Thursday
November 24, 2005 |
 Quod fuerim sin pummarolam?
by Ciro D'Agostino
Almost 3000 years ago, Basil and Tomato (lovers of different flavors) decided to meet in Naples, Italy, where they would have consumed a night of passion. (Read more...)
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Wednesday
November 23, 2005 |
 Why Limit Government?
by Marty Lewinter
There is only one way to safeguard rights: limit the power of the state—that is, limit the power of the group over the individual. (Read more...)
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Wednesday
November 23, 2005 |
 Machan's Musings - Nanocars and Other Nifty Feats
by Tibor R. Machan
Despite wishing to celebrate some of the technical feats achieved with extorted funds, I will not. Yes, I praise the scientists, the technological whizzes (I used to literally stroke my Volvo P1800 for being such a great engineering marvel). But given that they shouldn’t have had most of the funds that enabled them to achieve these feats, I decline the invitation to celebrate. (Read more...)
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Ayn Rand? Jealous?
by Robert L. Campbell
I strongly encourage everyone who wants to see Rand’s ideas treated fairly and objectively to read The Passion of Ayn Rand’s Critics. Not because Mr. Valliant’s assessment of Rand can be counted on to be fair and objective, but because Rand’s journal entries need to be consulted by anyone who wishes to make his or her own fair and objective assessment. (Read more...)
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Machan's Musings - Back to the Animal Rights Folly
by Tibor R. Machan
As the author of a book on this subject, Putting Humans First, Why We Are Nature’s Favorite (2004)—which, surprise, surprise, was not reviewed in The New York Review of Books (even as they dutifully review Peter Singer and other animal liberation and rights promoters), I find it especially peculiar that the magazine’s chosen reviewer of Coetzee’s pro-animal rights work offers no criticism of the Nobel Prize winning novelist’s ideas. (Read more...)
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Mexican Immigrants and the "Objectivist" Center
by Adam Reed
That racist propaganda is widely tolerated among America's "Conservatives" and "Liberals" is scandal enough. That it is spread by the magazine of an "Objectivist" organization is beyond scandal. It is treason.
(Read more...)
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Daily Linz 21 - Close Encounter of the Scary Kind
by Lindsay Perigo
With my sister Sally and her husband John—with whom I’ve been living since renting out my own apartment recently— away for the weekend, I would have the place to myself, free of distractions. As I emerged from my bedroom, I was momentarily disconcerted to see the lounge curtains drawn when I was sure I hadn’t drawn them. (Read more...)
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Machan's Musings - Faith and Public Controversy
by Tibor R. Machan
One crucial reason that religiously based public policies have dubious merit is that their justification can’t be examined along lines available to us in virtue of our humanity alone. A human community, as opposed to a sectarian or religious one, can’t rest its institutions on what arises from faith—especially not if those institutions aim to be considered fairly and openly by all those who might be citizens. (Read more...)
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Hegel's Authoritarian State as the Divine Idea on Earth
by Edward W. Younkins
For Hegel, the State is the highest embodiment of the Divine Idea on earth and the chief means used by the Absolute in manifesting itself as it unfolds towards its perfect fulfillment. Hegel argued that the State is the highest form of social existence and the end product of the development of mankind, from family to civil society to lower forms of political groupings. (Read more...)
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Machan's Musings - A Risky Argument for Liberty
by Tibor R. Machan
The fact that the insistence on the basic rights of all, including the rich, to pursue their own goals—be they of great public benefit or none—also tends to benefit most people is secondary, not primary. Unless the case for the free system can be made along lines that stress the justice of the it, those on the Left will make a better case with their equation of justice and fairness. (Read more...)
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Saturday
November 19, 2005 |
Decentralisation, and Those Who Oppose It
by Peter Cresswell
What's wrong with choice, and letting people exercise it? What's wrong with a cornucopia of choices, an abundance of options, a profusion of possible housing choices? Why can't you leave people alone to choose for themselves their own manner of living? When you strip away the veneer of buzzwords surrounding the planners' latest fads, you're left with the express intent that these people don't like the choices you make about how to live, and they will make you pay any price to avoid letting you do so. (Read more...)
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Saturday
November 19, 2005 |
Machan's Musings - Some (Small) Good News
by Tibor R. Machan
Although the content of discussions of global warming in Science News has not changed much, and most of them keep suggesting that it’s all due to the greed and materialism of human beings, at least now and then a letter is allowed to voice some dissent. (Read more...)
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The Epicurean Roots of Some Classical Liberal and Misesian Concepts
by Martin Masse
Epicureanism, wrote Ludwig von Mises, inaugurated "the spiritual, moral and intellectual emancipation of mankind". One can find articles on the Internet discussing similarities between Objectivism and Epicureanism, and how Ayn Rand has been influenced by Epicurus. These are some examples of how this ancient philosophy is connected to the classical liberal and libertarian tradition. (Read more...)
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Machan's Musings - Is Classical Liberalism Based on Skepticism?
by Tibor R. Machan
Those who champion the free society and want to do more than simply express their preference for it—never mind if it holds any argumentative merit, or whether it can be shown to be superior to alternative regimes—need to find good arguments and not rely on the skeptical tactic. It simply will not work. (Read more...)
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Thursday
November 17, 2005 |
 What's Wrong with Bebop? Reflections on Ayn Rand and Jazz
by Roger E. Bissell
An objective analysis of the value of music in general, and on bebop jazz in particular, focuses primarily on the presence and quality of memorable melody. For that reason, bebop jazz, while not without redeeming virtues, is of lesser rational value than, say, Dixieland jazz. Avant-garde jazz, however, like avant-garde music in general, is beyond the pale! (Read more...)
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Thursday
November 17, 2005 |
Daily Linz 20 - Vanity vs. Self-Esteem
by Lindsay Perigo
Likely those of us who’ve been around Objectivism for a while have met one or more of them. If we see one coming we cross the road or hide behind a tree. If we see one at a table we sit at another. Willingly to expose ourselves to him would be an act of masochistic self-sacrifice. (Read more...)
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Wednesday
November 16, 2005 |
Making a Contribution
by Merlin Jetton
By the self-sacrifice, ask-nothing-in-return standard, wealthy producers in business such as Bill Gates only get credit for "making a contribution to society" when they contribute to charity or do something comparable like endowing a university. There is no credit under this standard for providing employment to others or providing customers with useful products. These are only the pursuit of self-interest, which is morally neutral at best. (Read more...)
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Wednesday
November 16, 2005 |
Machan's Musings - Corruption of the Police
by Tibor R. Machan
My youngest daughter and I were driving about when she told me her theory about contemporary police officers. Her idea was that police departments in our time attract bullies, people who have always liked to flex their muscles and show everyone who is boss. (Read more...)
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 Persuasion
by Ciro D'Agostino
What are the reasons for such desire? (Read more...)
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Machan's Musings - What About the Children?
by Tibor R. Machan
Those who prize a free society, one where government concerns itself with protecting individual rights, keeping the peace and fending off attacks from enemies, have one very tough problem to overcome. This is the fact that millions of people who have no business doing so keep having children.
(Read more...)
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Rewarding Success, Rewarding Failure
by Rick Pasotto
If you want to reward success instead of rewarding failure, the sphere of government activities must be made as small as possible, and desirable goals left to the energy and ingenuity of entrepreneurs working for the rewards of profits in a free market economy. (Read more...)
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Machan's Musings - Gradualism Revisited
by Tibor R. Machan
Contrary to those who want it all in one fell swoop, the progression from a messy mixed economy in the direction of a free one is highly unlikely to come about by way of a sudden leap. Indeed, that is very likely never going to happen, because people are very unlikely to get on board the train to liberty all at once, with equal conviction and commitment. To believe otherwise is to perpetuate that very widespread mistake best captured in the motto, “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” (Read more...)
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Notes on "Reading Lolita in Teheran"
by Adam Reed
The ultimate paradox of theocracy, is that it exists for the purpose of imposing the primacy of consciousness on reality itself. It creates, in Azar Nafisi's parting words, "a place where the film censor is nearly blind and where they hang people in the streets and put a curtain across the sea to segregate men and women." And where pedophiles "marry" nine-year-old girls, with the full endorsement of the mullahs of the Islamic Republic. (Read more...)
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Machan's Musings - Rudy Giuliani vs. Civil Liberties
by Tibor R. Machan
What is telling is that nearly all of the measures Guiliani took pertain to how people must behave in public spheres. These are severely reduced in size and scope in a libertarian polity. And private owners and operators of subways, parks, buildings, and streets may, according to Lockean libertarians, establish whatever rules they deem are required to manage these realms. The real problem is reconciling civil liberties with the effective management of public realms. This is no challenge to Lockean libertarianism. (Read more...)
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Saturday
November 12, 2005 |
Austrian Economics and Objectivism
by Edward W. Younkins
By combining and synthesizing elements found in Austrian economics, Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism, and the closely related philosophy of human flourishing that originated with Aristotle, we have the potential to reframe the argument for a free society into a consistent, reality-based whole whose integrated sum of knowledge and explanatory power is greater than that of its parts. (Read more...)
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