Atlas Shrugged On Display Nationwide

By Joseph Kellard

While I was in a Barnes & Noble here on Long Island earlier this week, a cardboard display featuring a colorful image of Atlas caught my eye. The stand-up display was devoted exclusively to copies of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, and it was placed next to a display table filled with classic novels.

I wrote to B&N about this store several weeks ago, asking why it didn’t have copies of the hot-selling novel on a prominent display table. Within a week or two after sending my email, the store had ordered several copies of Atlas Shrugged and put them on the regular fiction self, as well as stacked several larger, trade-sized editions on a display table.

I wrote to the Ayn Rand Institute to let them know about this latest display. Kurt Kramer, an office manager from the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, wrote back that this display is part of a nationwide campaign by Penguin Publishing.

I’d like to think that through my efforts, and by inspiring others on the OActivism list to ask their local B&N stores to put Atlas on display, I played a part in influencing that campaign.

David Brooks: Republicans Need Collectivism

By Joseph Kellard

According to David Brooks, the conservative op-ed columnist at the New York Times, the problem with Republicans is that they are paragons of individualism and freedom-and that's why their losing power to the Left. His solution: turn to collectivism.

In his May 4 column, "The Long Voyage Home," he writes:

"Republicans are so much the party of individualism and freedom that they are no longer the party of community and order."

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