Free Republic

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Ayn Rand is back. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the long-dead novelist and philosopher has become prophet and a scapegoat. Liberals blame her for the economic collapse, citing the influence of her most famous acolyte, Alan Greenspan. Conservatives hail her as a visionary who saw it all coming. Love her or hate her, Rand's ideas have become fundamental to how Americans understand capitalism. The liberal case against Rand rests on her relationship with Alan Greenspan, the long-term head of the Federal Reserve Bank. In his youth, Greenspan was part of "The Collective," a small...

From Rush Limbaugh to President Obama, Ayn Rand and her book 'Atlas Shrugged' are recalibrating America.From Fox News to the passenger sitting next to you reading “Atlas Shrugged” on your commute to work, Ayn Rand seems to be everywhere. Since the economic collapse of 2008, the controversial novelist and philosopher has emerged as a leading intellectual on the right – and she’s been dead for nearly 30 years. Rush Limbaugh touts Rand as a prophet of sorts. “Ayn Rand, she wrote ‘Atlas Shrugged,’ ” he told his listeners. “The sequel, ‘Atlas Puked,’ we’re in the middle of it.” At the...

Afterword to Anthem ...Some of those who read the story when it was first written, told me that I was unfair to the ideals of collectivism; this was not, they said, what collectivism preaches or intends; collectivists do not mean or advocate such things; nobody advocates them. I shall merely point out that the slogan "Production for use and not for profit" is now accepted by most men as commonplace, and a commonplace stating a proper, desirable goal. If any intelligible meaning can be discerned in that slogan at all, what is it, if not the idea that the motive...

Address To The Graduating Class Of The United States Military Academy at West Point, New York - March 6, 1974 Since I am a fiction writer, let us start with a short short story. Suppose that you are an astronaut whose spaceship gets out of control and crashes on an unknown planet. When you regain consciousness and find that you are not hurt badly, the first three questions in or mind would be: Where am I? How can I discover it? What should I do? You see unfamiliar vegetation outside, and there is air to breathe; the sunlight seems paler...

This Did Not Work It Never Will by Reginald Firehammer Sometime in late 1940 or early 1941, Ayn Rand began efforts to form an "individualist" movement that would counter the growing collectivist, socialist, and communist movements active in those years. She expended a huge amount of time and energy on this "project" which she firmly believed would bring a kind of counter-revolution and restoration of individual liberty and free-market culture to America. One of her supporters in this effort was Channing Pollock, a drama critic, novelist, and playwrite. Her correspondence with Pollock reveals both her enthusiasm and conviction that this...

Egoism is a state of mind where a person values all things in terms of their value to the self. Egoism and selfishness are virtues, in fact the greatest of all virtues, as they enable life. All living beings are selfish. To survive, they must be. Without fulfilling one's basic needs of water, food, or protection, one would cease to exist. Although selfishness is a necessity, many people hold selflessness as their goal in life, and this altruistic thinking is a dominating and corrosive mainstay of today's society. If one were to give all of his money to charity or...

February 2, 2007 -- Ayn Rand was born on February 2, 1905; in 2007 we celebrate her great achievements and the legacy that she left us all! Rand has had a significant influence on today's world: Her strong moral defense of freedom and capitalism inspired many who have fought over the years for limited government, individual liberty and free markets. Her great novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, show the terrible consequences of the wrong philosophy on both individuals and societies and present the vision of happy, joyous lives in a benevolent society that is the consequence of human achievement,...

Back in the 1970s, Albert S. Ruddy, the producer of "The Godfather," first approached Ayn Rand to make a movie of her novel "Atlas Shrugged." But Rand, who had fled the Soviet Union and gone on to inspire capitalists and egoists everywhere, worried aloud, apparently in all seriousness, that the Soviets might try to take over Paramount to block the project.

The 1945 Movie "Love Letters" (screenplay by Ayn Rand) will be shown  on Turner Classic Movies at 8pm Eastern on Wednesday, August 16th.   Set your Tivos, DVDRs and VCRs if you haven't already gotten a copy  of this delightful film.   See: THIS page.  Also: click on the "MONTH SCHEDULE" button in the  second menu bar (scroll half way down).

When: Thursday, August 31, 2006, 6:30 PM Where: Please visit http://aynrand.meetup.com/158/ and sign up for details. There have been location and time changes. Description: This will be our group's August where we will meet to discuss Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand. We will listen to a taped lecture and after listening to the it, Ed Carlson will lead the discussion on the issues and points Branden brings up. The time slot has also been moved to up to allow for more discussion after listening to the tape.

Karen and Howard Baldwin spoke at The Atlas Society's recent Summer Seminar about plans for their film adaptation of Atlas Shrugged. The principals in Baldwin Entertainment Group (BEG), producer of the 2004 Oscar-winning "Ray," appeared in a 90 minute panel session on July 7 with TAS board member John Aglialoro, who holds the screen rights to the Ayn Rand novel and will be co-executive producer with Howard Baldwin, the company’s president and CEO. Baldwin and Aglialoro confirmed earlier reports that BEG will collaborate with Lionsgate, the studio that produced last year’s Oscar winner, "Crash”; the final contract was signed just...

OXFORD, N.C. --A college based on the teachings of philosopher-author Ayn Rand might come to Oxford -- if Maine doesn't get it first. The University of North Carolina Board of Governors, the ruling body for the state's public universities, has received a request for the establishment of Founders College in Oxford. The board has to approve applications for private colleges in the state. Two Duke University professors, Gary Hull and Eric Daniels, are involved with the College of Rational Education Inc., which would operate Founders College under Rand's principles. The author of "Atlas Shrugged" emphasized the rights of the individual...

Here's a question for you: Can you get through 24 hours without breaking a law? Before you answer, consider: In January, an Atlanta man was arrested and handcuffed for selling a subway token at face value. Donald Pirone observed another passenger having difficulty with a token vending machine, so he gave him a $1.75 token. After the man insisted on paying him, Pirone was cited by a transit officer for a misdemeanor, since state law prohibits selling tokens -- even at face value. A MARTA spokesperson denied that handcuffing a customer for helping another customer was excessive. "There are customer...

Going For Galt's Gulch by David MacGregor Galt's Gulch is a high-tech retreat in Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged—a place where all the "disappearing" productive people can meet, relax and recharge. John Galt, the hero of "Atlas", is a brilliant engineer who has decided he will not support a corrupt system. He will not allow his mind, his talent, or his efforts to prop it up. He plans a strike like no other—a strike of all those who are the engine of civilisation, the creative producers in every field. His mission is to persuade each and every one to...

Ayn Rand deserves to be taken seriously, because she was right about three things of immense importance: metaphysics, morals and individual liberty. Although many of her characteristic arguments were anticipated by Aristotle, Rand highlighted their relevance to modern life, and made them accessible. And by illustrating key philosophical concepts in superbly titled novels, she has provided millions of readers with arguments, and a vocabulary, that can be used to challenge the errors of conventional morality and collectivist government. The great metaphysical truth that Rand recognised is supremely simple: 'A is A'. This is a shorthand way of referring both to...

Today marks the centenary of Ayn Rand's birth. Born Alisa Rosenbaum in St. Petersburg, Russia, on February 2nd, 1905, Rand would go on to become one of the 20th century's foremost voices for human freedom. After living through the Russian Revolution, and the economic chaos and political repression that came in its wake—events she would later dramatize in her novel We the Living—Rand fled the Soviet Union for the United States in 1926 to begin her career as screenwriter, playwright, and novelist. Dividing her time between Hollywood and New York, the fiercely anticommunist Rand began to develop a philosophy of...

A hundred years after her birth and nearly 25 years after her death, Ayn Rand remains a fascinating and enigmatic presence. She has been “mainstreamed” enough to have been honored by a U.S. Postal Service stamp in 1999 and to have been featured on C-SPAN’s American Writers series in 2002. Her novels figure prominently in readers’ lists of the 20th century’s greatest books. Notably, in a 1991 survey of more than 2,000 Book-of-the-Month Club members about books that made a difference in their lives, Rand’s magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, came in second—albeit a very distant second—to the Bible. Rand, a...

Ayn Rand at 100: The Moral Defense of Freedom By Edward Hudgins ehudgins@objectivistcenter.org She was born on February 2, 1905, in Russia. At the age of nine she decided she wanted to be a writer. As a teenager she lived through the horrors of the communist revolution, and at age twenty-one she made her way to the United States. She learned English and became a best-selling author; her books still sell hundreds of thousands of copies a year and in 1991, over a decade after her death, a Library of Congress survey found that her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, was...

What did Ayn Rand want? Today is the centennial of her birth, and while newsletters and Web sites devoted to her continue to proliferate, and while little about her private life or public influence remains unplumbed, it is still easier to understand what she didn't want than what she did. Her scorn was unmistakable in her two novel-manifestos, "The Fountainhead" (1943), about a brilliant architect who stands proud against collective tastes and egalitarian sentimentality, and "Atlas Shrugged" (1957), about brilliant industrialists who stand proud against government bureaucrats and socialized mediocrity. It is still possible, more than 20 years after her...

Has Ayn Rand gone mainstream? The radical champion of individualism and capitalism, who died in 1982, is no longer an exotic taste. Her image has adorned a U.S. postage stamp. Her ideas have been detected in a new mass-market animated comedy film, "The Incredibles." And Wednesday, on the 100th anniversary of her birth, there will be a Rand commemoration at the Library of Congress--an odd site for a ceremony honoring a fierce anti-statist. In her day, Rand was at odds with almost every prevailing attitude in American society. She infuriated liberals by preaching economic laissez-faire and lionizing titans of business....