SALUTE TO AYN RAND
Did Ayn Rand provide a path to economic prosperity? Yaron Brook, author of Free Market Revolution: How Ayn Rand’s Ideas Can End Big Government and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, believes so, and tells Bill Whittle why in a special PJTV interview. Among the many topics Brook covers: the housing crisis, government spending and the roots of the current economic stagnation.
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Ever wonder why it’s tough to find a taxi? Jeanette Petersen from the Institute for Justice explains why government caps on permits and minimum fare laws are designed to restrict free competition among transportation companies. The net effect: Higher fares for consumers, spottier service and less room for innovation or for enterprising drivers to succeed.
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Are you tired of the government picking favorites in business? Then take a tip from Willy Bays, and order Crony Clean — the spray that breaks down cronyism by breaking down government bureaucracy.
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In his latest Afterburner, Bill Whittle wonders aloud how long before California crashes and burns, as the Golden State’s balmy reputation has now been tarnished by excessive taxes, strangulating regulations and hostile attitudes toward free enterprise. Whittle builds his case around the story of XCOR Aerospace, a successful high-tech business and longtime fixture in the Mojave Valley, now pulling up its stakes and relocating to Midland, Texas. Whittle says this poses a question for the other 48 states: “Who do you wanna be when you grow up? Texas or California?”
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Dick Morris travels back in time to World War II and traces how the United States built the world’s most formidable military-industrial machine within a span of a few years. With the encouragement of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the miraculous feat was accomplished by a capitalist czar handpicked from the automotive industry, William Signius Knudsen, who applied free market principles to spur increased production.
Morris cites a book called Freedom’s Forge by Arthur Herman that analyzes how the Danish-born Knudsen could so quickly achieve such a dramatic turnaround. Now, if only today’s Democrats could remember their own party’s past triumphs, instead of smearing those entrepreneurs trying to build businesses in the current, tough economic climate. H/T Capitalist Preservation
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“The government is the biggest violator of our rights today.” That’s the word from Yaron Brook, co-author of Free Market Revolution and president of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights.
At FreedomFest 2012, Reason.TV’s Matt Welch sat down with Brook to discuss why big government hurts the poor and how Ayn Rand inspired the Tea Party. Rand is as popular today as ever, Brook says, noting that 1.5 million copies of her novel Atlas Shrugged have sold since President Barack Obama’s election in 2008.
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Remember when President Obama said, “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”
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Well, now we know he was recycling a talk previously given by Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic Senate candidate from Massachusetts who notoriously lied about having a Native American ancestry to advance her career as a professor at Harvard Law School.
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But Warren didn’t invent this meme, either. Turns out she cribbed it from University of California at Berkeley professor George Lakoff, author of the 2004 book Don’t Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate– The Essential Guide for Progressives.
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The moral here: No matter how much Obama squirms, fudges and denies the intent of his rhetoric, it was no gaffe, but rather a smug, overbuilt meme, hatched in the bowels of academia, and aimed at furthering the Democratic Party’s incendiary class warfare. Come November, remember to pin this progressive “tall tale” on the donkeys. H/T Legal Insurrection
One pictures Ayn Rand promoting her principles of Objectivism at intellectual salons. But one of her most stimulating conversations occurred in a truly popular forum — The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. VHS tapes capturing excerpts of the 1967 appearance resurfaced this week and while the quality is hit-or-miss, the occasion was certainly momentous.
Carson was duly impressed. So much so that he canceled a scheduled appearance by Buster Crabbe that evening, and devoted his entire show to the Russian-born thinker with the thick accent and deep philosophy. TV viewers responded in kind. Rand generated more mail than any other Tonight Show guest, nearly all of it positive, although she touched upon several controversial positions — opposing the Vietnam War and a conscripted army, for instance, and discussing her atheism. H/T The Lonely Conservative
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The Great Wall of China. The Pyramids at Giza. Mount Rushmore. All stand as evidence of President Obama’s axiom: “You didn’t build that.” H/T Moonbattery
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In a speech today at Irwin, Pennsylvania, Mitt Romney delivered a stinging rebuff to President Obama’s talk in Roanoke, Virginia, casting entrepreneurs in an unflattering light. “President Obama attacks success and therefore under Obama we have less success, and I will change that,” Romney promised.
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