 Machan's Musings-Wanting but Reproducing
by Tibor R. Machan
At the Dallas/Forth Worth Airport I had to wait for two ours to board my flight back home, so I sat before a TV set beaming forth CNN’s various scary stories. (Even as the traffic there was quite calm, and even as my two days’ of lectures in New Orleans proceeded amidst a city now showing mostly evidence of... (Read more...)
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 Drama Queen versus Ice Queen
by Luke Setzer
I contend that passion can exist across a wide spectrum of "emotional temperatures." My contention respects the context of an individual's unique character and situation to dictate what temperature proves "just right" to cause flourishing for that person. To illustrate this principle, I introduce two polarized archetypes of passion: the Drama Queen and the Ice Queen. (Read more...)
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Machan's Musings-Unexpected Science News
by Tibor R. Machan
You would not know about this if you didn’t follow recent scientific research, the kind reported in one of my favorite magazine, Science News. But guess what appears to be contributing big time to global warming? No, not car emissions; no, not your microwave oven; no, not even your electric razor. It is the... (Read more...)
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 An Objectivist-Christian Dialogue
by Neil Parille
There has not been, to the best of my knowledge, Christian-Objectivist dialogue. I offer two areas in which dialogue would be fruitful in the narrow sense of helping to clarify opposing ideas. (Read more...)
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Wednesday
February 1, 2006 |
The "With-Measurement" Program
by Stephen Boydstun
In our family, the young people have taught us the proper way to read your fortune cookie when we go for Chinese dinner. Each person is required to read their fortune aloud, followed by the words “in bed.” The added phrase puts the fortune in a whole new light. To the fortune “You will soon be sitting on top of the world,” you must add . . . (Read more...)
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On Art
by A. Robert Malcom
One of the problems in dealing with the issue of aesthetics is that, from the philosophical standpoint, it has been considered the least of the branches of philosophy - this, despite the fact that it is personal, that is to say, individualistic, not tribalistic, and thus really the most important of the sibling of... (Read more...)
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Machan's Musings - Another "Liberal" Ruse
by Tibor R. Machan
First, the reason I put quotes around "liberal" is that this was a label that had been used to designate people who favored individual liberty, in the tradition of the American Founders--the right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and so forth. Today "liberal" is used to designate people who do not favor thes... (Read more...)
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Differences between Objectivist Politics and Libertarian Politics
by Joseph Rowlands
Objectivists have sometimes argued that you can't accept the Objectivist politics without the philosophical base. Certainly if you try, there should be significant differences due to the lack of grounding. Since the September 11 terrorist attacks, it's become quite clear that there are in fact significant differences... (Read more...)
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Machan's Musings - Teacher Watch!
by Tibor R. Machan
Here is my imaginary scenario: A black student alumni organization hears that some teachers are making racist remarks-advancing racist theories and conclusions-in, say, a sociology course. But they have no proof, so they offer to pay a student to take the risk of wearing a wire in class to make sure the report is accu... (Read more...)
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Machan's Musings - The Return of Marxism
by Tibor R. Machan
Since I just wrote a book, Revisiting Marxism, A Bourgeois Reassessment (Hamilton Books, 2004), one might imagine this is nothing but a plug. But in fact my reflections are prompted by the new movie, Why We Fight, made by Eugene Jarecki. Its theme is, coming from the horse's mouth itself, that America is pr... (Read more...)
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 Learning Lessons from the Fellowship of Reason
by Luke Setzer
Before I became involved with SOLO and now RoR as a way to place my local Objectivist club under a wider umbrella, I briefly explored the idea of opening a local chapter of the Fellowship of Reason® (FOR) for that purpose. Unfortunately, I learned that FOR had a substantially different vision, so I abandoned the effort. I also did not renew my membership with them when dues time came. Their new Executive Board sent a survey to all current and former members to learn lessons about what they could do to improve FOR. I offer my responses to their survey here. I have changed names to protect privacy. (Read more...)
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Machan's Musings - The Mind of the Fanatic Altruist?
by Tibor R. Machan
The New Republic (January 30, 2006) contains a fascinating and alarming piece-maybe it's a parody but it sounds mighty authentic to my ears-by Ali Salem, "The War of the Hotels" (p. 23) which appeared in the London based Al Hayat, a pan-Arab daily. The piece relates-or imagines-what one battlefield commander, Abu Fulan, supposedly narrated to some people about why it is so important to attack and kill all those from the West or anywhere else who are enjoying themselves, specially
in hotels. (Read more...)
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Thomas Aquinas' Christian Aristotelianism
by Edward W. Younkins
Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), the dominant thinker of the middle ages, combined the science and philosophy of Aristotle with the revealed truths of Christianity. Holding that Aristotelianism is true but is not the whole truth, he reconciled the philosophy of Aristotle with the truth of Christian revelation. Aquinas was a... (Read more...)
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Machan's Musings - Artificial Controversies
by Tibor R. Machan
Enemies of the free society are prone to find something that will render the very idea of it not just odd but insidious. So we have one Gerry Stoker, writing in the January 2006 (issue #118) of Prospect Magazine that "Politics has been infected by one of the dominant myths of our time: that the goal of life is self-actualization. Politics as an exercise in collective decision-making has been unable to withstand the assault of a naïve individualism" (http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?search_term=Stoker&id=7176&issue=514). (Read more...)
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Generation Gap
by Marty Lewinter
Though I have older and younger friends, each a generation apart from me, I do not experience a significant generation gap with either group. (Read more...)
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Machan's Musings - Limiting Outsourcing is Wrong and Harmful
by Tibor R. Machan
... (Read more...)
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Wednesday
January 25, 2006 |
Government Revisited: The central role
by Joseph Rowlands
What is the primary purpose of government? The typical Objectivist position is that the government’s job is to protect our rights. This inevitably leads to the question of whether the protection of rights needs to be done by the government, or if it can be done privately. Before even going down that path, I want to ... (Read more...)
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Wednesday
January 25, 2006 |
Machan's Musings - Roe & Privacy
by Tibor R. Machan
One reason that Roe v. Wade is still with us is that legal scholars and jurists are arguing about the wrong issue. The question isn’t whether the US Constitution contains any reference to a right to privacy. Let’s assume it does. Let’s assume that the Ninth Amendment, as argued in Griswold v. Connecticut and some other cases, implicitly refers to the right to privacy every human beings has. Why would this be relevant? (Read more...)
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Roles and Rational Egoism
by Luke Setzer
Chapter 12 from the forthcoming book The Vision-Driven Life™: Becoming the Self You Might Be and Ought To Be examines how one can best form relationships using the virtue of Justice. It shows how one must master the role of Island in order to have the greatest freedom to form the most flourishing relationships possible. It ends with an exercise to identify current roles and their emotional payoffs. (Read more...)
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Jean-Baptiste Say's Law of Markets: A Fundamental Conceptual Integration
by Edward W. Younkins
John-Baptiste Say (1767-1832) is one of the most important and insightful thinkers in the history of economic science. Say was a major proponent of Adam Smith’s self-directing economic system of competition, natural liberty, and limited government. He frequently praised the Scotsman’s work, publicized it, and described... (Read more...)
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Machan's Musings - Post-Modernism and Science
by Tibor R. Machan
The main tenet of post-modernist philosophy is that reality is constructed, non-objective. (A good description of the movement is at [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_Modernism ]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_Modernism and in Stephen Hicks, Explaining Postmodernism at www.explainingpostmodernism.com.) In Ameri... (Read more...)
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Machan's Musings - Looking Back at Kelo and More
by Tibor R. Machan
Since back when the Supreme Court ruled on Kelo v. City of New London, CT—in favor of the city’s use of eminent domain measures against private owners with viable property so as to obtain more taxes from the development other private parties may initiate—there has been much consternation about just what went wrong here... (Read more...)
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 Objectivist Heroes
by JJ Tuan
Objectivist heroes thrive in peace time. (Read more...)
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Machan's Musings - Modern Liberalism's Central Flaw
by Tibor R. Machan
Modern liberals sadly cling to their most grievous flaw and that is what makes them, even if at times only inadvertently, fundamentally misanthropic. They believe that advancing their objectives, even those that are perfectly valid, ought to be done by using coercion against those whose cooperation they seek. (Read more...)
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Circumstance Based Market Segmentation and Activist Products
by Ryan Brubaker
How circumstance-based products can help Rebirth of Reason shift its focus toward activism. (Read more...)
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