Free Republic

Lots of people who study K-12 education end up looking for a metaphor, a parallel, to explain the unnecessary stupidity of our public schools. Don't bother. Ayn Rand has run ahead and done the job. In 1970, Rand published a long [17k words] essay titled "The Comprachicos" (which roughly translates to the child-buyers). It lovingly examines a bit of history mentioned in a Victor Hugo novel. He wrote about vicious exploiters who mutilate and transform children into all sorts of freaks, dwarfs, gymnasts, and novelties. The techniques are analogous to those used by bonsai masters. You cut, twist, break, deprive...

The Comet uncoiled from the siding into a thin, straight line, and went on into the mountains, with the beam of the headlight like an extended arm pointing the way, and the lighted glass curve of the observation lounge ending it off. Some of the passengers aboard the Comet were awake. As the train started its coiling ascent; they saw the small cluster of Winston’s lights at the bottom of the darkness beyond their windows, then the same darkness, but with red and green lights by the hole of a tunnel on the upper edge of the windowpanes. The lights...

For over 30 years, I've been reading and re-reading Ayn Rand's books, both fiction and non-fiction, and I don't recall anything that suggests she was in favor of open borders. Furthermore, Ayn Rand died in 1982 – she never witnessed the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11, the steady stream of terrorist massacres throughout the great, historical cities of Europe and on American soil, or the large-scale invasion of so-called "refugees" into Europe. Islam and immigration were not cultural or political issues during her lifetime. So why am I even asking if Ayn Rand would have been for open...

It is time to admit it; modern conservatism is almost a complete and utter failure. Today’s conservative movement seems to employ a lot of folks in pretty cushy jobs, prints some magazines, hosts some websites, publishes various books, and puts on conferences until the cows come home – for those who don’t know, conferences and seminars can be big time money makers. Sadly, its primary purpose seems to have become a self-propagating jobs program for those lucky, skilled, or connected enough to rise to the top.

Her novel The Fountainhead is one of the few works of fiction that Donald Trump likes and she has long been the darling of the US right. But only now do her devotees hold sway around the world As they plough through their GCSE revision, UK students planning to take politics A-level in the autumn can comfort themselves with this thought: come September, they will be studying one thinker who does not belong in the dusty archives of ancient political theory but is achingly on trend. For the curriculum includes a new addition: the work of Ayn Rand. It is...

The evolving foreign policy of Donald Trump is an unintended reincarnation of Ayn Rand. When he says “America First,” he is effectively saying that the United States should act in what Rand would call its “rational self-interest.” Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) was founded forty-one years before the 9/11 attack on America, that is, on September 11, 1960 at the Buckley estate, Great Elm. Its founding document ended: “That American foreign policy must be judged by this criterion: does it serve the just interests of the United States?” Not the United Nations or the Third World, but only the U.S....

When President Elect Donald Trump named Ayn Rand as his favorite writer, and The Fountainhead as his favorite book, last spring, few Objectivists took notice. With his inauguration as the 45th President of the United States tomorrow, perhaps it’s time we should. Others -- critics of Rand and Trump -- aren’t shying away from the topic. “Ayn Rand acolyte-Donald Trump stacks his cabinet with fellow objectivists,” wrote Washington Post National Political Correspondent James Hohmann in a piece last month. At the same time, one prominent Objectivist, Onkar Ghate, called Trump’s election “One Small Step for Dictatorship.” Both positions are exaggerated....

Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates, the world's biggest hedge fund firm, says people should expect a major shift under President-elect Donald Trump. "Regarding economics, if you haven’t read Ayn Rand lately, I suggest that you do as her books pretty well capture the mindset," he wrote in a LinkedIn post on Monday. "This new administration hates weak, unproductive, socialist people and policies, and it admires strong, can-do, profit makers." The post continued: "It wants to, and probably will, shift the environment from one that makes profit makers villains with limited power to one that makes them heroes with...

Cynics, skeptics, and fiction-peddlers are frowned upon by the Obama administration (and the mainstream media) when it comes to our glorious leader's economic miracle. So we thought a simple litmus test might be useful to judge just how 'doomed' the nation really is... "When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing;  when you see that money is flowing to those who deal not in goods, but in favors;  when you see that men get rich more easily by graft than by work; and your laws no longer protect you against...

There are lots of famous Jewish atheists from Sigmund Freud to Ayn Rand to Isaac Asimov to Woody Allen. How do you think the Jewish community would have reacted if what follows had happened? A Jewish couple, atheists, artists, puts on an exhibit in which they critique five major religions with artworks and commentary. At the end of the first day the gallery owner comes up to them and says, you are attacking Islam and that means you favor the Jews in "Palestine." This is "racism." They try to explain that they are critiquing five major religions equally, did not...

I just hope everyone there – and all of you out in blogland – keep in mind Bryan Caplan’s Ideological Turing Test: Strive to model your opponent’s thinking as human and well-intentioned, not demonic. I always do, even though everyone is stupid.I love the above quote for a number of reasons, not least because, although laced with irony, it gingerly hints at a fundamental ignorance among vast swathes of the population. Not simply of economics, which, admittedly, is a seemingly abstruse, esoteric area of knowledge that routinely confuses even credentialed experts in their chosen field, but of simple cause and...

In her 1957 masterpiece, Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand introduced us to a powerful concept which she called “the sanction of the victim.” This concept is defined as “the willingness of the good to suffer at the hands of the evil, to accept the role of sacrificial victim for the ‘sin‘ of creating values.” As Rand explains through the character of her hero, John Galt, “Evil is impotent and has no power but that which we let it extort from us,” and, “I saw that evil was impotent…and the only weapon of its triumph was the willingness of the good to...

Does Fairness Depend on Kindness or Justice? An MIT study with the Tsimane People of Bolivia shows the origins of fairness. Posted Nov 11, 2015Imagine you have to split a plate of cookies. Does the person who baked the cookies get the most or do you split them evenly? Most very young children would split them evenly — that's fair, right? But as kids get older, they start to take into account who did the work. MIT researchers (link is external) working with the Tsimane' People, who live near San Borja, Bolivia, wondered what makes kids switch from "egalitarian" to...

Neil Peart, the drummer behind the band Rush, has made it known that, as a “bleeding-heart libertarian,” he encourages people to support Democrats. […] Rolling Stone notes that Peart's newfound beliefs appear to prioritize the “bleeding-heart” aspect over the “libertarian” one. Speaking of the libertarian-oriented Senator Rand Paul, a 2016 presidential candidate, Peart allegedly told Rolling Stone it is “very obvious” that Paul "hates women and brown people.” […] Peart, who recently became a United States citizen, told Rolling Stone, “For a person of my sensibility, you’re only left with the Democratic party.” …

we petition the obama administration to: place Ayn Rand on the ten dollar bill. Ayn Rand is the perfect candidate for the woman on the ten dollar bill.1. An immigrant who fled oppression2. Success story in literature, philosophy, and Hollywood- a true rags to riches story. She embodies the American dream3. Authored the most read book by an American author4. Has influenced more people than any other woman in American history male or female.If she isn't in the running to be on the ten then no other woman should be on that list.Published Date: Jun 19, 2015

President Obama said today that the incidents with police in Baltimore and Ferguson, along with “a growing awareness of inequality in our society,” can turn attention back to poverty in America and bridge “ideological divides that have prevented us from making progress.” At the Georgetown University panel on poverty, Obama name-dropped Ayn Rand and acknowledged he may speak differently to a black audience. Panelists joining the president were American Enterprise Institute President Arthur Brooks, Harvard professor Robert Putnam, and Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne. “The stereotype is that you’ve got folks on the left who just want to pour more...

To All Innocent Fifth Columnists Ayn Rand - 1941 You who read this represent the greatest danger to America. No matter what the outcome of the war in Europe may be, Totalitarianism has already won a complete victory in many American minds and conquered all of our intellectual life. You have helped it to win. Perhaps it is your right to destroy civilization and bring dictatorship to America, but not unless you understand fully what you are doing. If that is what you want to do, say so openly, at least to your own conscience, and we who believe in...

In a letter dated May 31, 1960, Flannery O’Connor, the author best known for her classic story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” (listen to her read the story here) penned a letter to her friend, the playwright Maryat Lee. It begins rather abruptly, likely because it’s responding to something Maryat said in a previous letter: I hope you don’t have friends who recommend Ayn Rand to you. The fiction of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get re fiction. I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the...

When future anthropologists study America in the 21st century and its rapid decline, they will no doubt better understand its code of values (or lack thereof) by examining the symbols and ideas that captured the spirit of the time – the things that we held dear. In every generation, there are icons that sum up its core values – not official ones, but symbols that really mean something to people: Rosie the Riveter, the American flag, Elvis Presley, the motorcycle jacket, the defeatist “peace sign” and now the tyrannical “Coexist” bumper sticker. There are symbols that sum up the zeitgeist...

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. What I will be discussing in my talk today is the crucial role that the ideas of Ayn Rand and Murray Rothbard have played in the defense of liberty and Western civilization. All Americans, well read in political affairs, know of these famous thinkers. They were two of the most powerful and revolutionary intellectuals in the 20th century, contributing many valuable insights to our knowledge of philosophy, politics, and economics. As with most intellectual rebels, their major ideas about freedom and government were highly controversial. What I will do in this talk is explain what...