Record Number of Students Enter the Ayn Rand Institute’s "Fountainhead" Essay Contest

Record Number of Students Enter the Ayn Rand Institute’s “Fountainhead” Essay Contest

Irvine, CA, July 7, 2009–More than 7,000 high school students, a record number, have entered the Ayn Rand Institute’s annual “Fountainhead” essay contest, which will award the winners a total of $43,250 in prizes.

First published in 1943, The Fountainhead tells the heroic and fascinating story of Howard Roark, an intransigently independent architect who stands against society’s conventions and refuses to compromise his standards in work and in life.

Open to 11th and 12th graders, the “Fountainhead” essay contest requires contestants to write on one of several topics dealing with the characters and themes in the novel. The contest is designed to promote critical thinking and writing skills. Essays are judged on both style and content.

According to Marilee Dahl, ARI’s education manager, “Judges look for writing that is clear, articulate and logically organized. Winning essays must demonstrate an outstanding grasp of the philosophic meaning of The Fountainhead.”

Since 1985 more than 200,000 high school students from around the world have entered ARI essay contests and received more than a half a million dollars in prizes.

The first prize winner for the “Fountainhead” essay contest this year will take home $10,000; 5 second-prize winners will receive $2,000 each, and 10 third-prize winners will receive $1,000 each. In addition, 45 finalists will get $100 each and every one of the 175 semifinalists will get $50.

More information about this year’s competition can be found at http://aynrand.org/contests.

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To interview Ms. Marilee Dahl or for more information on ARI’s educational programs, please contact media@aynrand.org

 

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Speaking Tour Celebrates Charles Darwin’s Anniversary

Washington, D.C.–In celebration of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, Keith Lockitch, resident fellow at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, will be speaking on Darwin and evolution at four college campuses this week.

The speaking tour includes the following appearances:

 February 9: University of Texas, Austin.
 February 10: University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa.
 February 11: University of Georgia, Athens.
 February 12: University of North Carolina, Charlotte.

According to Dr. Lockitch, “The theory of evolution is often disparaged by its opponents as being ‘just a theory’, a speculative hypothesis with little basis in hard, scientific facts. But this claim carries with it the implied accusation that Charles Darwin was ‘just a theorist’, an armchair scientist whose life’s work was nothing more than an exercise in arbitrary speculation. A look at Darwin’s pioneering discoveries, however, reveals the grave injustice of this accusation.” As Dr. Lockitch explains in his talk, “Darwin was not ‘just a theorist’ and evolution is not ‘just a theory.’”

In this speaking tour, which also celebrates the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin’s masterpiece On the Origin of Species, Dr. Lockitch explores Darwin’s life and work, focusing on the steps by which he came to discover and prove the theory of evolution by natural selection.

Ayn Rand Institute Now Offering Impact Newsletter Free on the Web

The Ayn Rand Institute is pleased to announce that its Impact newsletter is now available electronically to Web visitors. Beginning with the January 2009 issue, ARI’s Web site will now offer all of its Impact issues online as PDF documents.

Impact, which remains available in a print edition for ARI donors of $35 or more each year, delivers the latest news and progress reports on ARI’s programs, along with interviews of Objectivist intellectuals and monthly highlights of different aspects of Ayn Rand’s philosophy.

The new, free electronic format will serve as an excellent way of introducing newcomers to ARI’s goals and programs. Additionally, visitors may now view a three-part introductory video on ARI’s home page, which provides information about Ayn Rand, Objectivism, and the Ayn Rand Institute.

» View ARI’s Impact newsletter online

Watch and Learn from Hugo Chavez

Washington, D.C. – Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez has halted construction of a private shopping mall in downtown Caracas as a first step toward confiscation. “We’re going to expropriate that and turn it into a hospital–I don’t know–a school, a university,” said Chavez on his weekly radio show.

“Americans can learn an important lesson from the spread of socialism in Venezuela,” said Thomas Bowden, an analyst at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. “What is Chavez counting on when he grabs a private building and vows to make it into a hospital, school, or university? He’s counting on his listeners to excuse the seizure of private property because a higher moral purpose is supposedly being served.

“Chavez is relying on the fact that socialism embodies the world’s moral ideal of individual sacrifice for the ‘common good.’ History has taught him that no opponent will denounce that ideal. And so he climbs to the moral high ground, turning his back on socialism’s dismal historical record of economic decline, lost freedoms, and human misery.

“As long as the moral ideal of self-sacrifice remains unchallenged, socialism will continue to spread–not only in the third world, but in America as well.

“There is a rational alternative. It’s laissez-faire capitalism, which upholds the individual’s moral right to live and work for his own sake, not society’s. But to establish freedom we must dig up the moral roots that continue to nourish socialism worldwide.”

How to Stop the Next Madoff

Washington, D.C.–“Want to stop the next Madoff? Gut the SEC,” says Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights.

“Part of the reason Madoff’s misdeeds went undetected is that the Securities and Exchange Commission spends most of its time doing things the government has no business doing. The only legitimate job of a securities law enforcement division is to protect investors against the specific crimes of theft, fraud, and breach of contract.

“But the SEC plays a much different role. Its mandate is to attempt to make investing ‘safe’ by controlling every aspect of financial markets, from dictating the composition of mutual fund boards to mandating public release of executive compensation numbers that shareholders want kept private to determining when executives are allowed to sell stock–‘insider trade’–instead of leaving that to the discretion of a company’s owners.

“In pretending to guarantee to investors that their investments are sound, which is impossible, the SEC encourages the kind of blind group-think that characterized the Madoff investors. And with the SEC devoting itself to a sprawling array of elaborate witch-hunts, such as the ‘insider trading’ case against Mark Cuban, what time or attention does it have for real fraud?

“The answer–as is clear from the fact that a 29-point, 17-page report on Madoff, submitted in 1999, 2001, and 2005, entitled The World’s Largest Hedge Fund is a Fraud slipped through its cracks–is none.”

 

Obama’s Backward Economics

Washington, D.C.–“Barack Obama claims that Americans can only stave off economic disaster by trillions in government spending–which means trillions of dollars taxed or borrowed to finance government make-work programs,” said Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights.
 
“Obama-nomics couldn’t be more wrong.
 
“Prosperity requires that the government drastically cut government spending. That way, as much real capital as possible will remain in private hands, and be put to productive use by entrepreneurs to create valuable goods and services to sell at home and abroad. By taxing and inflating our wealth away, Obama will simply be creating more of the crushing debt that brought about the current crisis.”
 
“You don’t put out a fire with more gasoline. And you don’t end a recession by destroying capital.”

No "Footprint," No Life

By Keith Lockitch (Washington Times, January 9, 2008)

As environmentalism continues to grow in prominence, more and more of us are trying to live a “greener” lifestyle. But the more “eco-friendly” you try to become, likely the more you find yourself confused and frustrated by the green message.

Have you tried giving up your bright and cheery incandescent light bulbs to save energy–only to learn that their gloomy-but-efficient compact fluorescent replacements contain mercury? Perhaps you’ve tried to free up space in landfills by foregoing the ease and convenience of disposable diapers–only to be criticized for the huge quantities of energy and water consumed in laundering those nasty cloth diapers. Even voicing support for renewable energy no longer seems to be green enough, as angry environmentalists protest the development of “pristine lands” for wind farms and solar power plants.
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Atlas Shrugged Essay Contest Pays $24,000 in Prizes

IRVINE, CA–University of California Los Angeles undergraduate Robert Sanders, from San Jose, CA, is the winner of the Ayn Rand Institute’s annual “Atlas Shrugged” essay contest, for which he received a prize of $10,000.

Open to 12th graders and both undergraduate- and graduate-level college students, the “Atlas Shrugged” essay contest requires contestants to write on one of several topics dealing with the characters and themes in the novel. The contest is designed to promote critical thinking and writing skills. Essays are judged on both style and content.

With 1,917 contestants, 2008 was the most competitive year in the contest’s history. The previous record was 1,647 contestants in 2003.

The following students have won this year’s second and third prizes:

Second-prize winners ($2,000):

Gregory Arney, Berklee College of Music, Boston, MA
Ryan Krause, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN
Margaret Wray, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY

Third-prize winners ($1,000):

Abigail Chernick, Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA
Cadmus Kyrala, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom
Melanie Martin, University of California at Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA
Ryan Menezes, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
Tay Tufenkjian, George Washington University, Washington, DC

The contest also awards 20 finalists ($100) and 20 semi-finalists ($50). A complete list of winners and a copy of the first-prize essay can be read online at the Ayn Rand Institute’s website.

Republican Socialists

Republican Socialists

December 31, 2008

Washington, D.C.–“Republicans routinely criticize the policies of Barack Obama and other Democrats as socialist,” said Alex Epstein an analyst at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. “But their endorsement of Barack Obama’s imminent, trillion-dollar ‘stimulus plan’ shows that they buy into socialist ideas just as much as the Democrats. Indeed, Republican leader Mitch McConnell’s explanation of his party’s approach to a ‘stimulus plan’ would make Leon Trotsky proud: ‘We should have a simple test: Will the . . . trillion-dollar spending bill really create jobs and grow the economy . . .?’
 
“What is socialism, if not the idea that the government should seize citizens’ wealth and control industry in the name of creating jobs and growing the economy? If the government has the political right and economic ability to conduct this ‘simple test’ with a trillion dollars of stimulus, why not just nationalize the whole economy outright, and have McConnell, Obama, and a handful of czars tell us what to do and where to spend our money?
 
“A party that truly understood what is wrong with socialism would recognize the injustice and impossibility of central planners expropriating and dictating citizens into prosperity. It would recognize that wealth creation and economic prosperity are the result of protecting the rights of productive individuals to plan, produce, and trade on a truly free market–absent the massive government manipulation of interest rates and home-buying that brought about the current disaster. The Republicans have not earned the right to call anyone socialist–except themselves.”

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U.S. Should Help Crush Hamas

Washington, D.C. – In response to the Hamas bombardment of Israel, Washington must encourage and help Israel to annihilate that Islamist group, once and for all.

The failure to wipe out Hamas on previous occasions has encouraged Palestinian terror groups. It teaches Islamists that their terrorist war will be rewarded, that their quest to destroy Israel–and ultimately America–is achievable.

To put an end to Hamas’s brazen aggression, the jihadist group must be defeated. It is proper and necessary for America to aid and bolster Israel, its one true ally in the Middle East, in the face of a common enemy.

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