Free Republic

Let me get one thing out of the way: I have never read Ayn Rand. In fact, until recently I was one of those uneducated boors who thought the author's first name was pronounced Ann. A few of her readers have corrected me over the years, but for some reason, I assumed they were joking — which is also what I assumed when they told me they'd just read a great book about government intervention in the railroad industry. (That book is now a movie, Atlas Shrugged: Part I, opening Friday, April 15, in the U.S.) But then my editor...

It was the breaking-news headline last Friday that three construction workers had died in a coal-mine accident in Princeton, Ind., and maybe the markets melting down too, that congealed in my mind a thought I'd been kicking around for a while now: Our country is having an "Atlas Shrugged" moment. Trapped coal miners in Utah, smashed levees in New Orleans, busted steam pipes and flooded subways in New York City, a collapsed bridge over the Mississippi River in Minnesota, an air-traffic-control system stressed to its break point. Could this really be a description of the most prosperous country on the...

The USC Objectivist Club showed controversial cartoons of Muhammad Leland Ornelaz Posted: 4/12/06 The USC Objectivist Club revealed the Danish Caricatures of the prophet Muhammad Tuesday night at Davidson Conference Center - the images have rarely been seen in the West since inciting violent protests across the Muslim world in February. Jason Hoskins, president of the Objective Club, wrote in an e-mail the club revealed the cartoons because they point out that freedom of speech is absolute except when advocating violence. "To say 'I stand up for free speech, except when it offends my group' is not to defend...

Two Kinds of Freedom? Gregory Koukl Greg compares the freedom of a hedonist and the freedom of a President Last week, an issue came up that hinged specifically on the definitions of words. Do you know what clear thinking is? It's like a clear picture, one that's in focus. When you get a snapshot back from a holiday and look at it, if it wasn't in focus it will appear blurry. In the same fashion, if we want our thinking to be clear, it must be in focus. If there are words whose meanings are blurry to us, then...

I'm somewhat befuddled as to why objectivists seem so enthralled with The Incredibles. I suppose some of it has to do with some press coverage labelling the movie "Randian". It is understandable for objectivists to bask in the national spotlight that so rarely shines on them. Objectivists seem to be confused by The Incredibles. What underlies their confusion with this movie is their reflexive attempt to fit cultural events into the narrative of Atlas Shrugged. The proper dichotomy should be, they argue, between the strong and the weak, the able and the incompetent. So it is not surprising that they...

Objectivist Leonard Peikoff supports John Kerry! You have to go to his site to listen to his endorsement -- he didn't express it in text, but in audio, so you need Real Audio to hear it. I didn't listen yet, but I'm guessing that it's because of Peikoff's insanely anti-Christian hatred. Objectivists hate Christians, unlike libertarians, many of whom are either Christian or tolerant of Christians (e.g. LewRockwell.com, Liberty magazine). Note that Peikoff, like Ayn Rand, is a pro-war Objectivist, and not an anti-war libertarian. Objectivists have traditionally hated libertarians, have hated the Libertarian Party, and usually endorsed Republicans. Rand...

Because I subscribe to some magazine or journal that sells its subscription list, I now receive a varying degree of fundraising letters from the Republican National Committee. By far the most frequent letters I receive are of the infamous "push-poll" variety. The premise of this fundraising pitch is that the RNC wants to know what I think of various political issues so they can allegedly formulate their policies to take my views into account. In the letter RNC Chairman Marc Racicot writes in a breathy, stutter paragraph style, "Make no mistake — without your answers to the REPUBLICAN PARTY CENSUS...