By Jennifer Burns By Jennifer Burns March 3 at 8:28 AM

Jennifer Burns is an Associate Professor of History at Stanford University and a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Ayn Rand is dead. Its been 35 years since hundreds of mourners filed by her coffin (fittingly accompanied by a dollar-sign-shaped flower arrangement), but it has been only four months since she truly died as a force in American politics. Yes, there was aflurryofarticles identifyingRand lovers in the Trump administration, including Rex Tillerson and Mike Pompeo; yes, Ivanka Trumptweetedaninaccurate Rand quotein mid-February. But the effort to fix a recognizable right-wing ideology on President Trump only obscures the more significant long-term trends that the election of 2016 laid bare.However much Trump seems like the Rand hero par excellence a wealthy man with a fiery belief in, well, himself his victory signals the exhaustion of the Republican Partys romance with Rand.

In electing Trump, the Republican base rejected laissez-faire economics in favor of economic nationalism. Full-fledged objectivism, the philosophy Rand invented, is an atheistic creed that calls for pure capitalism and a bare-bones government with no social spending on entitlement programs such as Social Security or Medicare. Itsnever appeared on the national political scene without significant dilution. But there was plenty of diluted Rand on offer throughout the primary season: Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Carly Fiorina and Ted Cruz all espoused traditional Republican nostrums about reducing the role of government to unleash American prosperity.

Yetnone of this could match Trumps full-throated roar to build a wallor his protectionist plans for American trade. In the general election,Trumpsought outnew voters and independents using arguments traditionally associated with Democrats: deploying the power of the state to protect workers and guarantee their livelihoods, even at the cost of trade agreements and long-standing international alliances. Trumps economic promises electrifiedruralworking-class voters the same way Bernie Sanders excited urban socialists.Where Rands influence has stood for years on the right for a hands-off approach to the economy,Trumps America first platformcontradicts this premise by assuming that government policies can and should deliberately shape economic growth, up to and includingpunishing specific corporations. Likewise, his promise to craft trade policy in support of the American worker is the exact opposite of Rands proclamation that the essence of capitalisms foreign policy is free trade.

And theres little hope that Trumps closest confidants will reverse his decidedly anti-Randian course. Theconservative Republicanswhocame to powerwith Trumpin an almost accidental processmay findthey have to exchange certain ideals to stay close to him. True, Paul Ryan and Mike Pence have been able to breathe new life into Republican economic and social orthodoxies. For instance, in a nod to Pences religious conservatism, Trump shows signs ofreversing his earlier friendlinessto gay rights. And his opposition to Obamacare dovetails with Ryans long-held ambitions to shrink federal spending. Even so, there is little evidence that either Pence or Ryan would have survived a Republican primary battle against Trump or fared well in a national election; their fortunes are dependent on Trumps. And the president won by showing that the Republican base and swing voters have moved on from the traditional conservatism of Reagan and Rand.

What is rising on the right is not Randian fear of government but something far darker. It used to be that bright young things likeStephen Miller, Trumps controversial White House aide, came up on Rand. In the 1960s, she inspired a rump movement of young conservatives determined to subvert the GOP establishment, drawing in future bigwigs such as Alan Greenspan. Her admirers were powerfully attracted to the insurgent presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater, whom Rand publicly supported. They swooned when she talked about the ethics of capitalism, delegitimizing programs like Medicare and Medicaid as immoral. They thrilled to her attack on the draft and other conservative pieties. At national conferences, they asked each other, Who is John Galt? (a reference to her novel Atlas Shrugged) and waved the black flag of anarchism, modified with a gold dollar sign.

Over time, most conservatives who stayed in politics outgrew these juvenile provocations or disavowed them. For example, Ryan moved swiftly toreplace Rand with Thomas Aquinaswhen he was nominated in 2012 for vice president, claiming that the Catholic thinker was his primary inspiration (although it was copies of Atlas Shrugged, not Summa Theologiae, that he handed out to staffers). But former Randites retained her fiery hatred of government and planted it within the mainstream GOP. And it was Rand who had kindled their passions in the first place, making her the starting point for a generation of conservatives.

Now Rand is on the shelf, gathering dust with F.A. Hayek, Edmund Burke and otheronce-prominentconservative luminaries. Its no longer possible to provoke the elders by going on about John Galt. Indeed, many of the elders have by now used Randian references to name theiryachts,investment companiesandfoundations.

Instead, young insurgent conservatives talk about race realism,argue that manipulated crime statisticsmask growing social disorderand cast feminism as aplot against men. Instead of reading Rand, they take the red pill, indulging in an emergent internet counter-culture that reveals the principles of liberalism rights, equality, tolerance to be dangerous myths. BeyondBreitbart.com, ideological energy on the right now courses through tiny blogs and websites of the Dark Enlightenment, the latter-day equivalent of RandsObjectivist Newsletterand the many libertarian zines she inspired.

Once upon a time, professors tut-tutted when Rand spoke to overflow crowds on college campuses, where she lambasted left and right alike and claimed, improbably, that big business wasAmericas persecuted minority. She delighted in skewering liberal audience members and occasionally turned her scorn on questioners. But this was soft stuff compared with the insults handed out by Milo Yiannopoulosand the uproar that has greeted his appearances.Rand may have accused liberals of having a lust for power, but she never would have called Holocaust humor a harmless search for lulz, as Yiannopoulos gleefully does.

Indeed, the new ideas on the right have moved away from classical liberalism altogether. American conservatives have always had a mixed reaction to the Western philosophical tradition that emphasizes the sanctity of the individual. Religious conservatives, in particular, often struggle with Rand because her extreme embrace of individualism leaves little room for God, country, duty or faith. But Trump represents a victory for a form of conservatism that is openly illiberal and willing to junk entirely the traditional rhetoric of individualism and free markets for nationalism inflected with racism, misogyny and xenophobia.

Mixed in with Rands vituperative attacks on government was a defense of the individuals rights in the face of a powerful state. This single-minded focus could yield surprising alignments, such as Rands opposition to drug laws and her support of legal abortion. And although liberals have always loved to hate her, over the next four years, they may come to miss herdefense of individual autonomy and liberty. Ayn Rand is dead.Long live Ayn Rand!

Excerpt from:

Ayn Rand is dead. Liberals are going to miss her. - Washington Post

Henry Cavill in Batman v Superman

Much of the reason for the continued popularity of Christopher Reeves portrayal was the commitment he gave to the character irrespective of whether he was saving Lois from falling to her death or rescuing a kitten for a little girl. For Rand the little girl is a moocher, Lane only worth rescuing if Superman sees in her his self-interest (as in, if he wont get laid, she can hit the pavement). Applying an Objectivist view point to Superman results in the muddled character Batman v Superman presents.

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In 2016, Zack Snyders Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice staggered its way to over $800 million at the global box office. For many films this would have been a considerable success, but for one with such high expectations that cost in excess of $250 million to produce and market, and was supposed to be the tent pole off which Warner Bros would hang its DC extended universe it was a disappointment (especially when rival superhero bout Captain America: Civil War powered past the billion mark). Alongside the perceived failings of Suicide Squad, changes occurred at the top of Warners, with Geoff Johns becoming the new creative lead tasked with adding more levity to the DC universe. But I would argue that Batman v Supermans shortcomings, and those of its 2013 prequel Man of Steel, have more to do with the philosophical beliefs of their director, Zack Snyder, than simply with tone.

Among the many negative reviews (the film currently has a score of 27% on Rotten Tomatoes) and fan reactions, a noted theme developed: that the film, and the filmmakers, were clearly more interested in Batman than Superman (hence his first billing) and that Batman v Superman failed to capture the essence of the Superman character and mythology built up since his debut in Action Comics #1 in 1938. Much of the negative reaction focused on the generally glum tone taken with a character who had previously been seen (particularly in the Christopher Reeve incarnation) as the embodiment of light and hope. Similar issues had been taken with Man of Steel, especially in the sequence where Superman, as Clark Kent, allowed his adopted father to die in a tornado. How could the filmmakers so misunderstand such an American icon?

In March 2016, while finishing work on Batman v Superman, Snyder stated in a profile in The Hollywood Reporter that:

I have been working on The Fountainhead. Ive always felt like The Fountainhead was such a thesis on the creative process and what it is to create something. Warner Bros. owns [Ayn Rands] script and Ive just been working on that a little bit.

Zack Snyder, 2013. Photo by Eva Rinaldi, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

This quote reveals Snyders interest in Rand and Objectivism and points to a key reason why his version of Superman fails to live up to the characters nearly 80 years of history. Indeed, Rands ideas have become increasingly popular since the 1980s and, if the Atlas Society is to be believed, well liked in Hollywood. And this makes sense, as on the surface Rand advocates a self-made hero, one who uses his talents for his own gain. For Rand, this rational selfishness is the key to improving society, and on the surface Superman might appear to be a reasonable simulacrum of the Randian Hero; strong muscular types, who are handsome, well-built, and possess an iron will. But if we delve into Supermans conception, we can see that he really stands as Objectivisms antithesis.

Supermans Left-Wing Origins

Created in the 1930s by two young Jewish high school students, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Superman went through several iterations before they settled on the version that would catch fire with the public and start a superhero boom. These early stories may come as a surprise for those with only a casual knowledge of the Man of Steels history: he tackled gangsters, slum landlords, and profiteers rather than mad scientists or alien threats (as detailed by Les Daniels, 1998). Siegel and Shuster had taken their Superman ideal and put him to work as an often violent hero, not averse to killing the odd wife beater. As sales grew, the publisher asked Siegel to cut out the guns and knives and cut back on social crusading (Larry Tye, 2012), but the essence of Superman was set. Drawing inspiration from film star Douglas Fairbanks Sr. (in his portrayals of Robin Hood and Zorro), Siegel and Shuster deigned that Superman would use his powers for the good of all, while his alter ego, journalist Clark Kent (an embodiment of the reality of the creators lives), struggled to get the story or the girl. As wish fulfilment Superman is revealing rather than using his unlimited powers for self-gain, Siegel and Schuster wrote Superman as selfless, one who instinctively uses his powers for others. Its something that 1978s Superman (Richard Donner) was imbued with, developed in the characters Kansas upbringing (a sort of gee whiz nostalgia for 1950s morals) and the screenplays treatment of the character as a Christ figure.

In a message left for him to discover, Supermans Kryptonian father Kal-El (Marlon Brando) intones,

They can be a great people, Kal-El, they wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you my only son.

Biblical allusions aside (and there are many more in the film), the essence of Superman was captured; someone who does good, because it is good to do so. Rands conception of a hero, and indeed of good, is rather different.

Rands Hero

Ayn Rands passport photo, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

In Atlas Shrugged, the philosopher character Ragnar Danneskjld pronounces: Robin Hood He was the man who robbed the rich and gave to the poor. Well, Im the man who robs the poor and gives to the rich or, to be exact, the man who robs the thieving poor and gives back to the productive rich.

Rands philosophy is based on the conception that being selfish is a moral good, and that the sole aim of life is to pursue happiness through productive achievement (quoted by Joseph Breslin). In this conception, a folk hero like Robin Hood is punishing those who produce, to feed moochers and looters. The looters are the government types who take from the productive to give to the unproductive moochers, and all are keeping great men back.

Paperback cover

So what of societys poor and disadvantaged? Well, its their fault, and you owe them nothing, according to Rand. In Atlas Shrugged, the hero John Galt outlines this clearly, Do you ask what moral obligation I owe to my fellow men? None except the obligation I owe to myself, to material objects and to all of existence: rationality. In Rands conception the poor and the needy are parasites, living off the talent and industry of others. As she explained: The Objectivist ethics holds that human good does not require human sacrifices and cannot be achieved by the sacrifice of anyone to anyone (www.aynrand.org). No wonder Superman looks so glum rescuing flood victims in Batman v Superman theyre just moochers who should have worked harder to provide a better shelter for themselves.

The Randian hero is one who concentrates on himself, pursues his goals for their own worth without thought or sense of society. In Rands view, happiness is achieved through selfishness, through taking care of the individuals needs and not caving in to moralities that suggest that self-sacrifice and sharing can lead to happiness. In this conception of the universe Superman cannot be happy in his rescuing of the innocent, only in his time with Lois in which he displays and pursues his own desires. Happiness comes partly by treating others as individuals, trading value for value (www.aynrand.org) thus relations with others are predicated on trade, on exchange. What have the helpless and needy got to give Superman? If Clark Kent had been adopted by Rand instead of Ma and Pa Kent, what would have stopped him from becoming a tyrannical overlord?

Margot Kidder and Christopher Reeve in Superman 1978

Much of the reason for the continued popularity of Christopher Reeves portrayal was the commitment he gave to the character irrespective of whether he was saving Lois from falling to her death or rescuing a kitten for a little girl. For Rand the little girl is a moocher, Lane only worth rescuing if Superman sees in her his self-interest (as in, if he wont get laid, she can hit the pavement). Applying an Objectivist view point to Superman results in the muddled character Batman v Superman presents.

Superman in Batman v Superman

The failings of Snyders Superman can be summed up in a conversation the character has with his Earth mother Martha Kent during Batman v Superman. In the exchange, Martha explains to Superman, You dont owe this world a thing. You never did. This is the world that nourishes him (literally, as the yellow sun generates his power) and provided loving parents, but this sequence suggests he doesnt have to pay heed to that. In Man of Steel, the death of Jonathan Kent, during a tornado, illustrates this viewpoint. Rather than reveal his powers to the world, Clark lets him die, and the film suggests Jonathan is all right with that. Personal priorities triumph over anothers need.

A key element of Batman v Superman is the re-creation of the popular Death of Superman storyline from the 1990s comics, but the differences between the film and the original are instructive. By removing the battle with Doomsday to outside Metropolis and making Doomsday a creation of Kryptonian DNA and technology, Snyder removes the social good of Supermans sacrifice in the fight, but also the connection to the extended family generated over decades in the comic book. Rather than a sacrifice for the lives of others, his death becomes a moment of sacrifice for himself, a personal atonement rather than an act of social good. In the comic, his death is viewed by close friends, other heroes, and strangers. In the film, there is Lois Lane (his lover), Batman (who 10 minutes earlier was trying to kill him), and Wonder Woman (a stranger). The contrived pieta illustrates just how far Snyder misunderstands Superman by redrawing him along Rands selfish lines. This selfish self-sacrifice misses the essence of drama that exists in a character who can do almost everything. It is in the choice (of how, when, and who) to help that Supermans character fascinates. This dramatic axis is underpinned by the character of Clark Kent, his humanity motivating Supermans choices. There is no self-interested reason for Superman to retain the Clark Kent persona after he is revealed to the world (is it any wonder, then, that Clark Kent is such a small part of Batman v Superman and is killed off)? Superman is tethered to the world by his/Clarks extended family, something Snyder was happy to partially dispense with in the killing of Supermans Pal Jimmy Olsen, something the director described as fun (www.independent.co.uk).

Batman v Superman

Ben Affleck in Batman v Superman

Despite the overall negative tone of the critical reaction to Batman v Superman, some praise was given for Ben Afflecks Batman. How can a film that misunderstands one hero get the other right? The secret may be in comic author Frank Millers liking for Rand (Miller authored The Dark Knight Returns on which Batman v Superman is partially based). The Atlas Societys website quotes Miller,

I was drawn again and again to the ideas presented by Ayn Rand in her 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged. Eschewing the easy and much-used totalitarian menace made popular by George Orwell, Rand focused instead on issues of competence and incompetence, courage and cowardice, and took the fate of humanity out of the hands of a convenient Big Brother and placed it in the hands of individuals with individual strengths and individual choices made for good or evil. I gratefully and humbly acknowledge the creative debt.

Batman works well as a Randian hero the rich individual, working out his personal neuroses by beating up the moochers and looters (interestingly he has no moochers in his own house dependents Alfred, Robin, et al. have to work for their keep). In Millers The Dark Knight Returns, a retired, older Bruce Wayne returns to being Batman not because he wants to help the city, rather because his personal obsession is inescapable. For Miller, Superman becomes a government stooge, his patriotism and commitment to good tethering him to the looting politicians.

Superman shrugged: Batman v Superman

By basing much of Batman v Superman on Millers work, and with a fan of Rand at the helm, Superman gets a raw deal. Gone is the nobility of helping those who cant help themselves. What is left is an image of Superman, but one that is hollow and missing its essence. This year a Justice League movie is being released (also directed by Snyder), with a Man of Steel sequel planned. Only ditching Rands quasi-philosophy can get Superman back on track and revive the character.

Works Cited

Bidinotto, Robert James. Celebrity Rand Fans. The Atlas Society. https://atlassociety.org/commentary/commentary-blog/4598-celebrity-rand-fans

Breslin, Joseph. Ayn Rand: The Good, Bad & Obscene or Why Objectivism Is Flawed. The Washington Times. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/dec/31/ayn-rand-good-bad-obscene-or-why-objectivism-flawe/

Daniels, Les. Superman: The Complete History The Life and Times of the Man of Steel. Chronicle Books, 1998.

Miller, Frank. The Dark Knight Returns. DC Comics, 2006.

Rand, Ayn. Atlas Shrugged. Penguin Classics, 2007.

Shepherd, Jack. Batman v Superman Director Zack Snyder Explains Why He Killed Off Jimmy Olsen. The Independent. http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/batman-v-superman-zack-snyder-explains-why-he-killed-off-jimmy-olsen-a6954956.html

Siegel, Tatiana. Batman v. Superman: Married Creative Duo on That R-Rated DVD, Plans for DC Superhero Universe. The Hollywood Reporter. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/batman-v-superman-married-creative-874799

Tye, Larry. Superman: The High-Flying History of Americas Most Enduring Hero. Random House New York, 2012.

Introduction to Objectivism. https://www.aynrand.org/ideas/overview

Selfishness. https://campus.aynrand.org/lexicon/selfishness

http://www.boxofficemojo.com

Go here to read the rest:

Superman v Objectivism: Forget Lex Luthor and Brainiac; Could Ayn Rand Be Superman's Biggest Enemy? - Bright Lights Film Journal (blog)

Event Date:

Tuesday, March 7, 2017 (All day) - Saturday, March 11, 2017 (All day)

ALFA BOOK STORE NEWS FOR THE WEEK OF MARCH 7 THRU MARCH 11 Coming Events: The Members Only Half Price Sale will be held Friday, March 10 and Saturday, March 11. Paperback books will be 50cents and hardback books will be $1. New books: James Patterson now offers a series of books you can devour in a few hours called the Book Shots Series. One of those is currently on the new book shelf. Kill or Be Killed includes four thrillers: The Trial, Heist, The Womans War and Little Black Dress. The shelves with military books has recently had an infusion of new books including U.S. Army, A Complete History, Conduct Unbecoming, American Guerrilla, Seal Target Geronimo, and Seal Team Six to name a few. On the young readers shelves the series of P.C. Casts books Marked, Betrayed, Chosen and Hunted can be found. The classic shelves house The Odyssey, Uncle Toms Cabin, The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden, Atlas Shrugged and many more well know classics. Visit the Book Store located in the library. You will find a wide variety of books and you could also find some of our in-store specials some as low as 20cents. The store is open Tuesday from 10:30am to 7:30 pm and Wednesday thru Saturday from 10:30 to 4:30. All profits go to help the new library buy books and provide programs for the community.

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ALFA BOOK STORE NEWS FOR THE WEEK OF MARCH 7 THRU MARCH 11 - Alpine Sun

Ayn Rands divisive novel Atlas Shrugged offers both a frightening dystopia, where government regulation and totalitarianism force the gifted artists, scientists, and entrepreneurs to go on strike, and a hopeful utopia, where these gifted individuals are eventually free to produce great things. Rand warned in the 1960s that the US was a mixed economy heading towards dictatorship. With Donald Trump in The White House, it appears we are close to reaching that dictatorship stage, having perhaps reached it already.

There have been many protests against Trump, but strike action has also been taken. For instance, feminist groups have protested misogyny in the workplace and set up protests to close down streets, owing to Trumps appalling treatment of women. Though unlike in Atlas Shrugged, these strikes are also targeting neoliberal policies that have eroded social provision and labour rights.

Rand warned in the 1960s that the US was a mixed economy heading towards dictatorship

In addition, 127 top companies like Facebook, Google, Apple, Netflix, and Twitter have all filed court papers against Trumps executive order on immigration, stating it violates immigration laws and the Constitution. Most of this action prevents the freedom of movement of workers, simultaneously suppressing the progress and innovations these companies can make; Trump is blind-sighted to the fact that a large portion of the money America makes from companies comes from foreign workers. Hence, we would also be seeing how a society that uses force to over-regulate the private sector could stagnate and come close to collapsing, which is a major event that takes place in Atlas Shrugged.

What the book also shows, however, is that great thinkers with tenacious wills can overcome such forces of tyranny. In the future, more and more companies will likely strike out against Trump, and though theyd be unlikely to cease production, they might move production outside of the US, and stagnate the American economy. Once even the most ardent Trump supporters see that they have become worse off than before, they will defect against him, and America will come full circle.

Once even the most ardent Trump supporters see that they have become worse off than before, they will defect against him

The US probably wont however, embrace laissez-faire capitalism with total free markets and minimal government regulation, given that this was the underlying cause of the financial crisis. Big banks abused minimal regulation, fuelled a prejudice against immigrants and poor people, that then helped lead to Trumps rise to power. Nevertheless, the theme of individuals against the collective, that was paramount in Atlas Shrugged, is likely to resonate with many Americans today. Given that many people are furious at Trumps love of mob-mentality, stupidity, and suppression of anything that disagrees with him, it is likely that his presidency is a ticking Atlas-Shrugged time-bomb.

Excerpt from:

Strikes, Capitalism and Trump: A Review of Atlas Shrugged - The Boar

Because of his role in outing Soviet spy Alger Hiss, Whittaker Chambers other career, not that of paid witness he would become, has been overshadowed. For Chambers was a journalist par excellence. He had the distinction of having written for the New Masses, Time, and National Review.

At the time of his testimony, he was a highly-paid writer at Time. The pro-Hiss left no doubt wishes hed stayed at the typewriter rather than appearing behind a congressional microphone. Without Chambers, the Hiss case would never have gotten off the ground and Chambers would have toiled away his remaining days writing for Time, and Hiss leaking from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to Moscow.

To examine Chambers career without the Hiss case is, of course, impossible, but to examine his career solely on journalistic grounds reveals links between the different ideological magazines he wrote for. At first glance, a writer first for New Masses, then Time, then National Review shows chartable growth from communism to the mainstream then overshooting it into another political sect, the Buckley conservatives of the 1950s. But whatever party label he sported, his basic journalistic mission never changed, nor did his view of collectivist action.

While on the New Masses, Chambers differentiated himself from others by showing Marxists acting rather than preaching:

It occurred to me thatI might by writing, not political polemics which few people ever wanted to read, but stories that anybody might want to readstories in which the correct conduct of the Communist would be shown and without political comment.

The most praised of this formula, Can You Hear Their Voices? appeared in the January 1931 issue of the Masses, dealt with activist farmers who raid a food store during the worst of the Depression. Awakened to their collective power, they take food and arms into the mountains, like one of those resistance groups in a World War II film.

By the time his byline appeared in Time Magazine, Chambers had gone through six years of espionage work for the NKVD. NO longer pushing the history train toward the Revolution, Chambers was now trying to derail it. But the populist sense of reaching the masses via journalism remained.

Surveying the aftereffects on Western fellow travelers of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, Chambers saw his armed band of farmers circa 1931 now betrayed by this nave cadre who themselves thought they had enlisted in the cause of antifascism but were merely serving another variant of it:

How could they know that Lenin was the first fascist and that they were cooperating with the Party from which the Nazis borrowed all their important methods and ideas? By last week even the dullest fellow traveler found outAfter Stalins purge, the Nazi-Soviet Pact, Russian grab of half of Poland, 1940 betrayed the full sense of Stalin with his attacks on Finland, the seizure of part of Rumania and all of the Baltic States.

But Chambers hope for collective action remained, now centered on those who had fallen off the history train:

The Party had trained a group of men who would one day help destroy it. The literary intellectuals might be slow, lazy, self-important, impracticalbut they had reached their convictions not without years in the wilderness and days of blindness.

Chambers saw hope for a counterrevolution in Waldo Franks outline for action in Chart for Rough Weather and the writers observation that the struggle is for the human soul.

The election of 1944 saw the Partys most open and fervent support for FDR and the growing alarm of conservatives, and some liberals, about cultural dominance by Stalinists at home and their suspicious liberations of Nazi satellites abroad. It was also the year Chambers Ghosts on the Roof appeared in Time magazine. In it, Chambers was again trying to activate readers, this time through the approving ghosts of the murdered Nicholas and Alexandria toward the Party that murdered them. For the Czar, Stalin accomplished only what he had dreamed about:

What vision! What power! We have known nothing like it since my ancestor, Peter the Great, broke a window into Europe by overrunning the Baltic States in the 18th century. Stalin has made us great again!

Examining the Pact, the Czar noted rather enviously, I always wanted to take down those Poles a peg, but something was always tying my hands.

A decade later, Chambers again took up the familiar profession of journalism, this time on the staff of National Review. By now, he had gone through the emotionally brutalizing participation in the Hiss case, which provoked one suicide attempt. But his vision of journalism remained although this time focused on a very specific group: conservative Republicans. As opposed to 1941, he counseled his new comrades to cease their attempts at rolling back the New Deal (their stated editorial mission was for the magazine to stand athwart history, yelling Stop) and instead reap the benefits of accepting the drift of History:

Those who remain in the world, if they will not surrender to its terms, must maneuver within its terms. That is what conservatives must decide: how much to give in order to survive at all: how much to give up basic principles.

This sense of mission entailed cleansing conservatism of its more soulless elements such as Ayn Rand. Chambers review of Atlas Shrugged compared her atheistic capitalism to Karl Marx: He too admired naked self-interest and for much the same reasons as Miss Rand: because, he believed, it cleansed away the cobwebs of religion and led to prodigies of industrial and cognate accomplishments.

Thus, had there been no Hiss case, Chambers would have remained much of what he was: a crusading journalist. The familiar trajectory of the communist moving rightward fits him on the surface, but also doesnt. Along the way, he brought baggage with himnamely the Marxist baggage of journalism as a mass activator.

More:

Whittaker Chambers: Crusading Journalist | The Liberty Conservative - The Liberty Conservative

Illustration credit: Jim Cooke/Jalopnik

If there is one quote that sums up the ethos of Uber, it might be this cut from the companys firebrand CEO Travis Kalanick: Stand by your principles and be comfortable with confrontation. So few people are, so when the people with the red tape come, it becomes a negotiation. But after a month marked by one disaster after another, its hard to see how Ubers defiant, confrontational attitude hasnt blown up in its face. And those disasters mask one key, critical issue: Uber is doomed because it cant actually make money.

After a discombobulated 2016, in which Uber burned through more than $2 billion, amid findings that rider fares only cover roughly 40 percent of a ride, with the remainder subsidized by venture capitalists, its hard to imagine Kalanick could take the company public at its stunning current valuation of nearly $70 billion.

And now, in the past few weeks alone, Uber has been accused of having a workplace that fosters a culture of misogyny, accused of stealing from Google the blueprint of a successful self-driving system, and has lost 200,000 customers over ties to President Donald Trump and how it responded to a taxi driver boycott.

Yet even when those factors are removed, its becoming more evident that Uber will collapse on its own. Barring a drastic shift in the companys businessan implausible rollout of self-driving car fleets across the U.S., an increase of fares by three-fold, or a complete monopolization of the taxi and ride-hailing marketsUbers lifeline is shrinking. Its business model could collapse if one court case, and there are many, goes against it. Or perhaps more pressing, if it simply runs out of cash.

That Kalanick quote about confrontation may be as innocuous as a random sound bite, but its representative of the ride-hailing giants methodology since its founding in 2009: a perpetual resistance to regulatory oversight; a belief that, ultimately, an unfettered market is the key to prosperity.

At first glance it seems like Kalanicks libertarian ideals have paid off. Most recently valued at a reported $69 billion, Uber has captured a majority of the ground transportation market and flipped the taxi industrya sector Kalanick once famously and snidely referred to as the Big Taxi Cartelon its head. His philosophy mirrors the mindset of one of his favorite authors, the laissez-faire Ayn Rand. In 2012, Kalanick proffered that Ubers battle against government regulations has an uncanny resemblance to the Randian philosophy. A billionaire fighting The Systemand prevailing. Its a good story for those who find truth in Atlas Shrugged.

Ubers long had skeptics, and its not innovative to paint Kalanick, 40, as the boogeyman of Silicon Valley, where unseemly savants exist in vast supply.

The precarious moment in the companys eight-year history falls on Kalanicks lap. Its his baby after alla startup founded on seemingly nothing more than a vague idea, without much regard for the workforce to make it possible, or even a clear idea of what business model it actually wants to pursue. Uber has jumped from one idea to the next: UberX, UberEats, autonomous cars, and now flying cars, of all things.

The impact of Ubers death would probably be as much of a rebuke of Kalanicks vision of running on a scatterbrained dream, not so much a solid business model and philosophy, that you could muster.

It would also be devastating for some. The livelihood of 11,000 employees across the world rests on Kalanicks decision to submit to that philosophywhich, at its core, is a ruthless way of doing business. At the very least, drivers in the pre-Uber market could earn a decent living. Conversely, for example, Uber drivers taking advantage of new vehicle solution pilot program in Boston renting cars by the hour through Zipcar will earn less than Massachusetts minimum wage. How innovative.

One of the biggest issues that has left Ubers business model hanging in the balance is its resistance to classifying its driversthere are reportedly600,000 in the U.S.as employees, not contractors. If Uber is a house of cards, this is a key part of the foundation that, once removed, would demolish the structure.

Indeed, the company has said reclassifying drivers could force Uber to restructure its entire business model. The result of its opposition to readjust has been entirely expected. Without the perks and protectionsthat an employee may enjoyhealth care, benefits, gasoline and work reimbursements, vehicle maintenance, all of which could reportedly total as much as $730 millioncomplaints from drivers have piled up, ranging from low pay to new services like UberEats (a loathed food delivery service thats reportedly set to lose over $100 million annually) and UberPOOL, its carpool option which increases the companys take per-ride, lowers the take-home pay for drives, and is understood to be quite a drag for drivers and passengers alike. Drivers themselves said as much in a recent, disastrous question-and-answer session with Ubers president.

The counter-argumentperhaps one that would come from Kalanick himselfis that Uber drivers have the freedom to work whenever and wherever they want, or for the company at all. But the reality is that perception is built on a lie.

Uber, which didnt respond to questions from Jalopnik about its viability, recently paid $20 million to settle claims that it grossly misled how much drivers could earn on Craigslist ads. The companys explosive growth also fundamentally required it to begin offering subprime auto loans to prospective drivers without a vehicle.

Drivers with loans need to work to pay their monthly tab, thereby necessitating they work more for less, and so on. (Figures released in 2015 indicated that nearly 40 percent of Ubers driver force has no other source of income, while 30 percent work for Uber while holding down a second part-time job.)

To maximize their income, some have taken to sleeping in their car to be close to busier work areas. And beyond drivers, the company has also been accused of lying to prospective engineers about promises of lucrative stock options, in a move that could allegedly save it millions of dollars of tax deductions.

The Craigslist ads, for one thing, succeeded in reeling in drivers.

I thought I would try it out because I was desperate, said one driver who learned about the company after reading an online ad and declined to be named for fear of retribution in an interview with Jalopnik. Back then, the pay was quite a bit more than it is now. There have been a number of fare cuts since then. So, at the beginning, it was kind of different because not only was the pay higher, [but] because the pay was higher, there was a different type of customer that was using the service.

He added, And then contrast that with now with uberPOOL, a driver can be getting paid just 80 cents for a ride, and all the sudden you have these people who mightve been taking the bus, and now all the sudden theyre your boss for 80 cents and you better hop to and do what they say with a smile, or youre going to get a 1 star rating, if not [physically] assaulted in some cases.

That strikes at a core tenet of Ubers case that it provides a far-superior taxi service. Violent incidents, for example, involving drivers and passengers have popped up timeandagain against a backdrop of the companys campaign to prevent it from having to subject prospective drivers to extensive fingerprint background checks. Really, what is an Uber but a taxi with a smartphone app? Even then, taxi services have launched apps of their own.

Customers want to get from A to B quickly, pleasantly, and at a reasonable price, said Erik Gordon, a professor at the University of Michigans Ross School of Business. The Uber thing worked because it was cheaper and, initially, it was more pleasant than the typical taxi. So thats why it worked. But people dont have loyalty to Uber, not even the drivers. The drivers tend to drive for both Uber and Lyft, its chief competitor and a company with a remarkably more cuddly public image, albeit one that is probably not deserved.

But its the driver classification as contractors thats routinely staked out as potentially devastating for Uber. A $100 million settlement for a high-profile federal class-action suit over driver classification was denied last year, but the judge in the case believes Uber has enough wiggle room to readjust and still survive, despite the companys insistence that it would have to wholly restructure its operations. While that case remains pending, more suits over the driver classification have continued to emerge.

If you lose a case in a statethe state asserts theyre employees for state lawit would encourage other states to file lawsuits, but you only lose state by state, Gordon said. If you lose it at the federal level theyre in huge trouble.

The part-time model can last forever, he continued. But with drivers doing this more or less full time, he said, Something has to change; the price of the rides has to change... And if what changes is these people end up being employees, then I think the whole house falls down.

Its not just Uber drivers who feel downtrodden. A widely-circulated essay published last week by a former engineer described a series of incidents that painted the companys headquarters as a space that fostered repeated, systemic sexual harassment.

The essay by Susan Fowler Rigetti alleged that her former boss, for instance, solicited her for sex.

On my first official day rotating on the team, my new manager sent me a string of messages over company chat. He was in an open relationship, he said, and his girlfriend was having an easy time finding new partners but he wasnt. He was trying to stay out of trouble at work, he said, but he couldnt help getting in trouble, because he was looking for women to have sex with. It was clear that he was trying to get me to have sex with him, and it was so clearly out of line that I immediately took screenshots of these chat messages and reported him to HR.

When Fowler Rigetti engaged with HR, she said, they responded that even though this was clearly sexual harassment and he was propositioning me, it was this mans first offense ... he was a high performer. Translation: Nothing would happen to him.

Kalanick immediately issued a statement that what Fowler Rigetti described is abhorrent and against everything Uber stands for and believes in. He added that it was the first time hed learned of the allegations. An investigation was ordered, and Uber hired former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to conduct the internal probe.

But Silicon Valley is a small place, where high-profile talent bounce around companies on a regular basis. People talk. For Uber, the damage may have already been done.

I think this could definitely take a toll, said one former Uber exec who requested anonymity, adding: Its going to be difficult to continue to recruit the best and brightest talent.

Fowler Rigetti claims Uber had a game-of-thrones political war ranging within the ranks of upper management in the infrastructure engineering organization. Managers and peers duked it out, she said, while some attempted to undermine their direct supervisors with the intention of taking their job.

The ramifications of these political games were significant: projects were abandoned left and right, she said. The discontent and disorder at Uber HQ that she describes doesnt lend credence to the idea that its facilitating a decent work environment to succeed going forward.

In late November, the financial blog Naked Capitalism published the first of a series of pieces by transportation industry analyst Hubert Horan on the financial viability of Uber. The posts asked a simple question: Can Uber Ever Deliver? According to Horan, based on a significant amount of data on the companys finances that has been released, the answer is no.

Horan argues that, in order for Uber to prove that its domination of the taxi industry will improve overall economic welfare, it would have to earn sustainable profits; provide service at a significantly lower cost; create new competitive advantages through major product redesigns and technology/process innovations; and, eventually, be incentivized to pass on its efficiency gains to consumers.

This hinges on an autonomous driving fleet. Despite optimistic overtures from automakers and self-driving car start-ups, the likelihood of that coming to fruition, if ever, is decades away. Ford has an optimistic plan to roll out fully-autonomous cars by 2021, for example, but they would be limited to use in a geo-fenced area.

Kalanick himself has said the development of self-driving cars is existential to Uber. Labor drives up operating costs; removing 160,000 drivers from the equation makes it a lot easier to balance the books. Though Uber has a reported $11 billion war chest stowed away, by burning through billions at a rapid clip, the path and timeline to becoming a driverless car company however that would materialize is muddled.

Even then, Ubers likelihood of success appears slim.

If you put driverless cars totally aside, the near-term future of Uber is the question of whether they could succeed in establishing a reasonably secure quasi-monopoly position in the United States and other large developed country markets before the cash runs out, Horan said in an email to Jalopnik. This is certainly possible but by no means certain. If yes, cash flow would improve considerably. If no, cash flow problems could get worse as the world becomes increasingly aware that it will never generate sustainable profits in its core business. Kalanick said that Uber had an existential need to succeed in driverless cars. This suggests his optimism about taxi profitability is not what it used to be. And at the rate its going, Uber could crash and burn through its stockpile of cash by the end of the decade.

Like a lot of Silicon Valley companies, Uber has survived on the backs of wealthy investors that have propped it up, despite eye-popping losses for several years. Horans analysis found that Uber has maintained operating losses of $2 billion a year, surpassing any start-up in history, with a negative 143 percent profit margin. Thus Ubers current operations depend on $2 billion in subsidies, funded out of the $13 billion in cash its investors have provided, he wrote.

Further, Horan found that Uber passengers fares only covered 41 percent of the actual trip cost, suggesting it charges far-too little for fares. Even public transit systems, long lambasted for being money-losing ventures, perform better: for instance, fare revenue for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, which serves the nations capital, accounts for 47 percent of its operating costs.

Uber ... was using these massive [investor] subsidies to undercut the fares and provide more capacity than the competitors who had to cover 100 percent of their costs out of passenger fares, Horan wrote.

If a monopoly is the key to success, its hard to figure how Uber can achieve total dominance. In the third quarter of 2016, for instance, Uber lost $800 million, according to The Information, a tech news site. Its chief rival, Lyft, is backed by General Motors and recently secured market share gains against Uber in significant U.S. markets, the site said, adding that Lyfts continued relevance in the U.S. has changed the math for Uber in terms how much it projected it could profit from developed markets in the next few years.

Steven Hill, a former fellow at the New America Foundation think tank, who has regularly criticized Uber, said the company has been successful only because taxi service has kind of sucked.

I think ride-sharing may survive, but Uber may not, said Hill, who published a book on the so-called gig economy called Raw Deal: How The Uber Economy Runaway Capitalism Are Screwing American Workers.

Because the other thing thats really bedeviling Uber: instead of just focusing on being a good taxi company for the digital age finding the way, a sweet spot, to make that work, its blowing all sots of money [on] self driving-cars and China and now India. The company just so much reflects the megalomania of Travis Kalanick and whatever he thinks hes doing.

I mean, seven out of 10 silicon valley startups fail, Hill went on. Theyre producing a product or service that no one necessarily wants to buy at the cost you can produce it for. Capitalism 101, right? So thats what were seeing with Uber. At this moment, it does not appear that Uber is able to produce a service that customers will pay enough more to make it sustainable.

Its unclear in what markets Uber may be turning a profit, if any at all. The company reportedly said it wanted to achieve profitability in the second quarter of 2016, and it claimed at the time it had reached that goal in the U.S. and Canada. But by December, according to Bloomberg, Uber was losing money again in the U.S., to the tune of $100 million per year.

Its also striking that Uber tapped Wall Street banks for a billion dollar loan by convincing several financial institutions to focus only on its nearly $70 billion valuation, and not operating losses in certain markets. According to Reuters, regulators at the Financial Reserve were bothered by the loan because the banks carved out Ubers more mature operations from the rest of the business.

Thats a vague statement, but Reuters said the regulators scrutiny was not a surprise because it is rare for young, unprofitable technology firms to tap the leveraged loan market which is traditionally restricted to companies with long histories of generating cash. (The reserve declined to release any documents related to the loan in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, saying: Such information, including any statement confirming or denying that any such information exists, would constitute a disclosure of confidential supervisory information and thereby was exempt from public release.)

Again, its commonplace for venture capitalists and early stage investors to fund operating deficits. The belief is that the company is going to grow fast enough and that, with enough growth, its going to turn profitable, and its going to turn highly profitable, said Gordon, the University of Michigan business professor.

A common comparison to describe Ubers approach is Amazon, which lost money consistently over the first several years of its existence. As Horan notes, however, Amazons worst losses were $1.4 billion in its fifth year of operations, but shrank rapidly thereafter, while Ubers losses have been steadily growing and will be over $3 billion in its seventh year.

The problem with Uber, Horan argued, is that it doesnt have a powerful economy of scale that is, the savings in cost that are produced when production increases, particularly through fixed costs being spread out. Unlike Amazon, which had significant fixed costs, Horan said that 85 percent of Ubers costs are variable.

Uber cannot expand into new markets at very low cost since it faces unique driver recruitment, political lobbying and competitive marketing challenges in each city, Horan said.

Gordon said thats why the typical approach by venture capitalists with Uber probably wont work.

They dont have an economy of scale, he said. So, every day, venture capitalists fund loss-making companies, but not one [with] a model you cant see how its going to flip twice as many rides that you keep losing money on. Youre not going to start making twice as much money because youre doing twice as much rides. Its not like a factory [with fixed costs].

Maybe Kalanick knows something we all dont. Maybe Uber has a secret team of genius scientists wholl surpass all expectations of driverless cars and, somehow, have a fully-automated fleet of vehicles for the company to use everywhere within a few years. Maybe billionaire investors are actually fine with propping up a money-losing venture into perpetuity.

But until Uber can prove it has found a sustainable modelor, perhaps, stop the investor leaks of its financialstheres little to suggest it has the bandwidth to survive. Whether its sold, drastically shrinks its market footprint, or just outright shutters, its untenable for Uber to exist long term as the tech juggernaut it is today.

Kalanick has pushed an enterprise on little more than a grandiose bet: that Uber could exist on a playing field of its own with few regulations, carving a path to financial salvation by dominating the taxi market simply through the sheer force of investors with bottomless pockets. It isnt working.

See more here:

Uber Is Doomed - Jalopnik

The Orange County-based Ayn Rand Institute (ARI), founded in Los Angeles in 1985 to advance the writer's philosophy of objectivism, recently announced that Jim Brown has taken over as the new chief executive officer.

The nonprofit organization, which moved to Irvine in June 2002, distributes free books to teachers, sponsors cash-prize essay contests for high school and college students and offers free online courses for adults. It was founded by longtime Orange County resident Leonard Peikoff, the author and philosophy professor whom Rand, who died in 1982, chose as her heir.

The Russian-born writer escaped Soviet Russia, came to America and lived in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City, writing screenplays, a Broadway play and nonfiction works on epistemology which to Rand was the study of how humans acquire knowledge art and ethics. Her best-known novels include "Anthem," "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged" which depicts a dystopian U.S. where thinkers and creators go on strike when confronted with aggressive new regulations.

"Atlas Shrugged" was not critically well received when it was published in 1957, but it became a best-seller and later a rallying cry for the tea party movement.

In 1962, Rand was asked to write a weekly column for the Los Angeles Times. Her first was a brief introduction to objectivism. She described it as objective reality in metaphysics, reason in epistemology, self-interest in ethics and capitalism in politics.

In a 1959 TV interview, according to BBC News, Rand had offered this explanation: Man's "highest moral purpose is the achievement of his own happiness and that he must not force other people, nor accept their right to force him, that each man must live as an end in himself and follow his own rational self-interest."

In 1985, Michael S. Berliner, then the executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, attempted to clarify what he considered a misconception that Rand's philosophy gave rise to or was somehow associated with libertarianism. He explained that she "thoroughly repudiated libertarianism and the anarchism that dominates that movement."

"Objectivism stands for reason, rational self-interest and laissez-faire capitalism, including absolute individual rights," he wrote in an opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times. "It is a systematic, integrated view of existence, in direct contrast to the anti-philosophic, subjectivist approach of the libertarians. Having no interest in fundamental principles, libertarians make common cause with anyone, including terrorists, opposed to government, especially the United States government," he wrote.

With the naming of Brown, the institute has deviated from its two previous leaders, who were academics. In a statement, ARI referred to his 30-year finance career and military service in the U.S. Air Force.

Brown earned a bachelor's degree in political science from the United States Air Force Academy and an MBA from Harvard Business School, it said.

The husband, father and retired chartered financial analyst was interviewed at his new office in Irvine.

Below are excerpts from the conversation.

Weekend: Do you have a favorite lecture by Ayn Rand?

Brown: I do because it's the only one I ever saw in person. In 1977, I saw [Ayn Rand deliver her talk] "Global Balkanization" at the Ford Hall Forum [a lecture series at Northeastern University from 1961 to 1998] in Boston. I walked in and [former Federal Reserve Board Chairman] Alan Greenspan was sitting on the floor playing chess with someone in the foyer. By then, he'd been on President Ford's Council of Economic Advisers, so even then he was famous. Of course, when Ayn Rand came up this little, tiny woman with this heavy Russian accent it was amazing. I've reread that talk a few times. This is the essay in which she talked about classifying people according to ethnicity or arbitrary racial classifications, and she systematically demolishes it as any type of rational thinking at all. The Q and A was interesting too. She was so clear on what she wanted to say in answer to every question.

Weekend: How can the Ayn Rand Institute improve?

Brown: We have to get the ideas out and we have challenges in that area including resistance in the culture. I don't have to remind anyone reading this that the culture and society out there can look pretty irrational. Just look at the last election. But that's not the biggest obstacle to our success. I think the biggest obstacle to our success is right here in the objectivist movement. Sometimes, we can't get out of our own way.

So the room for improvement is what we can change about our movement. How can we make the movement more effective? I really believe strongly and we are starting to develop this idea here at the Institute that we need to develop a sense of community among objectivists. And that can only begin here at the Ayn Rand Institute. If we are going to try to help foster and develop this, it has to start here. We want to increase awareness, understanding and acceptance of the philosophy of Ayn Rand, objectivism. That is what we are about. So we have to give people something of value, probably over a period of years, before we can expect to have earned their support. Just like Say's Law in economics, you have to produce before you can profit. That is what I think we're doing: We're investing in people's minds, persuasion and in the influence of a philosophy that's a gift to the world in my view. When we have done that, we can hope and expect that they will support us because we will have earned it.

Weekend: What's your favorite work by Ayn Rand Institute founder Leonard Peikoff?

Brown: For comprehensive understanding, "Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand." For sheer pleasure, [the audio lecture course] "Eight Great Plays." I love it. For immediate impact on my life, his objective communication course is excellent. I still use "motivation, structure, concretize, delimit" everywhere I go.

Weekend: Which Ayn Rand book is the most effective in reaching the reader?

Brown: "Atlas Shrugged." There are a lot of ways you could measure what's most effective, but the way I interpret your question is which Ayn Rand book has the biggest impact on the maximum number of people, and it has to be "Atlas Shrugged." Everyone's talking about "Atlas Shrugged."

Weekend: Businessmen are depicted as villains not just as heroes in "Atlas Shrugged." Can you name three businessmen who are like villains in today's mixed economy?

Brown: If you look at [Ayn Rand's] "The Inexplicable Personal Alchemy," she talks about the money-making mentality and the moneymaker versus the money appropriator. [ Rand] also states in there, pretty explicitly, that there's often a combination and a mix. That's the way I think of most of today's businessmen. It's difficult to evaluate in today's mixed economy who's the moneymaker and who's the money appropriator. For example, I'd put [GE Chairman and CEO] Jeffrey Immelt as more of an appropriator, though he's undoubtedly a talented businessman. I'd put [Secretary of State and former ExxonMobil Chairman and CEO] Rex Tillerson along the lines of the moneymaker, besides obvious ones such as Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and probably Jeff Bezos.

Weekend: Is there a single quality that you acquired during your military aviation career that uniquely applies to your new role as CEO?

Brown: The first thing that comes to mind is an appreciation for working cooperatively and collaborating with people. If you have a big air crew, you can't just be the boss and make commands. You're in charge and you can't just tell people what to do if you want to get some new programs done or you're trying to move classes through administration to train 500 pilots a year. You have to give people responsibilities, have them commit to their responsibilities and own it. If you can get people to own their responsibilities, then reporting to you is a cooperative venture, not a command-and-control venture. I really learned that in spades as a flight commander and as a squadron commander when I was training pilots.

Weekend: What is the Ayn Rand Institute's greatest success in its 32-year mission to advance objectivism?

Brown: Getting Ayn Rand's books specifically her fiction into people's hands.

Weekend: How do you guard your leadership against sycophants in favor of people who might be more willing to tell you and ARI what they think you might not want to hear?

Brown: That's a very good question. It's a reason for collaboration. You only get sycophants if you're an authoritarian, because you can't spot them if you're an authoritarian.

Weekend: What is the most misunderstood part of objectivism?

Brown: I think it's this notion of objectivists as righteously selfish people who are mean-spirited, unconcerned and unloving. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Weekend: How will you know you've succeeded at ARI?

Brown: The first successful milestone that I would really take pride in is when people say that the Ayn Rand Institute is a wonderful place to work.

Read the original:

Jim Brown, new Ayn Rand Institute CEO: 'Culture and society out there can look pretty irrational. Just look at the ... - Los Angeles Times

Anthony Rek LeCounte Photo: Julian Vankim

Coming out as gay now is the easiest thing in the world, says Anthony Rek LeCounte. No one has a problem with it, especially in D.C.

Coming out as Republican? Not so much.

Ill often find myself trying to talk around my political views in conversations with folks in D.C. or in New York or New Haven, in ways Im much less likely to do when it comes to my being gay, says the 27-year old Arlington resident and board member of the D.C. Log Cabin Republicans. Its harder navigating the question of, When do you make the reveal that youre a Republican and how do you squeeze that in there?'

Thats not to say that coming out gay was simple for LeCounte, who was raised in a close-knit conservative military family by devout evangelical parents. His father, an Army officer, is also an ordained minister. Despite their religious beliefs, his parents eventually came to accept his sexual orientation, as well as his relationship with his boyfriend.

My parents are conservative Christians, says LeCounte. Theyre still not going to be going to any gay pride parades or anything like that. I dont see them joining PFLAG or anything. I dont know how they square what their thoughts on my being gay are with the church. Im under the impression they think its a sin, but Im not actually sure. Theyre working through that their own way, and as long as our relationship continues to be warm, Im happy to let them develop as they will.

The oldest of four children, LeCounte spent his childhood moving to various army bases: Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, Maryland, even Germany. The constant moving forced him to learn how to adapt to new situations and make new friends quickly. Its a skill LeCounte has carried into adulthood, charming people with his outgoing nature, intelligence, and warm Southern drawl.

Given his familys conservative background, its not surprising that LeCounte eventually gravitated to the Republican Party. Whats also not surprising particularly in our current political climate is that people often take issue with the fact that hes a Republican who happens to be both gay and African-American.

Ive had a number of folks make crazy remarks at bars or on Facebook. A number of people have defriended me because of it, he says. I had an acquaintance who I ran into at a bar, and we chatted for a little bit. Later, he texted me and said something to the effect of Id forgotten you were a Log Cabin Republican, and like theres nothing more disgusting to me than a Log Cabin Republican. And I responded, Okay, well, you have a good night, too.'

LeCounte points out that Log Cabin hasnt gotten the credit it deserves for working within the GOP to advance LGBTQ rights.

A lot of folks dont realize, for example, that the lawsuit that led to the repeal of Dont Ask, Dont Tell, was a Log Cabin lawsuit, he says. Or that the Log Cabin Republicans submitted a white paper to the Trump administration about the executive order. [National Log Cabin President] Gregory Angelo has been in constant consultation with folks on the transition team, and later, in the administration, and has a bunch of them on speed dial. Were making progress behind the scenes. We are getting folks who agree with us. We are turning the tide on a lot of LGBT rights issues from a Republican perspective.

Asked why the organization he belongs to hasnt gotten a fair shake, LeCounte targets the staff at some national LGBTQ organizations.

Theres a saying in politics that personnel is policy,' he says. A lot of these nonpartisan groups are staffed by aggressively left-wing progressive folks who, even if their organization say, We believe X, Y, and Z, have their own biases which then affect their decisions. If an LGBT candidate is pro-life, or supports gun rights, or holds a bunch of other conservative positions that run deeply counter to what the progressive movement is doing, a lot of these groups dont want to be associated with those kind of candidates. So theyll either endorse against or theyll just pretend the candidate doesnt exist.

That situation is further complicated by the two-front war Log Cabin must wage, not only against the Left, but from extreme social conservatives within the Republican Party, who wear hostility towards the LGBTQ community as a badge of honor. LeCounte believes that they are a dwindling minority, even within the GOP.

Theres the sense now that the mainstream of America is pro-LGBT, and therefore, the party needs to, at the very least look like its moving in that direction. Even if theres still some policy disputes, he says. So a lot of the rank-and-file Republicans find in Log Cabin a way to reach out directly to the LGBT community, or at the very least, ways to be and seem more inclusive.

Although LeCounte was not a Trump supporter in last years election he felt Trump was insufficiently conservative he is keeping an open mind when it comes to policy, preferring to score the presidents job performance on an issue-by-issue basis.

He is concerned, however, about the highly partisan nature of politics in Washington that threatens to keep Trump supporters and opponents in separate silos.

I think theres a mutually reinforcing epistemic closure where President Trump isnt talking to a lot of the folks who could probably help him policy wise, he says. And a lot of those people arent willing to help because apparently even just sitting on his economic counsel is grounds for people to boycott your company. He points to the recent boycott of Uber, believed to be friendly to the Trump administration until it pulled away.

I think Trump would probably be more amenable to hearing some criticism and changing his mind about things, if there were a sense that it was being offered as constructive criticism, LeCounte says. We need folks who are Democrats or libertarian or even nonpartisan being willing to work with the administration to offer better ideas, good ideas, course corrections, and to do it from a place where theyre willing to say, Yeah, Im working with the administration to do this. Im going to own part of this, too. This is a team effort.'

METRO WEEKLY: When did you first realize you were a conservative Republican?

ANTHONY REK LECOUNTE: When I was in high school, I was Democrat, but I was a pretty conservative one, because I was an evangelical Christian. I actually used to listen to Christian talk radio on my way to and from school. I listened to Focus on the Family with James Dobson and some other conservative talk radio, so I always had Christian conservative-style views.

Then, I kind of swung hard libertarian. I read half of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I went into college as this libertarian democrat, and then swung pretty hard left because of Yale.

MW: What about Yale changed your views, particularly if Atlas Shrugged appealed to you?

LECOUNTE: The social aspect of college. I was surrounded all the time by people who were just incredibly far left, and left in a way that I had never really experienced before. Growing up, a Democrat was a Mark Warner-style Democrat, or a Joe Manchin, or a Bill Nelson. Liberals were not that liberal. Especially in the military. Views in the military run the gamut, but all the Democrats were much more like working-class Democrats. When I went to Yale, everyone was aggressive, Marx-reading social Democrats, quoting Europe or citing Europe for every policy.

I started to realize that, on a lot of things, I was kind of out of sync. It gradually reached a crescendo by senior year when I realized that I was skeptical of a lot of the policy goals [of liberals]. The entire social justice movement made me uneasy. Identity politics has always made me uncomfortable and has always struck me as everything thats wrong with politics, and so that was a source of friction.

Then the Tea Party rose up, and I remember having conversations where Id say, Some of the stuff theyre saying, they have a point, or Some of the criticisms youre launching are just really unfair for these folks. While that was happening, my conservative friends were increasing in number and I was having more conversations with them. They were having me look at other sources of information. I started reading stuff like National Review, and Heritage this was before The Daily Signal CATO, and Reason, and I started seeing alternate points of view that started making a lot of sense.

In 2012, I realized, Holy crap. I think Im Republican. So I made the switch, went out and volunteered for Mitt Romney, voted for Mitt Romney, and got my job in right-leaning politics, and it was off to the races from there.

[callout]Read: LGBTQ Letters to President Trump[/callout]

MW: Do you feel your military upbringing influenced your political leanings?

LECOUNTE: Certainly. The military is a very right-leaning community, but not necessarily in the ways a lot of folks think. There is a lot of the traditional three-legged stool Republicanism you know, social conservatism, economic conservatism and foreign policy, obviously. But a lot of folks in the military are just libertarian.

A lot of that comes down to the environment youre in. If youre in the military, as a service member or a dependent, your entire life is heavily regulated by the government. Your kids go to federal government schools. You go to government doctors. A lot of times, youre doing your shopping at government stores. You see, in just about everything you do, what a command economy looks like, and its really inefficient and frustrating and limiting. It leaves a lot of folks thinking, Man, free markets are awesome.

You get this sort of libertarian atmosphere where one of the most popular bumper stickers I remember seeing was Government philosophy: If it aint broke, fix it till its broke. You say that to anyone with military experience, whether as a dependent or a service member, and theyll immediately relate and have stories for you. I feel that sort of experience really primes you for a more libertarian world view.

MW: Have you ever experienced any pushback from the African-American community because you are Republican?

LECOUNTE: The simple answer is yes. I actually got into this heated argument at a gay bar last week. A few Black Lives Matter protesters were there, and they werent protesting, just having a drink. I was there with some Republicans and they realized that we were a Republican group, so they came over to talk to us.

Initially, they were friendly. We were happy to talk to them. Then they brought up Black Lives Matter, and I had a mild disagreement about a tactical question and they flew off the handle. Within half-an-hour, one of them was shouting Youre a traitor to your race. Youre a self-hating black man. One said, I protest so that we can have fewer people like you. So I can stop people like you.

Those incidents, fortunately, dont happen too often now, but if I make a mistake and Im walking down the street in D.C. with any kind of Republican paraphernalia there will be comments. Especially in 2012, I would wear my Romney/Ryan pin and more than a few times someone on the Metro would just have very choice remarks. Every so often, they would threaten violence. On four or five different occasions, Ive almost been the victim of a hate crime for two reasons: once for being gay, and the others for being a Republican while black.

Anthony Rek LeCounte Photo: Julian Vankim

MW: Have these altercations ever turned physical?

LECOUNTE: They would have, but I managed to remove myself from the situation. Two of them were on the Metro. In one case, there was a Metro worker who wasnt inciting the incident, but was very approvingly standing by the guy who was. It was an awful situation.

Thats part of why I generally dont go around with Republican paraphernalia thats visible anymore. Nowadays, you just dont know. Its kind of par for the course. Youre used to it. Sen. Tim Scott got up and gave a speech a couple days ago about how he got all manner of invective for supporting Jeff Sessions nomination for attorney general. He read some of the tweets that folks were sending him. They were calling him a house negro, which Ive been called. Ive also been called a house faggot. Its just kind of par for the course if youre a minority Republican. There are certain comments you know youre going to get. MW: Why is that?

LECOUNTE: Because a lot of folks take politics personally. In a way that I think conservatives, like myself, try not to. Instead of just saying, Oh, this person disagrees with me. Thats interesting, a lot of folks take it as a personal affront that you disagree with them, especially if you disagree with them as a black man or a gay man or a woman.

MW: Do you expect more African-Americans to become Republicans as time goes on?

LECOUNTE: I hope so. Ive noticed that in the last couple of elections, young black voters, especially young black male voters, vote significantly more republican than older black voters, and obviously, more than black women. In 2012, for example, among young black men, a full one-fifth of them voted for Mitt Romney. I dont know what the numbers were for Trump, but its probably higher this time around. [Editors note: Only 13% of African American men voted for Trump, with just 9% of African Americans 18-29 regardless of gender voting for him. Source: Mic.]

I would expect that as a lot of those folks grow older, and as the Republican party makes more of an effort to be inclusive to black voters and actually starts to show up, you will see a lot more folks voting Republican. What that will look like and to what degree the Republican Party will capitalize on that, I have no idea. I would hope that within a few election cycles we get to a point where a Republican getting double digits of the black vote is normal and expected. And then a dam will break, because once it becomes normal to see black Republicans, it will encourage a lot of other folks to say, Hey, I dont have to be a Democrat. Then things will get interesting.

MW: As a group, LGBTQ people overwhelmingly identify as Democrat. Why do you think that is?

LECOUNTE: A lot of it comes down to historical Republican opposition to the LGBT rights movement, which is understandable. Republicans bitterly opposed same-sex marriage. Of course, Democrats did, too, but the Republicans were a little bit more enthusiastic about it. Republicans pushed a lot of the marriage amendments that are still in the constitutions of thirty-something states. Republicans, to this day, are opposing a lot of the trans rights stuff. So I think a lot of LGBT folks see Republicans as the party of the opposition to their civil rights.

There are also a lot of folks in the Republican party who are happy to take up that mantle. I think those folks are a shrinking minority of the party, but theres a lot of them, and theyre pretty loud. For that reason, a lot of LGBT folks take Democrat versus Republican very, very personally in a way that I find completely understandable.

MW: Do you feel that more LGBTQ people would become Republican if the Party stopped its opposition to our rights?

LECOUNTE: I think so. I know a lot of gay people who have conservative ideas about national defense or economic policies or various social issues that are not gay rights. I think a lot of those folks would be more willing to identify as Republican if they didnt feel that by doing so they were running counter to their interest in terms of issues like same-sex marriage or anti-discrimination laws.

MW: What do you view as the difference between being a conservative and being a Republican?

LECOUNTE: To be Republican is more of a partisan tribal kind of identification. Its This is my team, this is my coalition, Im invested in this Partys agenda, this Partys goals, this Partys candidates.

Being a conservative is more about a philosophy. Some folks are conservatives first, and theyre Republicans because that is the closest thing to a conservative. Some folks are Republicans first, and they are conservative when the Republican Partys conservative, and theyre not conservative when the Republican Partys not.

Im more of a conservative first, a libertarian-leaning conservative. And to the extent that the Republican Party is the best vehicle to promote the conservative and libertarian policy goals, thats the umbrella that I want to work within. If at some point, it somehow became the case that Democrats were much better on a lot of those issues that I care about, then I would happily support either a particular Democratic candidate or even the Democratic Party at large. For now, though, that doesnt seem to be the case.

MW: You were famously one of the Never Trump Republicans during the last campaign. Do you feel Donald Trump is a conservative, or is he just a Republican?

LECOUNTE: Well, hes definitely Republican. I think, more than anything, the president is a populist. He wants to do what the American people really want, and especially the things that they want that run counter to elite opinion.

For example, elites love trade deals. A lot of voters dont, so Trump wants to represent the voters who dont like those. Similarly, with immigration or other issues. I think his goal and the way he sees himself is to represent the folks whose voices arent usually heard. Sometimes, that veers him towards the conservative direction. He favors tax cuts and he has appointed a conservative, libertarian-leaning Supreme Court justice. But sometimes that leans in a complete other direction, like with protectionism, for example. Conservatives are generally very anti-protectionist. We dont like tariffs, and were generally very fond of trade deals.

MW: Have you changed your mind about Trump from how you viewed him during last years campaign?

LECOUNTE: I think the campaign is one thing, and the administration is another. I sort of take a similar approach to Trump that I did to President Obama. When President Trump does things I agree with, Im going to praise him, and when he does things I disagree with, Im going to oppose him. Im just taking it issue by issue, trying to influence him to do the things I support the way I would any other president.

MW: Based on what youve seen so far, do you largely agree or disagree with his actions as president?

LECOUNTE: Its a bit of a mixed bag. I think hes done some encouraging things. Hes done some frustrating things. Mostly, though, he hasnt done much yet.

MW: Whats the best thing you think hes done?

LECOUNTE: The Gorsuch pick, by a mile. Im very excited about the Gorsuch pick. That is the happiest Ive been about politics since November 2014.

MW: Whats the worst thing you think hes done?

LECOUNTE: Probably the travel ban, or whatever were calling that. I have a very Christian perspective about refugees and taking care of the victims of horrific situations around the world, especially in a situation where we had a hand in why its that bad. Seeing that translators who worked with us in Iraq who finally got their visas are now being turned away at the airport is very frustrating.

The administration does seem to be figuring out some of the things that work, and figuring out some of the things that they should be doing differently, and so I hope thats one of the things where cooler heads will prevail, but I guess well see.

MW: Do you think the LGBTQ community has been overreacting to some of the actions taken by the Trump administration?

LECOUNTE: There was an article I think it was in The Washington Post that said something to the effect of Not every Trump outrage is outrageous. I think a lot of folks are inclined to think the worst of the new administration, and so every time they hear a whiff of rumor of something awful, theyll dial it up to 11 immediately, even if the rumor was never credible or it wasnt clear where it was going to go, or whatever.

I think a more productive approach that a lot of conservatives are taking is: Relax, lets wait and see whats going to happen. Lets actually find out if this thing is actually unprecedented or if its just an ordinary thing.

MW: Do you think that people should take Trump at his word when he promises to do things like signing the First Amendment Defense Act, or fulfill other promises that hes made to social conservatives, or is that just pandering for political reasons?

LECOUNTE: I think candidate Trump was trying to get those people to feel like their concerns were heard, without necessarily giving them everything they want. Because candidate Trump made a point of saying like, Im going to be pro-LGBT. The quote was You can expect forward motion on LGBT rights in this administration.

To the extent that hes not actually done anything to undermine LGBT rights in any meaningful way maintaining the order, saying that, for him, same-sex marriage is a solved issue LGBT rights groups, as well as LGBT voters, should keep their powder dry. If he actually promoted the First Amendment Defense Act to undo the anti-discrimination laws, then thats a reason to get up in arms, but for now he doesnt seem to be pushing that at all. Im not aware of any serious push within Congress. I think that last session, they didnt even get it out of the House. Its definitely not getting out of the Senate. So its never going to get to his desk to sign or veto.

MW: How do you feel about Mike Pence?

LECOUNTE: I would love to meet him in person. He seems like he would be a very, very Midwestern guy, in the most salt-of-the-earth, folksy, down-home sort of way. I get the sense that he doesnt actually want to be controversial. When the Indiana fight happened over the original Religious Freedom Rights Act, [critics] came out and they said this is awful for these reasons. Mike Pence went back and said, All right, change the law. And they changed the law, and he signed it.

I think he doesnt get enough credit for the fact that he did call for the law to be changed and he did sign to change the law, which he didnt have to do. Again, thats something folks like [North Carolina Gov.] Pat McCrory just didnt do. That has to count for something.

MW: How do you respond to people who say, Youre young, gay, African-American, and Republican. Why are you a Republican? Do you have an elevator speech or any explanation that you would give to them?

LECOUNTE: I really should work on an elevator speech. Ive been thinking about ways to do that. Its really context-specific. Sometimes, to be honest, Ill just ignore the question if I dont feel like answering it.

But when I am in the mood to answer the question, the simple version is I am a young, black, gay man who was mugged by reality, and I dont want that to happen again. Im a guy who gets a paycheck and I want to keep more of my paycheck. Im a guy whose family is in the military, and I want to know that our militarys keeping us safe and that were looking out for our military. Im a guy whos mom was a military police officer, and I want to know that our policies around law enforcement are productive and fair for both suspects and the accused, as well as safe and fair for law enforcement.

Im a gun owner who wants to make sure that my gun rights are being protected. Im a person of faith who cares that religious liberty continues to exist in this country. Im a person who cares deeply about education policy, and I want to know that my kids, if or when I have any, will be able to go to good schools and that we will have a serious degree of choice in terms of being able to make sure theyre well-educated.

On a lot of those issues, the Republicans in general and conservatives have the right ideas about how to move forward, whereas Democrats are off in the wrong direction. Democrats are, obviously, not at all pro-gun anymore. A lot of them oppose school choice. They have various opinions about the military that Im a little bit skeptical of. While, yes, I might disagree with where the Republican Party stands on LGBT issues right now, as far as being black and young, the Republican Party has loads to offer me that I think the Democratic Party does not.

For more information about the D.C. chapter of the Log Cabin Republicans, visit dclogcabin.wordpress.com. For information on the national chapter, visit logcabin.org.

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Right Turn: Q&A with gay Republican Anthony Rek LeCounte - Metro Weekly

There's very few things I can add to all that have been said about "Atlas Shrugged" that haven't been said before. Ayn Rand wrote a timeless masterpiece who put her name across the most influential writers of the english language. The story by itself is an Ode to the Human Mind and the best within us. This book change the lives of those who enter in contact with it and, most of the time, for the better.

The production of this audiobook is perfect. There's no background noise and the sound is as crisp as it could be. Only on the technical standpoint, the recording is as perfect as the state of the technology allows it to be.

So, why I gave it only 3 stars? Because of the casting of Mr. Brick. I have no quarrel with him. He's a talented artist who, I am sure, would give an outstanding reading of "Pride and Prejudice". He's, sadly, a poor choice for "Atlas Shrugged". His voice is unable to carry the certainty of John Galt, Dagny Taggart seems to be a moment away to sobbing, Francisco d'Anconia got a mundane voice while Jim Taggart sounds perfectly sane(!). This mostly ruined my enjoyment of this recording. "Atlas Shrugged" is a righteous book and his voice is too mellow to sound right.

In summary, may I suggest to those who really want to enjoy this story that they acquire the Christopher Hurt's rendition of it? The quality is less than stellar but the reading is perfect. In fact, I listened to the later right after I listened Mr. Brick's recording, just to forget the poor experience I lived.

See the article here:

Atlas Shrugged Audiobook | Ayn Rand | Audible.com

After Donald Trump announced a number of cabinet picks who happen to be fans of Ayn Rand, a flurry of articles appeared claiming that Trump intended to create an Objectivist cabal within his administration.

Ayn Rand-acolyte Donald Trump stacks his cabinet with fellow Objectivists, proclaimed one article. Would that it were so. The novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand was a passionate champion of individual freedom and laissez-faire capitalism and a fierce opponent of authoritarianism. For her, government exists solely to protect our rights, not to meddle in the economy or to direct our private lives.

A president who truly understood Rands philosophy would not be cozying up to Putin, bullying companies to keep manufacturing plants in the United States, or promising insurance for everybody among many other things Trump has said and done.

And while its certainly welcome news that several of Trumps cabinet picks admire Rand, its not surprising. Her novel Atlas Shrugged depicts a world in decline as it slowly strangles its most productive members. The novel celebrates the intelligent and creative individuals who produce wealth, many of whom are businessmen. So it makes sense that businessmen like Rex Tillerson and Andy Puzder would be among the novels millions of fans.

But a handful of fans in the administration hardly signals that Trumps would be an Ayn Rand administration. The claims about Rands influence in the administration are vastly overblown.

Even so, there is at least one parallel we can draw between a Trump administration and Rands novels, although its not favorable to Trump. As a businessman and a politician, Trump epitomizes a phenomenon that Rand harshly criticized throughout her career, especially in Atlas Shrugged. Rand called it pull peddling. The popular term today is cronyism. But the phenomenon is the same: attempting to succeed, not through production and trade, but by trading influence and favors with politicians and bureaucrats.

Cronyism has been a big issue in recent years among many thinkers and politicians on the Right, who have criticized big government because it often favors some groups and individuals over others or picks winners and losers.

Commentators on the Left, too, often complain about influence peddling, money in politics, and special interests, all of which are offered as hallmarks of corruption in government. And by all indications, Trump was elected in part because he was somehow seen as a political outsider who will drain the swamp.

But as the vague phrase drain the swamp shows, theres a lot more concern over cronyism, corruption, and related issues than there is clarity about what the problem actually is and how to solve it.

Ayn Rand had unique and clarifying views on the subject. With Trump in office, the problem she identified is going to get worse. Rands birthday is a good time to review her unique explanation of, and cure for, the problem.

The first question we need to be clear about is: What, exactly, is the problem were trying to solve? Drain the swamp, throw the bums out, clean up Washington, outsiders vs. insiders these are all platitudes that can mean almost anything to anyone.

Are lobbyists the problem? Trump and his advisers seem to think so. Theyve vowed to keep lobbyists out of the administration, and Trump has signed an order forbidding all members of his administration from lobbying for 5 years.

Its not clear whether these plans will succeed, but why should we care? Lobbyists are individuals hired to represent others with business before government. We might lament the existence of this profession, but blaming lobbyists for lobbying is like blaming lawyers for lawsuits. Everyone seems to complain about them right up until the moment that they want one.

The same goes for complaints about the clients of lobbyists the hated special interests. Presidents since at least Teddy Roosevelt have vowed to run them out of Washington yet, today, interest groups abound. Some lobby for higher taxes, some for lower taxes. Some lobby for more entitlements, some for fewer or for more fiscal responsibility in entitlement programs. Some lobby for business, some for labor, some for more regulations on both. Some lobby for freer trade, some for trade restrictions. The list goes on and on. Are they all bad?

The question we should ask is, Why do people organize into interest groups and lobby government in the first place?

The popular answer among free-market advocates is that government has too much to offer, which creates an incentive for people to tap their cronies in government to ensure that government offers it to them. Shrink government, the argument goes, and we will solve the problem.

Veronique de Rugy, senior fellow at the Mercatus Center, describes cronyism in these terms:

This is how cronyism works: A company wants a special privilege from the government in exchange for political support in future elections. If the company is wealthy enough or is backed by powerful-enough interest groups, the company will get its way and politicians will get another private-sector ally. The few cronies win at the expense of everyone else.

(Another term for this is rent seeking, and many other people define it roughly the same way.)

Theres a lot of truth to this view. Our bloated government has vast power over our lives and trillions of dollars worth of favors to dole out, and a seemingly endless stream of people and groups clamor to win those favors. As a lawyer who opposes campaign finance laws, Ive often said that the problem is not that money controls politics, its that politics controls money and property, and business, and much of our private lives as well.

Still, we need to be more precise. Favors, benefits, and privileges are too vague a way to describe what government has to offer. Among other things, these terms just raise another question: Which benefits, favors, or privileges should government offer? Indeed, many people have asked that question of cronyisms critics. Heres how the Los Angeles Times put it in an editorial responding to the effort by some Republicans to shut down the Export-Import Bank:

Governments regularly intervene in markets in the name of public safety, economic growth or consumer protection, drawing squawks of protest whenever one interest is advanced at the expense of others. But a policy thats outrageous to one faction for example, the government subsidies for wind, solar and battery power that have drawn fire on the right may in fact be a welcome effort to achieve an important societal objective.

Its a valid point. Without a way to tell what government should and should not do, whose interests it should or should not serve, complaints about cronyism look like little more than partisan politics. When government favors the groups or policies you like, thats good government in action. When it doesnt, thats cronyism.

In Rands view, there is a serious problem to criticize, but few free-market advocates are clear about exactly what it is. Simply put, the problem is the misuse of the power that government possesses, which is force. Government is the institution that possesses a legal monopoly on the use of force.

The question we need to grapple with is, how should it use that power?

Using terms like favors, privileges, and benefits to describe what government is doing when cronyism occurs is not just too vague, its far too benign. These terms obscure the fact that what people are competing for when they engage in cronyism is the privilege of legally using force to take what others have earned or to prevent them from contracting or associating with others. When groups lobby for entitlements whether its more social security or Medicare or subsidies for businesses they are essentially asking government to take that money by force from taxpayers who earned it and to give it to someone else. Call it what you want, but it ultimately amounts to stealing.

When individuals in a given profession lobby for occupational licensing laws, they are asking government to grant a select group of people a kind of monopoly status that prevents others who dont meet their standards from competing with them that is, from contracting with willing customers to do business.

These are just two examples of how government takes money and property or prevents individuals from voluntarily dealing with one another. There are many, many more. Both Democrats and Republicans favor these sorts of laws and willingly participate in a system in which trading on this power has become commonplace.

Rent seeking doesnt capture what is really going on. Neither, really, does cronyism. Theyre both too tame.

A far better term is the one used by nineteenth-century French economist Frederic Bastiat: legal plunder. Rand uses the term political pull to describe those who succeed by convincing friends in government to use the law to plunder others or to prevent them from competing.

And she uses the phrase the Aristocracy of Pull, which is the title of a whole chapter in Atlas Shrugged, to describe a society in which political pull, rather than production and trade, has become the rule. Its a society that resembles feudalism, in which people compete to gain the favor of government officials in much the same way that people in feudal times competed for the favor of the king so they could use that power to rule over one another and plunder as they pleased.

The cause, for Rand, is not the size of government, but what we allow it to do. When we allow government to use the force it possesses to go beyond protecting our rights, we arm individuals to plunder one another and turn what would otherwise be limited instances of corruption or criminality into a systemic problem.

For example, when politicians promise to increase social security or to make education free, they are promising to take more of the incomes of taxpayers to pay for these welfare programs. When they promise to favor unions with more labor laws or to increase the minimum wage, they are promising to restrict businesses right to contract freely with willing workers. When they promise to keep jobs in America, they are promising to impose tariffs on companies that import foreign goods. The rule in such a system becomes: plunder or be plundered. What choice does anyone have but to organize themselves into pressure groups, hire lobbyists, and join the fray?

Rand memorably describes this process in the famous money speech in Atlas Shrugged:

But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims then money becomes its creators avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once theyve passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.

Observe what kind of people thrive in such a society and who their victims are. Theres a big difference between the two, and Rand never failed to make a moral distinction between them.

In the early 1990s, Atlantic City resident Vera Coking found herself in the sights of a developer who wanted to turn the property on which she lived into a casino parking lot. The developer made what he thought was a good offer, but she refused. The developer became incensed, and instead of further trying to convince Coking to sell or finding other land, he did what a certain kind of businessman has increasingly been able to do in modern times. He pursued a political solution. He convinced a city redevelopment agency to use the power of eminent domain to force Coking to sell.

The developer was Donald Trump. His ensuing legal battle with Coking, which he lost, was the first of a number of controversies in recent decades over the use of eminent domain to take property from one private party and give it to another.

Most people can see that theres a profound moral distinction between the Trumps and their cronies in government on the one hand and people like Vera Coking on the other. One side is using law to force the other to give up what is rightfully theirs. To be blunt, one side is stealing from the other.

But the victims of the use of eminent domain often lobby government officials to save their property just as vigorously as others do to take it. Should we refer to all of them as special interests and damn them for seeking government favors? The answer should be obvious.

But if thats true, why do we fail to make that distinction when the two sides are businesses as many do when they criticize Wall Street, or the financial industry as a whole, or when they complain about crony capitalism as though capitalism as such is the problem? Not all businesses engage in pull-peddling, and many have no choice but to deal with government or to lobby in self-defense.

John Allison, the former CEO of BB&T bank (and a former board member of the Ayn Rand Institute, where I work), refused to finance transactions that involved the use of eminent domain after the Supreme Court issued its now-infamous decision in Kelo v. City of New London, which upheld the use of eminent domain to transfer property from one private party to another. Later, Allison lobbied against the TARP fund program after the financial crisis, only to be pressured by government regulators into accepting the funds. In an industry as heavily regulated as banking, theres little a particular bank can do to avoid a situation like that.

Another example came to light in 2015, when a number of news articles ran stories on United Airliness so-called Chairmans Flight. This was a flight from Newark to Columbia, South Carolina, that United continued to run long after it became clear it was a money-loser. Why do that? It turns out the chairman of the Port Authority, which controls access to all the ports in New York and New Jersey, had a vacation home near Columbia. During negotiations over airport fees, he made it clear that he wanted United to keep the flight, so United decided not to cancel it. Most of the news stories blamed United for influence-peddling. Only Holman Jenkins of the Wall Street Journal called it what it was: extortion by the Port Authority chairman.

The point is, theres a profound moral difference between trying to use government to plunder others and engaging with it essentially in self-defense. Its the same difference between a mobster running a protection racket and his victims. And theres an equally profound moral difference between people who survive through production and trade, and those who survive by political pull.

Rand spells out this latter difference in an essay called The Money Making Personality:

The Money-Maker is the discoverer who translates his discovery into material goods. In an industrial society with a complex division of labor, it may be one man or a partnership of two: the scientist who discovers new knowledge and the entrepreneur the businessman who discovers how to use that knowledge, how to organize material resources and human labor into an enterprise producing marketable goods.

The Money-Appropriator is an entirely different type of man. He is essentially noncreative and his basic goal is to acquire an unearned share of the wealth created by others. He seeks to get rich, not by conquering nature, but by manipulating men, not by intellectual effort, but by social maneuvering. He does not produce, he redistributes: he merely switches the wealth already in existence from the pockets of its owners to his own.

The Money-Appropriator may become a politician or a businessman who cuts corners or that destructive product of a mixed economy: the businessman who grows rich by means of government favors, such as special privileges, subsidies, franchises; that is, grows rich by means of legalized force.

In Atlas Shrugged, Rand shows these two types in action through characters like steel magnate Hank Rearden and railroad executive Dagny Taggart, two brilliant and productive business people who carry a crumbling world on their shoulders. On the opposite end of the spectrum are Orren Boyle, a competitor of Reardens, and Jim Taggart, Dagnys brother and CEO of the railroad where she works. Both constantly scheme to win special franchises and government contracts from their friends in Washington and to heap regulations on productive businesses like Reardens. Rearden is forced to hire a lobbyist in Washington to try to keep the bureaucrats off of his back.Government does not create wealth. It can use force to protect property and freedom or it can use that force to plunder.

When we damn special interests or businesses in general for cronyism, we end up grouping the Reardens in with the Orren Boyles, which only excuses the behavior of the latter and damns the former. This attitude treats the thug and his victim as morally equivalent. Indeed, this attitude makes it seem like success in business is as much a function of whom you know in Washington as it is how intelligent or productive you are.

It is unfortunately true that many businesses use political pull, and many are a mixture of money-makers and money-appropriators. So it can seem like success is a matter of government connections. But its not true in a fundamental sense. The wealth that makes our modern world amazing the iPhones, computers, cars, medical advances and much more can only be created through intelligence, ingenuity, creativity and hard work.

Government does not create wealth. It can use the force it possesses to protect the property and freedom of those who create wealth and who deal with each other civilly, through trade and persuasion; or it can use that force to plunder the innocent and productive, which is not sustainable over the long run. What principle defines the distinction between these two types of government?

As I noted earlier, the common view about cronyism is that it is a function of big government and that the solution is to shrink or limit government. But that just leads to the question: whats the limiting principle?

True, a government that does less has less opportunity to plunder the innocent and productive, but a small government can be as unjust to individuals as a large one. And we ought to consider how we got to the point that government is so large. If we dont limit governments power in principle, pressure group warfare will inevitably cause it to grow, as individuals and groups, seeing government use the force of law to redistribute wealth and restrict competition, ask it to do the same for them.

The common response is that government should act for the good of the public rather than for the narrow interests of private parties. The Los Angeles Times editorial quoted above expresses this view. Whats truly crony capitalism, says the Times, is when the government confuses private interests with public ones.

Most people who criticize cronyism today from across the political spectrum hold the same view. The idea that governments job is to serve the public interest has been embedded in political thought for well over a century.

Rand rejects the whole idea of the public interest as vague, at best, and destructive, at worst. As she says in an essay called The Pull Peddlers:

So long as a concept such as the public interest is regarded as a valid principle to guide legislation lobbies and pressure groups will necessarily continue to exist. Since there is no such entity as the public, since the public is merely a number of individuals, the idea that the public interest supersedes private interests and rights, can have but one meaning: that the interests and rights of some individuals takes precedence over the interests and rights of others.

If so, then all men and all private groups have to fight to the death for the privilege of being regarded as the public. The governments policy has to swing like an erratic pendulum from group to group, hitting some and favoring others, at the whim of any given moment and so grotesque a profession as lobbying (selling influence) becomes a full-time job. If parasitism, favoritism, corruption, and greed for the unearned did not exist, a mixed economy [a mixture of freedom and economic controls] would bring them into existence.

Its tempting to blame politicians for pull-peddling, and certainly there are many who willingly participate and advocate laws that plunder others. But, as Rand argues, politicians as such are not to blame, as even the most honest of government officials could not follow a standard like the public interest:

The worst aspect of it is not that such a power can be used dishonestly, but that it cannot be used honestly. The wisest man in the world, with the purest integrity cannot find a criterion for the just, equitable, rational application of an unjust, inequitable, irrational principle. The best that an honest official can do is to accept no material bribe for his arbitrary decision; but this does not make his decision and its consequences more just or less calamitous.

To make the point more concrete: which is in the public interest, the jobs and products produced by, say, logging and mining companies or preserving the land they use for public parks? For that matter, why are public parks supposedly in the public interest? As Peter Schwartz points out in his book In Defense of Selfishness, more people attend private amusement parks like Disneyland each year than national parks. Should government subsidize Disney?

To pick another example: why is raising the minimum wage in the public interest but not cheap goods or the rights of business owners and their employees to negotiate their wages freely? It seems easy to argue that a casino parking lot in Atlantic City is not in the public interest, but would most citizens of Atlantic City agree, especially when more casinos likely mean more jobs and economic growth in the city?

There are no rational answers to any of these questions, because the public interest is an inherently irrational standard to guide government action. The only approach when a standard like that governs is to put the question to the political process, which naturally leads people to pump millions into political campaigns and lobbying to ensure that their interests prevail.

Rands answer is to limit government strictly to protecting rights and nothing more. The principle of rights, for Rand, keeps government connected to its purpose of protecting our ability to live by protecting our freedom to think and produce, cooperate and trade with others, and pursue our own happiness. As Rand put it in Atlas Shrugged (through the words of protagonist John Galt):

Rights are conditions of existence required by mans nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the product of his work. If life on earth is his purpose, he has a right to live as a rational being: nature forbids him the irrational. Any group, any gang, any nation that attempts to negate mans rights, is wrong, which means: is evil, which means: is anti-life.

A government that uses the force it possesses to do anything more than protect rights necessarily ends up violating them. The reason is that force is only effective at stopping people from functioning or taking what they have produced or own. Force can therefore be used either to stop criminals or to act like them.

The principle, then, is that only those who initiate force against others in short, those who act as criminals violate rights and are subject to retaliation by government. So long as individuals respect each others rights by refraining from initiating force against one another so long as they deal with each other on the basis of reason, persuasion, voluntary association, and trade government should have no authority to interfere in their affairs.

When it violates this principle of rights, cronyism, corruption, pressure group warfare and mutual plunder are the results.

Theres much more to say about Rands view of rights and government. Readers can find more in essays such as Mans Rights, The Nature of Government, and What Is Capitalism? and in Atlas Shrugged.

In 1962, Rand wrote the following in an essay called The Cold Civil War:

A man who is tied cannot run a race against men who are free: he must either demand that his bonds be removed or that the other contestants be tied as well. If men choose the second, the economic race slows down to a walk, then to a stagger, then to a crawl and then they all collapse at the goal posts of a Very Old Frontier: the totalitarian state. No one is the winner but the government.

The phrase Very Old Frontier was a play on the Kennedy administrations New Frontier, a program of economic subsidies, entitlements and other regulations that Rand saw as statist and which, like many other political programs and trends, she believed was leading America toward totalitarianism. Throughout Rands career, many people saw her warnings as overblown.

We have now inaugurated as 45th president of the United States a man who regularly threatens businesses with regulation and confiscatory taxation if they dont follow his preferred policies or run their businesses as he sees fit. A recent headline in USA Today captured the reaction among many businesses: Companies pile on job announcements to avoid Trumps wrath.

Are Rands warnings that our government increasingly resembles an authoritarian regime one that issues dictates and commands to individuals and businesses, who then have to pay homage to the government like courtiers in a kings court really overblown? Read Atlas Shrugged and her other writings and decide for yourself.

Steve Simpson is the director of Legal Studies at the Ayn Rand Institute where he writes and speaks on a wide variety of legal and philosophical issues. This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

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Why Ayn Rand Would Have Opposed Donald Trump - PanAm Post - PanAm Post

As I am writing these words, I am experiencing, like many of you, stress, fatigue, and dismay. It's a reaction to the deluge of lies, deceit and purposeful, vindictive chaosas Jon Stewart called itthat is being thrown our way. Its exhausting and quite disheartening to view the sad state of American democracy at this point.

Weve medicated ourselves with excessive media, narratives, and fake news, to the point that we can no longer tell truth from fiction. The vile, Fascist-Authoritarian mono-myth has reared its ugly head, spewing hatred and not caring about anyone but itself. It relies on peoples cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias. Its breaking families apart, creating deliberate chaos which is, in actuality, hurting people.

Throughout this wave, I sit and ask myself, what good can come out of this?

Through my pain and sadness, I begin to think forward and ask: How do we start to build a more just and caring world?

My solace in the past few months is the groundswell and the Rise of the #Resistance, and the #Stand people are taking. Not only against the Authoritarian regime, but as a stand for a kind humanity, a real democracy, and a flourishing planet.

People are mobilizing, organizing, coming together, and bringing in their unique genius to power this movement of solidarity. People are finding their calling, meaning, and power in activism. We are all called to be activists and bring our unique voice to the rising of the people.

It feels like we are starting to bridge the Narrative Gap of the progressive and liberal movements.

I see the idea of the Narrative Gap as part of the predicament of all times - but especially of our age.

We have no shared reality with our fellow humans. We are disembodied, immature people, finally waking up for the first time. We are looking for a new human narrative and coming to the Collective Journey as a new evolutionary moment of our human story.I have written extensively about the Collective Journey - you can read more here! But, in essence:

Integral thought refers to a range of philosophies and teachings that seek a synthesis of science and spiritual ideas to attain insight into the nature of the universe. Luminaries of the Integral Thought Movement offer an excellent framework for the spiritual-psychological-societal evolution a human can have with their model of:

Wake Up > Grow Up > Clean up > Show Up.

The process goes something like this: the experience of a person's waking up moment is a lot like Neo waking up from the Matrix. Usually, this is a messy experience, similar to the sewers where Morpheus picks up Neo. As we get our bearings in our new woke experience, we start growing up as a well-rounded, mature human being. Cleaning Up is what we do when we clean up our act by practicing respect and accountability. We begin to take responsibility for our actions and practice respect to ourselves, our fellow human and the planet as a whole. As we move through this spiral of growing, we get to show up as our highest selves. We work in service to the Collective and ourselves. This is the idea of being in a superpositioned state, which I introduced in the Collective Journey Part 1: The idea of operating from the individual perspective while being part of a collective, and the seamless behavior we are starting to experience as we lead lives online and offlinealmost at the same time.

The Collective Journey comes into being when: Mature, woke, empowered humans start coming together. They bring their unique voices and are acknowledged by others.

I see a huge difference between an actual Collective Journey and Collectivism.

One can find the Collective Journey in geopolitical and social movements. Some examples are: Standing Rock, Our Revolution, environmental groups and the Cleantech industry, social justice and social entrepreneurship.These groups and others like them aim to support everyones quality of life. They look at what makes a world work for all people.

The other groups that are showing up en masse represent that dark side of Collectivism. They possess a StarTrek Borg-like mentality of unification. These are the alt-right narratives that are forming globally, the anti-intellectualism and climate-deniers. All weaving false and hateful stories under a singular idea.

This myopic approach is the antithesis of the multi-thread, multi-POV, and complex system approach of the Collective Journey. This concept of collectivism has brought us totalitarian regimes. It's fuelled by the selfishness of Neo-liberalism, toting Ayn Randian-beliefs of glorified self-interest. These are morally bankrupt humans who seek to unify ideas and race with hate.

It is interesting to me how the light and dark sides of these ideas can form. The NeoLiberal philosophy holds two tenets of Ayn Rand's Objectivism as its highest ideals. Self-Interest and Capitalism-promoting individualism. It forgoes the two other tenants of Reason and Reality. It embraces the Mono-Myth of Nationalism as a totalitarian concept. It also uses the new and old archetypes for minorities and race. To that it adds a newly adopted concept of the snowflake, as a derogatory term for liberals and progressives:

Calling someone a snowflake combines every single thing a college freshman loves: trolling people on the Internet, a self-satisfied sense of the superiority of ones own impeccable powers of reasoning, and Fight Club. Nineteen-year-olds around the nation read Atlas Shrugged and then watch Brad Pitt wax poetic about how real masculinity means getting to punch Jared Leto in the face, and now feel enlightened. - GQ - DANA SCHWARTZ - Why Trump Supporters Love Calling People "Snowflakes

The interesting thing is the origin of this term, according to Merriam-Webster dictionary: In Missouri in the early 1860s, a 'snowflake' was a person who was opposed to the abolition of slaverythe implication of the name being that such people valued white people over black people. This use seems not to have endured. In affect, its use today is the opposite of its origins.

Derogatory names are a telling indicator of being immature. The tenets of the Collective Journey look at woke and mature human beings, coming together from a stance of empowerment. This empowerment does not come from belittling others, it comes from individuals doing their own personal growth work. When they show up as part of the collective, they come to support and collaboratenot compete and fight.

How do we move from a linear point of view to the emergent complex system? How do we evolve from the authoritarian Mono-myth into the collective journey?

Bigger, complex, diverse, and pluralistic narratives, are becoming part of the global narrative. It has its roots in many movements of the past. You can find its origins in the Summer of Love, the Civil Rights Movement, the Womens Liberation and all the way back to the Abolitionist Movement. In recent years this narrative showed up in Occupy Wall Street, Our Revolution, Standing Rock and now the Womens March on Washington. It's appearing in the breathtaking plethora of #Resistance movements that are happening globally. They are all using every digital and physical platform to bring forth their stories. From social media, video, to marching and rallying in the streets, the narratives that are being created are multiplatform and have diverse perspectives.

How do we use the Collective Journey as a blueprint to build a strong future?

The architect and futurist, Buckminster Fuller, patented and coined the term "Geodesic Domes. These were a lattice of intersecting icosahedrons and were extremely strong for their weight.

"I did not set out to design a geodesic dome," Fuller once said, "I set out to discover the principles operative in Universe. For all I knew, this could have led to a pair of flying slippers." Fuller believed that by observing nature, we can tap into its exquisite design.

The Buckminsterfullerene molecule was discovered at Rice University by Harold Kroto, Robert Curl, James R. Heath, Richard Smalley and Sean OBrien in 1985. It is a spherical fullerene molecule with the formula C60. It has a cage-like fused-ring structure (truncated icosahedron) which resembles a football (soccer ball), made of twenty hexagons and twelve pentagons, with a carbon atom at each vertex of each polygon and a bond along each polygon edge. Wikipedia. The scientists who discovered it named it in honor of Buckminster Fuller and his vision.

I would like to introduce a metaphor that will evolve my original model for the Collective Journey. My initial design is in the diagram below.

This model is likened to a cross section you get of a tree when you want to examine its circles. You know the tree is a far more complex system - but from that vantage point, the tree appears to be two dimensional. So is the Collective Journey suggested model above. It is but a glimpse into a complex, emergent and ever-evolving system. The Collective Journey in its three-dimensional form might resemble the Buckminsterfullerene molecule.

Below are a few anecdotes about the Buckminsterfullerene molecule. These can be of use in making it a great metaphorical candidate for the evolved model of the Collective Journey:

Fuller looked at complex systems of nature and how everything in nature collaborates . He mused that this structure, which symbolizes complexity and strength would appear in nature. He was proven when the molecule was discovered in 1985.

Each node on the molecule is critical to its strength and structure - so is every voice coming into the collective. Each node is unique and vitalTogether weaving a powerful structure.

The narrative that is created is networked, porous, multi-platformed, diverse and emergent. The archetypes that show up are multifaceted and ever-evolving. Like Fuller, if we observe our narratives as being part of nature, we will view them from the complex systems perspective.

For our species to survive and evolve beyond these troubled times, we need to take a longer view of evolution. We need to start looking at our Collective Journey as the next phase of our planetary society. We need to gain the Cosmic Perspective. The perspective that views our place in the universe as the speck of dust we are. We need to cultivate the awe of the grandeur of the universe.

NASA

Carl Sagan, one of my favorite thinkers and scientists, gave us one of the first vistas into our place in the universe, by suggesting the crew that was piloting the distant satellite, Voyager 1, rotate and take an image of our solar system, as it exited in 1990.

His reflections of this picture were immortalized in Pale Blue Dot. At times like these, I hold on to these words almost as scripture. I practice looking at the longer perspective of our species and our planet. I actually hope we finally show up as the evolved species we have the potential to become:

Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994

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The Narrative Gap - Huffington Post

The people who headed up the Womens March on Washington a few weeks ago (hereinafter Marchers) now have a strike in the works. They should think carefully before starting.

A strike is not the same thing as a protest. A strike matters because it interferes with material production. When theres a strike at the North Pole, the elves stop making toys. If Santa Claus has no toys, kids stop leaving him cookies. This forces Santa Claus to negotiate with the elves so they will go back to producing.

If the elves strike succeeds, it is for two reasons. First, the elves cooperate with each other. If just a few quit working, they only make more work for the working elves, then get fired by Santa Claus. Second, the elves make something that people want before the strike. People miss their product when it disappears. If the elves only made knockoff Barbies with pre-snarled hair before the strike, or if not enough elves quit working to make a real dent in production, their strike wont work.

The first problem is uniting the workers for the strike. Things at the shop are so bad that the great majority of workers have agreed to take the risk of refusing to work. They can only help themselves by helping each other, sharing the risk and making the line together.Crossing picket lines betrays a fellow schlep, and the evidence is that theres a picket line to cross.

Feminists would like to make scabs out of women who disagree with them or have more pressing duties than activism, but what if there are more scabs than strikers? So if there were 6 million Marchers on January 21, that leaves more than 310 million Americans who didnt show up in DC or at their nearest local march.

Lets say ten people wanted to march for every one who did, which makes 60 million Wish I Could Marchers. We still havent collected enough people to bargain. We dont have enough strikers building a picket line the remaining workers would hesitate to cross (and in real life, picket lines are made of people, not wishes). In these right-to-work days, we couldnt even makeshift an effective union. Enough workers are enough satisfied to keep the shop open.

What kind of shop are we talking about here, anyway? Thats the Marchers second problem. Committed contrarian Janet Bloomfield analyzed the male and female U.S. workforces a few years ago and reached this conclusion: If women took the day off, with the sole exception of NURSES, nothing would happen. No one would die. The world would continue to function. The hair salons and primary schools and retail clothing stores would close, and the male management structure would have to find some way to answer their own phones for a day, but essentially, nothing would happen.

Bloomfield details what the world would look like if Atlas shrugged, using numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Its worth the read. Men overwhelmingly work in the places that keep the sine qua nons of contemporary life operational. They have the jobs that generate and deliver our electricity and gas; they build and maintain the robots in our kitchens and garages; they take out almost all of the trash; they run die Herz Maschine und die Moloch Maschine; and this list could go on for a long time.

But if Atlas concubine doesnt show up for her job (which she has a hard time describing but involves a lot of social media platforms and the word facilitator), and Atlas sister boldly cancels her classes (while leaning on her advisees to don stupid hats), and Atlas mom doesnt put his birthday card in the mail, Atlas isnt going to care.

The March itself was an informative trial run for the proposed strike. Every person who marched that day was not at her/his/zeir job (paid or unpaid), but the gears of civilization failed to grind to a halt. Planes took off and landed, appendixes were removed, sewage left our houses and never came back. The only people who missed the Marchers were those with whom they share domiciles.

To be fair, the March was on a Saturday. Lots of people have Saturday off. But there was also a womens strike the day before (you got it: Friday). That day, 7,408 women refused to work. The number of oppressors they brought to the negotiating table has not yet been reported.

A stronger womens strike effort was hostessed by Betty Friedan on August 26, 1970 (that was a Wednesday). Twenty thousand strikers showed up in New York, while other strikes were held around the country. Do you remember the stock market catastrophe that day? Do you remember the gridlock on every interstate, and how there were no cornflakes for weeks? No, because they didnt happen.

The most significant economic impact of these events was probably the amount of travel and hype they generated. The absence of all those Marchers or strikers from their normal tasks on each of those three days failed to depress the systemically sexist GDP. Them being offsite from their normal work did not shut down the shop. Donald Trump filled his sleigh with racist toys and put them in stockings all over Michigan and Pennsylvania.

That means the events didnt work as strikes. One day of absence from work brought no significant material loss to anyone higher up.

The workforce has enough women in it that if they all agreed not to show up, there would be a noticeable public impact. The difficulty from a strikers perspective is that most of the work women do would still get done.

The day women dont show up for work would be the day women take care of their own kids, make their own lunches, and wash their own dishes. If they kept not coming to work, a lot of unemployed men would get jobs, a lot of made-up jobs would get un-made-up, and a lot of women would move back in with their parents. The economy would technically shrink, but the greater impact would be its reconfiguring. An extended exodus of women from the formal workforce would primarily amount to an undoing of the tangled job-trading women do with each other.

The day men dont show up for work, however, will be a trial run for Armageddon. It will be cold and dark; there wont be phones, TV, or Internet; and people will yell at you if you open the fridge. If men kept not coming to work, the only people happy would be preppers.

So, Marchers, consider. If you call a strike, make it a real one. It needs to halt production. It needs to cripple the economy. It needs to empty the bellies of the overlords and make them beg for the sweet music of your demands.

Traditionally, strikes last longer than one day. In the absence of a union, strikers dont get paid, so you should factor that in. Skilled nurses will be key, but I dont have any great leads after that. I am genuinely curious to see if you can get it done.

Rebekah Curtis is a housewife with a writing and indexing hobby. She has written for Babble, Touchstone, Modern Reformation (forthcoming), and is co-author of LadyLike, a collection of essays from Concordia Publishing House.

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Go Ahead, Women's Marchers, Strike. Nobody Will Miss You - The Federalist

Apply Today for Maryland Taxpayers Scholarship

Annapolis, MD On Feb. 4, Delegate Deborah C. Rey announced that her office is accepting applications for the Maryland Taxpayers Scholarship the 2017-2018 school year for residents of District 29B. The other delegates representing the other Districts will offer this same opportunity for their residents.

Applicants for the Maryland Taxpayers Scholarship must attend a Maryland college, university or approved career school. The applicant must be enrolled for full-time or part-time attendance.

In addition to completing an application, an official transcript is required, a resume, two letters of recommendation, an essay comparing one of the following Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged characters to a public individual: John Gualt, Hank Rearden, Dagny Taggart, Wesley Mouch or James Tagart.

All Maryland Taxpayers Scholarship applications are due by April 15, 2017, so dont delay. Applications are filed electronically and email instructions can be found on the last page.

Del. Rey can be reached at: Deborah C. Rey, Delegate, District 29B, St. Marys County, Maryland House of Delegates, 6 Bladen Street, Rm 323, Annapolis, MD 21401, phone: 301-858-3227.

If you know someone wanting to continue their education, please encourage them to apply. You can find the complete application form here.

Contact Shertina Mack at s.mack@TheBayNet.com.

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Apply Today for Maryland Taxpayers Scholarship - Bay Net

Several years ago, Miss Ayn Rand wrote The Fountainhead. Despite a generally poor press, it is said to have sold some four hundred thousand copies. Thus, it became a wonder of the book trade of a kind that publishers dream about after taxes. So Atlas Shrugged had a first printing of one hundred thousand copies. It appears to be slowly climbing the best-seller lists.

The news about this book seems to me to be that any ordinarily sensible head could not possibly take it seriously, and that, apparently, a good many do. Somebody has called it: Excruciatingly awful. I find it a remarkably silly book. It is certainly a bumptious one. Its story is preposterous. It reports the final stages of a final conflict (locale: chiefly the United States, some indefinite years hence) between the harried ranks of free enterprise and the looters. These are proponents of proscriptive taxes, government ownership, labor, etc., etc. The mischief here is that the author, dodging into fiction, nevertheless counts on your reading it as political reality. This, she is saying in effect, is how things really are. These are the real issues, the real sides. Only your blindness keeps you from seeing it, which, happily, I have come to rescue you from.

Since a great many of us dislike much that Miss Rand dislikes, quite as heartily as she does, many incline to take her at her word. It is the more persuasive, in some quarters, because the author deals wholly in the blackest blacks and the whitest whites. In this fiction everything, everybody, is either all good or all bad, without any of those intermediate shades which, in life, complicate reality and perplex the eye that seeks to probe it truly. This kind of simplifying pattern, of course, gives charm to most primitive storyknown as: The War between the Children of Light and the Children of Darkness. In modern dress, it is a class war. Both sides to it are caricatures.

The Children of Light are largely operatic caricatures. Insofar as any of them suggests anything known to the business community, they resemble the occasional curmudgeon millionaire, tales about whose outrageously crude and shrewd eccentricities sometimes provide the lighter moments in boardrooms. Otherwise, the Children of Light are geniuses. One of them is named (the only smile you see will be your own): Francisco Domingo Carlos Andres Sebastian dAntonio. This electrifying youth is the worlds biggest copper tycoon. Another, no less electrifying, is named: Ragnar Danesjold. He becomes a twentieth-century pirate. All Miss Rands chief heroes are also breathtakingly beautiful. So is her heroine (she is rather fetchingly vice president in charge of management of a transcontinental railroad).

So much radiant energy might seem to serve a eugenic purpose. For, in this story as in Mark Twains, all the knights marry the princessthough without benefit of clergy. Yet from the impromptu and surprisingly gymnastic matings of the heroine and three of the heroes, no childrenit suddenly strikes youever result. The possibility is never entertained. And, indeed, the strenuously sterile world of Atlas Shrugged is scarcely a place for children. You speculate that, in life, children probably irk the author and may make her uneasy. How could it be otherwise when she admiringly names a banker character (by what seems to me a humorless master-stroke): Midas Mulligan? You may fool some adults; you cant fool little boys and girls with such stuffnot for long. They may not know just what is out of line, but they stir uneasily. The Children of Darkness are caricatures, too; and they are really oozy. But at least they are caricatures of something identifiable. Their archetypes are Left-Liberals, New Dealers, Welfare Statists, One Worlders, or, at any rate, such ogreish semblances of these as may stalk the nightmares of those who think little about people as people, but tend to think a great deal in labels and effigies. (And neither Right nor Left, be it noted in passing, has a monopoly of such dreamers, though the horrors in their nightmares wear radically different masks and labels.)

In Atlas Shrugged, all this debased inhuman riffraff is lumped as looters. This is a fairly inspired epithet. It enables the author to skewer on one invective word everything and everybody that she fears and hates. This spares her the playguy business of performing one service that her fiction might have performed, namely: that of examining in human depth how so feeble a lot came to exist at all, let alone be powerful enough to be worth hating and fearing. Instead, she bundles them into one undifferentiated damnation.

Looters loot because they believe in Robin Hood, and have got a lot of other people believing in him, too. Robin Hood is the authors image of absolute evilrobbing the strong (and hence good) to give to the weak (and hence no good). All looters are base, envious, twisted, malignant minds, motivated wholly by greed for power, combined with the lust of the weak to tear down the strong, out of a deepseated hatred of life and secret longing for destruction and death. There happens to be a tiny (repeat: tiny) seed of truth in this. The full clinical diagnosis can be read in the pages of Friedrich Nietzsche. (Here I must break in with an aside. Miss Rand acknowledges a grudging debt to one, and only one, earlier philosopher: Aristotle. I submit that she is indebted, and much more heavily, to Nietzsche. Just as her operatic businessmen are, in fact, Nietzschean supermen, so her ulcerous leftists are Nietzsches last men, both deformed in a way to sicken the fastidious recluse of Sils Maria. And much else comes, consciously or not, from the same source.) Happily, in Atlas Shrugged (though not in life), all the Children of Darkness are utterly incompetent.

So the Children of Light win handily by declaring a general strike of brains, of which they have a monopoly, letting the world go, literally, to smash. In the end, they troop out of their Rocky Mountain hideaway to repossess the ruins. It is then, in the books last line, that a character traces in the dir, over the desolate earth, the Sign of the Dollar, in lieu of the Sign of the Cross, and in token that a suitably prostrate mankind is at last ready, for its sins, to be redeemed from the related evils of religion and social reform (the mysticism of mind and the mysticism of muscle).

That Dollar Sign is not merely provocative, though we sense a sophomoric intent to raise the pious hair on susceptible heads. More importantly, it is meant to seal the fact that mankind is ready to submit abjectly to an elite of technocrats, and their accessories, in a New Order, enlightened and instructed by Miss Rands ideas that the good life is one which has resolved personal worth into exchange value, has left no other nexus between man and man than naked selfinterest, than callous cash-payment. The author is explicit, in fact deafening, about these prerequisites. Lest you should be in any doubt after 1,168 pages, she assures you with a final stamp of the foot in a postscript:

And I mean it. But the words quoted above are those of Karl Marx. He, too, admired naked self-interest (in its time and place), and for much the same reasons as Miss Rand: because, he believed, it cleared away the cobwebs of religion and led to prodigies of industrial and cognate accomplishment. The overlap is not as incongruous as it looks. Atlas Shrugged can be called a novel only by devaluing the term. It is a massive tract for the times. Its story merely serves Miss Rand to get the customers inside the tent, and as a soapbox for delivering her Message. The Message is the thing. It is, in sum, a forthright philosophic materialism. Upperclassmen might incline to sniff and say that the author has, with vast effort, contrived a simple materialist system, one, intellectually, at about the stage of the oxcart, though without mastering the principle of the wheel. Like any consistent materialism, this one begins by rejecting God, religion, original sin, etc., etc. (This books aggressive atheism and rather unbuttoned higher morality, which chiefly outrage some readers, are, in fact, secondary ripples, and result inevitably from its underpinning premises.) Thus, Randian Man, like Marxian Man, is made the center of a godless world.

At that point, in any materialism, the main possibilities open up to Man. 1) His tragic fate becomes, without God, more tragic and much lonelier. In general, the tragedy deepens according to the degree of pessimism or stoicism with which he conducts his hopeless encounter between human questioning and the silent universe. Or, 2) Mans fate ceases to be tragic at all. Tragedy is bypassed by the pursuit of happiness. Tragedy is henceforth pointless. Henceforth mans fate, without God, is up to him, and to him alone. His happiness, in strict materialist terms, lies with his own workaday hands and ingenious brain. His happiness becomes, in Miss Rands words, the moral purpose of his fife.

Here occurs a little rub whose effects are just as observable in a free-enterprise system, which is in practice materialist (whatever else it claims or supposes itself to be), as they would be under an atheist socialism, if one were ever to deliver that material abundance that all promise. The rub is that the pursuit of happiness, as an end in itself, tends automatically, and widely, to be replaced by the pursuit of pleasure, with a consequent general softening of the fibers of will, intelligence, spirit. No doubt, Miss Rand has brooded upon that little rub. Hence in part, I presume, her insistence on man as a heroic being With productive achievement as his noblest activity. For, if Mans heroism (some will prefer to say: human dignity) no longer derives from God, or is not a function of that godless integrity which was a root of Nietzsches anguish, then Man becomes merely the most consuming of animals, with glut as the condition of his happiness and its replenishment his foremost activity. So Randian Man, at least in his ruling caste, has to be held heroic in order not to be beastly. And this, of course, suits the authors economics and the politics that must arise from them. For politics, of course, arise, though the author of Atlas Shrugged stares stonily past them, as if this book were not what, in fact, it is, essentiallya political book. And here begins mischief. Systems of philosophic materialism, so long as they merely circle outside this worlds atmosphere, matter little to most of us. The trouble is that they keep coming down to earth. It is when a system of materialist ideas presumes to give positive answers to real problems of our real life that mischief starts. In an age like ours, in which a highly complex technological society is everywhere in a high state of instability, such answers, however philosophic, translate quickly into political realities. And in the degree to which problems of complexity and instability are most bewildering to masses of men, a temptation sets in to let some species of Big Brother solve and supervise them.

One Big Brother is, of course, a socializing elite (as we know, several cut-rate brands are on the shelves). Miss Rand, as the enemy of any socializing force, calls in a Big Brother of her own contriving to do battle with the other. In the name of free enterprise, therefore, she plumps for a technocratic elite (I find no more inclusive word than technocratic to bracket the industrial-financial-engineering caste she seems to have in mind). When she calls productive achievement mans noblest activity, she means, almost exclusively, technological achievement, supervised by such a managerial political bureau. She might object that she means much, much more; and we can freely entertain her objections. But, in sum, that is just what she means. For that is what, in reality, it works out to. And in reality, too, by contrast with fiction, this can only head into a dictatorship, however benign, living and acting beyond good and evil, a law unto itself (as Miss Rand believes it should be), and feeling any restraint on itself as, in practice, criminal, and, in morals, vicious (as Miss Rand clearly feels it to be). Of course, Miss Rand nowhere calls for a dictatorship. I take her to be calling for an aristocracy of talents. We cannot labor here why, in the modern world, the pre-conditions for aristocracy, an organic growth, no longer exist, so that the impulse toward aristocracy always emerges now in the form of dictatorship.

Nor has the author, apparently, brooded on the degree to which, in a wicked world, a materialism of the Right and a materialism of the Left first surprisingly resemble, then, in action, tend to blend each with each, because, while differing at the top in avowed purpose, and possibly in conflict there, at bottom they are much the same thing. The embarrassing similarities between Hitlers National Socialism and Stalins brand of Communism are familiar. For the world, as seen in materialist view from the Right, scarcely differs from the same world seen in materialist view from the Left. The question becomes chiefly: who is to run that world in whose interests, or perhaps, at best, who can run it more efficiently?

Something of this implication is fixed in the books dictatorial tone, which is much its most striking feature. Out of a lifetime of reading, I can recall no other book in which a tone of overriding arrogance was so implacably sustained. Its shrillness is without reprieve. Its dogmatism is without appeal. In addition, the mind which finds this tone natural to it shares other characteristics of its type. 1) It consistently mistakes raw force for strength, and the rawer the force, the more reverent the posture of the mind before it. 2) It supposes itself to be the bringer of a final revelation. Therefore, resistance to the Message cannot be tolerated because disagreement can never be merely honest, prudent, or just humanly fallible. Dissent from revelation so final (because, the author would say, so reasonable) can only be willfully wicked. There are ways of dealing with such wickedness, and, in fact, right reason itself enjoins them. From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: To a gas chambergo! The same inflexibly self-righteous stance results, too (in the total absence of any saving humor), in odd extravagances of inflection and gesture-that Dollar Sign, for example. At first, we try to tell ourselves that these are just lapses, that this mind has, somehow, mislaid the discriminating knack that most of us pray will warn us in time of the difference between what is effective and firm, and what is wildly grotesque and excessive. Soon we suspect something worse. We suspect that this mind finds, precisely in extravagance, some exalting merit; feels a surging release of power and passion precisely in smashing up the house. A tornado might feel this way, or Carrie Nation.

We struggle to be just. For we cannot help feeling at least a sympathetic pain before the sheer labor, discipline, and patient craftsmanship that went to making this mountain of words. But the words keep shouting us down. In the end that tone dominates. But it should be its own antidote, warning us that anything it shouts is best taken with the usual reservations with which we might sip a patent medicine. Some may like the flavor. In any case, the brew is probably without lasting ill effects. But it is not a cure for anything. Nor would we, ordinarily, place much confidence in the diagnosis of a doctor who supposes that the Hippocratic Oath is a kind of curse.

Review from The National Review, by Whittaker Chambers

Excerpt from:

Atlas Shrugged | Ayn Rand | Conservative Book Club

Jennifer Anju Grossman Atlas Society CEO, former Cato Institute policy director and former speechwriter for President H.W. Bush This post is hosted on the Huffington Post's Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and post freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.

Kevin Sorbo, a neighbor and upright family man, has just made headlines for landing a role as a mystery villain on the hit TV series Supergirl. Sorbo will make an interesting villain, as hes known for playing heroes, most famously Hercules. But I think hed make a pretty impressive John Galt if Atlas Shrugged were ever turned into a TV mini-series. Here are five reasons why:

1) Sorbo has already played a John Galt-like character in an indie film called Alongside Night, based on a 1979 novel by Neil Schulman. Writing for HollywoodInvestigator.com, Thomas M. Sipo observes:

In the near future, the U.S. government grows ever more oppressive as it tries to avert economic collapse due to its excessive taxing, borrowing, spending, and regulation. Meanwhile, a morally principled group of anti-government cadres prepares for a freer, post-socialist America.alongside-night-movie-poster.jpg Atlas Shrugged? No, it's Alongside Night, a new indie film based on the 1979 novel of the same name.

The two films do differ on some ideological points. Atlas Shrugged promotes Ayn Rand's Objectivism, a philosophy that supports small government. Rand expressly rejected anarchism. By contrast, Alongside Night advocates Agorism, a school of anarchism founded by Samuel E. Konkin III.

2) Sorbo has got his act together. Objectivism holds that a mans life is his standard of value, and by that metric, Sorbo has a lot of virtues that have enabled him to live a productive, independent, loving, and full life.

I first met Kevin and his wife Sam through mutual friends when I worked at Dole Food Company, and they lived a stones throw from our headquarters in a sprawling house in Westlake Village, California. I ended up getting to know Sam better, and was awed by how this gorgeous, vibrant women managed to homeschool her three children while continuing her acting career and hosting a radio show. But Ill never forget the time that I my old Porsche has broken down for the umteenth time, and Kevin gave me a ride to the repair shop. Distractingly handsome, he turned all the Hollywood stereotypes on their head, with a quiet, modest presence and genuine benevolent interest in others well being.

A man of faith, Sorbo is not an Objectivist, and likely doesnt know and wouldnt care about the label anyway. But he sure does seem to live his life according to at least some Objectivist ethics, which hold: Man must choose his actions, values and goals by the standard of that which is proper to manin order to achieve, maintain, fulfill and enjoy that ultimate value, that end in itself, which is his own life.

In so doing, hes a better man, a better father, a better husband -- and clearly, a better, more professional, more disciplined actor -- than others who live their lives by whim and wishful thinking.

3) Sorbo, like Ayn Rand, believes in the primacy of the individual and the perils of government control. Check out the interview below, in which he says: Take public education, you can take post office, the IRS, everything the government puts it hand on they seem to destroy it... This country was built on individuals, never built on government, and I think our forefathers are turning over in their graves.

In an interview with The Blaze he talked about how this country fails to learn the lessons of history: I keep asking my far-left liberal friends to show me where socialism works show me where socialism has ever been successful. For this reason, he may resonate with the unique gift of Atlas Shrugged and Objectivism, which challenges collectivism on moral grounds.

4) Related, yet not quite the same: Sorbo is an individualist who has repeatedly challenged groupthink and political correctness. Hollywood screams tolerance, but theyre the least tolerant people youll ever meet in your life, he said in one interview with the Blaze. The hypocrisy just reeks in this town. Why cant we all have a point of view.

That theme -- tolerance, diversity of views, and a spirit of inquiry -- was at the core of a 2014 movie Sorbo starred in, Gods Not Dead. In it, Sorbo plays a professor who demands that each of his students sign a declaration that God is dead to pass the class. I can easily see Sorbo playing a similar villain, of a professor requiring students to sign proof of Christianity to pass class. The point is more about freedom of religion and freedom of speech, than promoting an evangelical point of view.

5) Sorbo looks the part -- right down to the coloring Ayn Rand envisioned:

he looked as if he were poured out of metal, but some dimmed, soft-lustered metal, like an aluminum-copper alloy, the color of his skin blending with the chestnut-brown of his hair, the loose strands of the hair shading from brown to gold in the sun, and his eyes completing the colors, as the one part of the casting left undimmed and harshly lustrous: his eyes were the deep, dark green of light glinting on metal.

Rands heroes combine forceful character, good looks, quiet strength and extreme masculinity. Roark, Rearden, Andrei, Leo...all these love interests were portrayed as handsome, dominant men who physically towered over their women, as the 63 Sorbo does in real life.

So what do you think? Would Sorbo make a good Galt? Who would be your pick for casting the roles in a remake of Atlas Shrugged?

Go here to see the original:

5 Reasons Kevin Sorbo Should Play John Galt - Huffington Post

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 its time we should. Others -- critics of Rand and Trump -- arent 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 Trumps election One Small Step for Dictatorship.

Both positions are exaggerated. To be objective, lets start with perspective.

In 2009 Obamas aggressive moves on socializing medicine and raising taxes helped spark a resurgence of interest in Ayn Rand. Book sales of the 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged doubled over previous-year averages and Tea Party protesters brandished homemade signs asking Who Is John Galt? Atlas Will Shrug, and Free Markets, Not Freeloaders.

Echoing Obama, Hohmann offers the same pseudo-psychological critique levied by so many Rand bashers on the Internet: The fact that all of these men, so late in life, are such fans of works that celebrate individuals who consistently put themselves before others is therefore deeply revealing.

More deeply revealing is Hohmanns choice of language. Hohmann is a talented writer. Calling Trump and others who like Ayn Rands books acolytes -- a term used in religious ceremony, also synonymous with minions, henchmen, lackeys and underlings -- carries the weight of Hohmanns perspective with elegant economy.

He likens Rand readers to a villain from Dirty Dancing who dismisses a plea for help by flourishing a copy of The Fountainhead.

Some people count, and some people dont, says the bad guy. Adds Hohmann: In popular culture, the Rand acolytes are that guy.

If true, Hohmanns piece, outing three cabinet picks, one advisor, and Trump himself for liking Ayn Rand, is tantamount to calling them selfish jerks, in popular culture.

If that were the case, one would expect the outed acolytes to distance themselves from Ayn Rand -- a la House Speaker Paul Ryan, who cut and ran when, as Mitt Romneys running mate, he was pushed on liking Rand.

Rather than simply saying he disagreed with Rand on theology but loved her defense of free-markets, Ryan offered a blanket denouncement of the woman and her philosophy -- even though for years hed recommended the book to congressional office interns and even keynoted at The Atlas Societys 2005 celebration of Rands 100th birthday on Capitol Hill.

Ryans shameful desertion of the gal who brought him to the liberty ball may be why liberals think they can use any Rand-connection to tarnish Trump advisors and nominees.

So what does the Trump camp think of Ayn Rand?

Lets start with Trump. In an April 2016 interview with Kirsten Powers, Trump said of The Fountainhead, It relates to business beauty life and inner emotions. That book relates to everything.

This hardly makes him an acolyte, much less an Objectivist. Conflating a literary liking for Ayn Rand with status as an objectivist -- i.e. a follower of her highly developed philosophy, encompassing detailed descriptions of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics and aesthetics -- is one common mistake that has got to go.

Equally obvious is the fact that Trump has consistently defied and rejected labels. He is a pragmatist, not an ideologue. Hes even changed his party affiliation five times. Trump, a builder of buildings, would certainly appreciate a hero who also builds buildings. Hes also a businessman, who needs to deal with facts, numbers, negotiations, deadlines, and deals. Hes had to prioritize, innovate, adapt -- and for that the market has rewarded him well.

Yet, as others have pointed out, Rand would oppose many of Trumps policies -- from restrictions on free trade to his endorsement of eminent domain takings of private property.

What of the other fellow objectivists with whom Hohmann claims Trump stacks his cabinet?

Well, the only actual self-described Objectivist mentioned in the article, John Allison, is reportedly under consideration to chair the Federal Reserve.

Former BB&T bank chair John Allison has been a major supporter of the Ayn Rand Institute. He has helped set up university chairs on the morality of capitalism, with Ayn Rands view front and center. And he served for two years as president of the libertarian Cato Institute.

As a former bank CEO, the Ayn Rand character Allison might superficially seem to most resemble is Michael Mulligan -- a wealthy banker who took Midas as his moniker when the press tried to mock him for his materialism. As with many of the scenarios which Rands fiction anticipated, Mulligan was ordered by the courts to lend money to incompetent applicants -- the real life consequences of which Allison described in his book The Financial Crisis and the Free Market Cure.

But unlike Mulligan -- and other heroes of Atlas Shrugged who withdrew from the world into Galts Gulch to avoid extending what Rand called the sanction of the victim -- Alison hasnt withdrawn. Hes been actively involved with his community, both locally and nationally, published books, and now seems poised to enter a new chapter of public service.

Trumps nominee for Labor Secretary, is another Ayn Rand fan. Like Hank Rearden, the fictional steel magnate and metal engineer, Andy Puzder created countless jobs as head of the CKE Restaurants which owns Hardees and Carls Jr. Like Rearden, hes also embraced innovation (like automation).

He even owns an original signed copy of The Fountainhead. As I wrote of our exchange in the Wall Street Journal, Puzder feels at peace with both his Catholicism and his admiration of Ayn Rand.

I encouraged my six children to read both Fountainhead and Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, he told me over lunch in Santa Barbara last year. Each child later read Atlas Shrugged. Mr. Puzder argued that theres no contradiction between raising my children in the church, and urging them to lead the kind of lives of achievement, integrity and independence that Ayn Rand celebrated in her novels.

But what of the other so-called Rand acolytes surrounding Trump? Have Rand defenders -- or detractors -- more to fear? Try this trivia question on to find out.

My philosophy is to make money. If I can drill and make money, then thats what I want to do. Who said it, ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, or Atlas Shruggeds Ellis Wyatt, of Wyatt Oil?

Its actually the former -- and perhaps future Secretary Secretary of State, the surprise and controversial pick of President Elect Donald Trump.

Tillersons main qualification as objectivist in Hohmanns accounting is having listed Atlas Shrugged as his favorite book in a 2008 feature for Scouting Magazine. While his office didnt respond to queries for elaboration, one can speculate that the oilman identified with Wyatts experience with government regulations and persecutions. He also likely admired the legendary oilman of Atlas Shrugged for reviving the economy by pioneering drilling innovations that anticipated fracking by half a century.

But unlike Wyatt, Tillerson isnt shrugging, hes slugging -- advocating for reform.

We need U.S. energy companies that have the scale and financial strength to make investments, undertake the risk and develop the new technologies, Tillerson has said.

Tillerson as an individual engages in private charity. He is a practicing Protestant and headed the Boy Scouts of America. But in these efforts, he was closer to the libertarian views of Rand than to the hot buttons of the religious right. For example, he pushed to allow gays in the Scouts and Exxon contributed to Planned Parenthood. But in his make money attitudes, hes rejecting the give back language of many CEOs who allow themselves to be guilt-tripped by the corporate social responsibility dogma and rhetoric, that the purpose of a business is to serve society in some way other than providing goods and services to eager customers.

Rep. Mike Pompeo, Trumps hopeful for CIA chief, said: One of the very first serious books I read when I was growing up was Atlas Shrugged, and it really had an impact on me.

He also penned a piece entitled We Need Capitalism, Not Cronyism. In it he makes the distinction that is at the heart of Atlas Shrugged. Pompeo has been a crusader against Congressional earmarks, that is, handouts to the politically connected -- or politically correct, witness his war on wind power tax credits, and other supposedly eco-friendly energy subsidies.

Does the all of this add up to an Ayn Rand moment?

Ray Dalio, the CEO of Bridgewater Associates, recently reflected on the coming Trump administration. Regarding economics, if you havent read Ayn Rand lately, I suggest that you do. He noted that Rands books pretty well capture the mindset. This new administration hates weak, unproductive, socialist people and policies, and it admires strong, can-do, profit makers.

An Ayn Rand moment? Half of you reading will probably ask, Who cares? The other half, I suspect, will answer, I do.

And if you do, as do I, lets break up the circular firing squad of true Rand acolytes. And here I do intend the adjective in the literal sense of the word.

Let us find more areas of agreement. Let us welcome the Rand-friendly and Rand-curious -- without purity tests and loyalty oaths. Let us prioritize, and recognize that the problem of too few ideologically consistent Objectivists is dwarfed by the problem, and opportunity, of too few people reading Ayn Rand. And let us join -- with libertarians, religionists, Trump and Hillary voters alike, to introduce more people to the literature of Ayn Rand, which has been an activator for so many to delve deeper into learning more about economic and political liberty.

Excerpt from:

Making Ayn Rand Relevant in the Era of President Trump - Huffington Post

When men live by tradeit is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgment and the highest ability, so says Francisco DAnconia of Atlas Shrugged fame, Ayn Rands 1957 blockbuster.

Rands iconic classic defined the coming bureaucratic, collectivist state that would put mediocrity over achievement since the latter, who achieved by thought, hard work, and action, would accumulate more wealth than the former, who are content with less since contentment requires no ambition. In a word: state enforced egalitarianism.

That this state is here and now, courtesy of the eurosocialist Democratic Party, is irrefutable. Ayn Rand accurately prophesied that the accepted political mantra would become from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

Or, as the Democrats put it, income redistribution.

And just as they no longer attempt to confuscate their agenda regarding taxing and spending, the eurosocialists have now declared open warfare on competency, achievement, and success. Theirs is a world where those with these attributes have no place in government.

One need look no further than their shamelessness currently displayed during President Trumps cabinet nominee confirmation process.

Trumps cabinet nominees are clearly men and women of the best judgment and the highest ability, as evidenced by their exceptional success in the private sector.

And the Democrats will have nothing of it. Certainly there is a place for civil inquiry and, perhaps, advised skepticism. Thats the job of the opposition party. Savaging these nominees, however, is another matter entirely. Boycotting committee hearings and votes is simply petulance.

As Harry Reid once said, This doesnt feel like America.

In 2005, for example, Barack Obamas nominees for Secretary of State (Hillary Clinton), Treasury (Timothy Geithner), Commerce (Gary Locke), and Health and Human Services (Kathleen Sebelius), were all career politicians with little or no private enterprise experience. None of them started a business, worked in a business, or ever created aprivate sector job but they did have law degrees.

Read more:

Trump's cabinet: No fear of the best | Valdosta Today - ValdostaToday.com

ROMAN KRUGLOV [] / FLICKRDavis Campus Readers feel heat after inviting dead author to campus

Davis Campus Readers (DCR), a book club at UC Davis, has had its funding cut and will be forced off campus by the end of Winter Quarter after providing a platform for some questionable speech. The club asked Ayn Rand to come speak to its members, but failed to notice that the award-winning author is, in fact, dead.

The club of 40 members has asked speakers such as Ray Bradbury, Jhumpa Lahiri and Stephen King to come speak, all of whom declined due to the pointed books that have been on the clubs reading list, including former chancellor Linda Katehis upcoming memoir.

Rand, the author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, is the founder of objectivism. The Atlas Society says of the belief system: There is no greater moral goal than achieving happiness. But one cannot achieve happiness by wish or whim [] Politically, Objectivists advocate laissez-faire capitalism. Under capitalism, a strictly limited government protects each persons rights to life, liberty, and property and forbids that anyone initiate force against anyone else.

Though UC Davis does not agree with the beliefs that Rand or objectivists follow, the school allowed for Rand to speak but neglected to mention to the clubs president that Rand is deceased.

I told them that Rand could come to the school. I disagree with them giving her a platform, but I couldnt stop them from bringing her to campus, said Bryan Lewis, director of Campus Clubs and Circles. I think, even though shes dead, that she has every right to come share her beliefs. Shame on the club for providing such a soapbox in the first place. We cant stop people from taking a stance, but we can do our best to stop the spread of such opinions.

Lewis went on to say that there was no room for such speech on campus and that, while he feels that such values exist, there is no reason for the club to bring such a controversial and divisive figure to campus.

DCR president Logan Marx claimed that the club would not be silenced and had every right to make their voices heard on campus.

While Rand has unpopular beliefs, DCR should not provide the contentious figure with a platform to spread ideas based around a highly capitalistic and self-centered society. These beliefs are obsolete and ridiculous, and they have no place in an intellectual setting. UC Davis administration elected to go straight to the source by punishing the group that provided a platform for dangerous dialogue by preventing the spread of such rhetoric. Questioning the credibility of ETHAN VICTOR? You can reach him at ejvictor@ucdavis.edu. Feel free to help with his followers-to-following ratio on Twitter @thejvictor, because it is pathetic right now.

Read this article:

Humor: School book club loses funding after asking Ayn Rand to come speak - The Aggie

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Paul Ryan, who used to regularly signal his displeasure with Donald Trump, has backed the president to the hilt since the election. And so the newest meme has been born: Paul Ryan has no spine. Andy Borowitz and ClickHole have columns riffing on the Spineless Paul Ryan meme, and somebody even edited the Wikipedia invertebrate page to add the House Speaker.

It is true that Ryan does not care about the principles he claims to care about. But it's inaccurate to imagine him as merely a soulless careerist. Ryan does have serious principles. He is deeply committed to the principle of liberating the affluent from the burdens of progressive taxation. That description may sound like an arch comment to those of us who don't share Ryan's bent. But to people like Ryan, it is a moral conviction of the highest order.

Ryan has repeatedly cited the influence in his younger days of such works as Wealth and Poverty, by George Gilder; The Way the World Works, by Jude Wanniski, plus, of course, Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. These books treat the struggle against progressive taxation as the fundamental project of politics. The central problem of mass-participatory politics, in this view, is its tendency to allow the masses of voters to gang up on the rich (whether through democratic or undemocratic means) and redistribute their deserved rewards to themselves. It is tempting to dismiss his fixation with the top tax rate as greed on behalf of his donors, but to adherents of this ideology there is nothing more serious.

Obviously, the defense of the right of the one percent to keep its earnings is an unpopular basis for political messaging. And so Ryan has an ecumenical view of the political message needed to sell his policies. He is happy to posture as a fanatical debt hawk if debt-hawkery is a promising vehicle to advance the goal of cutting taxes for the rich, but he will also support and even demand massively higher deficits if that is what is needed. Ryan has promoted outreach to Latinos and other socially moderate constituencies as a practical step toward expanding his party's base. Ryan continued to defend those policies before the election, when it looked probable that Trump would lose, and he would need to rebuild in the wake of the expected defeat. But he is also perfectly willing to abandon those policies if he happens to have a race-baiting Republican prepared to sign his cherished tax cuts into law.

Ryan might supplicate himself to limitless acts of corruption or misrule by Trump, but he would never stand silent if Trump attempted to implement even a tiny tax increase on the highest-earning one percent. I happen to find Ryan's belief system to be rather deranged. But it is a belief system.

Get more smart coverage of the news and politics at Daily Intelligencer, or follow New York on Facebook.

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What does Paul Ryan stand for? - The Week - The Week Magazine

Published in 1957, Atlas Shrugged was Ayn Rand's last and most ambitious novel. Rand set out to explain her personal philosophy in this book, which follows a group of pioneering industrialists who go on strike against a corrupt government and a judgmental society. After completing this novel Rand turned to nonfiction and published works on her philosophy for the rest of her career. Rand actually only published four novels in her entire career, and the novel that came out before Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, was published in 1943. So there was a pretty long publishing gap there.

It might seem a bit odd to use a work of fiction to make a philosophical statement, but this actually reflects Rand's view of art. Art, for her, was a way to present ideals and ideas. In other words, Rand herself admitted that her characters may not always be "believable." They are "ideal" people who represent a range of philosophies. Rand used these characters to show how her philosophy could be lived, rather than just publishing an essay about it.

Rand's personal philosophy, known as Objectivism (to read more about it, check out our Themes section) was, and remains, really controversial. Objectivism criticizes a lot of philosophies and views, ranging from Christianity to communism, and as a result it can be very polarizing. Rand herself was a devout atheist, held very open views about sex (which definitely raised some eyebrows in 1950s America), and was a staunch anti-communist. Rand's anti-communism stems from her personal history. She was born in Russia in 1905 and lived through the Bolshevik Revolution, which is when communists overthrew Russia's monarchy and took over, establishing the Soviet Union. The Revolution was a bloody affair, and the new communist government was very oppressive; as a result Rand developed a lifelong hatred of communism and violence of any sort.

Rand fled the Soviet Union in 1926 and came to America, where she quickly became a fan of American freedom, American democracy, and American capitalism, all of which greatly contrasted to the experiences she'd had in the oppressive Soviet Union. Rand's personal philosophy developed around these American ideas, in opposition to the type of life she saw in the Soviet Union.

Given that Atlas Shrugged is a statement of Rand's personal philosophy, the book expresses many of her views on religion, sex, politics, etc. When it was published, it received a lot of negative reviews. Many conservatives hated the book for its atheist views and its upfront treatment of sex. Many liberals hated the book for its celebration of capitalism. The book also confused a lot of people. But the novel sold, and it has remained popular since; it's actually never been out of print since it was first published over fifty years ago. Atlas Shrugged was kind of like one of those blockbuster movies that gets horrible reviews but still does really well at the box office. Something about this book intrigues people, whether it's the characters, the ideas, or just the mystery plot itself.

In fact, Atlas Shrugged has even seen a renewed surge in popularity lately, coinciding with the recent financial crisis. (If you want to see some of the news coverage of this, check out our "Best of the Web" section.) The book does deal with industrialists and hard financial times, so this popularity boom is not too surprising. In recent years the news media has often classed the novel as ber-conservative, which is funny, since a lot of conservatives hated the book when it first came out. At any rate it's still a very controversial book just check out the hundreds of varied reviews it has racked up on Amazon.

In an old episode of South Park, a character who reads Atlas Shrugged declares that the book ruined reading for him and that he would never read another book again. (If you want to watch this hilarious clip, head on over to the "Best of the Web" section.) There's a reason this book is so often made the butt of jokes. It's long. Crazy long. We're talking Tolstoy levels of longness. It's also a book that's about politics, philosophy, 30-something business people, and more philosophy. Frankly, this book can seem downright off-putting. Even the title is confusing.

So why should you care? Well, for one thing, putting aside all the Deep Thoughts and Profound Ideas in this book, we have a bunch of characters who are challenging the establishment. Seriously. At its core, this book is about individuals who go against the crowd, individuals bold enough to speak their minds, do their own thing, and seek their own happiness. And in trying to do so, these bold individuals face a heck of a lot of peer pressure. In fact, pretty much everyone in the whole world disapproves of these people, who are trying to make better lives for themselves by embracing things like liberty and self-esteem.

It's like high school times a billion. The world is filled with the snobby popular crowd and our intrepid band of misfit heroes is outnumbered, but never outsmarted. Turns out all that philosophy we mentioned earlier has a lot to do with all of this individualism and going against the crowd, too. Whether it's a high school cafeteria or a high-powered business meeting, some things seem to stay pretty universal. This book shows that there are always people who want to march to the beat of their own drum and who are bold enough to risk mass disapproval in order to do it. Kind of cool and inspiring really, regardless of your opinion of their particular philosophy.

Read more here:

Atlas Shrugged