"Hate Crime" Laws Criminalize Ideas
October 19, 2009 by Barbara Morehead · Leave a Comment
“Hate Crime” Laws Criminalize Ideas
WASHINGTON, October 19, 2009–The House recently voted to expand federal “hate crimes” to include those committed because of the victim’s sexual orientation.
“Despite the denials of ‘hate crime’ law supporters, this criminalizes certain ideas,” writes Don Watkins, an analyst with the Ayn Rand Center. “If the government can punish a criminal more harshly based on the ‘message of intolerance and discrimination’ he sends through his crime, then the inevitable conclusion is that sending a ‘message of intolerance and discrimination’ is a crime.
“It is irrelevant whether the ideas currently deemed ‘hateful’ are repugnant, which in the case of racism or anti-gay vitriol they certainly are. Every attack on free speech starts by targeting ideas people find repugnant; that’s how censorship gains purchase. But once the principle is established that the government can punish people for holding unpopular ideas, then any dissenter is at risk.
“The men who wrote the First Amendment sought to safeguard intellectual freedom by barring the state from taking cognizance of men’s ideas. The government, they said, has no role in deciding what ideas are true or false, right or wrong, hateful or loving. Its job is to proscribe actions that violate individual rights, so that each of us can make those determinations for ourselves.”
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Ayn Rand Institute Announces $2 Million Fundraising Campaign–the Atlas Shrugged Initiative
July 31, 2009 by Administrator · Leave a Comment
IRVINE, CA, July 24, 2009—The Ayn Rand Institute has announced a $2 million fundraising campaign—the Atlas Shrugged Initiative—in an unprecedented effort to increase readership of Ayn Rand’s best-known novel, Atlas Shrugged.
The impetus behind the Atlas Shrugged Initiative, explains ARI President and Executive Director Yaron Brook, is the fact that “At no time in history has there been greater public interest in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. And its message has never been more urgent.
“The torrent of destructive, statist policies emanating from Washington represents both a crisis—and an opportunity. Through the Atlas Shrugged Initiative, we intend to capitalize on the soaring grassroots interest in Ayn Rand and her ideas.”
Adds Dr. Brook, “The Atlas Shrugged Initiative is off to an outstanding start. A very generous benefactor has already offered to match every dollar donated to this Initiative—up to a total of $500,000—and as a result of early and substantial funding, the bookstore promotions that are a key component of the Initiative are already well underway.”
Key elements of the Atlas Shrugged Initiative include significant bookstore promotions of the novel; an expansion of ARI’s web-based efforts to spur readership of Atlas Shrugged; expansion of ARI’s long-running educational programs for high school and college students; and targeted outreach to pro-liberty, pro-capitalist activists around the nation.
Visit the Ayn Rand Institute’s Atlas Shrugged Initiative campaign page to learn more or to support this campaign.
National Surveys Show Atlas Shrugged Is Widely Read
November 5, 2008 by Administrator · Leave a Comment
Washington, D.C. — For the second year in a row, a question included in a Zogby International omnibus telephone survey of American adults indicated that 8.1 percent of respondents have read Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged. The surveys conducted in October 2007 and again in October 2008 indicated that more than 17 percent of U.S. college graduates have read the novel. That is a remarkable number for a serious, intellectual novel of more than 1100 pages whose theme is the role of the mind in man’s existence.
