Many years ago, thoughtful, well-intentioned, educated people in the United States all understood that socialism was the future. The average citizen might have retained a quaint belief in the American system of free enterprise, limited government, and individual rights, but among the cognoscenti — academics, artists, newspaper and radio pundits — it was widely recognized that the capitalist experiment had run its course. The overwhelming consensus was that the coming century would see economies managed by benevolent experts: the chaotic, dog-eat-dog competition of the market would give way to rational central planning.
Happy 112th birthday to Ayn Rand, who was born February 2, 1905, in St. Petersburg, Russia, and died March 6, 1982, in New York City…
Upon her 110th birthday Cato’s Executive Vice President David Boaz wrote that it’s hard to think of a writer more popular — and more controversial — than Ayn Rand. Despite the enormous commercial success of her books, and the major influence she’s had on American culture, reviewers and other intellectuals have generally been hostile. They’ve dismissed her support for individualism and capitalism, ridiculed her “purple prose,” and mocked her black-and-white morality. None of which seems to have dissuaded her millions of readers.
Although she did not like to acknowledge debts to other thinkers, Rand’s work rests squarely within the libertarian tradition, with roots going back to Aristotle, Aquinas, Locke, Jefferson, Paine, Bastiat, Spencer, Mill, and Mises. She infused her novels with the ideas of individualism, liberty, and limited government in ways that often changed the lives of her readers. The cultural values she championed — reason, science, individualism, achievement, and happiness — are spreading across the world.
A D.C.-based public policy research organization (or "think tank") dedicated to the values of individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and peace.
