Category: The Atlasphere

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

Ayn Rand on The Daily Show, with Jon Stewart

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

Jennifer Burns, author of the new Rand biography Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right, was interviewed last night on The Daily Show.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Jennifer Burns
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show
Full Episodes		 Political Humor Ron Paul Interview

Diana Hsieh offers a good analysis of the interview from an Objectivist’s perspective, and I agree with her when she says, “That’s the kind of interview that will intrigue people about Ayn Rand’s ideas. Given what might have happened in that interview, I count it as a huge win.”
Burns did a very, very nice job in this interview. WOW.
We’re in the process of lining up an interview with Ms. Burns, for publication shortly after we review her new book for our columns section. Stay tuned.

Ayn Rand book forum event at Cato on 28 Oct

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

The Life and Impact of Ayn Rand
BOOK FORUM
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
5:00 PM (Reception To Follow)
Featuring Jennifer Burns, Author, Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (Oxford University Press, 2009); and Anne C. Heller, Author, Ayn Rand and the World She Made (Doubleday, 2009).
The Cato Institute
1000 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20001

Ayn Rand in TIME magazine

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

From an article in TIME, pre-dated to October 12, 2009:

She knew how to make an entrance. Her dark hair cut in a severe pageboy, Ayn Rand would sweep into a room with a long black cape, a dollar-sign pin on her lapel and an ever present cigarette in an ivory holder. Melodramatic, yes, but Rand didn’t have time to be subtle. She had millions of people to convert to objectivism, her philosophy of radical individualism, limited government and avoidance of altruism and religion. Her adoring followers–some called them a cult–revered her as the high priestess of laissez-faire capitalism until her death in 1982 at age 77.
The bad economy has been good news for Rand’s legacy. Her fierce denunciations of government regulation have sent sales of her two best-known novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, soaring. Yet her me-first brand of capitalism has been excoriated for fomenting the recent financial crisis. And her most famous former acolyte–onetime Fed chairman Alan Greenspan–has been blamed for inflating the housing bubble by refusing to intervene in the market.

Uh-huh….
See the full article, “Ayn Rand: Extremist or Visionary?” for more. Its factual accuracy seems sketchy in places, but that’s par for the course.

Washington Times BOOK REVIEW: Why Ayn Rand Is Hot Again

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

Review of Jennifer Burns’s Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand And The American Right by Reason Senior Editor Brian Doherty in The Washington Times:

Why is Rand, dead since 1982, so hot again today?  Ironically, big government, one of Rand’s betes noires, is stimulating her sales.  Her more than 1,000-page 1957 novel, “Atlas Shrugged,” sold 25 percent more copies in the first half of this year than it sold in all of last year, shipping a total of 300,000 copies so far this year – tremendous success for a 52-year-old novel.
Readers and pundits alike look at America and see a world scarily reminiscent of Rand’s government-choked dystopia in “Atlas.”  It’s a world with a struggling economy where political pull matters more than success in the free market, where the government blithely takes over huge transportation industries.

You can read the rest here.

The Whole Foods alternative to ObamaCare

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

Celebrity Ayn Rand fan and Whole Foods CEO John Mackey has a great article in today’s Wall Street Journal with his recommendations for free market based health care reform (though I take exception to his dietary advice). It’s one of the best articles I’ve seen, in terms of making positive recommendations about how to actually improve the quality of health care in the United States.

The New York Times Profiles Objectivist CEO John Allison

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

A mostly favorable and long (6 pages) profile of Objectivist and former BB&T CEO (current Chairman) John Allison from Sunday’s New York Times: 

Over much of the last four decades, John A. Allison IV built BB&T from a local bank in North Carolina into a regional powerhouse that has weathered the economic crisis far better than many of its troubled rivals â?? largely by avoiding financial gimmickry.
And in his spare time, Mr. Allison travels the country making speeches about his bankâ??s distinctive philosophy.
Speaking at a recent convention in Boston to a group of like-minded business people and students, Mr. Allison tells a story: A boy is playing in a sandbox, only to have his truck taken by another child.  A fight ensues, and the boyâ??s mother tells him to stop being selfish and to share.
â??You learned in that sandbox at some really deep level that itâ??s bad to be selfish,â? says Mr. Allison, adding that the mother has taught a horrible lesson.  â??To say man is bad because he is selfish is to say itâ??s bad because heâ??s alive.â?
If Mr. Allisonâ??s speech sounds vaguely familiar, itâ??s because itâ??s based on the philosophy of Ayn Rand, who celebrated the virtues of reason, self-interest and laissez-faire capitalism while maintaining that altruism is a destructive force.  In Ms. Randâ??s world, nothing is more heroic â?? and sexy â?? than a hard-working businessman free to pursue his wealth.  And nothing is worse than a pesky bureaucrat trying to restrict business and redistribute wealth.
– Intro to “Give BB&T Liberty, But Not A Bailout”, The New York Times, August 2

Doctors on strike for freedom in medicine

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

From Atlasphere member Gregory Garamoni:
Doctors Support Proposed Florida Amendment to Protect Rights of Doctors and Patients
Doctors on Strike for Freedom in Medicine today applauded the Florida State legislators who proposed an amendment to the State Constitution that would thwart Washingtonâ??s plans to impose socialized medicine.
Dr. Gregory L. Garamoni, Founder of Doctors on Strike for Freedom in Medicine
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
PRLog (Press Release) â?? Jul 29, 2009 â?? Doctors on Strike for Freedom in Medicine, a private organization that champions individual rights and freedom in medicine, today applauded the several Florida State legislators who on Monday proposed an amendment to the State Constitution intended to stop the federal government from taking over medicine.
â??Washington politicians are poised to inject a massive, lethal dose of statism into the heart of healthcare–one that would violate the rights of doctors and patients to make personal, private, and independent healthcare decisions,â? said Dr. Gregory Garamoni, founder of Doctors on Strike. â??This ‘statist medicine’ would induce grave waves of arrhythmia – inflation, price controls, lower quality, doctor shortages, waiting periods, and rationing.â?
â??Doctors, patients, and law makers must stand together now to bring a halt to this leftist-led, lemming-like leap into healthcare hell,â? Garamoni said. â??We urge legislators all over the country to follow Floridaâ??s lead by creating political firewalls in every state to protect us from any further federal infringement on statesâ?? rights and individual liberty. â?
State Senator Carey Baker (R-Eustis) and State Representative Scott Plakon (R-Longwood) filed legislation (HJR 37- Health Care Services) on Monday to amend Florida’s Constitution â??to prohibit laws or rules from compelling any person, employer, or health care provider to participate in any health care system; permit person or employer to purchase lawful health care services directly from health care provider; permit health care provider to accept direct payment from person or employer for lawful health care services; exempt persons, employers, and health care providers from penalties and fines for paying or accepting direct payment for lawful health care services; permit purchase or sale of health insurance in private health care systems; and specifies what amendment does not affect or prohibit.â?
“Today, we’re drawing the line in the sand. It is bad enough that our federal government wants to choose your doctor and ration your treatment,” Senator Baker said. “But to do so virtually in secret and in such a rush proves that the goal is not to get better health care but to get socialized health care.”
â??The federal government and its bureaucracies dictating who, when and what kind of treatment you receive is not reform at all,â? said Representative Plakon. â??We believe this unprecedented power-grab by President Obama and Congress is clearly not in the best interests of the citizens of Florida.â?
â??The proposed constitutional amendment may be the only way left to prevent the destruction of the independent practice of medicine that has served us so well for so many centuries,â? said Dr. Garamoni.
# # #
Doctors on Strike for Freedom in Medicine has the mission of preserving, protecting, and promoting freedom in healthcare. Our organizationâ??s most pressing goal is to defeat HR3200 and other statist healthcare reform proposals now circulating in Washington. To this end, we are actively encouraging doctors and patients to put intense political pressure on legislators during their deliberations on healthcare reform. We supply doctors and patients with the intellectual and political ammunition to do this. We are calling on doctors to be prepared to go on strike against more government-run healthcare. We want doctors to let the country know – now – that if the President signs any legislation that establishes another government healthcare plan, they will “go on strike”: Doctors will refuse to participate in any new government healthcare plan, and they will resign from all government healthcare programs, including, but not limited to Medicare, Medicaid, and TRICARE.

Early review of Anne Heller's new biography: "Ayn Rand and the World She Made"

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

Atlasphere member Timothy Sandefur has published a rousing review of Anne Heller’s new biography Ayn Rand and the World She Made.
The review itself often seems more about what Sandefur thinks of Rand than about what Heller wrote, so I found it hard to divine much from this review. But it does sound like the new biography will provide worthwhile reading for those of us fascinated by Rand’s writing and thinking.
Here were Sandefur’s key observations about the biography:

Anne Hellerâ??s biography doesnâ??t pull punches. She is as honest and as objective and as forthright as Randâ??s own principles would demand. She pays Rand the compliment of treating her like a serious person who deserves respect, praise, criticism and blame. She goes out of her way to explain statements by Rand that are easily misunderstood and frequently misrepresentedâ??and she rightly criticizes her regrettable traits and expressions. Her book is meticulouslyâ??indeed, very surprisinglyâ??well researched. It is a story of serious, devoted, brilliant, talented, and flawed people. It is not the dreary finger-pointing weâ??ve seen too much of in the past decadesâ??Nathaniel Branden hardly comes off as the innocent victim hereâ??but a work of serious, yet sympathetic journalism. In the end, it is deeplyâ?¦one might say romanticallyâ?¦tragic. […]
Whatâ??s great about Hellerâ??s book isnâ??t that it reveals more facts than Barbara Brandenâ??s biographyâ??although it does; there are many interesting new detailsâ??or that it is so well written; itâ??s that Ayn Rand And The World She Made is so honest, so, in a word, objective. Rand is a real person to Anne Hellerâ??a brilliant, clever, sometimes over-the-top writer; an astonishingly original thinker with, alas, too little education in the history of philosophy; a passionate, intense, idealist who, sadly, imposed such a weird rigor on herself and others as to leave her dark and alone at the end; a woman who believedâ??and rightly soâ??in the indomitability of the mind and its capacity for greatness, but who was capable of breaking long friendships over trivialities, fudging the nature of her marriage, and watching hours of game shows and Charlieâ??s Angels. […]
Hellerâ??s book does have its flaws. I think she tries too hard to show a Jewish or a Russian influence on Randâ??possible, but hardly a major influence, I thinkâ??and she sometimes slightly oversimplifies Randâ??s views in a way that will play into the hands of her eager detractors. For instance, Heller writes that Randâ??s philosophy is basically an elaboration on Randâ??s childhood desire to get â??what I want.â? Well, of course, itâ??s not just about doing what you feelâ??as Heller acknowledges elsewhere in the bookâ??but Rand certainly would say that â??what you wantâ? is and must be important to you, and that a world that denies you â??what you wantâ? simply because you want it is a profoundly evil one.
These are very minor quibbles with an otherwise outstanding bookâ??written just as a biography ought to be. Itâ??s the best book Iâ??ve read so far this year and I very highly recommend it.

I will see if I can line up a review soon for readers of the Atlasphere columns.

Charlize Theron and Atlas Shrugged

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

In an interesting new twist on the never ending saga of the Atlas Shrugged movie. According to CanMag:

Charlize Theron has been meeting with Lionsgate and producers Howard and Karen Baldwin about taking the title role of Dagny Taggart. Her only concern is adapting the story properly. To solve this problem, Lionsgate will turn the story into a miniseries for Epix, a pay-cable network Lionsgate is forming with MGM and Viacom/Paramount.

Personally, I like the idea of a miniseries because it seems a more suitable medium for a 1000+ page work. I also like Theron as a possible Dagny.

We’ll just have to wait and see if this latest incarnation has any sticking power. Read the full article.

Pay with Paypal
Sub Total:
Total:

Please enter your username or email address. You will receive a link to create a new password via email.

Loading