Last December as the smoke was clearing from the electoral explosion and many of us were still shell-shocked and wandering around blindly searching for emotional shelter, Salons Matthew Sheffieldwrote a series of articlesabout the rise of the alt-right. The movement had been discussed during the campaign, of course. Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton even gave a big speech about it. Trumps campaign strategist and chiefconsigliere, Steve Bannon the once and future executive editor of Breitbart News had even bragged that his operation was the platform of the alt-right just a few months earlier. But after the election there was more interest than ever in this emerging political movement.

Its an interesting story about a group of non-interventionist right-wingers, who came together in the middle of the last decade in search of solidarity in their antipathy toward the Bush administrations wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was a motley group of conservatives, white nationalists and Libertarians that broke apart almost as soon as they came together. The more clever among them saw the potential for this new brand and began to market themselves as the alt-right, and it eventually morphed into what it is today. The series is a good read and explains that the alt-right really was a discrete new movement within the far right wing and not simply a clever renaming of racist and Nazi groups.

This week, conservative writer Matt Lewis of The Daily Beast, a Trump critic,wrote a pieceabout the Libertarian influence on the alt-right and suggested that Libertarians work harder to distance themselves from this now-infamous movement. He points out that former Rep. Ron Pauls presidential campaigns were a nexus of what became alt-right activism. Sheffield had written about that too:

Pretty much all of the top personalities at the Right Stuff, a neo-Nazi troll mecca, started off as conventional libertarians and Paul supporters, according to the sites creator, an anonymous man who goes by the name Mike Enoch.

We were all libertarians back in the day. I mean, everybody knows this,he said on an alt-right podcast last month. [Note: This podcast seems to have been deleted.]

It wasnt just obscure neo-Nazi trolls. Virtually all the prominent figures in or around the alt-right movement, excepting sympathizers and fellow travelers like Bannon and Donald Trump himself, were Paul supporters:Richard Spencer,Paul Gottfried, Jared Taylor,Milo Yiannopoulosand Alex Jones. (The latter two deny being part of the alt-right, but have unquestionably contributed to its rise in prominence.) Pauls online support formed the basis for what would become the online alt-right, the beating heart of the new movement.

In fact, Ron Paul then a Texas congressman and the father of Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky was the original alt-right candidate, long before Donald Trump came along. Paul was also, by far, the most popular Libertarian in America.

Those of us observing the Paul phenomenon and Libertarianism from the left always found it curious in this regard. Pauls racism was simply undeniable.It was documented for decades. He hid behind the states rights argument, as pro-Confederate racists have always done, but it was never very convincing. If you are a principled Libertarian who believes in small government and inalienable individual rights, what difference does it make whether a federal or state government is the instrument of oppression?

Most of us thought a lot of Pauls appeal, especially to young white males, came down to a loathing for the uptight religious conservatism of the GOP, along with Pauls endorsement of drug legalization. That made some sense. Why would all these young dudes care about the capital gains tax?

And lets face facts, it wasnt just Libertarians who could be dazzled by Pauls iconoclasm.There were plenty of progressives drawn to his isolationist stance as well.But as it turns out, among that group of Atlas Shrugged fans and stoners were a whole lot of white supremacists, all of whom abandoned Ron Pauls son Rand in 2016 when Donald Trump came along and spoke directly to their hearts and minds.

Is there something about Libertarianism that attracts white supremacists? It seems unlikely, except to the extent that it was a handy way to argue against federal civil rights laws, something that both Paulpreandfilsendorsed during their careers, legitimizing that point of view as a Libertarian principle. (In fairness, Rand Paul has tried to pursue more progressive racial policies in recent years which may also have helped drive away his dads supporters.) Other than that, though, it seems to me that Libertarianism has simply been a way station for young and angry white males as they awaited theirGod Emperor, as they call Trump on the wildly popular alt-right site, r/The_Donald.

Still, Libertarians do have something to answer for. While principled Libertarianslike Cathy Youngcertainly condemned the racism in their ranks at the time, but others who supported Ron Paul failed to properly condemn the rank bigotry undergirding the Paul philosophy.

Lewiss Daily Beast piece certainly provoked some reaction among Libertarians. Nick Gillespie at Reasonobjectedto the characterization of Libertarianism as a pipeline to the alt-right, writing that the alt-right and Trumpism, too, to the extent that it has any coherence is an explicit rejection of foundational libertarian beliefs in free trade and free migration along with experiments in living that make a mess of rigid categories that appeal to racists, sexists, protectionists, and other reactionaries. So he rejects calls to purge Libertarianism of alt-righters, since he believes they were never really Libertarians in the first place.

Gillespie does, however, agree that Libertarian true believers should call out such people wherever we find them espousing their anti-modern, tribalistic, anti-individualistic, and anti-freedom agenda. (It would have been easy to include racist in that list but, being generous, perhaps he meant it to fall under the term tribalistic.)

Meanwhile, over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Jonathan Adler addresses some Libertariansmisplaced affinity for the Confederacy,a phenomenon I must admit I didnt know existed. Evidently,there really are Libertarianswho take the side of the secessionists, supposedly on the basis of tariffs and Abraham Lincolns allegedly monstrous record on civil liberties. Adler patiently explains why this is all nonsense and wrote, Libertarianism may not be responsible for the alt-right, but its fair to ask whether enough libertarians have done enough to fight it within their own ranks.

Good for these prominent Libertarians for being willing to confront the currents of racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia that at the very least have contaminated their movement. We await the same honest self-appraisal from the conservative movement and Republican leaders as a whole.

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Now the Libertarians have known sin: Reckoning with the rise of the ... - Salon

It was a friendly audience, but Randy Bryces voice shook anyway.

This speech was among his first to a national crowd of this sizeover 1500 people passionate about progressive politics packed into a cavernous hall at the Netroots Nation conference held in Atlanta earlier this month. Towering screens on either side of the podium projected his now famously mustachioed face to the crowd.

Bryce took pauses to check his notes. A bumped mic filled the air with static. He wasnt smooth or showy in the way one might expect a U.S. Congressional candidate to be, especially one seeking to unseat a nearly 20-year incumbent, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan.

But then Randy Bryce said something that Paul Ryan could not: What Im doing isnt about me.

That message is such a threat that Ryan is planning his first town hall meeting in nearly two years, an event that will be broadcast Monday night on CNN. Its also an idea that has galvanized a left wary of personality politics, signaling a return to running on the issues and for the people.

Bryce, whos lost each of his three previous bids for elected office in Wisconsin, made his mission clear in his first campaign ad, released in June.

We can do so much better together, as a community, he says. And our future depends on it.

Its a powerful line that was even more powerfully timed, released smack in the middle of Republican efforts to pass the wildly unpopular Affordable Care Act replacement, a bill written by his opponent.

Within 24 hours, the video went viral and generated $100,000 in donations for Bryce, and an equally stunning number of Twitter followers. He appeared on cable news shows and very suddenly, noted Esquire in one of several glossy magazine features, became a capital-N, capital-F National Figure.

The ad focuses on health care but Bryce and his campaign have zeroed in on an even bigger vulnerability of Ryans, and more broadly, of the American experiment itself: the dogged devotion, both personally and politically, to individualism.

Ryan has built his entire political career on prioritizing the individual over society. This foundational conservative principle always made sense to the son of a wealthy and well-connected family. Whatever Ryan aimed for, he most often got.

Ryans devotion to philosopher Ayn Rand is well-documented. He gives copies of Atlas Shrugged as Christmas gifts, he has said, and makes all of his interns read it.

Individualism is the through-line of Ryans entire legislative agenda, including his draconian budgets that attempted to slash social programs that work to benefit the collective, and most recently, the American Health Care Act.

During the lead-up to the 2010 election, in which a wave of Tea Party candidates who idolize Ryan were voted into office, Ryan called the tax-and-spend agenda of the still-new Obama administration an attack on individualism and freedom...an attack on the moral foundation of America.

It is fitting then that Ryans first town hall in nearly two years, is not really a traditional open town hall with a focus on constituent questions, but instead a glittering CNN television event, moderated by news host Jake Tapper. Its a rehash of last years CNN-Paul Ryan production in New York City prior to the Republican National Convention, adjusted so that locals can come this timeif their application for an invite is accepted. The network is also vetting questions.

Problem with calling this thing a #townhall is that Ryan thinks he's done his due diligence representing which he hasn't, Bryce tweeted Sunday night.

The event itself seems like a direct response to the Bryce campaign, which has repeatedly pointed out Ryans lack of local town hall meetings in the last two years. Earlier this summer, Ryan explained that he offers office hours and phone conference meetings instead, citing obvious security concerns and the potential for a shouting fest.

Thats no deterrent for Bryce, who cut his teeth as the longtime volunteer political coordinator for his union Ironworkers Local 8. He was a fixture at the Wisconsin Capitol building in Madison during the days of so-called Wisconsin Uprising, when massive protests swelled the city following Scott Walkers multi-pronged attack on labor unions.

Its kind of similar to grabbing a bullhorn, he told The Progressive after taking to the stage for his big speech in Atlanta. Its actually easier because I dont have to yell and I have both of my hands free.

Bryces campaign has leaned into his working-class bonafides as an ironworker and a union man. He eschews the suit and tie favored by Ryan for literal blue, collared shirts. He passed out rainbow-colored toy mustaches at the Madison Pride Parade.

With the launch of his campaign, Twitter squealed, I want him to be my father. He was likened to Ron Swanson, a manly, thickly mustachioed government employee on the TV series Parks & Recreation. One fan tweeted her childrens drawings of Bryce as superhero Iron Man.

Its tempting to iconize Bryce, but too much of an emphasis on personality over issues can be dangerous, explains LaToia Jones, a longtime Democratic organizer who unsuccessfully ran for vice chair of the Democratic National Convention earlier this year.

The issue that I have with personality-driven campaigns is that you lose the local connection, Jones told The Progressive. It gets us the White House but it loses the House and the Senate. The reality is that when we focus on one person and one persons vision as opposed to talking about the democratic values we have locally, we dont have statehouses, we dont win municipal elections, we dont win governors races.

Maryland gubernatorial candidate and former NAACP president Ben Jealous, stumping alongside Bryce at Netroots Nation, also honed in on this same message.

We're not going to win by running to the left, or running to the right, but running towards the people," he said to cheers.

While Bernie Sanders presidential campaign successfully organized around core democratic issues and a for the people message, critics said it suffered from a cult of personality that coalesced around Sanders in a way that alienated potential Democratic voters.

It is smart then, for Bryce to continue countering Ryan with the language of we and the platform to back it up. Whether it is healthcare or social security or public education or fighting climate change, the most pressing challenges we face require the collective will to carry each other.

Id like to think other people want the best for their neighbors, Bryce said. Thats pretty much all that Im doing.

Excerpt from:

Randy Bryce is More Than A Mustache - Progressive.org

Dating site OkCupid made the unusual move of announcing that it had given a single member a "lifetime" ban on Thursdayand naming himin order to make a point.

"We were alerted that white supremacist Chris Cantwell was on OkCupid," the company wrote at its official Twitter account on Thursday. "Within 10 minutes, we banned him for life."

Cantwell was the subject of a Vice documentary about the white-supremacist Unite The Right marches in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the past weekend, where he offered numerous racist and threatening comments while acting as a march organizer and riding in a car alongside former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke. ("We're not non-violent," Cantwelloffered at one point in the documentary. "We'll fucking kill these people if we fucking have to.")

In announcing this ban,OKC alsoasked its users to be vigilant about any other active members of hate groups found on the site. "If any OkCupid members come across people involved in hate groups, please report it immediately," the company wrote on its Twitter page. The tweet linked to the company's official "feedback" site.

On OkCupid, Cantwell wentby the handle "ItsChris603" where he described himself as "a professional podcaster and writer specializing in controversial political satire" who specifically sought only"white" women. His dating profile did not contain statements anywhere near as sensational as those in the Vice documentary, though in a section titled,"I spend a lot of time thinking about," Cantwell wrotethe following: "Getting married, and how to stop the Democrat party from destroying Western Civilization." (A 2015 archiveof his dating profile is different, as it containsa shout-out to Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and a declaration that "I will make you laugh at things you might feel guilty laughing about, which is my favorite kind of laughter.")

Cantwell's OkCupid profiles look remarkably different fromonewritten by theSouthern Poverty Law Center, which describes him as "an unapologetic fascist who spews white nationalist propaganda with a libertarian spin" (and with many citations).

OkCupid's media relations team actively approached news outlets at the moment the company announced the ban, including Gizmodo, whichpublished a statement from OKCupid CEOElie Seidma: "We make a lot of decisions every day that are tough. Banning Christopher Cantwell was not one of them."

In that same report, Gizmodo went to the trouble of rifling through Cantwell's Internet history to find his own "dating advice for the ladies" post that revolved around his use of OkCupid; this post included a "tip" to women that simply said, "In a photo of you and a friend, I assume you are the ugly one." Cantwell has since deleted that and similarposts from his personal site.

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OkCupid bans white supremacist for life, asks daters to report others - Ars Technica

Common Dreams

Randy Bryce is More Than A Mustache Common Dreams He gives copies of Atlas Shrugged as Christmas gifts, he has said, and makes all of his interns read it. Individualism is the through-line of Ryan's entire legislative agenda, including his draconian budgets that attempted to slash social programs that ...

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Randy Bryce is More Than A Mustache - Common Dreams

But lately, many Rand devotees have been running into trouble. Travis Kalanicks abrupt departure as chief executive of Uber, the Internet-based ride-hailing service he built into a private corporation worth $50 billion or more, is the latest Icarus-like plunge of a prominent executive identified with Rand.

The hedge fund manager Edward S. Lampert, who some say has applied Rands Objectivist principles to the management of Sears and Kmart, has driven those venerable retailers close to bankruptcy.

Andrew F. Puzder, Mr. Trumps first nominee for secretary of labor, is described by friends as an avid Ayn Rand reader. Hes also chief executive of CKE Restaurants, which runs the Hardees and Carls Jr. fast-food chains and whose private equity owner, Roark Capital Group, is named for the architect-hero of The Fountainhead. Mr. Puzder had to withdraw his nomination after allegations that his restaurant companies mistreated workers and promulgated sexist advertising.

The Whole Foods founder and chief executive John Mackey, an ardent libertarian and admirer of Rand, last month had to cede control of the troubled upscale grocery company to Amazon and Jeff Bezos (who, while often likened to a fictional Rand hero, has not mentioned her books when asked about his favorites).

And then theres the scandal-engulfed Trump administration, where devotion to Rands teaching has done little to advance the presidents legislative agenda.

Though people close to Mr. Kalanick told me this week that he has distanced himself from many of Rands precepts while undergoing an intense period of personal reassessment, they all acknowledged that shed had a profound influence on his development. Few companies have been as closely identified with Rands philosophy as Uber.

Uber disrupted a complacent, highly regulated and often corrupt taxi industry on a global scale, an achievement Rands heroes Howard Roark and Dagny Taggart would surely have admired. Many of her ideas were embedded in Ubers code of values. Mr. Kalanick used the original cover art for The Fountainhead as his Twitter avatar until 2013 (when he exchanged it for an image of Alexander Hamilton, and then, in May, for one of himself).

But Mr. Kalanick was urged to step down as chief executive by the Uber board and Ubers major investors over less heroic issues: that Uber fostered a workplace culture that tolerated sexual harassment and discrimination; that it ignored legal constraints, poaching intellectual property from Googles self-driving car endeavor and using technology to evade law enforcement; and that it failed to hire a chief operating officer or build an effective management team. (Mr. Kalanick remains on the board.)

Rands entrepreneur is the Promethean hero of capitalism, said Lawrence E. Cahoone, professor of philosophy at the College of the Holy Cross, whose lecture on Rand is part of his Great Courses series, The Modern Political Tradition. But she never really explores how a dynamic entrepreneur actually runs a business.

She was a script and fiction writer, he continued. She was motivated by an intense hatred of communism, and she put those things together very effectively. She can be very inspirational, especially to entrepreneurs. But she was by no means an economist. I dont think her work can be used as a business manual.

Representatives of Uber and Mr. Kalanick declined to comment.

Rands defenders insist that the problems for Mr. Kalanick and others influenced by Rand arent that they embraced her philosophy, but rather that they didnt go far enough.

Yaron Brook, executive chairman of the Ayn Rand Institute and a former finance professor at Santa Clara University, who teaches seminars on business leadership and ethics from an Objectivist perspective, said, Few business people have actually read her essays and philosophy and studied her in depth. Mr. Brook said that while Mr. Kalanick was obviously talented and energetic and a visionary, he took superficial inspiration from her ideas and used her philosophy to justify his obnoxiousness.

He emphasized that Rand would never have tolerated sexual harassment or any kind of mistreatment of employees. Rand had enormous respect for people who worked hard and did a good job, whether a secretary or a railroad worker, he said. Her heroes ran businesses with employees who were very loyal because they were treated fairly. Of course, some people had to be fired. But she makes a big deal out of the virtue of justice, which applies in business as well as politics.

And even though shed celebrate what Travis did with the taxi industry, showing the world how all those regulations made no sense, she also believed there are rules of justice that do make sense and she supported, he said. You cant just run over all the regulations you dont happen to like.

Mr. Brook complained that Rands critics are quick to point to her followers failures, but rarely mention their successes. He cited the example of John A. Allison IV, the much-admired former head of BB&T Corporation, a regional bank in the Southeast that he built into one of the nations largest before he stepped down in 2008. Mr. Allison handed out copies of Atlas Shrugged to senior executives and is a major donor to the Ayn Rand Institute. He incorporated many of Rands teachings into his 2014 book, The Leadership Crisis and the Free Market Cure.

John is a gentleman and he actually studied Rands works in depth, Mr. Brook said. He couldnt be more different from Travis.

Mr. Allison has called for abolishing the Federal Reserve, while acknowledging that so drastic a step is unlikely. He has met with Mr. Trump at the White House and has been widely mentioned as a potential successor to Janet L. Yellen as Fed chief.

Despite Rands pervasive influence and continuing popularity on college campuses, relatively few people embrace her version of extreme libertarianism. Former President Barack Obama, in a 2012 Rolling Stone interview, criticized her narrow vision and described her work as one of those things that a lot of us, when we were 17 or 18 and feeling misunderstood, wed pick up.

Shes also dismissed by most serious academics. Mention Ayn Rand to a group of academic philosophers and youll get laughed out of the room, Mr. Cahoone said. But I think theres something to be said for Rand. She takes Nietzschean individualism to an extreme, but shes undeniably inspirational.

As the mysterious character John Galt proclaims near the end of Atlas Shrugged: Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, its yours.

But Rand has little to say about making the transition from this kind of heroic entrepreneurial vision to a mature corporation with many stakeholders, a problem many company founders have confronted and struggled with, whether or not theyve read or been influenced by her. She never really had to manage anything, Mr. Cahoone said. She was surrounded by people who saw her as a cult figure. She didnt have employees, she had worshipers.

For his part, Mr. Kalanick is said to have turned this summer from Rand to what is considered one of the greatest dramatic works in the English language, Shakespeares Henry V a play in which the young, reckless and wayward Prince Hal matures into one of Englands most revered and beloved monarchs.

A version of this article appears in print on July 14, 2017, on Page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Tough Times For Disciples Of Ayn Rand.

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As a Guru, Ayn Rand May Have Limits. Ask Travis Kalanick. - New York Times

New York Times

The net neutrality Day of Action counter-protest is a complete joke Mashable Carter also happened to be the associate producer on the failed Atlas Shrugged movie adaptation. Not ringing any bells? Well, regardless, you get the idea: These are serious people with serious ideas, and you should definitely take their arguments in ... Join the Day of Action for Net Neutrality on July 12th - Battle for the NetBattle for the Net Net Neutrality Day of Action: Help preserve the open internet - Google BlogGoogle Blog Join the Fight for #NetNeutrality - Twitter BlogTwitter Blog Net Neutrality Facts - Internet Association -AT&T Public Policy Blog all 393 news articles »

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The net neutrality Day of Action counter-protest is a complete joke - Mashable

Like many on the coasts, Ive been guilty of engaging in armchair anthropology these past months, and my recent trip to the Aspen Ideas Festival allowed me the opportunity to binge on this newfound interest. In the days since, Ive been stuck on one particular notion that seems to inform our divisivecurrent statethe paradox of cooperative living versus rugged individualism.

In classrooms all over America (at least in the 70s and 80s when I was in school), we learned about the individuals who helped tame the rough, romantic frontier as we pushed westward. In textbooks, we admired those charismatic individuals (think: Davy Crockett, Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley) who blasted through boundaries. For better or worse, this grand American ideal is now ingrained in our collective mindset.

Cooperative living used to mean you met once a year with your neighbor to fix the fence line that separated your properties. In todays context, we still admire the tough business leader who makes a company successful despite all challengeswithout acknowledging the hard working team around them. Lets face it- its easy to get caught up in that sexy, Atlas-Shrugged-Ayn Rand ideal. Moderation, cooperation, mediation, prudence, and collective identity are just not as attractive as admiring a single, striving person.

But now Im a grown up. Sort of. And this vision does not square with how Ive found success and actually, joy in life. Being part of a community, with common expectations, rules, goals and successes, has been where I have found greatest satisfaction. Supporting one another in good times and bad seems, well, right. Self-interest as a guiding principle seems, well, wrong. And its not how I see people raising children now either.

While listening to so many smart people in Aspen, I was struck by how America is stuck in this duality, especially with regard to foreign affairsgo it alone or join the global community. One session I attended, Has American Grand Strategy Gone Missing?, clearly described this current struggle with scholars and policy experts across the spectrum. If I favored a collective approach to global priorities prior to that discussion, Im now a confirmed believer in a global community. I know Earth is our collective home, and what we do here affects a whole lot of other communities around the world. The same is true in China, Africa, South America, you name it.

Pandemics know nothing of borders. Rising sea levels will affect all coastal cities. It is not a zero sum game, and if we do not work together, well all lose in this new America-First paradigm. We must navigate these massive issues with this collective, global context in mind, not retreat to our little safe corner of the world. Many who gathered in Aspen last week, have direct lines to those in power and are crafting arguments that persuade decision makers to see beyond a limited horizon. I am hopeful these rational, moderatedare I say prudentvoices will become the new heroes of todays classrooms.

image (cc) Todd Petrie

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Reflection from Aspen Ideas Fest: Collective Action in the Land of Rugged Individualism - Skoll Foundation

wbur Review Mija with her "super pig" Okja. (Courtesy Netflix)

Some pig, Charlotte the spider famously wrote of her friend Wilbur in a timeless childrens tale, but she just as well could have been referring to the title character in Okja, filmmaker Bong Joon Hos scabrous satire for adults that premieres this week on Netflix.

A larger-than-life collision of conflicting tones, gargantuan set-pieces and unsubtle social commentary, the film follows in the footsteps of the South Korean writer-directors extraordinary English-language debut Snowpiercer with another series of hairpin stylistic curves and barn-sized performances, at once both heartbreaking and ghoulishly funny. Love him or hate him, theres nobody else making movies quite like this guy.

Bong whose breakthrough 2006 creature-feature/family-melodrama The Host followed a giant lizard rising from toxic pollutants dumped into the Han River by an American army base isnt exactly coy when hes got an ax to grind. Snowpiercer was a class warfare fable set upon a speeding bullet train, its final reel a sly takedown of Ayn Rands Atlas Shrugged complete with Ed Harris as a gaseous John Galt-y industrialist. Okja fires a few shots at our current media culture but mostly its a horror movie about factory farming, detailing the ghastly practices of the fictional Mirando Corporation. (Any resemblance to Monsanto is presumably entirely intentional.)

A laboratory-engineered, floppy-eared super pig slightly larger than an Escalade, our lovable Okja is first seen frolicking around a South Korean mountaintop forest with her constant companion spirited, 14-year-old orphan Mija (An Seo Hyun). Mija has been raising the adorable animal for the past decade, as part of a PR campaign cooked up by one of the bickering Mirando sisters (played by twin Tilda Swintons) to try and make folks less wary of their genetically modified organisms by showing off some cute ones. The theory is that then we wont feel so weird about eating them.

But when a broken-down TV veterinarian (Jake Gyllenhaal, overacting atrociously) comes to collect Okja for a Mirando-sponsored parade in New York City, Mija loses her cool. The remainder of the movie is devoted to madcap chase sequences and daring rescues, our plucky heroine joining up with the Animal Liberation Front an idealistic collective of gentle vegans turned violent revolutionaries. Theyre led by a wonderfully droll Paul Dano, attempting to reconcile his peacenik manifesto with the messy tasks at hand.

The movies early highlight is a massive foot/truck pursuit through Seoul with tiny Mija constantly dwarfed by the immensity of both her surroundings and her porcine pal. Bong once again demonstrates a sharp eye for controlled chaos, the bravura sequence crashing through an underground mall as frenzied circus music on the soundtrack gloriously, inexplicably gives way to John Denvers Annies Song.

Not every offbeat choice works so well Gyllenhaals performance is a flat-out disaster but the movie is full of bold, sidelong jabs. Sharp-eyed viewers might bust out laughing at a moment when Swinton and her confidant Giancarlo Esposito are framed to mimic that iconic Situation Room photo taken during the Osama bin Laden raid. (Swinton even puts a hand over her mouth.) Nobody ever accused Bong Joon Ho of being subtle.

"Okja" became the subject of much extracurricular controversy at last month's Cannes Film Festival when jury president Pedro Almodvarread a statement saying he "personally could not conceive" of awarding a Netflix-produced picture, citing the streaming service's refusal to release their films in movie theaters. The festival later announced that starting next year films without a French theatrical run will no longer be considered for competition. The Netflix logo was reportedly booed by festival attendees, and a (rare for Cannes) projection error during the first screening was assumed by the more conspiratorially-minded to be an act of sabotage by film purists.

Personally, I wish Netflix shared their competitor Amazons strategy of booking a theatrical run before streaming exclusively. It especially would have been nice to see Okja on a big screen considering how many of Bongs visual gags are based on size and scale. But this isnt my money, and let's not pretend modern movie studios are lining up to finance projects as kooky and idiosyncratic as this one. How soon we forget that the U.S. release of Snowpiercer was all but scuttled after lengthy disputes over editing with distributors at The Weinstein Company, and the film would not have even played the Boston area had it not been for heroic efforts by our friends at the Brattle Theatre.

I expect Almodvars position will become increasingly more untenable as independent film financing continues to contract and Hollywood keeps narrowing its focus to franchises and branded properties. Later this summer, Martin Scorsese is scheduled to start shooting another of his decades-spanning gangster epics, this one starring the murderers' row of Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci and Harvey Keitel. Confoundingly, Scorseses home studio Paramount Pictures (which just released Baywatch and Transformers 5) passed on the project, so now its going to be a Netflix Original Movie.

It's slim pickings for discerning viewers at the movies right now. I'm an almost pathological habitual moviegoer, and this is the first summer of my adult lifetime I can recall going entire weekends without a trip to the multiplex. To have a Cannes contender that's as big and crazily ambitious as "Okja" available through a streaming service is a paradigm shift that I'm sure makes a lot of people in the industry uncomfortable. But I'm just grateful there's finally something interesting for me to watch, even if I have to stay home to see it.

And Im also overjoyed that people are still giving Bong Joon Ho lots of money to make super-expensive movies about how capitalism corrupts and destroys everything good in the world.

Here's the trailer:

Sean Burns Film Critic, The ARTery Sean Burns is a film critic for The ARTery.

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Love Him Or Hate Him, There's Nobody Making Movies Quite Like The Director Of Netflix's 'Okja' - WBUR

This would be the saddest thing Ive ever heard if it wasnt the funniest thing Ive ever heard ... Seth Meyers Photograph: YouTube

Late-night hosts on Wednesday took aim at Trumps fake Time magazine cover and the GOPs hugely unpopular healthcare legislation, the vote for which was delayed on Tuesday after failing to receive enough support from Republican senators.

Samantha Bee, of Full Frontal, began: Last week, Mitch McConnell and his gang of 12 finally unveiled their super-secret Obamacare repeal bill. Guess what the big secret was?

Bee went on to slam the bill, which includes huge cuts to Medicaid. Its called trickle-down, she said. Poor people will still get access to the antibiotics that rich people shed in their urine. It turns out, 13 rich white guys alone in a room isnt how good legislation happens. Its how Suicide Squad happens. But while Suicide Squad destroys your will to live, this bill destroys your ability to live.

Most people like Medicaid, including Republican people. Who the hell asked you to gut it by sending it to the states and capping its growth rate? she asked. Medicaid is the reason we dont have gangs of elderly people roaming the streets, robbing us of our soft food and sharing their thoughts about Asian people. Allowing states to cap Medicaid benefits also threatens the expensive long-term care that was so very important to Republicans back when it was keeping Terry Schiavo alive.

Bee then tore into Paul Ryan, who said hed been dreaming about the legislation since drinking out of a keg in college. While most college guys in the 90s were fantasizing about Pamela Anderson, Bee joked, Paul Ryan was jerking it to thoughts of poor people losing healthcare to pay for tax cuts. Easy there, cowboy! You might not be covered for carpal tunnel and blindness.

Amazingly, Mitch McConnells annotated copy of Atlas Shrugged wasnt greeted with unfettered senatorial rapture, Bee said. But dont put your sharpies and poster board away yet.

Stephen Colbert took aim at the legislation as well, a new version of which could be voted on after the Fourth of July recess.

The Senate Trumpcare bill suffered some setbacks this week because theres one major flaw to the legislation, he began. I dont want to get too wonky, but its a hot pile of garbage.

Yesterday, Senate majority leader and man trying to keep a bird from escaping his mouth Mitch McConnell announced that voting on the bill would be delayed until after the Fourth of July. Its a smart move. You dont want to strip people of healthcare until after the holiday that mixes booze and explosives.

Colbert continued: While theyve pulled the bill, Republicans say theyre going to come back with something better. And theres a lot of blame to go around. Today, the New York Times said Donald Trump faltered in his role as a closer. Usually, hes a great closer. Just look at his casinos. But you cant. Theyre gone.

The host then discussed the Times report, which detailed some of the internal efforts to get the bill passed. One Republican senator said the president did not have a grasp of some of the basic elements of the Senate plan, Colbert said, before beginning his impersonation of the president. Whoa, slow down. Slow down. Start from the beginning. Whats a Senate? And, follow-up question, whats a plan?

Trump claims he does understand the plan, Colbert continued, tweeting: Some of the fake news media likes to say that I am not totally engaged in healthcare. Wrong, I know the subject well and want victory for US.

He totally understands healthcare, Colbert quipped. He thinks you can win it.

Seth Meyers of NBC addressed healthcare legislation and the Washington Post report saying the president hangs a fake Time Magazine cover in many of his resorts and hotels.

This week the CBO projected that the GOP healthcare bill could leave 22 million more people uninsured, he began. So what has Trump been up to? Well, yesterday, he got up bright and early to retweet four different stories in a row from Fox & Friends attacking the Russia investigation and the Democrats.

Meyers continued: One of the stories Trump retweeted was a link to a monologue from Fox host Sean Hannity, whose surgery to have those bolts removed from his neck was apparently successful.

Trump is so obsessed with praise from the media that according to the Washington Post, he keeps this framed Time magazine cover hanging in several of his golf clubs, Meyers said. Cool cover, flattering photo. Just one problem. The Time cover is a fake. Thats right, Trump hung a fake Time Magazine cover with his face on it in his private golf club. That is the literal definition of fake news. This would be the saddest thing Ive ever heard if it wasnt the funniest thing Ive ever heard.

Excerpt from:

'The literal definition of fake news': late-night hosts on Trump's Time cover - The Guardian

Sam Bee on Wednesday railed into the GOP healthcare plan in a five-minute blitz that hit Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell and even Ayn Rand.

Bee torched conservatives for cutting healthcare coverage for poor, working and sick Americans, pleading, dont kill Medicaid, its only 52 years old! It just joined curves and is learning to dance like nobodys watching!

She then turned to Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI), playing a video of the GOP leader bragging hes been dreaming of sending Medicaid back to the states [and] capping its growth rate, adding hes been dreaming of this since you and I were drinking at a keg.

Yes, while most college guys in the 90s were fantasizing about Pamela Anderson, Paul Ryan was jerking it to thoughts of poor people losing healthcare to pay for tax cuts, Bee said.

She then turned to Ryans comrade in the Senate, Mitch McConnell (R-KY) for his thinly-annotated copy of Atlas Shrugged.

Watch the video below, via TBS:

More here:

WATCH: Sam Bee brutalizes Paul Ryan for 'jerking it to poor people ... - Raw Story

A fundamental insight to be gleaned from studying aid to developing countries is that healthy institutions lead to healthy economies; countries with undeveloped or corrupt institutions invariably have struggling economies.

Even countries with prodigious supplies of natural resources do not benefit if they do not have strong institutions. Wealth is extracted, it flows to a few individuals, and then to other nations. Most citizens remain impoverished.

What sets flourishing nations apart is the mediation of wealth creation and distribution by healthy institutions. Schools, universities, government, laws, courts, banks, churches, media, families, libraries, service clubs, hospitals and neighborhoods all serve, when functioning properly, to bring people together in a common cause, protect people from exploitation, and provide opportunities for developing and exercising gifts and talents.

IIn the 1970s and 80s, institution was a bad word, especially among liberals. The movement to reform society, to make it more just, less racist and sexist, was pursued through rejection of the establishment. Traditional ways of doing things were suspect simply because they were traditional.

The modern conservative movement rose in response to the liberal reforms of those years. People like William F. Buckley and George Will advocated incremental change when needed, but not wholesale rejection of traditional forms of society. Conservatives tended to be pro-business, pro-religion, pro-family and pro-education. They supported traditional moral values: honesty, courage, faith, humility, hard work, duty and self-sacrifice.

That all changed during the past decade with the rise of the Tea Party. The Tea Party rejected traditional conservativism and replaced it with profound distrust of institutions of all forms.

The intellectual and historical underpinnings of the Tea Party movement can be found in the writings of Ayn Rand, in books like Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead and The Virtue of Selfishness. Rand criticized institutions, especially government institutions, because they restrict personal freedom. She believed society is best served by allowing individuals to pursue their own paths and not requiring them to put their own interests aside for the sake of the common good.

Rands influence on contemporary American politics is far-reaching. Prominent politicians like Rand Paul (who is named after her) and Paul Ryan shaped their early careers in light of her philosophy, and others such as Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and business leaders John Mackey and Mark Cuban have acknowledged her inspiration as a factor in their success.

But Rands influence is not to be measured by the number of disciples, rather it can be seen in the profound changes in attitude we are witnessing in society today.

It can be seen in the growing antipathy toward government in all its forms, in the disrespect shown toward professionals in education, journalism and health care, in the rise of conspiracy theories, in the decline in church membership and service organizations, in the antipathy toward science, in the glorification of the violent hero, in the prominence of the cynic.

But there is another, albeit smaller, movement in America today, a movement started by a contemporary of Ayn Rand named Robert Greenleaf.

In 1972, Greenleaf wrote an essay entitled The Servant as Leader in which he expressed an attitude diametrically opposed to Rands Objectivist philosophy. That essay gave rise to the Servant Leadership movement, a movement encouraging the development of individual talents not for self-interest but to serve the common good. He believed this was best done by working diligently to ensure that core institutions are healthy and ethical.

In The Institution as Servant he wrote:

This is my thesis: caring for persons, the more able and the less able serving each other, is the rock upon which a good society is built. Whereas, until recently, caring was largely person to person, now most of it is mediated through institutions often large, complex, powerful, impersonal; not always competent; sometimes corrupt. If a better society is to be built, one that is more just and more loving, one that provides greater creative opportunity for its people, then the most open course is to raise both the capacity to serve and the very performance as servant of existing major institutions by new regenerative forces operating within them.

Greenleaf understood that when core institutions are weakened, it creates a void filled by the cult of the personality. Instead of society working slowly and consistently to fix its problems with long-term solutions, it tends to chase after a succession of quick fixes proposed by whoever happens to be most persuasive to the masses at the time.

That is precisely the situation in which most third world countries find themselves mired; it is the situation toward which America seems to be heading.

It is unfortunate that there are no strong conservative voices in American politics today. As a result, we have no political party that seeks, first and foremost, to protect and sustain core institutions as the foundation of democracy.

But there is hope. As long as we have a critical mass of people who believe in the common good, who are willing to sacrifice some of their own interests for the sake of others, who are willing to teach others children as if they were their own, and who are willing to share their vision for positive future, there is hope for a healthy, flourishing, ethical society.

Richard Kyte is the director of the D.B. Reinhart Institute for Ethics in Leadership at Viterbo University. He also is a member of the Tribunes editorial board.

Visit link:

Richard Kyte: Institutions can bring people together - Chippewa Herald

A fter an hour-long debate last night that contained references to both Ayn Rand and The Twilight Zone, HB 581, aka the billboard bill, failed by a 49-66 vote.

Thirty Republicans and 36 Democrats voted against the measure; 43 Republicans and six Democrats voted for it.The bill was sponsored by Harnett County Republican David Lewis.

This is the worst billboard bill Ive seen since Ive been here, said Rep. Chuck McGrady, a four-term Republican from Henderson County. Its a corporate welfare bill.

Even after slogging through several committees, the bill was packed with perks for the billboard industry. Although outdoor advertisements couldnt be built where they are currently prohibited the Town of Cary and parts of Durham, for example it otherwise stripped local governments of their control over where billboards could be built.

The measure consolidated power within existing, large billboard companies, making it difficult for smaller ventures to enter the market and compete. A billboard permit would become as coveted as a yellow taxicab medallion in New York City.

Rep. Grier Martin, a Wake County Democrat, proposed an amendment that would have broken up the large companies monopoly, but it failed.

In the first of the evenings two mentions of Ayn Rand, Rep. Jay Adams paraphrased from Atlas Shrugged, noting that the bill used government regulations to prop up a failing industry. Todays free market, it seems, does not favor billboards, especially ones that dont blink every six seconds.

HB 581 allowed billboard companies to replace conventional signs with digital billboards. These arenot merely upgrades, said Rep. Ted Davis, a Republican from New Hanover County, who would probably like to keep his districts beaches from looking like a carnival. Going from a static billboard to an electronic one would have a major impact on our state in terms of visual clutter.

Im getting more confused, said Rep. Jeff Collins, a Nash County Republican who supported the bill. Am I in the House of Representatives or The Twilight Zone? (As if occasionally, they arent one and the same.) What industry do we not let keep up with the times?

The bill removed protections for redbud and dogwood trees, which under current law, cant be cut down to make room for billboards.Lewis, the bill sponsor, had included that language, he said, because municipalities were using redbuds and dogwoods as a tactic like a pawn in a chess game, apparently to block the construction of billboards.

Rep. Brian Turner, a Buncombe County Democrat, tried to convince his fellow lawmakers to pass an amendment to protect the trees. He argued that the flower of the dogwood tree is the official state flower. The amendment failed.

Although appeals to nature didnt sway lawmakers, the giveaways to the billboard industry were too unpalatable for many Republicans, albeit a minority of them. Thirty-six Democrats pushed the bill across the finish line.

Environmental groups saw the bills failure as a rare mark in the win column.

Tonights vote is a victory for North Carolinians who appreciate our states scenic beauty, said Molly Diggins, state director of the Sierra Club, one of many environmental groups that opposed the bill. It also shows respect for local governments and the wishes of their constituents.

.

View original post here:

Republicans, inspired by Ayn Rand, and Democrats, sticking up for trees, join forces to kill billboard bill - The Progressive Pulse

A fundamental insight to be gleaned from studying aid to developing countries is that healthy institutions lead to healthy economies; countries with undeveloped or corrupt institutions invariably have struggling economies.

Even countries with prodigious supplies of natural resources do not benefit if they do not have strong institutions. Wealth is extracted, it flows to a few individuals, and then to other nations. Most citizens remain impoverished.

What sets flourishing nations apart is the mediation of wealth creation and distribution by healthy institutions. Schools, universities, government, laws, courts, banks, churches, media, families, libraries, service clubs, hospitals and neighborhoods all serve, when functioning properly, to bring people together in a common cause, protect people from exploitation, and provide opportunities for developing and exercising gifts and talents.

IIn the 1970s and 80s, institution was a bad word, especially among liberals. The movement to reform society, to make it more just, less racist and sexist, was pursued through rejection of the establishment. Traditional ways of doing things were suspect simply because they were traditional.

The modern conservative movement rose in response to the liberal reforms of those years. People like William F. Buckley and George Will advocated incremental change when needed, but not wholesale rejection of traditional forms of society. Conservatives tended to be pro-business, pro-religion, pro-family and pro-education. They supported traditional moral values: honesty, courage, faith, humility, hard work, duty and self-sacrifice.

That all changed during the past decade with the rise of the Tea Party. The Tea Party rejected traditional conservativism and replaced it with profound distrust of institutions of all forms.

The intellectual and historical underpinnings of the Tea Party movement can be found in the writings of Ayn Rand, in books like Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead and The Virtue of Selfishness. Rand criticized institutions, especially government institutions, because they restrict personal freedom. She believed society is best served by allowing individuals to pursue their own paths and not requiring them to put their own interests aside for the sake of the common good.

Rands influence on contemporary American politics is far-reaching. Prominent politicians like Rand Paul (who is named after her) and Paul Ryan shaped their early careers in light of her philosophy, and others such as Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and business leaders John Mackey and Mark Cuban have acknowledged her inspiration as a factor in their success.

But Rands influence is not to be measured by the number of disciples, rather it can be seen in the profound changes in attitude we are witnessing in society today.

It can be seen in the growing antipathy toward government in all its forms, in the disrespect shown toward professionals in education, journalism and health care, in the rise of conspiracy theories, in the decline in church membership and service organizations, in the antipathy toward science, in the glorification of the violent hero, in the prominence of the cynic.

But there is another, albeit smaller, movement in America today, a movement started by a contemporary of Ayn Rand named Robert Greenleaf.

In 1972, Greenleaf wrote an essay entitled The Servant as Leader in which he expressed an attitude diametrically opposed to Rands Objectivist philosophy. That essay gave rise to the Servant Leadership movement, a movement encouraging the development of individual talents not for self-interest but to serve the common good. He believed this was best done by working diligently to ensure that core institutions are healthy and ethical.

In The Institution as Servant he wrote:

This is my thesis: caring for persons, the more able and the less able serving each other, is the rock upon which a good society is built. Whereas, until recently, caring was largely person to person, now most of it is mediated through institutions often large, complex, powerful, impersonal; not always competent; sometimes corrupt. If a better society is to be built, one that is more just and more loving, one that provides greater creative opportunity for its people, then the most open course is to raise both the capacity to serve and the very performance as servant of existing major institutions by new regenerative forces operating within them.

Greenleaf understood that when core institutions are weakened, it creates a void filled by the cult of the personality. Instead of society working slowly and consistently to fix its problems with long-term solutions, it tends to chase after a succession of quick fixes proposed by whoever happens to be most persuasive to the masses at the time.

That is precisely the situation in which most third world countries find themselves mired; it is the situation toward which America seems to be heading.

It is unfortunate that there are no strong conservative voices in American politics today. As a result, we have no political party that seeks, first and foremost, to protect and sustain core institutions as the foundation of democracy.

But there is hope. As long as we have a critical mass of people who believe in the common good, who are willing to sacrifice some of their own interests for the sake of others, who are willing to teach others children as if they were their own, and who are willing to share their vision for positive future, there is hope for a healthy, flourishing, ethical society.

Richard Kyte is the director of the D.B. Reinhart Institute for Ethics in Leadership at Viterbo University. He also is a member of the Tribunes editorial board.

See original here:

Richard Kyte: Institutions can bring people together - La Crosse Tribune

The Fountainhead, part 1, chapter 9

Ayn Rand wasnt one for understatement. When she had a political point to make, she did it with all the subtlety of a big brass band. This makes it all the more noteworthy when she lets a controversial topic pass without comment. And one of those silences, the topic of todays post, is a surprising one.

It begins with the citys construction workers going on strike:

The strike of the building-trades unions infuriated Guy Francon. The strike had started against the contractors who were erecting the Noyes-Belmont Hotel, and had spread to all the new structures of the city. It had been mentioned in the press that the architects of the Noyes-Belmont were the firm of Francon & Heyer.

Through some plot machinations that arent important, Peter Keating attends a public meeting of the strikers and their supporters. The first speaker is a man named Austen Heller:

Keating looked up at the loud-speaker with a certain respect, which he felt for all famous names. He had not read much of Austen Heller, but he knew that Heller was the star columnist of the Chronicle, a brilliant, independent newspaper that Heller came from an old, distinguished family and had graduated from Oxford; that he had started as a literary critic and ended by becoming a quiet fiend devoted to the destruction of all forms of compulsion, private or public, in heaven or on earth; that he had been cursed by preachers, bankers, club-women and labor organizers; that he had better manners than the social elite whom he usually mocked, and a tougher constitution than the laborers whom he usually defended; that he could discuss the latest play on Broadway, medieval poetry or international finance; that he never donated to charity, but spent more of his own money than he could afford, on defending political prisoners anywhere.

For an Ayn Rand protagonist, Austen Heller is unusual. He went to Oxford even though Randian heroes usually scorn higher education and is cultured and sophisticated even though Randian heroes are usually aggressively uninterested in culture. Youd almost think him a villain, but hes unquestionably on the side she considers right:

and we must consider, Austen Heller was saying unemotionally, that since unfortunately we are forced to live together, the most important thing for us to remember is that the only way in which we can have any law at all is to have as little of it as possible. I see no ethical standard to which to measure the whole unethical conception of a State, except in the amount of time, of thought, of money, of effort and of obedience, which a society extorts from its every member. Its value and its civilization are in inverse ratio to that extortion. There is no conceivable law by which a man can be forced to work on any terms except those he chooses to set. There is no conceivable law to prevent him from setting them just as there is none to force his employer to accept them. The freedom to agree or disagree is the foundation of our kind of society and the freedom to strike is a part of it.

I love that thrown-in unfortunately. He hates having to see or interact with other human beings. If only we could each have our own desert island, this would be a perfect Objectivist world.

But more importantly: Austen Heller, the libertarian, supports the workers strike! Thats surprising by itself, but whats more surprising still is who hes there in company with.

The next speaker is Ellsworth Toohey, whos somehow a celebrity to this crowd even though he hasnt done much other than write a book about the history of architecture. The mere announcement of his name gets thunderous applause:

Ladies and gentlemen, I have the great honor of presenting to you now Mr. Ellsworth Monkton Toohey!

He knew only the shock, at first; a distinct, conscious second was gone before he realized what it was and that it was applause. It was such a crash of applause that he waited for the loud-speaker to explode; it went on and on and on, pressing against the walls of the lobby, and he thought he could feel the walls buckling out to the street.

When Toohey finally speaks, Rand tells us, he holds the crowd spellbound with his oratory (because the devil has a silver tongue):

and so, my friends, the voice was saying, the lesson to be learned from our tragic struggle is the lesson of unity. We shall unite or we shall be defeated. Our will the will of the disinherited, the forgotten, the oppressed shall weld us into a solid bulwark, with a common faith and a common goal. This is the time for every man to renounce the thoughts of his petty little problems, of gain, of comfort, of self-gratification. This is the time to merge his self in a great current, in the rising tide which is approaching to sweep us all, willing or unwilling, into the future. History, my friends, does not ask questions or acquiescence. It is irrevocable, as the voice of the masses that determine it. Let us listen to the call. Let us organize, my brothers. Let us organize.

All Rand characters wear their politics on their sleeves, and this talk of renouncing self-gratification or the voice of the masses is a sure giveaway of a villain. But this leads into a fascinating contradiction.

As well see shortly, Austen Heller will become one of Roarks few friends and also the man who gives him his first and most important commission. Clearly, hes on the side Rand expects us to agree with. On the other hand, Ellsworth Toohey is an insidious advocate of collectivism. As a rule, whenever such a character says something in an Ayn Rand novel, were supposed to boo and hiss. But Heller and Toohey both support the strike!

For a reader of Rands oeuvre, this is disorienting. Normally, every moral issue in her books is binary black and white, with the good guys and the villains lining up on equal and opposite sides. To have a fearless individualist and a soulless socialist on the same side of a political debate is something I cant recall seeing anywhere else in all her writing.

The only way I can explain this is as a particularly glaring example of how Rands views changed and hardened. It seems likely that when she wrote The Fountainhead, she didnt view labor organizing as an important political issue. She saw nothing untoward in having both heroes and villains support unions, each for their own reasons. (Later in the book, well see another good character give an endorsement of collective bargaining.)

By the time she wrote Atlas Shrugged, this had changed. In that book, labor unions are another tentacle of the socialist octopus, and their only purpose is to impede heroic businessmen from doing what they want to do.

Of course, theres nothing inherently bad or unusual about a persons opinions changing over time. It happens to all of us. The evolution of Rands view on unions is worth noting only because she insisted it never happened, that she was ideologically flawless from the beginning and stayed that way throughout her life. But her own writing testifies to the contrary.

Image credit: Tony Werman, released under CC BY 2.0 license

Other posts in this series:

See the article here:

The Fountainhead: Hooray for Unions - Patheos (blog)

A famous epigrammatic nugget of wisdom appears in The Leopard, Lampedusas great novel about a noble Sicilian familys fortunes: If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change. I thought of the novel as I was driven up to Gstaad during last weeks heatwave. Disembarking in Geneva, I felt I was back in Nairobi, circa 1970, on my way to Mombasa and a romantic interlude among the elephants and wildebeest. The old continent now looks like Africa, especially in airports and public spaces. But things will have to change if we want things to stay the same, I told myself again and again.

In the coolness and quiet of the mountains one can think clearly about important things, such as ambition and lack of it, or the conundrum of whether one declines to try out of a false sense of decorum, or just plain laziness. Personal doubts aside, right now the great question seems to be the economic inequality generated by capitalism and free enterprise, and the egalitarian drive bursting out in anti-capitalist demonstrations and militant rage, as in London this week. Mind you, the impression I got from looking at British television was that Jeremy Corbyn had won the election, and that the Tories, in a fit of pique, had allowed the fire at the Grenfell estate to get out of hand and burn Africans and Muslims alive. Talk about the power of the idiot box and the irresponsibility of leftie hacks.

Britain now resembles Central America, where the loser, immediately after an election, declares it null and void and demands a repeat performance. What is the difference between John McDonnells call for a million people to take to the streets and a banana-republic electoral losers call for civil disobedience? The temperature, I suppose. Never mind. My social schedule is rather full, starting next week, and I thank the Almighty that I no longer go to Ascot to keep company with glorified hairdressers and other such nice folk.

I know, it sounds snobby as hell, but Ive had it with this smouldering class resentment in Britain. We will always have differences in looks, intelligence and bank accounts, and if that causes outraged shrieks among do-gooders and phonies, too bad. Such is life. Immediately after the last world war, with all the large pleasure boats having been requisitioned by the warring states, I walked about the various marinas in the south of France and saw only tiny sailing boats or fishing vessels. Shipyards didnt start to build pleasure yachts until well into the 1950s. Hence all bathers looked the same, although I do remember King Farouk being held up by two flunkies on account of his weight. Then the yachts began to appear, separating the men from the boys. And the men did get to pick up women while the boys kept to their swimming. Life, after all, is unfair, and a man with a yacht has a better chance of picking up a tart than a man whose only asset at sea is his bathing suit.

Am I going all Ayn Rand on you? God, I hope not. She was too awful a woman, an arch capitalist and a man-eating cougar if ever there was one; not the most attractive of females. She did for selfishness what the saints did for altruism, and then some. But she had some very good points. When she was asked by her publisher to cut John Galts speech in Atlas Shrugged a long paean to runaway capitalism and individualism she snapped, Would you cut the Bible?

Rand was committed to the idea that capitalism was the greatest way of organising society ever invented, having experienced hunger and oppression and the loss of all her family wealth in St Petersburg to the communists. Once in the land of opportunity, Rand changed her name from Rosenbaum and took to wearing a dollar-sign pin to make sure people knew of her love of capitalism. The one problem Rand had were the businessmen she met. They did not match up to the bermenschen of her imagination, or those she created in her fiction. In fact, Rand had no more reverence for real capitalists than fellow intellectuals did. At the end, her individualism owed more to Nietzsche than to Adam Smith, but never mind. We could use someone like her in the capital this week, especially when the militants rage up and down central London screaming Tory scum and other such intellectual put-downs.

I suppose the best medicine for those consumed by rage against the system would be a bit of collectivism la North Korea. The Corbynites have never seen collectivism up close. This is why Poles and Hungarians and others who suffered so under communism have such adamantine confidence in the free-enterprise system. And it is why we would have the last laugh if, God forbid, people such as Corbyn ever came to power and turned this green and pleasant land into one of misery and poverty. But enough of thinking seriously. Time for a drink, and perhaps more than just the one.

More:

Where's Ayn Rand when you need her? - Spectator.co.uk

Thomas Edison inspires Navicure Chief Growth Officer Kermit Randa Atlanta Business Chronicle Most influential book: Atlas shrugged. Fantastic book that everyone should read no matter their political perspective. We used it as mandatory reading for new hires at one of my previous companies. I recommend it to people all the time. Favorite ...

Original post:

Thomas Edison inspires Navicure Chief Growth Officer Kermit Randa - Atlanta Business Chronicle

During a speech before the National Association of Manufacturers, June 20, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) pledged to lower taxes and streamline the tax filing process. (The Washington Post)

While Republicans in the Senate work out how to take health insurance away from millions of Americans, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) turns his attention to the other great crusade that animates his career: tax cuts. This afternoon, Ryan is giving a speech to a friendly audience of lobbyists at the National Association of Manufacturers, in which he will lay out his vision for the next phase of the great Republican project, once health care is (one way or another) out of the way.

Ryan may not be the hard-nosed, number-crunching policy wonk hes often portrayed as in the press, but he is certainly a man of substantive beliefs. Unlike his Senate counterpart Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who plainly has no sincerely felt goal other than acquiring and holding power, Ryan has policy changes he desperately wants to see. Among them, only destroying the safety net can rival his deep and abiding wish that America might ease the burden of taxation under which our countrys rich, super-rich and corporations suffer so unjustly.

According to excerpts of his speech released in advance, hell tell his audience: We need to get this done in 2017. We cannot let this once-in-a-generation moment slip. While cutting taxes might slip into 2018, Ryan is basically right. It may not be quite a once-in-a-generation opportunity, but it only comes along when Republicans have unified control of government which they might only have until 2018.

While Ryan may not get everything he wants out of tax reform, he stands a very good chance of getting most of it. Republicans will move heaven and earth to pass something not because they feel pressure from their constituents Americans are not exactly crying out for tax cuts but because they believe in it. If we cant cut taxes on the wealthy, they ask each other, then why are we here? Whats the point of having power if you dont use it for this? So heres what Ryan is proposing to do, per the speech excerpts:

Among these, only the increase in the standard deduction is aimed at the non-wealthy. As the Tax Policy Center wrote last year about an earlier version of this plan:

Three-quarters of total tax cuts would go to the top 1 percent, who would receive an average cut of nearly $213,000, or 13.4 percent of after-tax income. The top 0.1 percent would receive an average tax cut of about $1.3 million (16.9 percent of after-tax income). In contrast, the average tax cut for the lowest-income households would be just $50.

While the figures for this latest iteration will vary somewhat, the essential idea will be the same. This is part of the Republican tax template going way back: Make sure that even lower-income people get something in your tax cut, even if its tiny and the vast majority of the benefits go to the wealthy. Then you can say, This isnt about the wealthy were cutting taxes for everybody!

There are differences among Republicans on some points. For instance, many of President Trumps economic advisers dont like the border adjustment tax (which is essentially a big tariff on imported goods that would be paid by consumers), which means it will probably be dropped. But the good news for Ryan and Republicans is that even if cutting taxes for the wealthy isnt popular, it tends not to generate intense, concentrated resistance of the kind that makes members of Congress skittish about voting for it.

Thats because, unlike health-care reform, taxes are not an issue where its easy (or even possible) for citizens to see a direct harm Republican policies might do to them. If I take away your coverage or enable insurers to deny you coverage because of your preexisting condition, youll know thats bad for you. But if I give a tax break to the millionaires who live in that gated community on the other side of town? You may think its unfair and you may not like it, but since it doesnt seem like it will have an immediate impact on you, youre much less likely to march in the streets or call your member of Congress to stop it from happening.

Furthermore, Ryan and the Republicans know that the public has virtually no historical memory, which enables the GOP to make bogus arguments about taxes and convince many people that theyre true. Why is it necessary to make these tax cuts? Because this will create jobs, Ryan will say in his speech, according to the excerpts. That is what this is all about: jobs, jobs, jobs. Good, high-paying jobs.

Just like all those millions of high-paying jobs that were created when George W. Bush passed a similar set of tax cuts for the wealthy in 2001 and 2003, which brought about the economic nirvana of explosive job and wage growth Republicans like Ryan promised the tax cuts would produce. Thats what happened, right?

Thats not what happened, of course just the opposite. But Paul Ryan is undeterred. Hes a man of substance, but hes no empiricist. What experience teaches him about the world we live in is far less important than the dream that implanted itself in his heart when he read Atlas Shrugged as an impressionable youth. Whatever else does or doesnt make it through Congress, Ryan will get his tax cuts.

Link:

Paul Ryan's passionate call to cut taxes on the wealthy and corporations - Washington Post (blog)

Rand kicks things off with dread and doom. The world is in serious trouble: the economy is tanking, and the government is becoming crazy-oppressive. But fear not: we meet two heroic businesspeople who might just be savvy enough to keep the country going. Hank Rearden and Dagny Taggart team up on a major mission: to build a railroad to provide all the up-and-coming businesses in Colorado with transportation for their merchandise. Hank and Dagny succeed, with the help of some other good businesspeople, and the John Galt Line, which uses a special metal that Hank invented, is a success.

Who is John Galt? Well, the whole world is wondering that. While all this is going on, more and more talented people are mysteriously disappearing, and John Galt may just have something to do with it. But Hank and Dagny are more concerned with other things now. The two begin a romantic relationship and a new quest: to find the inventor of an abandoned high-tech motor that could transform the world. The search leads them all over the country, where they are increasingly confronted with evidence of the bad economy and government.

Things begin going rapidly downhill for Hank and Dagny. The government, a sleazy crowd of politicians and businesspeople (including Dagny's weasel of a brother James), passes a series of laws that restrict people's freedoms. These laws particularly target successful industrialists and make business, and life, hard and miserable. More and more industrialists disappear and Dagny becomes obsessed with tracking down the "destroyer" of the world.

Hank, meanwhile, is coming to some painful personal realizations about his family life and his morals. He is being helped along by the mysterious Francisco d'Anconia, a supposed playboy who used to date Dagny and is somehow connected to the "destroyer." Dagny sets off on a desperate solo quest to stop a scientist from quitting his job and disappearing. While following the scientist, Dagny crashes her plane in Colorado.

When she wakes up, she finds herself in the secret hideaway of none other than John Galt and his fellow strikers. This valley is often referred to as Galt's Gulch by the strikers, though Dagny calls it Atlantis. Galt is both the inventor of the motor and the "destroyer," and he's calling talented people together to go on strike in order to show the government how harmful their policies are. Galt and his followers refuse to cooperate with an oppressive regime, which they call the "looters."

Galt has been in love with Dagny for years, and she quickly falls for him too. But Dagny can't bring herself to stay on strike in Galt's Gulch, since she still feels she can fight the terrible government. Dagny returns home and has an amicable breakup with Hank, who shortly thereafter joins the strike and leaves for Atlantis.

After things in the world become even worse, Galt makes a long radio address, outlining his philosophy and asking people to stop going along with the bad government policies. But Galt is captured by the government shortly thereafter and is tortured. Dagny, helped by Hank, Francisco, and other strikers, rescues Galt, and the group flees for Atlantis as the country's infrastructure collapses. At the very end, Galt and his strikers make plans to return to the world and to fix it.

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Atlas Shrugged Summary - Shmoop - Shmoop: Homework Help ...

When the Supreme Court handed down Citizens United, most people decried the end of campaign finance reform or rejoiced at all the Obama is a criminal ads they could buy with the backing of kooky billionaires. But the decision also erected a signpost marking the path that most defines the Roberts Court: the provisions of the Bill of Rights are for making money. That corporations are people has reached the point of clich, but theres a reason Roberts started issuing all his oaths of office on a dog-eared copy of Atlas Shrugged when no one was looking.

So when Simon Tams case reached the Supreme Court, we all knew what was going to happen. Tam, a member of an all Asian-American band called The Slants, challenged 15 U. S. C. 1052(a), which sets standards for trademark protection to bar marks that disparage or bring into contemp[t] or disrepute any persons, living or dead. Tams group believes their use of a known slur against Asians and those of Asian descent is an act of reclamation and not one of disparagement.

An interesting factual challenge wouldve considered Brandeis Brief style the expanding body of academic work on the nature of linguistic reclamation and delve into whether the facile neutrality imposed upon words like disparage in the application of the statute improperly excluded valuable expressions from the financial protection provided by a federal grant of intellectual property protection. That would have been a fascinating dive into the changing meaning of language and the problems inherent in interpreting terms in legal texts from a cemented perspective of whiteness.

As would someone just pointing out that the statute is unconstitutionally vague which is the right answer! and calling it a day. But the Court decided to drop an ode to how fundamental rights really only matter as long as theyre about making money, because after all, the business of America is business.

It wasnt a pretty opinion. Professor Crouch said of the opinion that the Courts logic is largely incomprehensible. But the real nut of the opinion can be found in the opening paragraphs of Justice Alitos majority opinion:

We now hold that this provision violates the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. It offends a bedrock First Amendment principle: Speech may not be banned on the ground that it expresses ideas that offend.

Good point! Except no one was trying to ban any speech here. But other than that basic, foundational fact, this is a good point.

What the statute did authorize the USPTO to do is to say, The government wont grant a federally registered trademark with no bearing on your state and common law rights to protect marks for marks that offend. That aside is critically important. An unregistered mark is not some kiss of death to protecting an intellectual property right, and nothing about this statute sought to interfere with that. There are advantages in having the federal government maintain a list of registered marks, but registration is not the source of trademark protection.

Federal trademark protection flows from the congressional power to regulate interstate commerce, and in light of the broad grant of power the Framers gave the government here, its entirely reasonable for the government to impose limits on what marks it gives the imprimatur of nationwide recognition, in the interest of regulating the market. This isnt banning someone from expressing a disparaging view. Its not even banning someone from making money off a disparaging view. The statute barred the federal government from inserting itself into a potential dispute between someone trying to make money off a racial slur and someone trying to make bootleg products to make money off that same racial slur. And, as already discussed, it doesnt even stop someone from suing the bootlegger.

And its in this reasoning, adopted by the majority in a rather fractured decision, that really draws a straight line from Citizens United where the right to express a political opinion metastasized into the right to buy the most access for a propaganda blitz. To the majority of this Court, what interests them about Free Speech isnt protecting the right of individuals to express unpopular or even offensive opinions. When it comes to protecting protestors arrested and bullied for speaking out especially if they do it in front of the Supreme Court this Court isnt eager to lend a helping hand. But if they can spin the hyperbole wheel and transform a government regulation that makes it ever so slightly more difficult to make money into a ban on speech, theyre right there for you. Thats the Bill of Rights this Court wants to build caselaw about.

If only those wrongfully convicted death row prisoners could find a pecuniary justification for staying alive.

(Opinion on the next page.)

Joe Patriceis an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free toemail any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him onTwitterif youre interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.

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Supreme Court Confirms The Bill Of Rights Is Just About Making ... - Above the Law

I feel like my arm is all warmed up and I dont have a game to pitch. I was primed to review "Atlas Shrugged." I figured it might provide a parable of Ayn Rands philosophy that I could discuss. For me, that philosophy reduces itself to: "Im on board; pull up the lifeline." There are however people who take Ayn Rand even more seriously than comic-book fans take "Watchmen." I expect to receive learned and sarcastic lectures on the pathetic failings of my review.

And now I am faced with this movie, the most anticlimactic non-event since Geraldo Rivera broke into Al Capones vault. I suspect only someone very familiar with Rands 1957 novel could understand the film at all, and I doubt they will be happy with it. For the rest of us, it involves a series of business meetings in luxurious retro leather-and-brass board rooms and offices, and restaurants and bedrooms that look borrowed from a hotel no doubt known as the Robber Baron Arms.

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During these meetings, everybody drinks. More wine is poured and sipped in this film than at a convention of oenophiliacs. There are conversations in English after which I sometimes found myself asking, "What did they just say?" The dialogue seems to have been ripped throbbing with passion from the pages of Investors Business Daily. Much of the excitement centers on the tensile strength of steel.

The story involves Dagny Taggart (Taylor Schilling), a young woman who controls a railroad company named Taggart Transcontinental (its motto: "Ocean to Ocean"). She is a fearless and visionary entrepreneur, who is determined to use a revolutionary new steel to repair her train tracks. Vast forces seem to conspire against her.

Its a few years in the future. America has become a state in which mediocrity is the goal, and high-achieving individuals the enemy. Laws have been passed prohibiting companies from owning other companies. Dagnys new steel, which is produced by her sometime lover, Hank Rearden (Grant Bowler), has been legislated against because its better than other steels. The Union of Railroad Engineers has decided it will not operate Dagnys trains. Just to show you how bad things have become, a government minister announces "a tax will be applied to the state of Colorado, in order to equalize our national economy." So you see how governments and unions are the enemy of visionary entrepreneurs.

But youre thinking, railroads? Yes, although airplanes exist in this future, trains are where its at. When I was 6, my Aunt Martha brought me to Chicago to attend the great Railroad Fair of 1948, at which the nations rail companies celebrated the wonders that were on the way. They didnt quite foresee mass air transportation. "Atlas Shrugged" seems to buy into the fairs glowing vision of the future of trains. Rarely, perhaps never, has television news covered the laying of new railroad track with the breathless urgency of the news channels shown in this movie.

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So OK. Lets say you know the novel, you agree with Ayn Rand, youre an objectivist or a libertarian, and youve been waiting eagerly for this movie. Man, are you going to get a letdown. Its not enough that a movie agree with you, in however an incoherent and murky fashion. It would help if it were like, you know, entertaining?

The movie is constructed of a few kinds of scenes: (1) People sipping their drinks in clubby surroundings and exchanging dialogue that sounds like corporate lingo; (2) railroads, and lots of em; (3) limousines driving through cities in ruin and arriving at ornate buildings; (4) city skylines; (5) the beauties of Colorado. There is also a love scene, which is shown not merely from the waist up but from the ears up. The man keeps his shirt on. This may be disappointing for libertarians, who I believe enjoy rumpy-pumpy as much as anyone.

Oh, and there is Wisconsin. Dagny and Hank ride blissfully in Taggarts new high-speed train, and then Hank suggests they take a trip to Wisconsin, where the states policies caused the suppression of an engine that runs on the ozone in the air, or something (the films detailed explanation wont clear this up). They decide to drive there. Thats when youll enjoy the beautiful landscape photography of the deserts of Wisconsin. My advice to the filmmakers: If you want to use a desert, why not just refer to Wisconsin as "New Mexico"?

"Atlas Shrugged" closes with a title card saying, "End of Part 1." Frequently throughout the film, characters repeat the phrase, "Who is John Galt?" Well they might ask. A man in black, always shot in shadow, is apparently John Galt. If you want to get a good look at him and find out why everybody is asking, I hope you can find out in Part 2. I dont think you can hold out for Part 3.

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Atlas Shrugged Movie Review & Film Summary (2011 ... - Roger ...