Here’s a thorough response to several very common misconceptions.

Unscrupularity is a fog under which ignorance and evil thrive.

As expected, the ubiquitous “boat emergency” question is so droningly spewed by the first of the lollipop-kid audience members. I’d guess he’s never read a single word of Rand… likely just regurgitating what one of his professors told him one time.

This is wonderful exposure for reason, rights, and Capitalism.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

Part 5:

Part 6:

I’ll use this thoughtful post (HT: GVH) as an introduction to my latest blog link. John’s path of philosophic evolution is very similar to mine.

Great blog - check it out.

On the health care “debate” is summed nicely with the following excerpt:

The Virtue Of Selfishness: Chapter 10 - ‘Collectivized Ethics’

…The hallmark of such mentalities is the advocacy of some grand scale public goal, without regard to context, costs or means. Out of context, such a goal can usually be shown to be desirable; it has to be public, because the costs are not to be earned, but to be expropriated; and a dense patch of venomous fog has to shroud the issue of means—because the means are to be human lives.

“Medicare” is an example of such a project. [Or socialization of health care to any degree]

“Isn’t it desirable that the aged should have medical care in times of illness?” its advocates clamor.

Considered out of context, the answer would be: yes, it is desirable. Who would have a reason to say no? And it is at this point that the mental processes of a collectivized brain are cut off; the rest is fog. Only the desire remains in his sight—it’s the good, isn’t it?-it’s not for myself, it’s for others, it’s for the public, for a helpless, ailing public… The fog hides such facts as the enslavement and, therefore, the destruction of medical science, the regimentation and disintegration of all medical practice, and the sacrifice of the professional integrity, the freedom, the careers, the ambitions, the achievements, the happiness, the lives of the very men who are to provide that “desirable” goal—the doctors.

After centuries of civilization, most men—with the exception of criminals—have learned that the above mental attitude is neither practical nor moral in their private lives and may not be applied to the achievement of their private goals. There would be no controversy about the moral character of some young hoodlum who declared:

“Isn’t it desirable to have a yacht, to live in a penthouse and to drink champagne?”—and stubbornly refused to consider the fact that he had robbed a bank and killed two guards to achieve that “desirable” goal.

There is no moral difference between these two examples; the number of beneficiaries does not change the nature of the action, it merely increases the number of victims. In fact, the private hoodlum has a slight edge of moral superiority: he has no power to devastate an entire nation and his victims are not legally disarmed.

[emphasis and comments added]

As part of a promotion at audible.com, several books are on sale including the unabridged version of Atlas Shrugged.

I highly recommend the audio book version. Not only has it proven to be a very convenient format for enjoying the story, but also a way to share the story with others. I keep the stack of 50 CD’s in a case that I leave in my car and occasionally will put on my desk at work. I’ve loaned it out on two separate occasions - both of which were facilitated by the format of the media.

To get this life-changing novel for $4.95 is a incredible value.

UPDATE: Unfortunately, I just realized that you must be a member to get the sale price. This fact was conveniently excluded from their add as well as the site. Still a great deal if you were to join for 3 months (minimum) @ $7.95/month, which would allow you three books at no additional charge plus the sale price on Atlas. Essentially, one could get 4 books for $28.80 total.

Book review: Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, by Ayn Rand (from HBL)

She wrote the book because she was confounded by the fact that young people blamed every societal ill on capitalism, which was hardly surprising since they had not lived under any other system. Socialism and communism, at the time she was writing, had legions of promoters and defenders, but capitalist ideals seemed to be trampled on everywhere and held up as evil. An American immigrant who had witnessed the economic misery and attacks on individual dignity that defined communist Russia, Rand had at an early age resolved to be capitalism’s defender.

…

Most of the ‘anti-capitalists’ of today actually know little about the system into which they were born. They have eyes only for some actors within it (such as large companies) and their apparent greed, while being blind to the fantastic freedoms and prosperity they have inherited. Free markets, they believe, will mean a ‘race to the bottom’ of greater and greater exploitation of workers. Such arguments fail to notice that the sweatshop workers in developing countries who make goods sold in the rich world have usually arrived there by choice, leaving behind back-breaking lives of rural poverty. Their wages may be a pittance, but they represent the beginnings of a way out; their conditions look bad, but are little different to those endured by our grandparents or great-grandparents when their countries were industrialising.

The usual accusation levelled at Rand and her followers is of extremism. A more intelligent view is that she was a supreme rationalist who valued personal freedom to the highest degree.

Capitalism for her was not just a system for people to get richer, but was the only system in which people were free to act according to their best interests. Today, because we take our comfortable lives for granted, we take capitalism for granted as well. [emphasis added]

I’m shocked to see such an accurate and objective review of Rand outside of the core Objectivist media circles.  This is a very good thing. If you only read one article this week, this should be it.