 Capitalism: The Only Moral Social System
by Edward W. Younkins
A social system such as capitalism is a system of relationships and cannot be moral or immoral in the sense that a person can be—only individuals can be moral agents. However, a social system can be moral in its effects if it promotes the possibility and likelihood of moral behavior of mindful human beings who act with... (Read more...)
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Free Trade cannot be Forced
by William D
Guns do not produce value. Guns cannot force people to produce wealth. Unaware of this fact, the government holds the threat of force against the greatest form of human interaction, the corporation. (Read more...)
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Why Not Regulate Religion and Speech?
by Tibor R. Machan
When I was in college ages ago the truth in advertising and lending and such measures were high on the agenda of modern liberals. Oddly, they were the same people, usually, who declared themselves to be loyal champions of free speech, defenders of an absolutist stance on the First Amendment to the US Constitution. But not when it came to commercial speech. You know those people in commerce—all chronic cheats and liars, of course. (The modern liberal’s hatred of commerce trumps their most cherished ideals!) (Read more...)
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Selfishness, Defined
by William D
Egoism is a state of mind where a person values all things in terms of their value to the self. Egoism and selfishness are virtues, in fact the greatest of all virtues, as they enable life. (Read more...)
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Shrugging All the Time
by Alexander Butziger
With the G8 summit upon us, the German government is well prepared, having built dedicated holding facilities for violent anti-globalization activists planning on Seattle redux.
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The Political Norm of Centuries
by William D
There has consistently been a conflict between conservatives and liberals. Between those who want to maintain the status quo and those who want to see change. The connotations of the words conservative and liberal can change over time; here we are interested in their denotation. Is the eternal struggle between conservatives and liberals necessary? (Read more...)
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 Art Tutorials
by Michael Newberry
Not sure how long it has been since my last post...but, I opted to spend my time more constructively than toying with y’all. :) I have completed lots of work and recently sold an important work, within weeks of signing it, for over $50,000. Instead of writing posts here I have begun writing online art tutorial... (Read more...)
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Fairness Is a Minor Virtue
by Tibor R. Machan
Few ideas serve more wicked purposes as "fairness." In public policy it is probably the most overused justification for increasing the power of some people over others, for meddling in others’ private lives, and for being guiltlessly resentful. (Read more...)
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What Social Responsibility?
by Tibor R. Machan
Over the last several decades the field of business ethics has become very popular in colleges and universities, including business schools around the world. Actually, all professional ethics courses have gained entry into the curriculum—medical, legal, engineering, and the other ethics. (Oddly, though, the ethics of education and scholarship have not joined this trend!) (Read more...)
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 Acceptance
by Alexander Butziger
Why can't we just get along? Why can even apparently reasonable people sharing many fundamental values sometimes not agree on fundamental moral questions? Is reason limited, after all? Or are all human beings inherently irrational subjectivists, no matter what claims to reason and objectivity they may make? Is our faith in reason misplaced? (Read more...)
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 Walter Lippmann: chronicler of evil
by Michael E. Marotta
Both Hoover and Roosevelt enacted collectivist responses to the Great Depression. No one seriously advocated laissez faire -- or if anyone did, they were not taken seriously by serious people. So said Walter Lippmann. For admirers of Ayn Rand's works, Walter Lippmann is the epitome of what was right and wrong with liberalism. (Read more...)
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"Must We Mean What We Say?"
by Tibor R. Machan
The tile of this column is the title of an early book and the title essay in it~by Harvard University philosopher Stanley Cavell. Cavell’s work was to me fascinating because it argued, putting it very roughly, that when one uses words with widely understood meaning, one may not expect that one’s idiosyncratic interpretation of the words should override the former. And there is pretty plain evidence of the acceptance of this in how we treat each other’s utterances. If someone calls you a fool and you take offense, it is no good for the person to say, "But what I mean by ‘fool’ is ‘wise and sensible’." When one says "fool," one must mean what "fool" means. If one fails to realize this, that is a failure indeed and no one can escape the consequences by pleading ignorance. (Read more...)
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Ron Paul on "Blowback"
by Tibor R. Machan
During the Republican presidential candidate debates Ron Paul insisted that 9/11 can best be understood as an instance of "blowback," meaning the expected reaction of those in the Middle East to the US government’s interventionist foreign policy. To this Rudi Giuliani said he has never heard anything so ridiculous. (Read more...)
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Buchanan on Ron Paul’s Debate Point
by Tibor R. Machan
Shortly after the South Carolina Republican presidential hopefuls’ debate I wrote chiding Ron Paul for suggesting that 9/11 was a blowback in response to the fact that the US government had been in the Middle East for ten years or so. As Paul put the point, "They attack us because we've been over there, we've been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We've been in the Middle East…." My point was that however ill conceived, even evil, US foreign policy in the Middle East may have been, it would not serve to justify the blowback of murdering 3000 innocent working people in the Twin Towers on 9/11. (Read more...)
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An Open Letter to a Catholic High School
by William Scott Dwyer
The following letter, written in 1983, was sent to the principal of my high school in response to the school's request for donations and its invitation to a 25-year class reunion. I am including it here, because it exposes a facet of Catholic education that most non-Catholics are probably not aware of, namely, its extreme violence and brutality, which serve to illustrate Rand's archetypes of Attila and the Witch Doctor -- the unholy alliance between faith and force, which characterizes the rejection of reason. (Read more...)
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Ayn Rand in Argentina
by Manfred F. Schieder
Ayn Rand’s Objectivism continues to spread worldwide. This time it’s Argentina, in the southern part of the world, where the Spanish version of several of her books was presented at an international books trade fair. (Read more...)
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Soft Pedalling Coercion
by Tibor R. Machan
All those of us who travel by air have probably come across those announcements in airports about how smoking is forbidden. If airports were private facilities, I would have no problem with this. And, in fact, since I don’t smoke, I am not personally put out by those bans, either. (Read more...)
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Toward a Paradigm for a Free Society
by Edward W. Younkins
What can we learn from a survey of political and economic philosophies throughout history? Can we put them together by drawing from many or all of them to construct a powerful emergent libertarian synthesis that is a true reflection of the nature of man and the world properly understood? Is it possible to reframe the a... (Read more...)
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America's Government School Woes
by Tibor R. Machan
The removal of banners in a high school, which had the words "God" and "Creator" on them, placed there by a school math teacher, have led to a lawsuit against the Poway Unified School District in San Diego. Most people take this to be a confrontation between religion and secularism but it isn't. What it is, however, is a confrontation between government and private secondary education. (Read more...)
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North Carolina Governor's School Experience
by Luke Setzer
The campus director informed the parents from the outset that it would be "best for their children" if they refrained from visiting for the first two weeks of the program. He asserted that early visits from family would disrupt the students' "adjustment" to campus life. He also sternly informed students that "if you have any kind of prejudice against others, check them at the gate. We will be too busy pursuing new and valuable ideas to have those kinds of barriers holding us back." It all seemed just a little ominous. (Read more...)
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Free Will or Not?
by Tibor R. Machan
Sure enough, some topics resurface quite naturally in the wake of certain types of events. The Virginia Tech massacre has brought out the gun control champions, as well as those who anticipate their histrionics and warn that banning guns can do more harm than good in just such circumstances. Also, the issue of whether perpetrators of such heinous acts are helpless or in fact possess free will and are therefore responsible for their actions has come up (notably in a recent missive by New York Times columnist David Brooks.) (Read more...)
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Human Certainty: The only kind there is.
by Ed Thompson
The subtitle to this essay hints at the fact that human certainty is something special. Now, there are 2 ways to be certain:
1) psychologically (whenever any animate, perceptual being is "convinced" of things being a certain way)
2) philosophically (whenever any conceptual being has discovered an identifiable and potentially-measurable difference among the existents in the world)
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Solving the Pregnancy Question
by Steven Thomas Druckenmiller
Pregnancy should be the responsibility of the woman alone. (Read more...)
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Roark Rising
by Alexander Butziger
Looking at the Manhattan skyline (kneeling if you will), let's talk about life imitating art. After more than half a century, it looks like two buildings out of The Fountainhead are finally getting built in New York. (Read more...)
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Homework for Brian Doherty
by Dennis C. Hardin
In his impressive and fascinating history of the libertarian movement, Brian Doherty would have been better served to take a closer look at Atlas Shrugged and those who presume to speak for its author. (Read more...)
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