Category: Culture

Is the Alliance between Christianity and Capitalism Falling Apart?

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

In an incisive column at TownHall.com, George Will points out that the alliance between religious conservatives and economic conservatives seems ready to crumble.

Like Job after losing his camels and acquiring boils, the conservative movement is in distress. Mike Huckabee shreds the compact that has held the movement’s two tendencies in sometimes uneasy equipoise. Social conservatives, many of whom share Huckabee’s desire to “take back this nation for Christ,” have collaborated with limited-government, market-oriented, capitalism-defending conservatives who want to take back the nation for James Madison. Under the doctrine that conservatives call “fusion,” each faction has respected the other’s agenda. Huckabee aggressively repudiates the Madisonians.
He and John Edwards, flaunting their histrionic humility in order to promote their curdled populism, hawked strikingly similar messages in Iowa, encouraging self-pity and economic hypochondria. Edwards and Huckabee lament a shrinking middle class. Well.
Economist Stephen Rose, defining the middle class as households with annual incomes between $30,000 and $100,000, says a smaller percentage of Americans are in that category than in 1979 — because the percentage of Americans earning more than $100,000 has doubled from 12 to 24, while the percentage earning less than $30,000 is unchanged. “So,” Rose says, “the entire ‘decline’ of the middle class came from people moving up the income ladder.” Even as housing values declined in 2007, the net worth of households increased.

Read the whole article.
Provides further evidence for Ayn Rand’s claim that altruism provides a lousy philosophical basis for capitalism.
Thanks to novelist (and Rand protege) Erika Holzer for the tip.

Quotes from Clarence Thomas's Biography

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

From Atlasphere member Greg Feirman:

I’ve been reading Clarence Thomas’s autobiograpy and he seems to be a big Rand fan.
I read Sowell’s Atlasphere review of the book.
But Thomas also explicitly references Rand in his book:
“It was around this time that I read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. Rand preached a philosophy of radical individualism that she called Objectivism. While I didn’t fully accept its tenets, her vision of the world made more sense to me than that of my left wing friends.”
– pg. 62, when Thomas was approximately the summer before his senior year of college at Holy Cross
“… I also reread The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, whose scathing criticisms of the dangers of centralized government impressed me even more after working in Washington.”
– pg. 187, late 1985 (37 years old), when Thomas was heading up the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)
Unbelievable story. Great book.

UPDATE: More from Greg:

Also, if you haven’t seen the 60 Minutes episode with Thomas, I recommend watching it.
Clarence Thomas has such a great presence. You can feel it in his writing too. One book about him it titled Supreme Discomfort: The Divided Soul Of Clarence Thomas.
But the impression given from reading his book and seeing him is the complete opposite: a man of such pure integrity and clear conscience that you can almost feel that his words are perfect expressions of his inner principles and conviction.
In the interview, one of the quotes that really stood out for me was:
“It is always worth it to stand on principle no matter what the ultimate goal is. Wrong is wrong, even if it’s over a penny.”
It reminds me of the great scene in The Fountainhead:
“Everybody would say you’re a fool….. Everybody would say I’m getting everything….”
“You’ll get everything society can give a man. You’ll keep all the money. You’ll take any fame or honor anyone might want to grant. You’ll accept such gratitude as the tenants might feel. And I – I’ll take what nobody can give a man, except himself. I will have built Cortlandt.”
Clarence Thomas is a modern day Roark in public life.
He is truly a great American.

I would have to agree.

Ayn Rand's Fountainhead in Course Syllabus at MIT

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

Thanks to Atlasphere member Johann Gevers for pointing out that Ayn Rand is listed first among “the authors whose theories will be discussed” in the online course Capitalism and Its Critics being offered at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology:

Course Description
This course examines the implications of economic theories for social and political organization in the context of the historical evolution of industrial societies. Among the authors whose theories will be discussed are Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, Karl Marx, Max Weber, Joseph Schumpeter, and John Kenneth Galbraith. Emphasis will be placed on class discussion of specific texts. Students will be encouraged to ground their views in concrete textual and empirical material and to consider the implications of different arguments for the understanding of personal, political, and economic events today.

The course syllabus urges students to buy The Fountainhead and to write essays about its perspectives on society and capitalism.

Rep. John Campbell (R-Calif) gives all his interns a copy of Atlas Shrugged

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

Reason Magazine has an excellent new article about Rep. John Campbell, who — as we noted when he replaced Rand fan Christopher Cox who was picked to head the SEC — is himself an admirer of Ayn Rand’s writings.
Author David Weigel notes that Campbell may be in a position to help lead the Republican Congress in a few years.
The article is titled “This is John Campbell Speaking” and begins:

If Rep. John Campbell (R-Calif.) said his book shelf was a time capsule, a memorial to the modern GOP, youâ??d believe him. Here is Ste­phen Slivinskiâ??s Buck Wild, a jeremiad against the Bush-era big-spending Republicans. Here is Bruce Bawerâ??s While Europe Slept, the terrifying tale of how â??radical Islam is destroying the West from within.â? Here is one of Watergate felon Chuck Colsonâ??s bestsellers on how Christ can save your life.
Less predictable are the tomes bookending the collection: not one but two hardbound cop­ies of Ayn Randâ??s 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged, a favorite among many supporters of free markets and limited government. â??Those arenâ??t my only two copies,â? Campbell says, laughing. â??Atlas Shrugged is the book I give to our interns after they spend a summer here, working for free. I consider it to be the authoritative work on the power of the individual.â?
It is late September in Washington, D.C. Another Rand disciple is in the news: Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, is on the talk shows promoting his autobiography. Like Greenspan, Campbell is upset that the Repub­lican Party has been growing the government, hiking spending with funds that donâ??t exist. But Greenspan is out of public life. The 52-year-old Campbell, an Orange County, California, car salesman who arrived in D.C. just two years ago, is one of his partyâ??s fastest-rising stars.
â??Heâ??s an absolutely fantastic member of the Republican conference,â? says a senior GOP aide. â??I think heâ??s become the heir apparent to lead the Republican Study Committee,â? the anti-tax, anti-spending caucus founded in 1973 by then-insurgent proto-Reaganite Republicans. Campbell currently heads the RSCâ??s Budget and Spending Taskforce.

Here’s a great anecdote from later in the article:

During the floor debate over the defense appropriations bill, Campbell honed in on a $2 million earmark for Sherwin-Williams, a paint company that is developing a â??paint shieldâ? for military vehicles. In the process, he locked horns with the fearsome chair­man of the Defense Appropriations Committee, Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.). To everyoneâ??s surprise, Campbell cleaned the 33-year congressmanâ??s clock.
After Murtha rambled about how the military probably wanted the paint shield earmark even though it wasnâ??t on its â??priority list,â? Campbell pounced. â??Mr. Chairman,â? he said, â??you said youâ??re â??sureâ?? the military [wants it]. So youâ??re not aware if, in fact, the military has asked for this kind of technology?â?
Campbell kept his eyes trained on the Democrat. Murtha didnâ??t have anything to say.
â??I guess the answer to that is no,â? Campbell said.
Of course, the House isnâ??t a debat­ing club. The earmark survived any­way.

See the full article for much more about Campbell and his excellent work.

Tim Sykes up 14% for November, despite S&P

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

Greg Feirman just alerted me that Star stock trader (and Ayn Rand enthusiast) Timothy Sykes is up 14% with his TIM Project for the month of November, while the S&P was down 4%.
For background about Sykes and his TIM Project — wherein he vows to once again take $12,415 and turn it into a million dollars, while allowing other investors to watch each trade he makes along the way — see Feirman’s recent Atlasphere article “The Odyssey of Star Stock Trader Tim Sykes.”

Celebrity Ayn Rand Fan: Grammy-winning R&B artist Van Hunt

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

From The Examiner‘s article “The philosophy of Van Hunt”:

For Grammy-winning R&B artist Van Hunt, it all started back in high school.
â??I can still remember coming out of class one day in 10th grade, when a friend of mine stopped me and said, â??Man, if you could only see all the girls who wanna get with you,â?? but I didnâ??t have any idea,â? says the former nerd, who had a fondness for Izod polo shirts at the time.
Thatâ??s when things took a turn for the worse. Once he possessed this arcane chick-magnet knowledge, he says, he instantly abused it.

Van Hunt

â??I fancied myself a player, and it was a disgrace to my character,â? he says. â??And I behaved that way until recently, when I found that my integrity was worth polishing up and I decided to be the man that I knew I could be.â?
What brought about the transformation? Oddly, it was the objectivist ideals of author Ayn Rand, whose cornerstone man-living-for-his-own-happiness axiom moved Hunt forward into maturity.
â??Now, Iâ??m not a big follower of people or movements,â? says the 30-year-old, who plays the Independent in San Francisco on Thursday. â??But a big transition in my life was reading â??The Fountainheadâ?? â?? I identified with not only the story, but Randâ??s whole philosophy of objectivism.
â??It was the key to my own freedom, to recognizing that my manhood was the only responsibility I had in this world. And â??manhoodâ?? meaning the expression of my creativity, and not anything self-indulgent.â?
The singer and multi-instrumentalist put that tenet to work on his new third effort, the ironically-titled â??Popular,â? out this January on Blue Note. His smooth-talking former self had accomplished much on the retro-soul scene â?? once heâ??d moved from Ohio to Atlanta, he began writing for renowned vocalists like Dionne Farris and Cree Summer, picked up â??American Idolâ??sâ? Randy Jackson as manager, signed to Blue Note parent imprint Capitol, and wound up nailing a 2007 Grammy â?? with Joss Stone and John Legend â?? for their cover of Sly and the Family Stoneâ??s â??Family Affair.â?
But â??Popularâ? finds him blazing bold new trails, from country-gospel rave-ups such as â??In the Southern Shadeâ? to jazz-funk experiments such as â??Ur A Monsterâ? and kickoff single â??Turn My TV On.â?
Now Hunt can freely reference artier influences including Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock and Charlie Parker. All thanks to objectivism, which he breaks down: â??To articulate the ideas in your head, you need formal education, so you study music theory to do that. And thatâ??s the only responsibility that you have â?? to make that process work for you and express yourself. In this life, nothing is more important.â?
Heâ??s now firing on so many creative cylinders, heâ??s just completed his own book, a short story collection heâ??ll publish next year.

At Amazon.com, you can listen to samples from his Grammy-winning first album, Van Hunt.

John Galt and the Writers Guild Strike

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

Writing at the Huffington Post, Rachel Sklar has a snotty and meandering article comparing the striking Writers Guild of America writers with John Galt and the other strikers in Atlas Shrugged.
True to form for the Huffington, she has little good to say about Ayn Rand’s novels except, I guess, that the writers’ strike made her think of them — at some length.
Along the way, though, she makes some interesting points about the writers and their productive place in the universe.

'Defense of Corporation' Help Requested

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

From Atlasphere member Nigel Richards:

Australian Objectivists are urgently seeking financial assistance to advertise ‘In Defence of the Corporation’, a one-day conference for CEOs to be held in May 2008 in Sydney.
Conference speakers include:
· Two Ayn Rand Institute speakers: Dr Edwin Locke, author of Prime Movers, Traits of the Great Wealth Creators; and Dr Andrew Bernstein, author of The Capitalist Manifesto;
· Mr Ron Manners, former chairman of Croesus Mining, De Grey Mining, and the Australian Mining Hall of Fame, and founder of the Mannkal Institute;
· Dr Alex Robson, lecturer in economics at the ANU.
These are the conference topics:
· The moral right of corporations and their shareholders to maximise their profits, and the importance of speaking out for this right.
· The enormous contributions that corporations make to our standard of living.
· Why CEOs do deserve multi-million dollar compensation packages.
· The heroic qualities of great business leaders.
· The types of attacks: the media, NGOs, existing and impending legislation.
· The source of the attacks: the anti-capitalist mentality, environmentalism, traditional morality.
· A contrasting code of morality: one that sees capitalism as the only moral social system and money-making as a noble endeavour.
· A strategy for resisting these attacks.
Supporters have so far contributed $1,150. We need to raise $1,980 by Thursday the 29th November for a quarter-page display on p.5 of The Wentworth Courier, a suburban weekly with a readership of 99,000 in Sydney’s affluent eastern suburbs.
Following is the proposed text of The Wentworth Courier ad, which is designed to attract wealthy Ayn Rand fans willing to sponsor the conference.
AYN RAND conference for CEOs
Sydney May 2008.
In Defence of the Corporation
Dear CEO,
The time has come to take a stand.
You are under attack from all sides. You – who through your daring imagination and risk taking, have built products or services that enrich us all – endure constant criticism from the greens, from the media, from the unions, from the social welfare lobby. Instead of gratitude for your inspiring achievements – which continue to raise our standard of living – you face threats from politicians to shackle you even further.
The time has come to take a stand. The time has come to sharpen your intellectual spears. The time has come to look your attackers proudly in the eye, convinced of your own moral stature. The time has come to mount effective arguments against the moral premises of your critics. The time has come to speak out for a moral code of rational self-interest.
Intellectual ammunition will be provided at a one-day conference in Sydney in May 2008.
[Speaker list to follow]
This conference cannot proceed without your financial support/sponsorship.
For more information: contact Nigel Richards by email at info (at) enterpriseethics.com.au or on 0417 065 047.

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