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Paul Ryan has claimed that the American Health Care Act (also known as Ryancare), which is intended to replace the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare), is a return to a “free market” in health care. And various commentators and politicians are suggesting that Ryan’s plan is inspired by Ayn Rand’s philosophy. For example, Rep. John Yarmuth, D-Ky., went on CNBC’s Squawk Box to say that “It’s not really a health-care bill. This is an ideological exercise to basically satisfy Paul Ryan’s Ayn Rand tendencies.”
Is Ayn Rand a serious artist concretizing a timeless message or a writer of ideological sermons disguised as novels? Over at Objectivism: Who Needs It, my colleague Onkar Ghate explains why categorizing her as a “didactic fiction” writer is completely wrong.
Leftists love citing countries like Sweden as proof that “democratic socialism” works. To set the record straight, I recently gave a campus talk, entitled “Sweden: Socialist Paradise or Egalitarian Nightmare?” at Emory University in Atlanta, GA.
Today many believe that Senator Bernie Sanders’ vision of “democratic socialism” works. As proof, they cite the success and prosperity of countries like Sweden.
This Sunday is Valentine’s Day, a holiday on which we celebrate romantic love. But, what exactly is romantic love? According to Ayn Rand, “Love is a response to values. . . . One falls in love with the embodiment of the values that formed a person’s character, which are reflected in his widest goals or smallest gestures, which create the style of his soul — the individual style of a unique, unrepeatable, irreplaceable consciousness.”
Amanda Maxham, research associate at the Ayn Rand Institute, was recently interviewed on Power Hour, a podcast hosted by Alex Epstein, the president and founder of the Center for Industrial Progress. In the interview Epstein and Dr. Maxham discuss the technology of genetic engineering, technophobia and what it means (or doesn’t mean) for a food to be “natural.” Dr. Maxham highlights the promise and possibilities of genetic engineering and offers a taste of what’s covered in her newly published report, The Gene Revolution.
Today is Ayn Rand’s birthday. Although Rand is known for her best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and works of nonfiction like The Virtue of Selfishness and Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, the fact is that her views are still largely unknown (and often misunderstood).
ARI Fellow Don Watkins reviews Thomas Piketty’s “new” book, The Economics of Inequality, in The Claremont Review of Books. In this book, Piketty tries to explain why he believes that economic inequality is a problem and what we should do about it.
