Enter The Atlas Shrugged Video Contest!

The “Atlas Shrugged” Video Contest will end in a few weeks, so be sure to submit your entries and vote on your favorite videos!

The “Atlas Shrugged” Video Contest is a challenge to anyone with a video recorder who has read “Atlas Shrugged” and wants to change the world.

Create a short web video, three minutes max, on how Ayn Rand’s epic story relates to current issues in society or in your own life. Videos will be judged on their intellectual strength, creativity and persuasiveness.

Grand prize: $5,000
2nd prize: $1,000
Viewer’s Choice award: Apple iPad pre-loaded with works of Ayn Rand

Contest ends: December 8, 2010, at 11:59 pm (PST)

For more information, please refer to the Official Rules page. Or contact this mail address:

Ayn Rand Institute
2121 Alton Parkway, Suite 250
Irvine, CA 92606
Telephone: 949-222-6550

E-mail address: contest@AtlasShrugged.com
Website: http://atlasshrugged.com/contest/

The "Giving Pledge"

The “giving pledge” of Warren Buffett and Bill Gates was signed by 40 of the wealthiest Americans. Gates and Buffett have asked the wealthiest to give up half of their wealth for philanthropic causes. Strangely, many complied and many more are like to, in coming days. Don Watkins and Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute has called it the “guilt pledge’ in Forbes. “Charity is not a primary virtue”, said Ayn Rand.

We are usually reminded that we could wipe out poverty if only we would be willing to sacrifice a little more. “What good would it do, for a corporate CEO to have one more private jet?” they ask. An overwhelming majority of world’s population lives in near starvation. Any sane, intelligent person can look upon this fact and pass his judgment that charity, definitely, isn’t a solution to this problem. How are we supposed to deal with a problem of this scale through sacrifices? When they say sacrifices are to be made out of profits, they ignore the basic economic fact that every penny given to charity is taken out of what would have been employed in capital investment or personal luxury.

Charity is, needless to mention, a virtue on a free, uncontrolled, unregulated economy if exercised in the right manner. Not for a single moment is anyone saying that we shouldn’t help men thrown into poverty by no fault of their own, but we should know what makes and keeps them poor. It would certainly be argued that their problems need immediate attention, and few have anything to say against it. What is to be said against it is that ‘charity’ or welfare state as a policy would only exacerbate their problems. Even if all the richest men on the earth try to cure poverty through charity, they won’t reach anywhere close to it, as the poor are too much for them to take care of.

We now see the richest men on earth running around like Santa Clauses, which forces me to believe that they do really believe what they preach. At least on a conscious level, they do, otherwise they wouldn’t have been willing to spend their hard earned money that way. We get to one more reason why a libertarian education is essential for each and every man on earth. It would relieve the rich of their guilt and the neurotics of their inferiority complex. Alienation and scapegoating has a lot to do with it.

The Morality Of Abortions

In the 2010 state ballot in Colorado, the 62nd amendment will appear which states that the term ‘person’ shall apply to every human being from the beginning of the biological development of that human being”. It would mean the “sanction” of full legal rights to embryos. It wishes to eliminate abortion and all sorts of contraceptives.

Abortions, it is often argued, would break up the natural order and balance in the ‘society’. No one cares to ask the question- ‘Natural order’ and ‘balance’-For whom? The inanimate matter doesn’t have any rights; nor does a ‘fictitious body. What would it mean to state that it is not the individuals as such that matter, but it is the interacting individuals -‘Society’-that matter? If the individuals doesn’t matter one way or another, & the interacting individuals do matter, it can only imply that it is the interactions that matter. Or else, it could mean that the benefit derived by some of the interacting individuals takes precedence over the rights of others.

Let’s have a look at the implication of those arguments from morality. Let things be as it is. Let the parents suffer. Let the child suffer all her life. Let the ‘society’ suffer as a result.-And let the interactions be preserved-Based on a false theory, a contradiction which has no justification whatsoever. As Ayn Rand observed: “The task of raising a child is a tremendous, lifelong responsibility, which no one should undertake unwittingly or unwillingly. Procreation is not a duty: human beings are not stock-farm animals. For conscientious persons, an unwanted pregnancy is a disaster; to oppose its termination is to advocate sacrifice, not for the sake of anyone’s benefit, but for the sake of misery qua misery, for the sake of forbidding happiness and fulfillment to living human beings.”

Morality is not a spoon that hangs on your roof. It’s a set of rules to live consciously and self-responsibly. We shouldn’t forget that the legalization of abortion in the many parts of the United States brought down crimes unbelievably. Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner informs us: “What else might we look for in the data to establish an abortion-crime link? One factor to look for would be a correlation between each state’s abortion rate and its crime rate. Sure enough, the states with the highest abortion rates in the 1970s experienced the greatest crime drops in the 1990s, while states with low abortion rates experienced smaller crime drops. Since 1985, states with high abortion rates have experienced a roughly 30 percent drop in crime relative to low-abortion states.” Even if common good is the standard of morality, the arguments in support of abortion still hold.

Nietzsche and the Nazi’s

The recently published “Nietzsche and the Nazi’s A Personal View” by Stephen Hicks, an Objectivist is a brilliant analysis of the philosophical roots of Nazism.

Hicks tells us how philosophy plays a dominant role in shaping history. The part I find particularly impressive is the section in which Hicks deals with Anti-individualism and collectivism. He points out that the National Socialists were collectivistic and anti-individualistic in a horrible sense. They rejected the idea that men are ends in themselves. Hicks reaffirms Ayn Rand’s contention that Nietzsche’s individualism is largely overstated. While I don’t find the idea of individuals creating themselves from scratch quite plausible, we are by and large responsible for our own destiny. Nietzsche believed the exact opposite, and such determinism can never be an adequate foundation for Individualism.


The counterfeit individualism of Nietzsche is evident in this passage:
“Nietzsche believes that most individuals have no right to exist and—more brutally—he asserts that if they were sacrificed or slaughtered that would be an improvement. In Nietzsche’s own words: “mankind in the mass sacrificed to the prosperity of a single stronger species of man—that would be an advance.”And again: “One must learn from war: one must learn to sacrifice many and to take one’s cause seriously enough not to spare men.” It is hard to see as an individualist

'Ayn Rand - India' features among "30 Best Blogs for Exploring Objectivism"

A website called "Accredited Online Colleges" has posted an article on the best blogs for exploring Objectivism. Our blog features in the list at number 14.

ARI announces first ever 'Atlas Shrugged' Video Contest

Contest entry deadline: December 8, 2010.        Here's your chance to speak out on how Ayn Rand's epic story relates to current issues of the day or in your own life. Enter the Atlas Shrugged Video Contest. Create a short web video that is no more than 3 minutes long. And have fun doing it. Each entry will be judged on originality, creativity and persuasiveness. Prizes of up to $5,000 or an Apple iPad will be awarded by the Ayn Rand Institute. Check out contest details now. And pass them along to your friends. Then it's lights, camera, activism.   Copyright © 2010 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved. For official contest details, visit www.AtlasShrugged.com/contest. The Ayn Rand Institute, 2121 Alton Pkwy, Ste 250, Irvine, CA 92606

Anti-Business Mentality

In the Indian society, businessman are not regarded highly enough as of various cultural reasons and prejudices. Much of it had to do with the caste system, but it can’t be solely attributed to it. The situation is universal, though there are variations in the degree of the bias from country to country. The reasons behind it as obvious, as it would become evident in these words of Ayn Rand: “Throughout men's history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, whose names changed, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honour. Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers--as industrialists.”

People instinctively grasp that some men rightly deserve their wealth, and for many, nothing can be more unbearable than this. People hate Capitalism for the same reason, that it rewards people based on their socially objective value. Moser put it eloquently, though sympathizing with people plagued by such notions : “Life in a society in which success would exclusively depend on personal merit would simply be unbearable. “

All this is not to say that businessmen never acquire their wealth through devious means. No advocate of Capitalism, as far as I know, had said that businessmen are angels, and would always act in their rational self-interest. Omkar Ghate reminds us in his column in Forbes that being pro business is not the same as “assuaging the desires of the business lobby.” One of the most common arguments (It is not exactly an argument) I hear against her works is that it worships businessmen and corporations. Now, this is not true at all. What is intended is just that businessmen perform a very important, and often underestimated function. Many of her villains, her critics forget, are the worst kind of statists .

In the words of Ghate , “The true producer Rand shows, makes just one demand of Washington: "Get the hell out of my way!" If we can extort any sense out of statist arguments, it would be just that businessmen bribe Government officials and get things done. This much is true. However, it doesn’t follow from this alone that further regulations are the answer. It is the regulations that got us here. We are in big trouble when the alleged defenders of capitalism themselves call for more and more regulation!

Atlas Meet in Delhi - Watch the additional disc in the boxed set of Ayn Rand's "We The Living" on DVD

The next monthly Atlas Meet in Delhi will take place on Saturday, 18 September, 2010. The last couple of meetings have focused on the screening of the movie version of Ayn Rand's debut novel "We The Living" on DVD (courtesy Rajendra Lakhotia). Staying with that theme, we propose to view the additional disc in the boxed set that contains the scenes deleted from the original and many interviews of people associated with the movie.

This movie has a checkered history - it was made in Italy during World War II, without Ayn Rand's knowledge or permission and was based on an unauthorized Italian translation of the novel. It  has some stellar performances by Alida Valli and Rossano Brazzi and was a cult hit in Italy at the time of its release. 

Decades later, Duncan Scott helped restore the film and re-edit it for release under Ayn Rand's guidance.  The additional disc captures many moments that were deleted from the original Italian version and tells the story behind the re-discovery of the film and its painstaking restoration.

[Last month, Mr.Scott had offered DVD sets of the movie to us for $25 (Rs.1250) each and many of us have ordered our own copy. Just a handful of DVDs are still left, so those still interested may send a mail to vbajaj@aynrand.in to order their copy.]

Date

18 September 2010

Time
5.30 pm - 7.45 pm

The Agenda

Session I (Savor and Study)
5.30 pm - 6.30 pm: Watch the additional disc of the DVD set of "We The Living" 

6.30 pm - 7.00 pm: Tea and snacks break. 

Session II (Spread and Sustain)
7.00 pm - 7.45 pm: Discussions on the movie and a broad range of topics, including ways to spread Ayn Rand's ideas 

The Venue
inlingua International School of Languages,
N-12, first floor,
South Extension - Part I

It is an open meeting - anyone interested in Ayn Rand's ideas is welcome. You may call Vikram on 9810028900 for directions. If you're planning to attend, it would be helpful if you let us know by leaving a comment below or by sending an email to vbajaj@aynrand.in .

Castro Admits the Failure of the Cuban Model

Fidel Castro, who had abstained from commenting on local issues for a long time, has admitted that the communist economic model doesn’t work. He said this to an American journalist who visited the country. "The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore”, he said, when he was asked whether other countries would do well if they adopt the Cuban model. In Cuba, the Government controls 90 percent of the economy.


Cuba was a country which adhered to Socialism even after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Castro can’t claim that he was not warned, that this mistake was made innocently. Half a century has passed after these words were written: “Fifty years ago, there might have been some excuse (though not justification) for the widespread belief that socialism is a political theory motivated by benevolence and aimed at the achievement of men’s wellbeing. Today, that belief can no longer be regarded as an innocent error. Socialism has been tried on every continent of the globe. In the light of its results, it is time to question the motives of socialism’s advocates.”(Ayn Rand, The Virtue Of Selfishness). It is strange that it took him such a long time to catch up to this knowledge. While it should be appreciated that he had the honesty to admit that he was wrong, his evasiveness on the subject raises much suspicion.

Socialism was definitely not a mistake which would be evident only after a post-mortem analysis. In 1920, Ludwig Von Mises proved beyond doubt that no rational planning is possible under socialism in the absence of market prices.” Pictures of Socialistic Future” by Eugene Richter warned of the impending disaster in 1891, much before communists got their way in Russia. Even then, it was an issue which was beaten to death long ago. Bastiat wrote as early as 1849 of the socialist attitude: “Superior! This supposes that these gentlemen can see further than the common people; that their only fault is that they are too ahead of their times; and if the time is not yet come for suppressing certain free services, pretended parasites, the fault is to be attributed to the public, which hasn’t caught onto Socialism. I say, from my soul and my conscience, the reverse is the truth; and I know not to what barbarous age we should have to go back, if we were to sink to the level of Socialist knowledge on this subject.” It is ironic that such semi-barbarians claim their monstrous, archaic ideology to be ahead of the times and morally and economically superior. The claim of economic superiority has weakened, and now it rests only on the moral argument, which never had any merit.

A report on the screening of "We The Living" and the Skype session with Duncan Scott

On a very wet Saturday afternoon, 35 intrepid fans braved a Delhi downpour to make it to the screening of Ayn Rand's film classic "We The Living" at the NCUI auditorium. Projected on a large screen with crystal clear sound and easily read sub-titles, the film proved to be a captivating and  truly immersive experience for each and every member of the audience, despite a run-time of nearly 3 hours. 

The chemistry of the lead pair, the emotional roller-coaster as the lives of Kira and Leo are torn asunder, the abject destruction of Andrei as he learns the truth about Kira - each had such an impact that by the end of the film quite a few handkerchiefs were in evidence!

After a break for tea and snacks - and some time to recover from the drama of the film - the group reassembled for what turned out to be the highlight of the evening: a live session on Skype with Duncan Scott, who is the producer and editor of the reconstructed film! 

Mr. Scott had very graciously agreed to be ready for the chat at 7 a.m. at his home in California, and he gave nearly an hour of his time for what proved to be a fascinating discussion. He spoke at length about how at age 21, as a young film-student, he had offered his services to the Holzers, who were Ayn Rand's lawyers, for re-editing this lost classic.  

That was the beginning of a fascinating journey as a four hour film had to be edited down to three hours in order to enable its release in theaters. Bits of propaganda inserted by the fascist government in Italy back in 1942 was easy to eliminate. To remove the sub-plots was trickier. The biggest challenge was to 'create' scenes from within the existing footage and re-record dialogues that

Social Insecurity

Recently, The United States celebrated the 75th anniversary of Social Security and the president Barack Obama promised to protect it against “privatization.” In a radio address, he said to the public: “Seventy-five years ago today, in the midst of the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt signed Social Security into law, laying a cornerstone in the foundation of America’s middle class, and assuring generations of America’s seniors that after a lifetime of hard work, they’d have a chance to retire with dignity. We have an obligation to keep that promise; to safeguard Social Security for our seniors, people with disabilities, and all Americans–today, tomorrow, and forever.”

Social security, needless to mention, is one of the greatest frauds perpetrated on mankind. Such schemes are introduced in the midst of crises such as economic depressions, as it is easier to sell it to desperate people. It is forgotten that the depression itself was caused by the Central Bank, a government institution which inflates the currency and throws people into a life of poverty and misery. When Ayn Rand was asked (In the Mike Wallace Interview) whether there should be unemployment insurance when the economy breaks down, she replied: “Study economics. A free economy will not break down. All depressions are caused by government interference. And the cure that is always offered is to take more of the poison that caused the disease. Depressions are not the result of a free economy.”

It is absurd to compare social security to voluntary insurance plans, as social security rests on coercion and coercion alone. Such a comparison will inevitably founder upon this simple but devastating question: If it is voluntary, why should the Government be involved? Such questions do not occur to proponents of the welfare state.

Alex Epstein writes in the Ayn Rand Institute website:

“This is a fraud. Under Social Security, lower- and middle-class individuals are forced to pay a significant portion of their gross income--approximately 12 percent--for the alleged purpose of securing their retirement. That money is not saved or invested, but transferred directly to the program's current beneficiaries--with the "promise" that when current taxpayers get old, the income of future taxpayers will be transferred to them. Since this scheme creates no wealth, any benefits one person receives in excess of his payments necessarily come at the expense of others.”

Reason is All

Sudha G Tilak has an interesting review of Heller's Rand biography in Open Magazine. The reviewer recognizes Rand as one of the most original and interesting personalities of the 20th Century.The Heller book, she says, is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand Rand and her life better.

Excerpts:

"Revisiting Rand has never been as interesting as reading Heller’s striking biography. It takes us closer to the creature that Rand was, a compelling entity whose advocacy of rebellion and individualism held a mesmeric quality over those around her, even detractors who rejected her idea of wealth. Heller includes interesting details of how Rand would wear dollar pins on her dress to advocate her support for capitalism, though she did not attach much importance to wealth when she gave up her royalties. Heller points out that for Rand, the wealth of ideas amounted to the intellectual capital she so cherished in her own life. Alan Greenspan might find her ideas appealing, but at heart Rand’s philosophy owed more to Nietzsche, hints Heller."

"Heller’s tome talks about Rand, born Alissa Rosenbaum to Russian-Jewish parents who immigrated to America, and made New York her home to pursue a career in writing. The book is divided in a chronological order following her life and also some of the life of her followers after her passing. Heller finds that Rand’s social criticisms of an industrial America were based on her grounding in 20th century Russian history. Heller explains at the outset that she is not an advocate of Rand’s philosophy, but admires her facets. ‘Whatever one thinks of her positive program of rational selfishness, egoism, and unregulated capitalism, her ability to spot and skewer cowardice, injustice and hypocrisy is at least as keen and passionate as that of her ideological opposite Charles Dickens.’"

Nistula Hebbar has a review of the same book in The Financial Express, which even buys the fallacy that Rand even failed to realize that Roosevelt's New Deal got the United States out of depression.

Excerpts:

"The book points the finger at the one thing, in fact, which makes most people uncomfortable with Rand’s philosophy despite the brilliance of her premises, the fact that this is an imperfect world, and

Special Event: Screening of Ayn Rand's "We The Living" and Live Interaction with Duncan Scott, Producer and Editor

We are pleased to announce a special screening of the film "We The Living" at 3 p.m. on Saturday, 21 August 2010, at the NCUI Auditorium in Delhi.

Based on Ayn Rands' debut novel, this 1942 film classic starring Alida Valli and Rossano Brazzi has a checkered history. It was made in Italy during World War II, without Ayn Rand's knowledge or permission and was based on an unauthorized Italian translation of the novel. Surprisingly, it was a cult hit in Italy at the time of its release, but was soon banned by the Mussolini regime.

Decades later, Duncan Scott helped restore the film and

The World's Biggest Message with a 'GPS Pen'

In the US, one man drove 12,238 miles and across 30 states to scrawl a message that could only be viewed using Google Earth. His big shoutout: "Read Ayn Rand." 

http://gizmodo.com/5611713/man-scrawls-worlds-biggest-message-with-a-gps-pen

We The Living, The Movie

Ayn Rand's novel, We The Living tells the story of individual battling the state. It was made into a movie, first without the permission of Ayn Rand. It was a huge success when it was released, and was reviewed widely. Many consider it a better movie than the film version of "The Fountainhead. A special screening of the film "We The Living" will be held at 3 p.m. on Saturday, 21 August 2010, at the NCUI Auditorium in Delhi.

Excerpts from certain reviews and interviews:

" The banned, lost, rediscovered: Ayn Rand's "We the Living" lives on!" was published on We The Living The Movie website.

"The movie opened in Rome and was a huge box-office success. But before long, the film came to be viewed as a sly indictment of the Mussolini regime. In addition, the portrayal of an intelligent, sexually independent heroine, groundbreaking for its time, was viewed as controversial. The film was banned by the Italian government and ordered to be destroyed. But Massimo Ferrara, the studio chief for Scalera Films, hid the original negatives with a trusted friend and sent the negatives of another Scalera production to authorities for destruction! After the war, efforts to rerelease the film were ended when Rand declined to grant the necessary literary rights. By the early 1950's Scalera Films had gone out of business and We the living had dropped from sight."
"Philosopher Robert Mayhew on Ayn Rand's novel "We the Living", interviewed by Scott Holleran" was published in Capitalism Magazine.

"What is We the Livings theme?
The individual versus the state, especially the evil of statism. I think