Beyond her chatty sarcasm, her main point is that the web offers Objectivismm the opportunity to openly debate and expound upon its philosophy. This is critical in so far that it’s not generally taught in colleges.
Score one for dark money: Meet the Ayn Rand-loving billionaires behind David Brat
An interesting “follow the money” piece from a surprising source (Salon).
I can’t help but read between the lines with a rising sense of optimism here. Print off a pdf for the historical archives.
Ok, it is not a mainstream news publication, but relevant to the recent political trend of invoking her name the last few years.
The concluding remark from The Ayn Rand Factor: Who is David Brat?
Rand’s influence is broad — a hugely positive development — even if it has yet to penetrate deeply enough.
In another Salon piece reposted from AlterNet Ayn Randian wingnut goes to Washington: The frightening economic policy of David Brat the article wraps up with:
Back when Rand (an atheist!) was a celebrity in the 1960s, she was generally dismissed as a loon on par with the likes of fellow novelist L. Ron Hubbard. But today, half a century later, she is the intellectual inspiration of many Republicans who heartily embrace the essense of her creed: there is nothing so divine as getting rich. The Tea Party has made this fringe figure their favorite “thinker.” Her philosophy of greed is more popular than ever
Does Ms. Parramore think her readers desire to be not rich? I know every time I’ve ever used the line “Money isn’t everything.”, someone within earshot usually offers to take some off my hands.
In a press release from the Ayn Rand Institute:
Coming, 2015: Ayn Rand’s Lost Novel
The Ayn Rand Institute is excited to announce the new publication of a lost Ayn Rand novel. Ayn Rand’s work Ideal, written in 1934, is scheduled for release by Penguin Random House in July of 2015 and will be paired with Rand’s play of the same name into a single volume. The introduction will be written by Rand’s designated heir, Leonard Peikoff.
And in an opening paragraph you almost have to see to believe . . .
A ‘Lost’ Ayn Rand Novel Has Been Discovered; It’s Based on an Ayn Rand Play
The Libertarian equivalent of the Dead Sea Scrolls just happened, guys: the Ayn Rand Institute announced today that they discovered a “lost Ayn Rand novel,” and not only will they publish it in July, they will also devote an entire seminar to the subject of Ayn Rand’s secret lost novel.
Okay, caveat: It’s not really a “lost novel,” but a novelization of Ayn Rand’s play Ideal, which was written in 1934 and was first staged in 2010 off-Broadway.
Why does stuff like this second column only seem to appear on Internet facsimiles of check-out lane tabloids?
As far as I could tell from the Google translation, the review doesn’t say who adapted it. Barbara Branden wrote a stage version which was to be the first production of the theater company that Nathaniel Branden was planning just before everything fell apart.
Advocating fiction as a means of influencing culture? Stylizing hero’s and villain’s to dramatize a point? Former literature teacher, now journalist Ron Charles had this short piece in the Washington Post.
“The new conservative counterculture is a rebellion from below and from without,” Bellow says from above and within. (He’s also an editor at HarperCollins.) “Fueled by the rise of digital self-publishing technologies, it is a simultaneous revolt against the hierarchical control of mass media and the ideological narrowing of acceptable discourse. . . . Out at sea a wave is building. This cresting wave of right-wing creativity is raw and untamed.”
Comparing these raw, untamed novelists to Soviet dissidents of old, Bellow calls on his fellow conservatives to help build right-wing writing programs, fellowships and prizes — “a feeder system so that the cream can rise to the top, and also to make an end run around the gatekeepers of the liberal establishment.”
The New Yorker posts an article entitled: Ayn Rand Comes to U.N.C.:
Excerpts;
The Cato Institute recently hosted a forum on the private donors’ so-called “renewal” agenda, featuring Jay Schalin, the author of the Pope Center report, along with the former BB&T president John Allison and C. Bradley Thompson, the director of the BB&T-funded Institute for the Study of Capitalism at Clemson University. Thompson was eager to emphasize the role that donor-funded teaching programs like his play in the conservative movement. “I meet too many very smart businessmen and women who are giving millions of dollars every year to political candidates, and I have to ask the question ‘How has that worked out for you?’ And the answer has to be, ‘It hasn’t worked out very well at all,’” he said.
Once a round of supportive laughter died down, Thompson continued, “If they really want to change the culture long-term in this country, it’s not going to happen through politics. If you think the political system is corrupt, what you’re really saying is the American people are corrupt. And if you’re saying the American people are corrupt, then what you have to do of course is change American culture. And the way you change culture is through ideas…. If we’re giving tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars to political campaigns and we’re giving one-tenth of one per cent to trying to change the intellectual culture of this nation, you are by definition going to lose.”
This comes shortly after:
The other reformist front is a call to revive the Great Books model of humanities education: literature and philosophy as a source of eternal truths, dating back to Plato, passing through John Locke, and perfected by Ayn Rand and the libertarian economist Friedrich Hayek. A Pope Center research paper published this year describes a “renewal in the university” through privately funded programs dedicated to teaching the great books untainted by relativism. The report devotes a great deal of attention to programs dedicated to “the morality of capitalism,” which have been founded at sixty-two public and private colleges and universities. (Bold, mine)
The closing paragraph concludes with:
After decades of funding cuts, rising tuition, and growing economic inequality, the old idea of higher education would be under pressure even if universities were not political targets. A twenty-first-century version of the idea that education is more a public good than a private investment will not arise without a politics behind it. Recent protests against tuition increases at the University of California and student-debt strikes by graduates of for-profit institutions are the merest glimmer of what those politics might look like. At the University of California, student protesters have hoisted signs reading, “Education is a right.” The new fights over public universities will help to determine whether education will in fact be a right, a privilege, or, as John Allison and others would have it, a commodity to be bought and sold by students and donors alike. (Bold, mine)
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Here’s one that got overlooked last November by Milad Doroudian in The Jewish Journal.
Practical Objectivism: The Virtues of Capitalism
Excerpt:
Yaron Brook, the Israeli-American president of the Ayn Rand Institute has become one of the main propagators of the ideals of Objectivism, and the ideas of the ‘individual’ within the Israeli state. Yet, I fear that although Atlas Shrugged sales are soaring, not enough people are hearing the message it has been propagating for the last 50 years: the importance of individualism, especially today when collectivism, and “groupthink” is becoming increasingly prevalent.
Brook has taken Ayn Rand’s ideas about selfishness and their rational application within one’s life and has shown that one can reasonably live like Howard Roark, Hank Rearden, and Dagny Taggart. It basically amounts to one simple concept: the pursuit of happiness. Of course the issue is far more complicated than that, as a 1000 page novel itself was not enough to completely cover the philosophical framework of the idea that man and woman hold their lives in their own hands, and that all free societies are only truly free if based on laissez -faire capitalism. Still, how true is this? The short answer is true. The long answer is more than one would think.
While Mr. Doroudian takes issue with Brook’s position on Zionism, his admiration of Capitalism and Individualism stand on their own merit, even as captured in the sentiment:
You are wrong if you believe that Israel has become the great nation it is today through kibbutzim and social policies. No. It is the product of individual men and women, who sought achievement, who sought happiness for their own selves.
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According to the Ayn Rand Institute Facebook page, Discovery Park of America has erected a statue of Ayn Rand.
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Who is John Galt? Ayn Rand, libertarians and the GOP by Gene H. Bell-Villada
Ayn Rand (1904-82) has arisen from the dead. Over the last decade the pop philosopher and propaganda fictionist extraordinaire has moved steadily from the cultish margins to the mainstream of US conservatism.
In a larger sense, though, Randhad never died. Sales of her books remained steadily in the six figures in the years following her demise, their underground influence an unacknowledged-if-discomforting fact of American life. A couple of reader surveys carried out in the 1990s by Book-of-the-Month Club and the Library of Congress, and by the Modern Library imprint, showed Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead near the top of the polling results, according to author Brian Doherty. And, in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown, sales of her works tripled.
Including a plug for his book On Nabokov, Ayn Rand and the Libertarian Mind, (30 page excerpt) where he presents Randianism mistakenly, but intentionally, as a theology; both recognize and suggest a growing presence of Rand’s influence.
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Brad Bird’s Objectivist leanings shine brightest in Tomorrowland
Having enjoyed both The Incredibles and Ratatouille, it may be time to seek out the 1999 The Iron Giant, and perhaps take another look at Mission: Impossible � Ghost Protocol
Bird has previously dismissed any Rand comparisons as "ridiculous,’ calling himself a centrist who “feel like both parties can be absurd.” One or two ideological slips are easy to brush off, sure, but with Tomorrowland, Bird has produced four unmistakably Objectivist tracts. There are coincidences, and then there’s proselytizing.
But how has Bird been able to get away with labeling the majority of his audience inferior cogs who are only impeding their superiors? Being a legitimately brilliant director helps. Few working filmmakers can execute a set piece quite like Bird, who has an expert way at ratcheting tension, controlling dramatic beats and realizing sharply imagined visuals. It’s right there in The Incredibles’s secret-island sequence, _Ratatouille’_s grand finale dinner or Ghost Protocol’s audacious jaunt up a Dubai skyscraper.
On the face of it, Pixtar appeared to be the common denominator here — even Robots had a pro-business underscore to it. After Wall-E though, this short write-up puts that premise under a different perspective.
Related:Tomorrowland: ‘Atlas Shrugged reimagined by Mickey Mouse’ by reason.com
“Ratatouille is essentially an animated version of The Fountainhead, except that cooking replaces architecture, Ellsworth Toohey eventually has a Grinchian change of heart, and Howard Roark is a rodent.”
A Wall Street Journal exclusive.
Read an Excerpt of Ayn Rand’s Novel ‘Ideal’ By Jennifer Maloney
“Ideal” tells the story of a screen actress who is accused of murder and visits six of her most devoted fans to ask for help. Rand wrote it as a 135-page novel in 1934, when she was in her late 20s. She was dissatisfied with it, however, and the same year, she rewrote it as a play. The theatrical version didn’t have its premiere until 1989 – 55 years after she wrote it.
Rand, the author of “ Atlas Shrugged ” and inventor of Objectivism , has sold more than 25 million books around the world.
The original version of “Ideal” was rediscovered in 2012 by Richard Ralston, publishing manager at the Ayn Rand Institute.
According to the article, the book is coming out next week (July 7th), via Penguin Random House imprint New American Library, Rand’s longtime publisher.
I saw this on Listverse:
http://listverse.com/2015/06/28/10-potential-alternatives-to-the-conventional-capitalist-system/
Objectivism is number 2. It is one of the fairer characterizations of Objectivism I’ve seen mentioned on this site.
I guess this isn’t exactly news, but I thought it was worth sharing.
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This Day in Jewish History, 1946 Ayn Rand Begins Writing Her Magnum Opus, Critics Shrug
by Alona Ferber
Closing paragraph:
Though Rand was never taken seriously in academia, her way of thinking has been a key influence on American conservatives and libertarians, as well as on corporate bigwigs. Chief executive of Whole Foods John P. Mackey, for instance, has cited Rand as key to his success, as have others. The Ayn Rand Institute, established in 1985 by Leonard Peikoff, her heir and former member of “the collective,” makes sure her fiction continues to influence new generations, giving copies of her novels to high schools. But when it comes to “Atlas Shrugged,” there is little need for promotion: It continues to sell. In fact, after the 2007 financial crisis, sales of the book boomed. In 2009, it stayed in Amazon’s top 50 for over a month.
While August 24th, Salon pitches a different headline, with its vitriol:
Slavoj Žižek: Ayn Rand’s Tea Party lie — Now we know who John Galt is
How long will Tea Party base stick to basic irrationality of protecting working people by protecting the 1 percent?
The 1% line reminded me of a Dr. Hurd article I found recently: Staying Upbeat When the News is Bad
The persecuted minority continues to keep the shelves full here in America, while we read of socialism reaching its natural conclusion in other parts of the globe. The passage in the article that came to mind was:
History is full of such examples. Aristotle. Galileo. Christopher Columbus. Thomas Jefferson. On and on.
More recently: Thomas Edison, John D. Rockefeller, Ayn Rand, Maria Montessori, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs.
The history of human progress is primarily the triumph of individuals.
Clearly, one person can make a wild amount of difference. This is one major reason for optimism. We don’t necessarily need a majority for a rational turnaround in any context, because innovation doesn’t generally happen due to a group. Most often, it happens because of one.
For innovation which may require more than one, the biggest obstacle is finding one another amidst the heavy fog of passive disintegration.
69 years ago, Ayn Rand conceived a hero who was without original sin. Forging the links of her new chains in her redesigned foundry of concept formation, she anchors morality to reality with an unprecedented set of specifications, The new alloy, from which the links of these chains have been wrought, has been beset with nearly everything except an objective analysis, except by a few, of its structural composition.
I’m interested to see that at least in this case the Jews are trying to claim her as one of their own. Ferber clearly wanted a pretext, any pretext, to talk about Rand; a 69th anniversary is a flimsy one.
Her statement that academics don’t take Rand seriously is inaccurate.
June Kurisu, who has written columns for The Rafu Shimpo, has her own unique place in literary history. As a young woman, she was hired to work as a secretary for author and philosopher Ayn Rand and worked with her from September 1947 to June 1949 as she was writing her novel “Atlas Shrugged.” Rand, born in St. Petersburg, Russia, on Feb. 2, 1905, emigrated to the United States in 1925. Rand’s philosophy of “Objectivism” continues to gain followers, most notably former Republican vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan.
The Rafu spoke recently with Kurisu, who lives in Monterey Park. She was modest about her role in literary history. Kurisu was also featured in the book “100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand” by Scott McConnell.
* * *
What follows is [a portion of?] an interview with Jan Kurisu by Rafu.
Thank you for the lead. It’s an interesting interview with some presumably new information (haven’t read 100 Voices) but some inaccuracies as well:
- Rand came to the US in 1926, not 1925;
- The house was razed to build a housing tract, Buckingham Estates, not a shopping center (though a big mall is nearby, and Kurisu doesn’t, strictly speaking, say this, only that she’d heard it);
- McCarthy had nothing to do with HUAC and its movie hearings;
- Rand survived lung cancer and died of heart failure seven years later.
The music was probably Prokofiev - Love for Three Oranges march - not Shostakovich.
I’m interested to see that at least in this case the Jews are trying to claim her as one of their own. Ferber clearly wanted a pretext, any pretext, to talk about Rand; a 69th anniversary is a flimsy one.
Her statement that academics don’t take Rand seriously is inaccurate.
I hadn’t considered the angle of being put into the annals of Jewish history.
From the academic standpoint, isn’t it only recently that she has been given more serious consideration?
Thank you for the lead. It’s an interesting interview with some presumably new information (haven’t read 100 Voices) but some inaccuracies as well:
- Rand came to the US in 1926, not 1925;
- The house was razed to build a housing tract, Buckingham Estates, not a shopping center (though a big mall is nearby, and Kurisu doesn’t, strictly speaking, say this, only that she’d heard it);
- McCarthy had nothing to do with HUAC and its movie hearings;
- Rand survived lung cancer and died of heart failure seven years later.
The music was probably Prokofiev - Love for Three Oranges march - not Shostakovich.
Good catch. I should have known the year she came to the US. The other details are more esoteric to the person of Ayn Rand than to her philosophy.