MrPickles

Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson is quite good for debunking many economic myths such as Full Employment, Unions, and much more. So far Ludwig von Mises' Human Action seems to be pretty good (albeit I am still on chapter one.) George Reisman's Capitalism is supposedly very good, as it synthesizes Austrian Economics with Objectivism.

The republican party needed a slap in the face. I would hope that in another 2/4 years we would see a true capitalist party or a radically changed republican party. The latter, however, is not likely, given the core evangelical base of the Republican party.

Alright, first post. This should help you out. I believe your professor is referring to logical positivism: http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/logicalpositivism.html As you can tell, Rand wasn't a big fan of positivism (or any other Kantian off-shoots, for that matter). I can't really comment on the Criticial Theorist part.