented liberals to cooperate with “social liberals” in an International, but I wanted to make a point about the orientation many Liberal parties have, an orientation you wouldn’t even expect from a U.S. Republican.
Even in Canada, there’s the provincial party “B.C. Liberals” (British Columbia), which is separate from the Liberal Party of Canada, and have a policy in favour of free enterprise and lower taxes. Consistent advocates of laissez-faire could question some of its implementations, but it seems that there’s a change in Canada over the meaning of “liberalism”.
In other English-speaking countries like Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, “liberalism” is often meant to be pro-capitalism and pro-individualism.
In France, “liberal” is almost always used in the correct way, and therefore the French left use it as a derogatory term :-). Good that the French at least are right about this terminology.
Erik Herbertson, true liberal
Thanksgiving: The Producer's Holiday
Writing for the Ayn Rand Institute, Gary Hull has published an ode to Thanksgiving as “the Producer’s Holiday”:
Thanksgiving celebrates man’s ability to produce. The cornucopia filled with exotic flowers and delicious fruits, the savory turkey with aromatic trimmings, the mouth-watering pies, the colorful decorations–it’s all a testament to the creation of wealth.
Thanksgiving is a uniquely American holiday, because this country was the first to create and to value material abundance. It is America that has been the beacon for anyone wanting to escape from poverty and misery. It is America that generated the unprecedented flood of goods that washed away centuries of privation. It is America, by establishing the precondition of production–political freedom–that was able to unleash the dynamic, productive energy of its citizens.
This should be a source of pride to every self-supporting individual. It is what Thanksgiving is designed to commemorate. But there are those, motivated by hatred for human comfort and happiness, who want to make Thanksgiving into a day of national guilt. We should be ashamed, they say, for consuming a disproportionate share of the world’s food supply. Our affluence, they say, constitutes a depletion of the “planet’s resources.” The building of dams, the use of fossil fuels, the driving of sports utility vehicles–they insist–are cause, not for celebration, but for atonement. What if, they all wail, the rest of the world consumed the way Americans do?
See the full op-ed for additional analysis.
More on Ayn Rand and The Incredibles
The new movie The Incredibles received a terrific write-up in yesterday’s Washington Times. The review begins:
For decades, kids have enjoyed following the out-of-this-world exploits of comic-book heroes, learning along the way about courage and the need for good to triumph over the plots of those possessed by evil. Every generation must learn its own duty to sacrifice and fight for the good.
But lately, ever since the first “Spiderman” live-action movie roared at the box office, fans of the long-lasting Marvel Comics stable of superheroes have been inundated with big, noisy, expensive blockbusters bringing these two-dimensional pen-and-ink heroes to life. Unfortunately, in attempting to dramatize Marvel honcho Stan Lee’s formula ? paper heroes deepened on the page by troubled private lives in their worlds of secret identity ? these films have all suffered in varying degrees, growing ever more dark and gloomy, almost hopeless.
While the “Spiderman” films have retained a fraction of whimsy, movies like “Daredevil” and “The Incredible Hulk” have left many fans wishing they had seen more righteous heroism and less sulky realism. In the final analysis, superhero comics work best when the reader is inspired, not left seeking Dr. Phil. Complex superheroes can make for a nice, dramatic storyline, but when they’re so tortured by personal demons, they can’t be very super, can they?
For those who like their heroes a little less super-serious than the superhuman characters of old, there is a surprisingly mature option: Pixar’s new cartoon “The Incredibles.” This film unfolds like a comic book, with lots of action. But between its animated lines, it offers real lessons about heroism, the use of talents and commitment to family. It’s not often a cartoon carries a line where a child worries, “Mom and Dad’s life could be in jeopardy … or even worse … their marriage.”
See the full review for additional information about this apparently-terrific, and refreshing, film.
Government Humor
On the lighter side… Here’s some government-related humor forwarded to us by Karen Reedstrom:
1. Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
–Mark Twain
2. We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
–Winston Churchill
3. A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
–George Bernard Shaw
4. A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money.
— G. Gordon Liddy
5. Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.
–James Bovard, Civil Libertarian (1994)
6. Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.
–Douglas Casey
7. Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
–P.J. O’Rourke, Civil Libertarian
8. Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.
–Frederic Bastiat, French Economist (1801-1850)
9. Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
— Ronald Reagan (1986)
10. I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.
–Will Rogers
11. If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free.
–P.J. O’Rourke
12. If you want government to intervene domestically, you’re a liberal. If you want government to intervene overseas, you’re a conservative. If you want government to intervene everywhere, you’re a moderate. If you don’t want government to intervene anywhere, you’re an extremist.
–Joseph Sobran, Editor of the National Review (1995)
13. In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.
–Voltaire (1764)
14. Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.
–Pericles (430 B.C.)
15. No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.
–Mark Twain (1866)
16. Talk is cheap-except when Congress does it.
–(Unknown)
17. The government is like a baby’s alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other.
–Ronald Reagan
18. The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.
–Winston Churchill
19. The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.
–Mark Twain
20. The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.
–Herbert Spencer, English Philosopher (1820-1903)
21. There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.
–Mark Twain
22. What this country needs are more unemployed politicians.
— Edward Langley, Artist 1928-1995
Marilyn Monroe at the Brooklyn Museum
If you share Ayn Rand’s admiration for Marilyn Monroe, you may enjoy this reflective article about a showing of Monroe photographs at the Brooklyn Museum in New York. It begins:
Daryl F. Zanuck, the movie mogul who controlled 20th Century Fox, once observed, ?I didn?t discover Marilyn Monroe. Nobody did. Marilyn Monroe discovered herself.?
She was indeed a self-creation. It is difficult to see the later Marilyn in the photos of the fresh-faced Norma Jeane Baker on the beach (photographer unknown, 1945) taken when she was only 19. By the end of her career ? in the photos of ?The Last Sitting? (1962) taken by Bert Stern ? she looks tired, perhaps drugged and obviously in pain. Just look at the eyes.
They were taken only two days before she died.
After her death, Marilyn became a tabula rasa for thinkers like Ayn Rand, who wrote, ?Anyone who has resented the good for being the good and given voice to it is the murderer of Marilyn Monroe.?
See the full article for more information.
Industrialist Don Bentley
If you like the thought of hearing an unpretentious 80-year-old industrialist reflect on his accomplishments, contemporary politics, and the importance of Ayn Rand’s ideas, check out the article “Bentley still innovating after all these years” in Nevada’s Record-Courier.
Ayn Rand and The Incredibles
Everyone seems to be noticing the relevance of Ayn Rand’s ideas to the new movie The Incredibles. From a review of The Incredibles by A.O. Scott for the New York Times:
“They keep finding new ways to celebrate mediocrity,” grumbles Bob Parr, once known as Mr. Incredible, the patriarch of a superhero family languishing in middle-class suburban exile. He is referring to a pointless ceremony at his son’s school, but his complaint is much more general, and it is one that animates “The Incredibles,” giving it an edge of intellectual indignation unusual in a family-friendly cartoon blockbuster. […]
The intensity with which “The Incredibles” advances its central idea ? it suggests a thorough, feverish immersion in both the history of American comic books and the philosophy of Ayn Rand ? is startling. At last, a computer-animated family picture worth arguing with, and about! Luckily, though, Bird’s disdain for mediocrity is not simply ventriloquized through his characters, but is manifest in his meticulous, fiercely coherent approach to animation.
A veteran of both “The Simpsons” and “King of the Hill,” Bird was also responsible for “The Iron Giant,” an exquisite and poignant variation on the sensitive robot theme and one of the most dazzling attempts so far by an American filmmaker to match the strangeness and lucidity of Japanese anime. The clean, modernist lines of “The Incredibles” suggest an attempt to bring some of the beautiful flatness of anime into three dimensions. In contrast to the antic busyness of movies like “Shrek 2” and “Shark Tale” ? and even to the kinetic bright colors of other Pixar productions like “Monsters, Inc.” and “Finding Nemo” ? “The Incredibles” is spare and precise.
See the full review for additional information.
Reviewer David Brudnoy sees Ayn Rand connections as well, and gives the movie an A- overall.
Watch the Incredibles trailer for a taste of the actual movie.