Category Archives: Ayn Rand

Debate has been sparked after activists at the University of Bristol held a protest against a speaker who was invited to attend a private event. Protesters barricaded the door of a university society's event at the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, at which libertarian Yaron Brook was scheduled to appear.

Brook was asked to speak by the university's Liberty Society about the causes of war in relation to the conflict in Ukraine, and the event was also used as a fundraiser for the Ukranian war effort. But the door was barricaded by activists, who played loud music through speakers, banged on doors and chanted, which caused the event to be shortened slightly.

The protesters have accused Brook, who is the chairman of the Ayn Rand Institute, of having "hateful" and "sinister" politics due to his views on US imperialism, Islam and Palestine. Brook has previously advocated for a ban on Muslims immigrating into the United States of America and Europe on the basis that the western world is "at war with radical Islam". He also supports Israel in its conflict with Palestine, which lead to the deaths of 5,600 Palestinians and 250 Israelis between 2008 and 2020, according to data published by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Read more: Police called as protesters 'blockade door' to Bristol University lecture

Student Action Bristol, who organised the protest, declined to be interviewed for this article. But in the aftermath of the event, they claimed they had "no choice" but to block Brook from speaking. In a statement posted on social media, they wrote: "Yaron Brook represents a sinister politics, one which harms the most vulnerable students in our university.

"He wears a suit and speaks the language of power - but his ideas are no different to those of Tommy Robinson or Nick Griffin. Should he or his kind attempt to speak at the university again, we will be back and in greater numbers."

But Brook told Bristol Live that he does not agree with the attempt to "silence" him, and says the students should have tried to engage him in a debate instead. He said: "I completely accept the fact that people have a right to protest, they don't like what I have to say.

"They don't like me, they don't like something I've said in the past, that's fine. What I don't think is acceptable, and what I don't think the university should allow, is the disruption of an event.

"Students have put a lot of time and effort into organising an event, I came out from London to do the event. To disrupt it, to attempt to stop an event from happening and to attempt to silence a speaker should be unacceptable and there should be ways to deal with it by security and police.

"We invited them in to ask questions but they didn't want to come in under those terms. Their whole goal was to silence me and I think that's unacceptable." Brook also denied having "hateful" views on Israel or on Islam, and said that the claims that the protesters have made about him are "ridiculous".

He said: "Is it out of the mainstream to be pro-Israeli? I guess it is in UK universities, but that's a little nuts and a little crazy. I'm pro-Israel and I think the Palestinians have been betrayed by their leadership, and have gone down a path that is not in their interest.

"I think it's sad what's happening in Israel and among the Palestinians and I think Israel is in the right in the conflict. I don't think my views on Islam are that out of the mainstream and I don't think my views on Islam are that radical.

"I'm not particularly fond of any religion, I'm hugely critical of Christianity and Judaism and Islam. And in the context of 9/11, I've said things about jihadism or totalitarian Islam that are pretty harsh, but they deserve it given their terrorist activities.

"But Islam? My views on Islam qua religion? They don't know what my views on Islam qua religion is."

And he added: "The fact is, my views are not mainstream, but if we only accept mainstream views I think we'll be doing a huge disservice to the culture in which we live, and I think particularly the universities where were supposed to be challenged, we're supposed to be thinking a bit outside of the box."

Following the event, Brook wrote on Twitter: "Tonight a group of Leftist students tries to Cancel me at Bristol University in the UK. In spite of their threats and the obnoxious noise they created my talk on the Roots of War proceeded as planned. I will not let thugs intimidate me into silence."

Some other students at the university have criticised the activists' decision to try and 'cancel' the event. Eshaan Badesha, who is the treasurer of the university's Labour Club society, says that he "despises" Brook's views but did not agree with the protest.

The 20-year-old said that, while he might have supported direct action if Brook had been invited to speak publicly, such as at a rally, he does not support trying to shut down debate at a private event.

He said: "If the SU thought it was acceptable to have then we don't think we should allow students not to have their right to have that speaker talk. The difference would have been if he was there to give off the views that he has before on things like American foreign policy, Islamic extremism.

"But in this sense he was there as a libertarian promoting his philosophy and promoting his view on the Ukraine crisis, and I feel like that was perhaps a step too far, to try and no-platform him. The issue we have as well is, the people attending that event might not necessarily know that much about him, and they might have gone in good faith to learn more about his views.

"When they see people on the so-called left perhaps trying to shut down the views of someone like that, it's only going to consolidate the views they already hold. Ideally our politics, as members of the Labour Club, our views are that we're trying to bring people on a journey and tell them, 'this is what we stand for'.

"When you go to places where there's a private event, and a small group of people tells them, 'we're going to no-platform your speaker' and they intimidate those members who aren't as aware, are you actually benefiting your cause there? Because now all the news is going to be not about Yaron Brook and his awful views, it's going to be about a bunch of students causing security problems, and it doesn't actually help the cause that you're fighting for either."

And, following the event, the Liberty Society wrote a lengthy statement on its Facebook page condemning the actions of the students. It said: "The UoB Liberty Society aims to provide an environment which facilitates the free exchange of ideas, and hosting external speakers is one way of doing so.

"The society does not necessarily endorse the views of our speakers and we encourage debate and discussion between students. We are saddened to write this statement but do so as attempted censorship on campus is no longer looming in the shadows but is vividly on display in one of the most prestigious universities in the world."

This is not the first time that a speaker at the university has been targeted by activists. The university is currently being sued by Raquel Rosario Sanchez over claims that the institution failed to protect her from harassment and bullying by activists.

It is alleged she was targeted over her involvement with campaign group Womans Place UK after trans rights activists protested against a talk she was holding and labelled her a terf (trans-exclusionary radical feminist). A spokesperson for Bristol SU said: "As a charity we are bound to uphold the law and allow freedom of expression, even where our views may differ from the speakers invited."

A University of Bristol spokesperson said: We are aware that a protest took place at an event last week held by the Liberty Society. The University adheres to the principles of free speech and all views, including those that can be difficult to hear for some, should be able to be expressed and heard with tolerance and mutual respect.

The University respects the right to protest, however we recognise that we also have a duty to ensure this is carried out in a safe manner which doesn't endanger others. Our Security Team were in attendance to ensure that the event was conducted safely. They identified that around 12 protestors were sitting in front of a fire exit from the room where the event was taking place and that they had linked arms and wouldnt move.

This was carefully managed by our Security Team. Due to the health and safety issues associated with such actions the Police were called to attend and the protestors were escorted out of the building after the event.

"We understand that the event went ahead as planned. If any individuals felt personally threatened, or have concerns about any aspect of the event, we would encourage them to report this.

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Debate sparked after University of Bristol students try to 'cancel' controversial speaker - Bristol Live

Rishi Sunak is the man most likely to be our next prime minister.

Just kidding.

While the rest of the country is weighing up if they can save on heating costs by putting their head in the oven, the chancellor has swanned off to his 5m house in Santa Monica.

The man responsible for tackling the cost of living crisis is taking a well-deserved break in a house with a pet spa. Whatever that is.

Sunak has had an almost unparalleled fall from grace, suffering a public wrath usually reserved for Love Island contestants and immigrants.

The BBC photoshopped him into superman for gods sake and now hes a byword for Tory cruelty.

His approval ratings have fallen a staggering 38 points since 2020, going from being one of the most popular chancellors in memory to radicalising money-saving expert Martin Lewis.

So, how did the Oxbridge-educated public schoolboy who worked for a hedge fund get so out of touch?

The story starts, like all good villain narrative arcs, in the City of London.

You wont find much about this on Sunaks website, dear reader, but after stints at 40,000 a year Winchester College, Oxford, and then Goldman Sachs, the chancellor worked at TCI.

TCI is a hedge fund that played a significant role in the collapse of RBS.

I wont get into the details, Ill just encourage you to revisit Margot Robbies bath scene in The Big Short.

Sunak and a TCI colleague went on to found their own hedge fund. That colleague was landed with an 8m tax avoidance bill.

The chancellor has denied any involvement in this matter, or the TCI scheme.

The point is, hes a born to rule Lord of the Manor.

And despite what you might have heard about the collapse of feudalism in your history lessons - we are all still very much living on his estate.

In fact, we never left.

You could see Sunaks mask slipping when he was challenged about his wifes continued involvement in Infosys, a company operating in Russia.

Sunak had called for investors to divest from Russia but said he was surprised he didnt go all Will Smith on the people criticising his wife for profiting from Putins regime.

And now he's overseeing a cost of living crisis that it's estimated will push 1.3m people into absolute poverty. Skyrocketing energy prices are about to make households 1,000 worse off a year.

And what is Sunak doing about this?Hes not taxing the energy companies that have recorded "bumper profits" and have "more money than they know what to do with" to offset the prices.

Hes loaning every household just 200 that theyre obliged to pay back in the next five years. It might actually be more cost-effective to burn the 200 instead of turning the radiator on.

The chancellor has also devised a cunning plan that essentially taxes people for voting Labour.

Sunak launched a scheme meaning that social care will be paid for by a rise in National Insurance.

National Insurance is a tax on workers' earnings. People who work pay National Insurance but dont need social care - and they largely voted for Labour in 2019.

Whereas old people, who do need social care but dont pay National Insurance, are more likely to vote Tory.

Tory voters are no longer the slick city boys of the 80s that would have caved their own skull in if Mrs Thatcher asked.

Theyve moved to the shires and will need their arses wiped for them in a few years.

And theyd still cave their skull in if it would bring back Thatcher from the dead.

Lets go back to how fishy Rishi became dishy. When he wasnt being fawned over for being conventionally attractive, the superhero chancellor sent the publics hearts a flutter by launching the furlough scheme, where the government paid 80 per cent of peoples wages who otherwise would have had to be laid off.

The government spent a huge 70 billion on this before it was abruptly ended in September 2021 to widespread concern.

This was a hugely generous package but there was a real oversight. Three million people were simply excluded from government support, by virtue of various self-employment quirks.

Old school Tory Sunak consistently claims that hes a low tax Conservative, despite the public facing the largest tax burden for close to 100 years.

While people confront the biggest fall in living standards since the 1950s, the UK is the only major economy actually increasing the tax burden on its citizens.

For years, Sunak got to play politics on easy mode.

He pursued massively popular schemes like furlough and eat out to help out. The country needed help and was welcome to receive it.

This exposes the hollowness at the heart of fishy Rishis brand.

Vulnerable people are making impossible choices between food and fuel, just so Sunak can role play Ayn Rand.

To paraphrase Lord Farquaad, some of you may freeze but thats a chance hes willing to take.

And whys he willing to take that chance?

I hear a mansion is a pretty easy place to stay warm.

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Rishi Sunak is a terrible bloke, regardless of his wife's finances - JOE.co.uk

In this episode of New Ideal Live, Ben Bayer interviews Rob Tarr, an expert on economics, about how Ayn Rands philosophical approach to economics can help us understand the nature and causes of inflation.

Among the topics covered:

Mentioned in the discussion are Rands lecture Egalitarianism and Inflation, her book Philosophy: Who Needs It (in which the lecture is reprinted), the bound volume of her periodical the Ayn Rand Letter (in which it first appeared) and Tarrs essay Economic Theory and Conceptions of Value: Rand and the Austrians versus the Mainstream from the book Foundations of a Free Society, edited by Gregory Salmieri and Robert Mayhew.

The podcast was recorded on March 19, 2022 and was broadcast on March 30, 2022. Listen to the discussion below. Listen and subscribe from your mobile device onApple Podcasts,Google Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher. Watch archived podcastshere.

Podcast audio:

If you value the ideas presented here, please become an ARI Member today.

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Understanding the Roots of the New Inflation: With Rob Tarr - New Ideal

EXCLUSIVE: First Wind Film Development has optioned TV rights to Rick Bleiweiss recently published debut mystery novel Pignon Scorbion and the Barbershop Detectives, withBrendan Deneen and Josh Stanton of Blackstone Publishing attached to produce the adaptation.

The book is set in 1910, inthe small English municipality of Haxford, which has a new Chief Police Inspector. At first, the dapper and unflappable Pignon Scorbion, a Brit of Egyptian and Haitian descent, strikes something of an odd figure among the locals. But it isnt long before Haxford finds itself very much in need of a detective.Investigating a trio of crimes whose origins span half a century, Scorbion interviews a parade of people with potential motives, but with every apparent clue, new surprises come to light. And just as it seems nothing can derail Scorbion, in walks Thelma Smithdazzling, whip-smart, and newly single. Has Scorbion finally met his match?

Bleiweiss spent the majority of his career in the music industry as a recording artist, Grammy-nominated producer, recorded songwriter and record label senior executive, working with superstar acts and contributing to film soundtracks. He has written numerous newspaper columns and magazine articles, had chapters in anthologies, and has a story in the upcoming collection Hotel California. He is a member of the International Thriller Writers, Mystery Writers of America, Historical Novel Society, and the Pacific Northwest Writers Association, among other organizations.

First Wind Film Development focuses on new premium content origination and package development for producers and authors. Based in the EU and UK, and formed in 2016 by three colleagues formerly working with United Artists Europe, the company developed the recently released feature documentary Meeting Gorbachev, on the life of Mikhail Gorbachev, directed by Werner Herzog and Andr Singer. FWFD has multiple projects in development for different film and TV markets, including Those Bloody Women, based on activist Emily Hobhouses 1902 memoir, The Brunt of Waran authentic insight into the life and suffering of women and children in the Boer War.

Deneen is aformer Scott Rudin Productions and Miramax/Dimension exec whorecently joined Blackstone and launched its in-house film and TV division, which currently has projects in development with Netflix, Paramount, Amblin, Roadside Attractions, Genre Arts, 6th & Idaho and Makeready.

One of the largest independent audiobook publishers in the U.S., Blackstones catalog counts over 13,000 audiobook titles from such authors as Ayn Rand, Gabriel Garca Mrquez, Pablo Neruda, C.S. Lewis, Don Winslow and Neil deGrasse Tyson. Its print and eBook imprint releases count over 80 titles a year by both new and established writers including James Clavell, Rex Pickett, P.C. Cast, Catherine Coulter, Norman Reedus and Karin Slaughter.

Bleiweiss is repped byNicole Resciniti at the Seymour Agency.

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First Wind Film Development To Adapt Rick Bleiweiss Blackstone Novel Pignon Scorbion And The Barbershop Detectives For TV - Deadline

AUBURN When I was in fourth grade, I reached college level reading. My first favorite book was Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, I carried a thesaurus with me like most children would carry a common pencil bag and I had the wildest dreams of becoming the next J.K. Rowling.

When we are kids, we are taught the importance of a proper education. Go to school, get good grades, excel in projects and sports and social activities, but we are never told how hard it can be to get there. Nobody tells you how often you stay up late at night, questioning yourself and your worth while you watch your peers excel.

One of my fondest memories was when my family and I had first moved into our home in Auburn. It became my beacon of light, where I had my very own room to play school with my sisters. I had an easel, desks for them to sit at, notebooks to grade papers, the works.

It truly fostered my dreams, to feel important and smart, to be seen in a way that I could be proud of myself for. I became encompassed in the idea that one day, I too could be a remarkable author who allowed young girls like me to escape into a world of their choosing, with little to no consequence.

After my mother and her ex-husband split up, we fell into financial hardship. Not the normal kind of hardships, but the really nitty-gritty not having a bed to sleep on, going to foodbanks twice a week so we could eat kind of hardships.

After a while, I became academically discouraged. Its easy for you to lose yourself when youre told over and over again Im not sure why you care so much, or Why bother? With every positive step I took, I felt I was dragged another five steps back.

Because of this, I truly lost track of what I wanted in life. Being so focused on my home life, I felt I didnt have room for homework or general studies. My day-to-day life just blurred together, and before I knew it, I was dropping out.

I tried for years to rekindle the flame of my inquisitive spirit. I stayed late after school to get homework done, I did extra credit projects to make up for the ones I had missed out on earlier in the year, and I regularly attended the Boys and Girls Club in Auburn, which had a study group that I was supposed to be involved in. Instead, I used it as a safe place to be with my friends.

For a long time I carried a sense of sadness around with me. I put myself in a little box labeled never to graduate, and convinced myself thats where I would end up staying. Just a girl working a 9-to-5, making sure her babies are fed.

Surely though, miraculous things happen in this world. Roses do bloom from concrete, just as I did when I joined the Wayfinder Schools Passages program. Its like a fog simply lifted from my vision one day, and I realized this is not who I want to be anymore. I can do this. For me and for my boys.

After years of hard work and self criticism, on June 8, 2022, my jagged path to a cap and gown is coming to an end. Finally, I will be making a speech on stage in front of my loved ones, holding a diploma, and wearing a smile.

Not only have I learned so much about academics and the world itself in this program, but I have absolutely found myself again. Im rooting for myself to keep going, and pursue the dreams I never thought possible, even though I didnt take the traditional route of education. You can, too.

Brianna Robinson dropped out of Lewiston High School her sophomore year. After graduating from Wayfinder Schools this June, she plans to study forensic science at Central Maine Community College in Auburn.

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'My jagged path to cap and gown': Reflections from a 23-year-old expectant high school graduate - Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel

In the short amount of time Ive written for Above the Law, Ive gotten a couple of emails, occasionally sprinkled with the word libtard, that bemoan the Leviathan power wielded solely by left-wing media and Gen Zers with neopronouns: cancel culture. But that accusation has always struck me as odd, given that the first thing that comes to my mind is some dude bringing up Grimace to shut down conversations involving accountability when he gets caught doing a prejudice in public.

For the record, I do occasionally read right-wing media outlets just for a bit of balance and the things you can get canceled for on that side boggle my mind.

Ketanji Brown Jackson is basically the next Supreme Court Justice. You know it, I know it, hell, Socrates probably does too. But nothing, and I mean nothing, is gonna prevent these snowflakes from looking up Hail Mary dirt to keep Justice Jackson from becoming a thing:

As Breitbart News previously reported, Jackson has made a note in her opinions to employ the term noncitizen or undocumented non-citizens rather than the terms alien or illegal aliens that are regularly used in court and in federal statutes. SOURCE

American citizens who oppose judges abusing their power to assist illegal immigrant invaders and hardened criminals are encouraged to contact their US Senators, especially Susan Collins (R-ME), to oppose the Supreme Court nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson.

The libs have been dragged through the mud for bringing up Booze McGees sexual conduct at his confirmation and Amy Coney Barretts lack of judicial experience at hers, but could you imagine the backlash if one of the arguments in the final hours before their confirmation was that they opted to use a way of referring to people that didnt spring to mind Marvin the Martian? That level of gall and audacity is a right-wing affair through and through.

Have you ever really sat back and thought about what the political and interpersonal strategies of canceling would look like? Libertarianism is cancel cultures ethos raised to an aesthetic ideal. No really, what are the myriad contemporary treatises on the virtues of Negative Liberty other than extended rants on policing who can or cant do what and how cool armed revolution is when you dont get your way? Those arent the words they use, its something more along these lines:

Any act directed against a person, apart from the cases and without the forms determined by law, is arbitrary and tyrannical; if attempt is made to execute such act by force, the person who is the object thereof has the right to resist it by force.

But lets be clear, this lofty language gets applied to any and everything they dont like: vaccine mandates, helmet laws, seat belt requirements, whatever its like a defiant toddler read a bit of Ayn Rand and was let loose upon the world.

In the spirit of balance, the next time a crowd member or two doesnt sit idly by at a Yale talk where some dude defends state-sanctioned murder on the basis of gender or something, try not to make lefties the face of canceling? I mean its not like were the ones burning books or anything.

Disqualified! Bidens Supreme Court Nominee Helps Illegal Alien Dealer [ Americansforlegalimmigration]

Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord in the Facebook groupLaw School Memes for Edgy T14s. He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim,a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email atcwilliams@abovethelaw.comand by tweet at@WritesForRent.

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Don't Believe The Hype: The Left Wish They Ran Cancel Culture Like This - Above the Law

GB News backer John Malone, who is the largest landowner in the US, is in the running to buy Channel 4.

The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) has said that the privatisation of Channel 4 would be bad for journalism. The channel, which was founded in 1982 to make content for under-served communities, could be sold for around 1 bn to the right wing US telecoms tycoon John Malone, one of the backers of GB News.

Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries said in a tweet that government ownership is holding Channel 4 back from competing against streaming giants like Netflix and Amazon.

In 2015, when the Tories first started looking at privatising Channel 4, Politico reported that The buzz among TV executives in London is that Discovery, the pay-TV group part-owned by billionaire John Malone, is interested in buying Channel 4 if the government decides to privatize. In 2014 Discovery tried to buy Channel 5, but lost out to its rival Viacom.

Malone is the largest shareholder and sits on the board of Discovery, a company which has been looking to expand its UK assets for a number of years. In 2017 the Guardian reported that Discovery has eyed numerous assets in the UK, including expressing interest to the government in buying Channel 4 when it was being considered for a 1bn privatisation.

Malone is yet another right wing libertarian tycoon, in a similar mould to Charles Koch, the oil baron who has funnelled millions of dollars into the supporting right wing think tanks like the Institute for Humane Studies, the Ayn Rand Institute, the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and the Cato Institute.

Malone has also sat on the board of directors at the Cato Institute, and donated $250,000 to Donald Trumps inauguration in 2017. He owns Liberty Media, which has investments in TV, Formula One and Baseball, and is also the largest private landowner in the US, with 2.2 million acres. At one time Malone also owned a sizeable stake in Rupert Murdochs News Corporation.

His empire also includes parts of ITV (hes the biggest shareholder), GB News, Eurosport, and Virgin Media, among TV and broadband operations in 30 territories, mostly in Europe. At 80 years old, Malone is a decade younger than Rupert Murdoch, who has been slowly relinquishing control of his companies to his sons.

Malones company Discovery is poised to take control of WarnerMedia, which owns CNN, later this year. Malone has said that he wants CNN to become more politically centrist. Malone seems to be on a spree of acquisitions in the past few years, and has also been floated as a potential buyer for Channel 4 by OpenDemocracy.

The New Yorker has said that the merger between Discovery and WarnerMedia is an entry into the streaming market for Malone, who is aiming to compete with Netflix and Amazon. This accords with Nadine Dorries suggesting that she wants to see Channel 4 competing with the established streaming services.

However, Channel 4 was originally established to serve under-represented groups, and support the UKs film and television industries with subsidiary companies like Film 4. Taking away its public service remit would mean that Channel 4 would be less likely to champion things like the Paralympics, its coverage of which has helped to change attitudes towards disability in the UK.

Competing with streaming services like Netflix would be a totally different kind of market competition, which could see the channel become more populist in its output.

In 2014, The Independent reported that David Abraham, the Chief Executive of Channel 4, warned of the risk that British television could wither under the dominant influence of American media moguls including Rupert Murdoch and Virgin media owner John Malone.

Abraham said Malone was nicknamed Darth Vader by Al Gore, currently holds a net debt of $41bn and famously hates to pay tax.

The sale of British creative industries to big US tycoons isnt going to lead to a destruction of the industry overnight, but it could lead to a slow reduction in especially the more public service oriented aspects of Channel 4s output, as well as to a change in the output of its news channel, creating a more homogenised and US-influenced media landscape in the UK.

John Lubbock leads on the Right-Watch project at Left Foot Forward

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Who is John Malone, the 'Cable Cowboy' and GB News backer who could buy Channel 4? - Left Foot Forward

There are no new Mozart symphonies to hear or paintings by Mark Rothko to see. Part of the sadness that comes from learning that an artist is gone involves the absence of getting to experience something new from them. At least, thats how things usually go. But every once in a while, a previously-unseen work by a renowned creator is uncovered, or an incomplete posthumous work gets a technological boost and finds its ending.

When it comes to architects, some of the disciplines most revered figures left behind a host of unrealized projects. Consider the case of Frank Lloyd Wright, who died in 1959 at the age of 91. Wrights body of work has many highlights, but it also included a number of projects that were never actually built. And while some unbuilt structures go on to be built long after they were first designed, a significant group remain in a more nebulous state.

In the years since Wrights death, several museum shows (and some unlikelier venues) have invoked and displayed his unbuilt designs. Unpacking the Archive, an exhibit at MoMA on the 150th anniversary of Wrights birth, featured a number of designs for buildings that never were. Justin Davidsons 2009 New York article on a Guggenheim retrospective of Wrights work alludes to Wrights 1947 plan for a section of Pittsburgh.

Wrights civic-center project was an inspiring and slightly lunatic plana Guggenheim Museum on steroids, a vertical strip mall, a pleasure dome that would make a Dubai emir blush, Davidson writes. Still, it leaves you wondering about what might have been. The Scottish writer Grant Morrison also worked an unbuilt Wright design in this case, for a city on Ellis Island into a 2005 DC Comics crossover event.

All told, 660 of Wrights planned buildings exist only on paper. What happens, though, when decades-old plans converge with present-day technology? Sometimes, the results can offer a glimpse into buildings that never were and give us a sense of what were missing from the Wright archives.

Floor plan for the Devin house.

Angi

An initiative from Angi applied 3-D visualization technology to show what a trio of Wright-designed homes would look like had they been built. The projects include a lodge at Lake Tahoe and homes for Aline Devlin and Ayn Rand. And while the buildings do not exist in the physical world, these images do a good job of filling that void. Its worth mentioning that Angis project isnt the only one to fit this description; an ongoing effort from David Romero also seeks to evoke Wrights designs via modern technology.

The team were shocked to find out how many Frank Lloyd Wright creations never went as far as to be built, Kaitlyn Pacheco, Content Editor at Angi, told InsideHook. That was the moment that sparked inspiration to bring some of Frank Lloyd Wrights unbuilt homes to life for the first time.

This blend of old and now required some challenges. The most challenging part was designing the floor plans, Pacheco said. In some cases, the team working on this project had to engage in a deeper look at Wrights work to make a best guess about what might be the most ideal choice for a particular space.

The design team followed the plans and sketches as closely as possible, but some parts required additional research and an understanding of how existing Frank Lloyd Wright houses are built, Pacheco added. With regards to the interiors, the research team took inspiration from famous Frank Lloyd Wright buildings, like Taliesin West and Hollyhock House.

The exterior of the Devin house.

Angi

These three projects span Wrights career, with the design for the Devin home known as Mrs. David Devin House dating back to the 1890s, while the lodge and the space intended for Ayn Rand both emerged decades later in Wrights career, in the 1920s and 1940s, respectively.

Of those three buildings, one stood out as the most difficult to realize. Mrs. David Devin House was more challenging than the other two to digitally construct, because that particular design looked so different to many of the other houses weve seen from Frank Lloyd Wright, Pacheco said.

But that also had its benefits, ultimately endearing itself to the team engaged in the project. That one became our favorite because it stands out as different to the typical style that Frank Lloyd Wright is known for, Pacheco explained.

Working on the project also led the team to have a greater appreciation for architects full array of designs, whether built or not. It made the team realize that Frank Lloyd Wright has a truly impressive body of work and his status as one of the worlds most respected architects was definitely earned, said Pacheco. The team also began to feel a deeper appreciation for the versatility of Frank Lloyd Wrights work, from castle-like structures to modernist homes.

The unbuilt Lake Tahoe lodge.

Angi

Architects are predominantly remembered by the buildings that theyve left behind. But this project also serves as a vital reminder that never-built structures also offer their own insights.

By exploring the unbuilt projects of an architect, people can learn more about who that particular architect was and build a bigger picture of their career, Pacheco said. Sometimes its the dusty unused plans that really bring an artists vision to life and attract more fans long after the artist has passed away.

Could some of these designs end up manifesting in the physical world? It wouldnt be unheard of: in 2013, a house Wright designed in 1939 was built on the campus of Florida Southern University. Perhaps these particular renderings are just a few years away from being realized somewhere in the world.

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Frank Lloyd Wright Left 660 Unbuilt Designs And an Innovative New Project Brings Three of Those to Life - InsideHook

The smallest minority on earth is the individual, said Ayn Rand. Yet, today it seems that individuals are increasingly grouped into boxes based on characteristics such as race, ethnicity, or gender, which can weaken ones spirit of self-determination.

This is the topic of my LiberatED podcast conversation this week with David Morales, author of the outstanding new book, American Familia: A Memoir of Perseverance.

Morales spent his childhood in Puerto Rico and moved to Massachusetts when he was 11, where he was surrounded by the love of his family, but also widespread poverty and despair. Determined not to be a statistic and instead to seize the opportunity this country offers, Morales began embracing an attitude of self-reliance and self-improvement in his early teen years that would ultimately lead to his personal and professional success. His tenacity and grit enabled Morales to rise above his modest beginnings and achieve the American Dream.

This is the greatest country on the planet and you can do anything here. Do not let yourself be put in a box, said Morales during our podcast discussion.

This message of individual self-reliance and personal responsibility echoes throughout American Familia, which is told as a series of conversations between Morales and his two young sons. He writes: Our sons will also fully understand that the freedoms and opportunities they enjoy in America will not come from the color of their skin, or their ethnic heritage, but rather from their faith, work ethic, grit, skill, and their willingness to assume personal responsibility. Anthony and Alexander know well that character matters more than skin color or ethnicity. That they enjoy constitutional freedoms not available in any other country. That as Americans, they can live, pray, and learn freely, as well as pursue better for themselves with self-reliance, perseverance, and faith. Only in America can one go from living on the third floor of a triple-decker in a small, working-class urban city to a successful career and prosperous life in one generation. I believe in the promise of the United States of America.

Its an uplifting message about the power of the individual at a time when individualism is frequently disparaged in favor of collectivism. Morales reminds all of us that the only obstacle in front of you is the mirror, the person in the mirror. You.

You can listen to this inspiring episode of the LiberatED podcast on Apple, Spotify, Google, or wherever you get your podcasts, or visit liberatedpocast.com.

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American Familia: David Morales on Grit, Self-Reliance, and the American Dream | Kerry McDonald - Foundation for Economic Education

Rather as everybody supposedly thinks they have a book in them, I wonder if every novelist thinks their mind holds unbuilt architecture. I know I do. Not the technical stuff, obviously. The trigonometry and structural engineering. I mean the exciting freehand sketching bit at the start. The dreaming into existence of a building that didnt exist before.

Of course, conjuring fictional structures on the page is about a lot more than simply satisfying unrealised ambitions: buildings have done an awful lot of work in many a fiction, shaping and expressing characters lives, concretising themes, rooting narratives in time and place.

My debut novel, Peterdown, involved imagining many such buildings. In the universe of the novel, a new five-runway airport has been built in the Thames estuary, and work is about to start on a Japanese-style bullet trainline that will connect the airport up to the regions. My fictional town, Peterdown has been chosen as the site of the railways splitter station, but to make way for the station a building in the town will have to be knocked down. On the shortlist alongside a digital arts centre, and a dilapidated football stadium is the Larkspur Hill, a sprawling brutalist housing estate that I was free to dream into existence without having to worry about budgets, planning restrictions, or whether or not it might blow over in the wind.

Needless to say, the estate is in fine company when it comes to fictional buildings. Here are some of my favourites.

1. Howards End by EM ForsterOne may as well begin with Howards End, one of the most lovingly described buildings in all literature. It is old and little, and altogether delightful red brick theres a very big wych-elm leaning a little over the house, and standing on the boundary between garden and meadow. It is modelled consciously on Rooks Nest, the house in Hertfordshire where Forster lived as a child, and as Oliver Stallybrass says, it: carries as great a structural load of values as any house in fiction. Forster was unambiguous as to its significance to his vision: In these English farms, if anywhere, one might see life steadily and see it whole.

2. High-Rise by JG BallardForster was not alone in believing that buildings are places that can condition the characters of the people that live in them. Ballards unnamed high-rise, a 40-storey behemoth in glass and concrete, which stands near the river, a couple of miles west of the City of London, is a gigantic vertical zoo, its hundreds of cages stacked above each other. That these are gilded cages, owned and occupied by lawyers, doctors and academics, doesnt stop the residents descending into a state of orgiastic dog-barbecuing savagery: In many ways, the high-rise was a model of all that technology had done to make possible the expression of a truly free psychopathology.

3. The Cortlandt housing project in The Fountainhead by Ayn RandThe architect behind Ballards high-rise is given a rough old time, but Rand is much kinder to Howard Roark. His masterpiece is the Cortlandt housing project, which he designs as six buildings, 15 stories high, each made in the shape of an irregular star with arms extending from a central shaft The buildings, of poured concrete, were a complex modelling of simple structural features; there was no ornament; none was needed; the shapes had the beauty of sculpture. Unfortunately, when it is realised it has been traduced by a bunch of second-handers. Roark, being one of Rands typically ameliorative and compromising sorts, blows it up with a load of dynamite.

4. Mr Biswass house in A House for Mr Biswas by VS NaipaulNot all fictional buildings would require dynamite to knock them down. A single well-aimed kick would probably do the job for Mr Biswass house: two of the wooden pillars supporting the staircase landing were rotten, whittle away towards the bottom and green with damp at the lightest breeze the sloping corrugated iron sheets rose in the middle and gave snaps which were like metallic sighs. For all its faults, Biswass house is evidence that he is modern man, a self-authoring, property-owning individual, and it means he wont have lived without even attempting to lay claim to ones portion of the earth; to have lived and died as one had been born, unnecessary and unaccommodated.

5. Pemberley in Pride and Prejudice by Jane AustenIts impossible, on a list such as this, to overlook Austen, with her keen eye for property and its central role in the British class system. Mansfield Park or Northanger Abbey, so rich in gothic ornaments, might have worked, but Darcys pad Pemberley gets the nod: It was a large, handsome, stone building, standing well on rising ground, and backed by a ridge of high woody hills Elizabeth was delighted. And who wouldnt be?

6. The Castle by Franz KafkaKafkas castle sits on a hill above a village: It was neither a stronghold nor a new mansion, but a rambling pile consisting of innumerable small buildings closely packed together and of one or two storeys. The protagonist Ks relationship to the castle might represent mans alienation in the face of totalising bureaucracies, or our never-satisfied yearning for religious salvation. Either way, its an exemplar of what David Foster Wallace identified as the central Kafka joke: That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home. Which would make it an odd choice, youd have thought, as a source of inspiration for a real building, but the Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill disagreed, using it as the template for an apartment block in 1968.

7. The Ministry of Love in Nineteen Eighty-Four by George OrwellYou get a better sense of the architecture of the Senate House-inspired Ministry of Truth an enormous pyramidical structure of glittering white concrete but it is The Ministry of Love, or Miniluv as its known in Newspeak, that stays with you longest. It was a place impossible to enter except on official business, and then only by penetrating through a maze of barbed-wire entanglements, steel doors, and hidden machine-guns nests. The building has no windows and is home to the most famous room in all literature, located many metres underground, as deep down as it was possible to go. It is, of course, Room 101 and the thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world.

8. 11 rue Simon-Crubellier in Life: A Users Manual by Georges PerecIt was hard to leave out the old tenement in Tom McCarthys splendid Remainder, but when it comes to buildings in experimental fiction it is difficult to look beyond the apartment block at 11 rue Simon-Crubellier. Using a staircase of questionable cleanliness, the reader roams around the building from the grand apartments of the lower floors with Louis XIII armchairs up to Smautf the butlers servants quarters in the eaves. The effect is akin to a cutaway illustration of a building where the front wall is removed allowing you to peer in at the outsized characters within.

9. The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis BorgesI have steered clear of fictional buildings in fantasy fiction as you could easily fill a Top 10 with them alone (Gormenghast, Bilbo Bagginss hole etc), but I couldnt not include Borges mind-bending Library of Babel. It is composed of an indefinite and perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries, with vast air shafts between, surrounded by very low railings. From any of the hexagons one can see, interminably, the upper and lower floors. The library is total and contains all possible books, including the autobiographies of the archangels and the treatise that Bede could have written (but did not). It can only be the handiwork of a god.

10. The Cathedral in The Spire by William GoldingIts a shame that Lord of the Flies swallows all the oxygen when it comes to William Golding because his other books deserve a lot more attention than they get, particularly his book about Neanderthals, The Inheritors, and, most of all, this visionary masterpiece. Almost all the action takes place in a fictional cathedral on to which a monomaniacal dean, Jocelin, is demanding that builders graft a new 400ft spire despite everyone warning him that the buildings foundations will never support such a weight. Throughout, the reader perceives the cathedral from the deans reverent perspective. It is, as he puts it, the bible in stone.

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Top 10 buildings in fiction - The Guardian