Ayn Rand on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson
Ayn Rand on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson,” October 1967.
Nikos Sotirakopoulos: Tribalism Distorts Thinking
Nikos Sotirakopoulos author of Identity Politics and Tribalism: The New Culture Wars examines how “From politics to the ‘culture wars,’ tribalism has added to the toxicity of the public sphere. But there is one other field where tribalism, i.e., the viewing of the world through the prism of a group, can be even more insidious: in one’s own thinking. Nikos will talk about how tribalism can poison our mind, and discuss what the remedy is.”
Given at ARC Europe 2022.
Novak Djokovic, Hero For The Right to Body Autonomy, Will Not Be Barred From Playing in the French Open
From Tennis Now:
Reigning Roland Garros champion Djokovic will be permitted to defend his crown in May after the French government announced it will end mandatory masking indoors and COVID-19 vaccination pass requirements on March 14th.
That ruling means the unvaccinated Djokovic, who was booted from Australia and unable to defend his Melbourne crown, can play the clay-court major starting May 22nd and the Rolex Monte-Carlo Masters set for April 10-17th provided governmental protocol stands.
French Prime Minister Jean Castrex announced vaccine passports will no longer be required to enter venues or arenas as of March 14th.
The COVID-negative Djokovic was deported from Australia for being an “icon” for body autonomy (“anti-vaccination sentiment”) by Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison — who as I write this has tested COVID positive “but will continue his official duties while isolating.”
Milgram: When and How Ayn Rand Embraced the Term ‘Capitalism’
Ayn Rand scholar and professor of literature, Shoshana Milgram, writes on “‘Capitalism’: When and How Ayn Rand Embraced the Term (Pt. 1)” (2021 Dec 1, New Ideal):
Capitalism, wrote Ayn Rand, is “the only system geared to the life of a rational being.” She was an outspoken, enthusiastic, uncompromising advocate of capitalism, a self-described “radical for capitalism.” Her 1957 best seller, the novel Atlas Shrugged, celebrates production and business. She is known for eloquent articles on the topic (e.g., “America’s Persecuted Minority: Big Business”), many of them collected in the 1966 volume Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.
But at what age did she first come to view business itself positively? When did she recognize free enterprise as not only an efficient economic system, but as the only moral political system? When did she begin to make salient use of the term “capitalism” and think of it as naming her political ideal? The present article is a biographical answer. I begin with her youth, continue through her university education and her early Russian publications, cross the Atlantic with her to the United States, follow her reading and writing about individualism in politics, and examine the advocacy in her private and public writing of the principles of free enterprise — and the appearance there of the word “capitalism.”