I’m attending the Ayn Rand Institute’s summer conference (a.k.a. OCON this week. So in lieu of regular blogging, I thought I’d try to post a few brief highlights each day.

Lin Zinser on “Health-Care Activism: Saving the Life Savers,” Class 1 of 3:

• An excellent first class. Inspiring review of the accomplishments of Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine (FIRM). Fascinating discussion of the rise, fall, and rise of state laws licensing doctors to practice medicine.

• Kind of Activism: Intellectual activism means changing the ideas of honest, intellectually active people. Political activism means directing your legislators on how to vote. Political activism is not primary: the real change must be in the culture.

Yaron Brook on “Cultural Movements: Creating Change,” Lecture 1 of 3:

• A fascinating overview of the successes and failures of the economic defense of free markets from the 1960s to the 1990s and the environmental movement from the 1970s to today. (I’m eager to hear the rest of these lectures! They’ll definitely be worth buying.)

… drumroll please …

Yaron Brook on “State of ARI”:

These are just a few highlights:

• ARI has shipped 1.1 million books as part of the “Free Books for Teachers” program. So if the books have a lifespan of four to five years, then four to five million students are reading Ayn Rand’s novels in their English classes. By the end of the decade, over seven million kids will have read Ayn Rand.

• BB&T has funded 38 programs in the southeast US for the study of capitalism and philosophy.
• DC Office will be opened with four staff members just five blocks from the White House in August.
• Yowza! An anonymous donor donated one million and one dollars just this afternoon. That’s ARI’s largest single donation ever — by a dollar. So ARI’s projected revenues for 2008 will be nine million dollars.

That’s all for now!

Further Reports on OCON:

• Highlights from OCON: Day 1 Addendum
• Highlights from OCON: Day 2
• The Next 3 OCONs
• Highlights from OCON: Day 3
• Highlights from OCON: Day 4
• OCON: Q&A Session with Leonard Peikoff
• Highlights from OCON: Day 5