Like we mentioned the other day, turns out that despite all the histrionics coming out of the Uptown paper of record, UNCC’s business school has never offered a course that required students to read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.
Now the faulty reasoning behind the paper’s childish edit on the topic — I do believe the rough draft was written in crayon — is diced up by Craig Biddle:
The second sentence of the Observer editorial claims: “Otherwise, the college classroom becomes just another a [sic] arena of commerce, not a place where independent learning and research take place.” If an arena of commerce (i.e., free trade) is somehow incompatible with learning, does this mean that no one can learn anything by reading the Charlotte Observer, which is certainly an arena of commerce? The notion that free trade is incompatible with independent learning or research is utterly refuted by such obvious examples as the private-school industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the computer and software industries, and libraries—which are filled with the products of the book-publishing industry. If the Observer’s editors want to proceed with their “logic” they will have to contend with these facts.
Ah, but the Uptown paper of record does not deal in facts — at least not on the editorial pages.
Bonus Observation: There is a new Atlas Shrugged Web site up — of all things.
