 The Power of Moral Ideals
by Joseph Rowlands
A colleague of mine told me about a business trip he went on to a foreign country. When he got there, he found himself under the attention of an attractive young woman. She had surmised that he was a wealthy businessman from America, and was offering more than just a good conversation. Being the married man that he ... (Read more...)
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 Republican Election Fiasco
by Ed Hudgins
In my article on "The Battle for the Soul of the Republican Party" I analyzed the likely results of a GOP turning more and more to big government, interventionist policies. In the 2006 election they got what they asked for. (Read more...)
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Wednesday
November 8, 2006 |
Can One Respect the Police?
by Tibor R. Machan
It began with the Orange County ordinance authorizing police to stop teens from smoking in public places. One of my children asked me, who are these people to tell them whether they may smoke? Isn’t that the job of parents? Don’t the cops have kidnappers, rapists, murderers, and robbers to deal with? Is it really their role in our lives to order us to stop smoking?
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 Achtung! Germany drags homeschool kids to class
by Bob Unruh
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com
A Nazi-era law requiring all children to attend public school, to avoid "the emergence of parallel societies based on separate philosophical convictions" that could be taught by parents at home, apparently is triggering a Nazi-like response from police.
The word comes from Netzwerk Bildungsfreiheit, or Network for Freedom in Education, which confirmed that children in a family in Bissingen, in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, have been forcibly hauled to a public school.
"On Friday 20 October 2006 at around 7:30 a.m. the children of a home educating family ... were brought under duress to school by police," the organization, which describes itself as politically and religiously neutral, confirmed.
A separate weblog in the United States noted the same tragedy. (Read more...)
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The Three Parties
by Andre Zantonavitch
Some thoughts on the important political parties, and America's upcoming November 8th, 2006 elections. (Read more...)
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Wednesday
November 1, 2006 |
Sacrificing Minds
by Joseph Rowlands
Occasionally I find myself in a conversation with someone who has a completely distorted and chaotic worldview. And when I say chaotic, I can't emphasize the word strongly enough. Their systems of belief are totally non-integrated, combining conspiracy theories, bad science, a malevolent view of mankind, and some of ... (Read more...)
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Government School Follies
by Tibor R. Machan
France, England, Germany, and who knows which other countries are in deep doo-doo because of the impossibility of supporting both multiculturalism and state school policies. (Read more...)
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Why There Should Be No Minimum Wage
by Wesley Bronez
86% of the United States' population supports a higher minimum wage. This is why I'm not one of the 86%. (Read more...)
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Wednesday
October 25, 2006 |
 Context, Context, Context
by Joseph Rowlands
The Contextual Theory of Knowledge is one of the broadest ideas in Objectivism. It basically says that all of our knowledge exists in a context. Context is the background in which something is said. There's a huge amount of background information you assume in every statements, and all of that information is then connected to more information. When you identify something, you identify it within a given context. (Read more...)
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 What is Love
by Michael F Dickey
Love, and emotion for that matter (in a healthy brain) is our response to our highest values. Love is the emotional price you pay for *valuing* something and seeing it expressed in another human being. All of our emotions are responses to the things we value most being expressed. When we value the health and well being... (Read more...)
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Respect our Enemies - Why?
by Tibor R. Machan
Freeman Dyson, who is a famous physicist and Professor Emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton University, wrote the following lines in The New York Review of Books that are, in my view, worth reflecting upon: (Read more...)
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Wednesday
October 18, 2006 |
The Justice of Inequality
by William Scott Dwyer
Increases in the inequality of wealth and income are viewed as a moral and economic failure, but insofar as they occur in a free market, they are simply a reflection of the laws of supply and demand and are in fact desirable, because they not only provide for the proper allocation of economic resources and thereby ensure that people's needs and desires are met, but also reflect the fact that producers receive the value of what they produce -- that those who produce more earn more -- which, far from being unjust, is a prerequisite of economic justice. (Read more...)
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Ayn Rand and Religion
by Dennis C. Hardin
Did Ayn Rand miscalculate the strength, endurance and appeal of religion? (Read more...)
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One Size Fits All Revisited
by Tibor R. Machan
Outside of politics, the place where the one size fits all approach is most tempting would be the family. Parents are often eager to urge their own tastes and preferences on their children, confusing these with the basic values, virtues and principles they do need to teach them. (Read more...)
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Wednesday
October 11, 2006 |
How to Deal with the Nuclear-Armed North Koreans
by Andre Zantonavitch
Some thoughts on what America and the West should do about the growing nuclear menace from North Korea. (Read more...)
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Logic
by Joseph Rowlands
Rand defines logic as "the art of non-contradictory identification". The just means that logic is concerned with eliminating contradictions. A contradiction is when two things can't both be correct at the same time. In reality, if something can't happen, it doesn't. But in the world of ideas, you may be mistaken about what can or can't happen, as well as whether they actually did happen. (Read more...)
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 Territorial Imperative
by John Paul Sherman
I used to believe
... (Read more...)
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Two Cheers for the Welches
by Tibor R. Machan
In their BusinessWeek column of October 9, 2006, Suzy and Jack Welch make a valiant effort to debunk the stakeholder theory of corporate ethics. This is the view that managers do not owe service first and foremost to shareholders or owners of a company but, rather, to anyone who has an "interest" in the company's activities. The idea has also been dubbed the CSR thesis, whereby the first duty of business managers is their so-called "corporate social responsibility." (Read more...)
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The Battle
by Marty Lewinter
Our young people in uniform may be called on to fight major battles to save the USA. Do they know what they are fighting for? (Read more...)
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Reason vs. Faith
by Joseph Rowlands
Sometimes the best way to understand a concept is to contrast it with others. There are some aspects of reason that fit this description. Specifically, it's useful to contrast it with the concept of faith. (Read more...)
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In Praise of Investing Money Gained from Tax Cuts
by G. Stolyarov II
Mr. Stolyarov refutes several fallacious objections to the scenario of tax cut recipients investing the money they gain. He addresses three of these objections using the principles of economics and rational self-interest to display the virtues of such an outcome. Indeed, no damage will result from investment of such money; quite the contrary, this practice will fuel economic growth in the United States and rising standards of living for Americans as well as other individuals worldwide. (Read more...)
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Thursday
September 28, 2006 |
Religion and the Public Square
by Tibor R. Machan
A wonderful aspect of a free, capitalist society is that nearly everything is privately owned. That applies to churches -- they are owned by the order, such as Roman Catholics, Methodists, Baptists, Moonies, Muslims, Hindus, and all the some 4200 different religious groups (that's the number of how many different religious groups exist in the USA now [http://www.adherents.com/]) -- or by their congregations. Because a free society has no state religion, various religious groups are not involved in politically squaring off against one another. Sure, there are some political aspects of some religious orders, but in the main their affairs are left to the social and private realms of our lives. (Read more...)
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Wednesday
September 27, 2006 |
Death to the UN!
by Andre Zantonavitch
Some thoughts on the fundamental nature of the current United Nations. (Read more...)
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Tuesday
September 26, 2006 |
Hierarchical Theory of Knowledge
by Joseph Rowlands
We've already hinted at a lot of things along the way. First, we talked about concepts having a genus and differentia as part of their definition. This rests on an interesting assumption. In order to have a genus, the concept you're referring to must be part of a larger category. A larger concept, actually. (Read more...)
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The Philosophical Origins of Austrian Economics
by David Gordon
This is a good and fairly long article from David Gordon on the Aristotelian origins of the Austrian school of economics. Gordon tells us that Carl Menger was influenced by Franz Brentano who "held Kant and Hegel in contempt, viewing them as retrogressive figures." (Read more...)
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