Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism

LIBERTARIAN BLAST FROM THE PAST... Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs has just discovered this video clip from a late 1970s appearance by Ayn Rand on the Phil Donahue show, in which she makes some rather politically incorrect remarks about Muslim Middle-Easterners. "But if you mean whose side should one be on Israel or the Arabs? I would certainly say Israel!" Israel is up against "a group of almost totally primitive savages, who have not changed for years, and are racist, and resent Israel because it is bringing industry, intelligence, modern technology..." "They're terrorists... they're monsters..." Note From the Editor: Last night I had the ... Read Full Story

by Eric Dondero This is truly unexplicable. Newsweek has moved further and further to the Left in recent years, castigating both the conservative and libertarian Right. They've even taken a fair share of potshots at South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford for his recent marital infidelity. But in their on-line edition, 10/24, the liberal magazine publishes a two page commentary piece on radical capitalist author Ayn Rand; what's more, the piece is penned by none other than Sanford. It is titled "Atlas Hugged." The sub-heading: "Ayn Rand has drifted in and out of favor, but she may be more relevant today than ever before." Perhaps ... Read Full Story

Deliberately Misplaced Blame Mises Daily by Sean W. Malone Let's play a game. I have a not-so-famous quotation to share with you, and then you guess who said it: We might have done nothing. That would have been utter ruin. Instead we met the situation with proposals to private business and to Congress of the most gigantic program of economic defense and counterattack ever evolved in the history of the Republic. I'll give you a hint; it was spoken by a sitting US president. Not quite enough? How about multiple-choice? Was the speaker Current president Barack Obama Overseer of the first-round, $700 billion bailout ... Read Full Story

Twin Biographies of a Singular Woman, Ayn Rand Janet Maslin Crucially, both authors understand the reasons that Rand’s popularity has endured, not only among college students dazzled (and thronged into packs) by her triumphant individualism but also by entrepreneurs. From the young Ted Turner, who rented billboards to promote the “Who is John Galt?” slogan from “Atlas [...] Read Full Story

Ayn Rand—author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, mother of Objectivism, and the conservative movement’s most rapacious cougar—leapt back into popular culture this year as the hero of the Obama-hating far-right -- Daily Beast Rebecca Dana reports at the Daily Beast that Rand is suddenly in Vogue: With two new biographies, the mother of Objectivism is so in vogue now that even designers such as Ralph Lauren are finding inspiration in her writing... But it’s not just Glenn Beck and his minions who are drawing inspiration from the writer... Honestly, it’s a broad inspiration that I get from her,” said Los Angeles designer Kimberly ... Read Full Story