Ayn Rand Institute took Payroll Protection money

In sign of the times, Ayn Rand Institute approved for PPP loan | Reuters - Helen Coster:

July 6, 2020 - "The institute promoting the 'laissez-faire capitalism' of writer Ayn Rand, who in the novels Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead introduced her philosophy of 'objectivism' to millions of readers, was approved for a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan of up to $1 million, according to data released Monday by the Trump administration. The Ayn Rand Institute: The Center for the Advancement of Objectivism in Santa Ana, California, sought to preserve 35 jobs with the PPP funding, according to the data.

"The institute advocates the Russian-American writer’s philosophy and 'applies its principles to many issues and events, including ones Rand herself never discussed,' according to its website....

The institute referred Reuters to a May 15 article, in which board member Harry Binswanger and senior fellow Onkar Ghate wrote that the organization would take any relief money offered from the CARES Act. 'We will take it unapologetically, because the principle here is: justice,' they wrote, adding that 'the government has no wealth of its own…. It can only redistribute the wealth of others.'

"In Rand’s novels and works of nonfiction — which included The Virtue of Selfishness and Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal — she expressed her belief in 'rational self-interest' and the goal of pursuing happiness as a person’s highest moral aim. 

"In a 1962 essay, Rand wrote of seventeenth century French businessmen: 'They knew that government "help" to business is just as disastrous as government persecution, and that the only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off.'"

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-ppp-ayn-rand/in-sign-of-the-times-ayn-rand-institute-approved-for-ppp-loan-idUSKBN248026

Ayn Rand Institute Questions Whether Obama Has Read Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Institute Questions Whether Obama Has Read Ayn Ran =- Lucia Greaves, Huffington Post::

October 26, 2012 - "After President Barack Obama said in an interview with Rolling Stone that Ayn Rand's books are largely for teenagers who are 'feeling misunderstood,' the Ayn Rand Institute is questioning whether the president has done his reading.

"'President Obama claims he has read Ayn Rand, but you wouldn’t know it from his recent comments," said Don Watkins, a fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute and co-author of Free Market Revolution: How Ayn Rand's Ideas Can End Big Government. 'To be an individualist, Obama suggests, is to be concerned with yourself with no regard for other people -- indeed, at the expense of other people. That is a total distortion of Rand's individualism'....

"'The President is pulling the same old trick that collectivists have been pulling for the last hundred fifty years. Rather than openly defend the proposition that you have a duty to serve society, he misrepresents and smears individualism....

"'Rand's argument is that other people are a tremendous value to an individualist: as teachers, friends, trading partners, lovers. But the key to successful human relationships, she argues, is that there should be no sacrifice of anyone to anyone.... Unlike the President, Rand doesn’t confuse ‘caring for others’ with having the government forcibly redistribute your wealth to others. She recognizes that our main obligation to other people is to respect their freedom.'"

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/26/ayn-rand-institute-obama_n_2024497.html
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