Shrugging off Atlas Shrugged 

A half-truth is a dangerous thing.

Writing in the Public Discourse, Josh Herring argues that any reader of Ayn Rand must recognize the half she omits in her individualist glory fables.
 

Because that half is the better half.
 

No doubt there’s something attractive about Rand’s stories of radical individualism—particularly in an era of big government and nascent socialism.
 

But he wants to tell you a story too. And he suggests that it illuminates a deeper truth that “is missing in Ayn Rand.”
 

A Library Is a Terrible Thing to Waste 

Admit it: You take your local library for granted.
 

So did Brooke Allen, as she confesses in the New Criterion, before reading The Library: A Fragile History, by Andrew Pettegree and Arthur de Weduwen.
 

Pettegree and de Weduwen's studies show that “the concept of the public library did not really bear fruit until the very end of the nineteenth century, and its survival far into the twenty-first . . . is far from certain.”

In fact, when you look at human history, you mainly see libraries lost and libraries destroyed—by war, by religion, by ideology.
 

Allen’s review might send you straight to the stacks—to reflect on what’s been lost and to enjoy their profound bounty . . .

while they're still there.

Robert Nisbet Explains How Modern Tyranny Works

The George Washington Statesmanship Program, Application Deadline Dec. 3

• Study prominent thinkers and statesmen like Aristotle, Edmund Burke, Alexis de Tocqueville, Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, and of course, George Washington
   
• Participate in a series of ‘modern day application’ sessions like “Civil Rights, Race, and Identity,” and “America is the World’s Technological City on a Hill”
   
• Enjoy a trip to Normandy to participate in the annual Tocqueville Conversations conference at Alexis de Tocqueville’s family chateau and to visit historic sights including the beaches stormed by American troops in World War II

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