Pimping Ayn Rand At The Free Market Of Ideas

CEOs give millions to get the patron saint of anti-pulbic education taught in public schools.

"Rand could not write her way out of a paper bag."

Harold Bloom
Yale University Professor




April 11 (Bloomberg) -- Ayn Rand's novels of headstrong entrepreneurs' battles against convention enjoy a devoted following in business circles. While academia has failed to embrace Rand, calling her philosophy simplistic, schools have agreed to teach her works in exchange for a donation.

The charitable arm of BB&T Corp., a banking company, pledged $1 million to the University of North Carolina Charlotte in 2005 and obtained an agreement that Rand's novel ``Atlas Shrugged'' would become required reading for students. Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, and Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina, say they also took grants and agreed to teach Rand.

The author, who died in 1982, used her self-righteous heroes to promote objectivism, a philosophy that embraces reason and individualism, while rejecting religion. While Rand, an advocate of free markets, would support a university's getting paid to teach her works, the idea riles academic ethicists.

Read more at Bloomberg...

Share The Wealth

"I wonder if any of you people who are listening to me were ever at a barbecue! We used to go there--sometimes 1,000 people or more. If there were 1,000 people, we would put enough meat and bread and everything else on the table for 1,000 people. Then everybody would be called and everyone would eat all they wanted. But suppose at one of these barbecues for 1,000 people that one man took 90 percent of the food and ran off with it and ate until he got sick and let the balance rot. Then 999 people would have only enough for 100 to eat and there would be many to starve because of the greed of just one person for something he couldn’t eat himself."

Huey P Long
Barbeque Speech

Read more and watch the actual speech

Governing By The Numbers...

Bush 28 percent v. Global Warming 85 percent



According to a Time magazine/ABC News/Stanford University poll, the majority of Americans - 85 percent, to be exact - believe global warming is a threat.

The latest Associated Press-Ipsos poll finds that only 28 percent of Americans approve of the job Bush is doing, a new low. He was at 30 percent last month.

What about Congress?



More on Congress related polls.