Ayn Rand

Re-Imagining Marketopia: A Reply to Terence Ball

by Matthew Alexander June 29, 2011

A decade ago Terence Ball wrote a critique of some Frankenstein-like creature meant to represent free market ideology. He robbed the graves of men and women as diverse as Murray Rothbard, Margaret Thatcher, Robert Nozick and Ayn Rand to put it together and came up with something that no libertarian would endorse, I suspect, but [...]

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Death Comes for the Philosopher

by Wirkman Virkkala June 13, 2011

Though John Hospers was never my hero, he came close. Now he’s dead, like most of the other philosophical writers I admire. He died yesterday, a few days into his 94th year. Since I grew up in one of the two states of the union in which his name appeared on the ballot for the [...]

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Jennifer Burns on Ayn Rand and the Classical Liberal Tradition

by Geoffrey Allan Plauché May 28, 2011

With the recent release of the first part of the film adaptation of Atlas Shrugged (see Matthew Alexander’s review on Prometheus Unbound), the Institute for Humane Studies (IHS) — via LearnLiberty.org – brings us this interview with Professor Jennifer Burns, author of Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right, on how Ayn Rand fits [...]

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Is Libertarianism a Gnostic or Utopian Political Movement?

by Geoffrey Allan Plauché April 24, 2011

This post is excerpted and adapted from the concluding chapter of my dissertation, wherein I addressed two related objections to libertarianism in general and to my account of Aristotelian liberalism in particular: utopianism and gnosticism, the latter being sort of a theological version of the former. Does the theory of virtue ethics and natural rights [...]

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My Take on Atlas Shrugged the Movie

by Katelyn Horn April 16, 2011

I read Atlas Shrugged about three years ago. There is nothing in the movie not in the book and the stuff that is skipped is obviously skipped for the sake of time. It’s technically set in modern times, but with a heavy-handed attempt to pay homage to the art-deco, 1920s aesthetic of the book. The [...]

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Robert James Bidinotto and “The Contradiction in Anarchism”

by Stephan Kinsella December 11, 2010

Here’s an interesting piece on Objectivist Robert James Bidinotto’s criticisms of anarcho-libertarianism: Nicholas Dykes, Robert James Bidinotto and “The Contradiction in Anarchism”, Libertarian Alliance, Philosophical Notes No. 77, 2006 (pdf). See also my post Objectivism, Bidinotto, and Anarchy; See also Roderick Long’s Bidinotto-Long debate on anarchism and Roderick Long’s blog discussion about this.

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Daily Anarchist Interviews Walter Block

by Stephan Kinsella September 6, 2010

The Daily Anarchist has posted a nice, short interview of Walter Block by Seth King, touching mostly on Block’s history in the libertarian movement and his thoughts on the prospects for liberty and the tactics and strategy libertarians employ. A few interesting excerpts: Seth: Would you mind explaining to me exactly what Anarcho-Capitalism means to [...]

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