Category: The Atlasphere

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

Wheeler: Election Signals End of 'Clintonian Perversity'

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

Prominent cultural analyst (and Ayn Rand admirer) Jack Wheeler sounds a note of optimism in his latest discussions of current events. Excerpts are included in the article “‘Clintonian childish perversity’ finally dies,” published at WorldNetDaily:

Dr. Jack Wheeler, whose death-defying adventures span the globe and whose achievements have inspired wide-ranging acclaim, has penned a positive, historically relevant analysis of the election, saying the days of “Clintonian childish perversity” are behind us.
On his unique intelligence website, To the Point, Wheeler analyzes the re-election of President Bush and declares the nation is now on a continuing upward trend of moral decency. […]
“The election of 2004 was the last gasp of the left’s attempt to maintain its stranglehold on American popular culture and moral values,” he writes. “George W. Bush leads a finally-maturing Boomer generation that leaves Clintonian childish perversity behind, with America’s youth demanding clear and decent moral standards. […]”

Longer excerpts are available in the full article at WND.

Ed Locke on the Fall of the Berlin Wall

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

The Ayn Rand Institute’s Ed Locke offers powerful reminders about the importance of capitalism in his article “The Fall of the Berlin Wall: 15 Years Later,” published at Front Page Magazine:

The 15th anniversary of the destruction of the Berlin Wall is today. This event is widely taken to symbolize two things: the demise of Communism, and the global triumph of political freedom and capitalism. Unfortunately, the second has not occurred.
The Soviet Union was certainly an evil empire, with mass slaughter, enslavement and poverty as its only legacy. But the destruction of the bad does not ensure the emergence of the good. When a tyrant is overthrown, he may simply be replaced by another one. In fact, much of world history, from ancient Egypt to modern China and Iran, has followed this very pattern, with rebellions leading only to the supplanting of an old system of despotism with a new one.

See the full article for additional information.

Movies: Shattered Glass and The Cooler

Posted on by Heather Wagenhals

Robert Hessen (who wrote several essays for The Objectivist in the 1960s) forwards us the following two mini-reviews:

Two movies, new on DVD. One is wonderful, the other dismal. Shattered Glass is the story of Stephen Glass, a young writer at The New Republic who, in 1998, was exposed as a fabulist who invented the people and events in his widely-read non-fiction stories. Hayden Christensen plays Glass, whose panic is palpable as his forgeries are about to revealed; Peter Sarsgaard plays Charles Lane, the editor who ferrets out the facts; and Chloe Sevigny is the staff writer who wants to believe Glass is a victim because she finds him so charming and vulnerable. It is a great drama, so the DVD rental fee carries my money-back guarantee.
The other film is The Cooler, which garnered great reviews for William H. Macy’s performance as a man with such bad luck that his touch or mere presence can end a winning streak for high-rollers in the Las Vegas casino where he works to pay off his gambling debts to the casino boss, gangster Alec Baldwin. Fed up with his loveless life, Macy resolves to quit and move away, so Baldwin arranges for a beautiful cocktail waitness, Maria Belli, to seduce him and thus entice him to stay. Unexpectedly, they fall in love, etc. The whole story is preposterous; the plotholes would fill up Grand Canyon. You could better spend the two hours cleaning out your garage or alphabetizing your recipes.

Note also that Shannon Ringvelski wrote a full-length review of Shattered Glass a few months ago for the Atlasphere.

Notable Ayn Rand Fan: Carlos Garcia

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

Carlos Garcia is owner of Kira, Inc., a construction management and maintenance company serving military facilities throughout the United States. The article “Ace of Base” in Boulder’s Daily Camera provides an inspiring profile of Garcia:

Though he owns homes in both Boulder and Miami, has a Picasso hanging in his den and is constantly crisscrossing the country on planes, Carlos Garcia dismisses the notion that he leads a glamorous life.
“I don’t know of any other Columbia MBAs who unclog toilets on military bases,” Garcia said. […]
A native of Cuba, Garcia was only three months old when his family fled the country after the government took over his father’s sugar farm. He lived with his mother and two sisters in the Bahamas until he moved to Pennsylvania to attend college. In a time when criticism of government and foreign policy is common, Garcia remains thankful for the opportunities afforded in a free society.
“Anyone who was born in a Communist country and had members of their family killed is going to spend a lot more time being grateful to this country rather than criticizing it,” he said. “This is the greatest country in the world.”
The name of his company comes from a character in Ayn Rand’s novel, “We the Living.” Garcia identifies with its heroine, a woman engineer who struggles to escape from Communist Russia to America. Like Rand, Garcia believes there is much to appreciate about America.
“I am definitely an optimist,” Garcia said. “I see the beauty in life and try to appreciate it as I can.”
While freedom and individuality rule his personal philosophy, hard work and quality are equally vital when it comes to Garcia’s business doctrine. His drive for excellence is well known to those who work around him.

See the full article (registration required) for additional information about this highly successful fan of Ayn Rand’s novels.

Atlasphere Nuptials

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

We get e-mails regularly from happy couples who’ve met through the Atlasphere, but this week we received our first notice of an Atlasphere wedding, from a woman who, needless to say, no longer needs her dating profile:

Thanks to the Atlasphere dating service, I met my match! We are now happily married and living in California. Thank you beyond measure for creating this website! It has changed my life for the better!

We’re thrilled, and offer our heartfelt congratulations to the bride and groom. Building and maintaining the site takes a lot of work, and stories like this keep us going. (Plus, er, the paid subscriptions!)
The lucky lady has promised to give us further details for the next edition of our “In the Atlasphere” monthly newsletter.

Ayn Rand's Night of January 16th in New York City

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

Forwarded to us by the play’s director:
Watchdog Theatre Company Presents

Night of January 16th

by Ayn Rand
A Stage Reading
directed by Christopher Conant
November 16th & 17th @ 8:00 PM
78th St. Theater Lab
236 W. 78th St.
Tickets: $10. Call 917-407-9313 to reserve.
Equity Approved Showcase
www.watchdogtheatre.org
Ayn Rand’s gripping courtroom melodrama puts the audience in the jury box, as Karen Andre stands trial for the murder of her lover. Before this trial is over, tears will be shed, tempers will flare, and each revelation will be more shocking than the last. At the end, Ms. Andre will go free or die, and only the audience can decide her fate.

Richard Salsman on the Secret of Reagan's Success

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

Forwarded by Atlasphere member Robert Begley:

The Secret of Reagan’s Success

Lecture by Richard M. Salsman
Was U.S. President Ronald Reagan (1981-1989) a hero? Why did he once describe himself as an ?admirer of Ayn Rand?? Were Reagan?s ?supply-side? policies pro-capitalist? Did those policies truly revive the U.S. economy in the 1980s or instead deliver a ?false prosperity?? What was Reagan?s worst economic policy error – and why did he make it? Why were Objectivst-inspired economists Reagan?s worst domestic enemies? Did Reagan?s foreign policy end the Cold War and dissolve the Soviet Union – or were those outcomes ?inevitable,? regardless of Reagan? What was Reagan?s worst foreign policy mistake – and why did he make it?
In this lecture Mr. Salsman provides answers to these intriguing questions.
DetailsWhen: Thursday, November 11 at 7:00pmWhere: 243 East 34th St. 2nd Floor (Off corner of 2nd Ave.)Admission: $20 regular admission, $15 for studentsRSVP: info@nyheroes.org
Richard M. Salsman is president and chief market strategist of InterMarket Forecasting, which provides quantitative research and forecasts of stocks, bonds, and currencies to guide the asset allocation decisions of institutional investment managers, mutual funds, and pension plans. He is the author of numerous books and articles on economics, banking, and forecasting from a free-market perspective, including Breaking the Banks: Central Banking Problems and Free Banking Solutions (American Institute for Economic Research, 1990) and Gold and Liberty (American Institute for Economic Research, 1995). Mr. Salsman’s work has appeared in The Intellectual Activist, the New York Times, Investor’s Business Daily, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Barron’s.

George Reisman Answers George Soros

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

Socialist billionaire George Soros has invested tens of millions of dollars to help influence the 2004 presidential election. A vocal critic free markets, he now helps lead (and fund) American liberals’ campaign to bring more socialism to the United States.
Wouldn’t it be nice to hear one of capitalism’s most consistent defenders take him on head-first? George Reisman, author of the seminal Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics, does just this in an essay for the Ludwig von Mises Institute titled “Is Laissez-Faire a Threat to Freedom? An Answer to George Soros.”
The essay begins:

Back in 1997, George Soros, a multibillionaire stock and commodities speculator, wrote an essay titled “The Capitalist Threat” (The Atlantic Monthly, February1997. The essential substance of this essay is the claim that the main contemporary threat to a free society is a fully free society–i.e., a society of laissez-faire capitalism. It is a claim that has grown more prominent in the years since his article first appeared.
The obviously self-contradictory nature of this claim may have escaped Soros because he does not use the term “free society,” but the ambiguous expression “open society.” Yet is clear that insofar as the “open society” is to be considered as something desirable, it represents a free society, as when Soros writes: “The Declaration of Independence may be taken as a pretty good approximation of the principles of an open society….”

Read the full article.

Ayn Rand Institute's Andrew Bernstein in So Cal

Posted on by Heather Wagenhals

The Ayn Rand Institute has announced two coming events in Southern California featuring writer and lecturer Andrew Bernstein.
The first is a debate at USC on Friday, Nov. 12, 2004 titled “Capitalism: Is There a Moral Alternative?” Dr. Bernstein will be debating Dr. Peter Robinson at 6:30 in SGM-123 (Seeley G. Mudd).
The second event is a lecture by Dr. Bernstein in Irvine on Thursday, November 11, 2004:

Global Capitalism

The opponents of global capitalism overlook the key points in the debate. The capitalistic nations of Europe, North America and Asia are by far the wealthiest societies of history?with per capita incomes in the range of at least $20,000-$30,000 annually. But capitalism is not merely the system of prosperity; fundamentally, it is the system of individual rights and freedom.
Capitalistic nations protect their citizens? freedom of speech, of the press and of intellectual expression. Similarly, their citizens possess economic freedom, including the right to own property, to start their own businesses and to seek profit. By stark contrast, the pre-capitalist systems of history, and the non-capitalist systems of the present, are politically oppressive and economically destitute; their citizens have few or no rights and, consequently, little or no wealth.
What deeper principles make possible the freedom and wealth enjoyed under capitalism?and lacking in its political antipodes? How has capitalism already greatly enhanced the lives of millions of human beings in formerly impoverished Third World countries? What can the men of the free world do to further promote the spread of capitalism into the repressed nations of the globe? These are the questions Dr. Andrew Bernstein addresses in his talk.
THIS EVENT IS FREE TO THE PUBLIC
LOCATION and DETAILS:
Hyatt Regency Irvine
17900 Jamboree Road
Irvine, California 92614
Bookstore opens: 6:30 PM
Presentation: 7:30 PM to 8:30 PM
Q & A: 8:30 PM to 9:30 PM
Reception: follows until 10 PM
For more information about the event, call 949-222-6550

Journal of Ayn Rand Studies – New Issue

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

Volume 6, Number 1 of The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies has just been published. This Fall 2004 issue is the first of two symposia celebrating the Ayn Rand Centenary (which is marked, officially, on 2 February 2005).
This issue is entitled “Ayn Rand: Literary and Cultural Impact,” and it features the articles and contributors listed below. The second Rand Centenary issue will be titled “Ayn Rand Among the Austrians,” and will include contributions from Walter Block, Peter J. Boettke, Steven Horwitz, Roderick T. Long, George Reisman, Larry J. Sechrest, Leland Yeager, Ed Younkins, and others. Information on that issue will be available in the Spring of 2005.
The Fall 2004 issue (Centenary Symposium, Part I – Ayn Rand: Literary and Cultural Impact) includes the following contributions:

The Illustrated Rand (by Chris Matthew Sciabarra)
Passing the Torch (by Erika Holzer)
Completing Rand’s Literary Theory (by Stephen Cox)
Ayn Rand’s Influence on American Popular Fiction (by Jeff Riggenbach)
Integrating Mind and Body (by Matthew Stoloff)
The Poetics of Admiration: Ayn Rand and the Art of Heroic Fiction (by Kirsti Minsaas)
The Russian Cultural Connection: Alexander Etkind on Ayn Rand (by Cathy Young)
The Russian Subtext of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead (by Bernice Rosenthal)
Reply to Kirsti Minsaas: Toward an American Renaissance (by Alexandra York)

Visit the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies web site for article abstracts, contributor biographies, and information about subscribing.

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