Ayn Rand & Objectivism

In his recent interview with Rolling Stone magazine, President Obama, following the lead of other leftists, implies that Ayn Rand’s ideas are not for mature, intelligent adults, but rather for immature, ignorant teenagers—“17 or 18 and feeling misunderstood,” as he puts it. Much could be said of Obama’s comments on…

Barack Obama claims to have read Ayn Rand, which is hard to believe given how completely he misrepresents her views. Of course, Obama’s distortions of Rand’s ideas feed his political agenda of forcing wealth transfers and shackling producers, policies Rand certainly would have rejected as immoral and destructive. In a…

On Friday, I posted on TOS Blog explaining why evolutionary anthropologist Eric Michael Johnson failed, in a recent Slate article, to disprove Ayn Rand’s ethics. I also showed that his article betrayed a gross misunderstanding of Rand’s philosophy. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Johnson responded on Twitter: How shocking. A magazine dedicated…

Even if it were true that historical tribes had primitive rules that nod to modern altruism, this would not disprove Ayn Rand’s ethics.

Last night Diana Hsieh of Philosophy in Action interviewed Craig Biddle about common mistakes people make in thinking about ethics. The full podcast of the hourlong interview is now available. Discussion encompassed "people's wrong ideas about ethics, including ethics of duty, pragmatism, religious ethics, [and] collectivism." For Biddle's systematic treatment…

Here’s a speech I gave at Universidad Francisco Marroquín earlier this month. Check it out via YouTube, or download the mp3 file. Enjoy! Like this post? Join our mailing list to receive our weekly digest. And for in-depth commentary from an Objectivist perspective, subscribe to our quarterly journal, The Objective…

On this day in 1946, Ayn Rand began writing Atlas Shrugged, which would be published eleven years later. In addition to telling a fascinating mystery story about a man who would stop the motor of the world, this novel presents a new morality—a morality of rational egoism, value pursuit, and…

Dear Mr. Krugman, In “Galt, Gold and God,” you assert of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged that “the book is a perennial favorite among adolescent boys. Most boys eventually outgrow it. Some, however, remain devotees for life. And [Paul] Ryan is one of those devotees. . . . Mr. Ryan is…

Although historian Jennifer Burns gets a lot wrong about Ayn Rand, she makes some good points in a recent op-ed for the New York Times. Burns discusses Rand’s ideas in relation to those of Paul Ryan, the GOP’s vice-presidential candidate who has credited Rand for inspiring him to enter politics.…

In a Washington Post article, Eugene Robinson falsely asserts that Ayn Rand “equated capitalist success with moral virtue,” and he claims that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan ascribe to this allegedly Objectivist outlook. This view, according to Robinson, also entails “disdain” for “the working class,” who, not being “capitalists,” “don’t…