ARC on the Tea Parties

Hi folks - I wanted to forward on an important email from the Ayn Rand Center. Great resources here. Thanks, Gina

Dear Admirer of Ayn Rand,

Earlier this week, we wrote to you to promote a new video, titled "Atlas Shrugged and the Tea Party Revolts." Today we're writing to let you know that we are expanding this effort with two new videos, along with a new Web page of Tea Party Resources.

The new videos expand upon the moral meaning of the Tea Party efforts, and the ideas that will be needed in order to make the defense of individual rights a success.

• Individual Rights and the Boston Tea Party
• The Moral Defense of Freedom

Once again, we want to bring these videos to as wide an audience as possible, and we encourage you to view them and, if you like them, pass them along to others. Remember also that you can watch our videos as they are produced by subscribing to our YouTube channel for updates.

We are also proud to present our new Web page, titled "ARC on the Tea Parties." There you'll find relevant material on the morality of capitalism, Atlas Shrugged, and ARC's tea party resources. Materials on the page include:

• Flyers that can be used as Tea Party handouts
• Speaker resources
• Video presentations by ARC spokesmen
• Radio interviews
• Recordings of Ayn Rand
• ... and much more.

I'm grateful for the outpouring of activism that we have seen from our audience in recent times. I encourage you to continue, so that we may influence the culture towards Ayn Rand's vision of individual rights and laissez-faire capitalism.

Sincerely,

Yaron Brook
Executive Director
The Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights

Is Rand Relevant

Yaron Brook is the President of the Ayn Rand Institute. I think you will enjoy his profound opinion-editorial was published recently in the Wall Street Journal. http://snipurl.com/wsjrand

Is Rand Relevant?
By YARON BROOK

Ayn Rand died more than a quarter of a century ago, yet her name appears regularly in discussions of our current economic turmoil. Pundits including Rush Limbaugh and Rick Santelli urge listeners to read her books, and her magnum opus, "Atlas Shrugged," is selling at a faster rate today than at any time during its 51-year history.



There's a reason. In "Atlas," Rand tells the story of the U.S. economy crumbling under the weight of crushing government interventions and regulations. Meanwhile, blaming greed and the free market, Washington responds with more controls that only deepen the crisis. Sound familiar?



The novel's eerily prophetic nature is no coincidence. "If you understand the dominant philosophy of a society," Rand wrote elsewhere in "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal," "you can predict its course." Economic crises and runaway government power grabs don't just happen by themselves; they are the product of the philosophical ideas prevalent in a society -- particularly its dominant moral ideas.



Why do we accept the budget-busting costs of a welfare state? Because it implements the moral ideal of self-sacrifice to the needy. Why do so few protest the endless regulatory burdens placed on businessmen? Because businessmen are pursuing their self-interest, which we have been taught is dangerous and immoral. Why did the government go on a crusade to promote "affordable housing," which meant forcing banks to make loans to unqualified home buyers? Because we believe people need to be homeowners, whether or not they can afford to pay for houses.



The message is always the same: "Selfishness is evil; sacrifice for the needs of others is good." But Rand said this message is wrong -- selfishness, rather than being evil, is a virtue. By this she did not mean exploiting others à la Bernie Madoff. Selfishness -- that is, concern with one's genuine, long-range interest -- she wrote, required a man to think, to produce, and to prosper by trading with others voluntarily to mutual benefit.



Rand also noted that only an ethic of rational selfishness can justify the pursuit of profit that is the basis of capitalism -- and that so long as self-interest is tainted by moral suspicion, the profit motive will continue to take the rap for every imaginable (or imagined) social ill and economic disaster. Just look how our present crisis has been attributed to the free market instead of government intervention -- and how proposed solutions inevitably involve yet more government intervention to rein in the pursuit of self-interest.



Rand offered us a way out -- to fight for a morality of rational self-interest, and for capitalism, the system which is its expression. And that is the source of her relevance today.



Dr. Brook is president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute. www.YaronBrook.com