The gift agreement stipulates that WCU’s College of Business will use the money—plus another $500,000 in matching funds it hopes to obtain from the state Legislature—to create a new “BB&T Distinguished Professorship in Capitalism” and develop a program exploring “the moral and ethical foundation of capitalism,” according to the school’s Nov. 17 announcement. While the new program will encompass “all points of view,” the agreement specifically focuses on just one, “the philosophy of objectivism as portrayed by Ayn Rand in her classic novel Atlas Shrugged and in her essays,” the announcement states.

There are some who believe this is dangerous territory for colleges to tread upon saying that corporations should not have this kind of influence on what gets taught in the classroom. I believe we need more of this, not less. In essence this is free market capitalism at work.

If a college doesn’t want to abide by the stipulations accompanying any monetary gift then they can refrain from accepting the gift. According to the article some already have.

It is stories like these that give me hope that capitalism isn’t quite dead yet.

(Thanks to Tim Peck for pointing us to the article)

…[Cultural Marxists] took over and began acting, well, like lunatics. I learned from the local media that the former academic vice president had rejected an applicant for a top job because the applicant “wasn’t black enough.” The job was academic vice president for diversity and the interviewee was an African-American man with very impressive credentials. According to news reports, this man was told that he was well qualified, but that the College preferred an African-American with somewhat darker skin.

So here was a man who had probably been discriminated against in employment during his lifetime who had reached the peak of his professional career, and was interviewing for what was probably his dream job. And he is told he wasn’t getting the job, once again, because of his skin color. And you probably thought “lunatic” was too strong a word.

This is a very entertaining article. Highly recommended.  Read it here.

The word “socialism” can mean many things to many people, anything from Western European style social welfare to state ownership of the means of production to the New Deal or the Great Society or a wide range of other usages. I’ll let those who know (or at least claim to know) more about the real meaning of the word have the debate over which usage is proper (mostly because I hate debates over whether somebody is using a politically-charged word correctly). Instead, I’ll engage the McCain rhetoric on its own terms.

McCain, just like Obama, believes that taxes should be levied for the purpose of funding social programs that redistribute income downwards. (We’ll leave aside, for the moment, the fact that both of them also believe that taxes should be levied for the purpose of funding a bloated military-industrial complex and other things that redistribute at least some of the income upward.) McCain and Obama may envision different forms and scopes for those programs, and those differences may or may not have profound consequences in practice. However, the McCain rhetoric is being employed to argue that just about any downward redistribution is a type of socialism. If it is (at least in McCain’s usage of the term) then McCain is a socialist. Maybe not as much of a socialist as Obama (we’ll leave aside welfare for the rich, for the moment) but a socialist nonetheless.

Read the rest here.

THE SKY, Dec. 20—We’re hovering 1,500 feet above Baltimore in a 200-foot blimp with Ron Paul’s name on it, and I’ve lost feeling in my hands. Elijah Lynn, vice president of the Ron Paul Blimp, passes around heat packets, the kind made for skiers. “Shake it,” he says. Over the past week, temperatures in the blimp have dropped to as low as 28 degrees. As the crew has learned, it’s hard out here for a blimp.

Read the rest at Slate.com. 

In this first clip (a little over 5 minutes long) the discussion turns to the idea that people think libertarians are ‘crazy’. Penn replies with a reference to Harry Browne, which shows how much respect he has for the late great 2 time Libertarian Presidential nominee.

In the second clip (only about 1 1/2 minutes long) Jillette blames FDR’s “New Deal” policies for the problems we have today. Also, Penn brings up his belief in Ayn Rand’s objectivism, but clarifies that it isn’t all about being selfish, necessarily.

The final clip is the rest of the recorded portions of the interview. I only wish the subject of Ron Paul’s candidacy came up as a topic. Earlier in the first part of the interview Glenn Beck said that Jillette was starting to sound ‘crazy like Ron Paul’ just before going to commercial. Jillette replied by saying well “maybe he’s right.”

I found that interesting because on Glenn Beck’s radio show he said that not even Penn Jillette would go so far as to support Ron Paul. This interview certainly didn’t show any lack of support. This is a bit hypocritical of Beck, because during this final part of the interview he talks about the lies the media tells us.

View this on LiveDigital

The book is a modern day version of “The Fountainhead” by Ayn Rand. It explores the logical progression of government run/mandated health care where the doctors are beholden to government administrator’s decisions on how to treat patients and only the lowest cost / lowest common denominator treatments are authorized by the government. Today Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have pushed for nationalized health care. Obama has recently revealed his “plan” to cover every American.

An article that articulates why this is such a bad plan and idea can be found here.

Obama’s Health Care Plan: Wrong RX by Michael D. Tanner

Tanner explains how Obama’s plan will cause higher taxes, less choice, lost jobs, and worse care than we have today.