Wednesday
February 6, 2008 |
 Americans Don’t Much Care About Freedom
by Tibor R. Machan
Ever since I have been an American citizen--starting 1961--I have noticed that after elections losers often blame winners for distortions, misrepresentations, and so forth. Few of the losers say, "Well, I lost because the voters didn’t agree with me." This become most evident for me during the elections when one ballot measure aiming to sock it to oil companies in California lost. Supporters of the measure, led, I think, by a very busy and prominent leftist political activist, Bill Press, insisted that their measure lost because the voters were deceived, lied to, and so forth, not because voters didn’t buy their pitch. (Read more...)
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Clinton-Obama Debate and Health Care Costs
by Merlin Jetton
Will health care costs keep on rising? You can bet on it. Are the campaign promises about lowering health care costs flimflam? Of course. (Read more...)
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Wednesday
January 30, 2008 |
Revolutionaries and Reality
by Tibor R. Machan
Those who are loyal to the political values of the American Founders are revolutionaries, far more so than any other type (like the Marxists or radical Muslims). This is because the American Founders identified something brand new and radical when they declared that individuals have unalienable rights to their lives, liberty and pursuit of happiness.
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Wednesday
January 23, 2008 |
Economic ups and downs
by Tibor R. Machan
Those who study a country’s economic conditions, mostly macro-economists, track general trends--is inflation or unemployment, how about productivity, comparative strength of the currency, etc., and so forth. But the basics of all these are mostly local matters, all about what happens to you, me, our neighbors, all about what we decide to do with our income and other liquid assets. (Read more...)
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Wednesday
January 16, 2008 |
Another Distortion at the Movies, etc.
by Tibor R. Machan
American Rhapsody is a movie about a family that gets smuggled out of Hungary in the early 1960s and all the various complications this gives rise to. Since I went through this ordeal myself when I was 14, not with my family but several perfect strangers and a paid guide, I thought I’d check out the movie. (Read more...)
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ATLAS SHRUGGED: Socialist Manifesto
by Dennis C. Hardin
Ayn Rand used 645, 000 meticulously chosen words to construct her philosophical and literary masterpiece--Atlas Shrugged—but fifty years later, many if not most readers still do not “get it” and never will (Read more...)
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Freedom & the Needy
by Tibor R. Machan
The defenders of the free society assume that, generally, people can fend for themselves, often alone, more often in voluntary cooperation. But they are not blind to the plain fact that not everyone can or will do this--there are serious hard luck cases, people in dire straits, as well as many who make mistakes by failing to prepare for bad times or by producing bad circumstances for themselves. So such folks will require support in order for them to live reasonably well. (Read more...)
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"I'll Think of Something!"
by Tibor R. Machan
Often when some unexpected challenge faces a person, someone asks, "What are you going to do about this?" The answer, frequently delivered with casual confidence, tends to be: "I’ll think of something." (Read more...)
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From the 60's to the 90's and Beyond...
by W Chase
An analysis of American culture and consumerism from the Cold War era to the present times. (Read more...)
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Wednesday
December 26, 2007 |
It's deja vu All Over Again
by Tibor R. Machan
Back in 1971 the late Harvard behaviorist psychologist B. F. Skinner published his popular best seller, Beyond Freedom and Dignity (New York, Knopf). The book followed several more technical works by Skinner arguing that the belief that human beings have free will and are morally responsible is all wrong, a pre-scientific prejudice that needs to be discarded and replaced with a technology of behavior.
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Wednesday
December 19, 2007 |
Who Fires or Lays you Off?
by Tibor R. Machan
During economic downturns many people become hostile toward their employers, thinking whatever hardship they suffer is their fault. In fact, however, the responsibility lies with customers, consumers, and a host of other economic agents, rarely if ever with one’s employers. (Read more...)
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Wednesday
December 12, 2007 |
Are Values Universal?
by Tibor R. Machan
A frequent claim by erudite people is that the values on which America was founded--individual rights, rule of law, due process--are obsolete. They have been superseded by more recent ways of seeing things, of understanding people and their world. (Read more...)
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Wednesday
December 5, 2007 |
Foreign Policy with Limited Means
by Joseph Rowlands
Life is full of possible values to pursue, always restricted by a limitation on means. We always have to search for ways to take those limited means and get as much value with them as we can. The same is true in foreign policy. While it would be nice to have unlimited ability to pursue your goals, we have to live with real constraints. (Read more...)
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Varieties of "Imperialism"
by Tibor R. Machan
Imperialism is the policy one country has toward others when it is intent on ruling them. But these days the idea is also used to point to one country’s efforts to spread ideas and institutions outside of its borders, regardless of what those ideas and institutions are. So by some people’s account—evi... (Read more...)
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Wednesday
November 21, 2007 |
Some Pros and Cons of Ron Paul
by Tibor R. Machan
Texas Republican House member Ron Paul is undoubtedly the most committed libertarian among all the presidential hopefuls. Dr. No, as he is sometimes called, opposes virtually all government spending and other forms of oppression. He believes that many of the laws passed by Congress aren't authorized by the U. S. Constitution—a document he believes is sound because of its support of the free society and a limited federal government—and could only be passed by state political bodies, not by the feds. He is pro-life but instead of wanting to outlaw abortion—a dubious libertarian idea in my book—he wants the issue of whether there is a right to have an abortion to be dealt with at the state level. His views on banking, the Federal Reserve Bank, hard money, the IRS, and, especially, military adventurism all follow sound strict libertarian principles. (Read more...)
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Wednesday
November 14, 2007 |
Good Argument Ain’t Enough
by Tibor R. Machan
As rational animals, human beings do best when they think matters through and act accordingly. This is no less true in public policy matters. From the time of Socrates, political philosophers have urged us to be rational in our political affairs. Indeed, arguably the most famous Platonic dialogue, The Republic, is but a call to reason, what with the philosopher placed in the position of king, a symbolic role in a mythical society to remind us all that what matters most in both our personal and public lives is to think!
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Discriminatory Nondiscrimination
by Eric Rockwell
ENDA stands for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. This article considers the pros and cons of this legislation, which attempts to eliminate workplace discrimination against gays and lesbians. (Read more...)
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Wednesday
November 7, 2007 |
Life & Property
by Tibor R. Machan
When both life & property are threatened, there is much talk about how property is only stuff, easy to replace, so one should be concerned only or primarily with life. There are even those who disparage the right to private property, claiming it is not really a human right at all. Some prominent academics have been calling ownership itself a myth, claiming that no one really owns anything and all wealth belongs to government that’s supposed to manage it for the collective or public good. (See Murphy & Nagel, The Myth of Ownership [2002].) (Read more...)
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Government is Violent Pornography
by William D
A prostitute asked her customer if he wanted to be bound and gagged, to heighten the excitement of their sex. A man, convinced of his god-given power, asked his neighbors if they wish to be ruled by stone, sword, and gun to make life better for everyone. Both the customer and humanity had a choice, but it is unlikely that either recognized the grave significance of the decision. Once total control is granted to the dominatrix or king, all consequences to the individual or group under control are determined by the whim of the captor. (Read more...)
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Wednesday
October 31, 2007 |
Emotions and Reason
by Tibor R. Machan
One of the oldest topics in human thought is whether emotions drive us or are we guided by reason. The ancient Greeks thought reason will rule if we only engage it, while David Hume, one of the most influential modern philosophers, believed that reason is the slave of the passions. (Read more...)
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Wednesday
October 24, 2007 |
Ethics, East and West
by Tibor R. Machan
My title may suggest a sharp difference between East and West and that would be inaccurate. After all, we are all human beings, even though some of us grew up with different ideas from the others and over time these ideas may have divided us throughout the world, though by no means permanently or irrevocably. So, even ... (Read more...)
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In Defense of Discrimination
by William Scott Dwyer
Discrimination is bad! We hear it from the pulpit, from the media, from our moralists and especially from our "civil rights" leaders. But is discrimination the evil that everyone says it is? My answer is: No. It depends on the kind of discrimination one is talking about. In fact, discrimination can be a good thing, and even something worth promoting. (Read more...)
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Atlas and Economics
by Edward W. Younkins
Text of a talk delivered October 6, 2007 in Washington D.C., in celebration of Atlas Shrugged’s 50th Anniversary sponsored by the Atlas Society. Atlas Shrugged is widely recognized as a masterpiece of philosophy and of literature. However, not so widely recognized, but equally true, is that Atlas Shru... (Read more...)
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Wednesday
October 10, 2007 |
Federal Censorship of Children’s Book?
by Tibor R. Machan
Governments run the country’s schools and while some variation is still evident in how they are administered, there is a pretty strong movement toward a one-size-fits-all policy. Certainly, when the United States federal Congress can pass bills banning books from use in elementary schools, this does not bode well for educational pluralism and diversity. (Read more...)
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Free Riders versus Forced Riders
by William Scott Dwyer
If voluntary government financing permits free riders -- those who refuse to pay for something they value at the price they are being charged -- then taxation requires forced riders -- those who are forced to pay for something they don't value at the price they are being charged. Are forced riders an acceptable solution to the problem of free riders? Read the article and find out! (Read more...)
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