Principles in Practice

Summer Issue of The Objective Standard

2009-06-23T01:10:00.000-04:00

The print edition of the Summer issue has been mailed, and the online version has been posted to our website. The contents are:

From the Editor

Letters and Replies

ARTICLES
An Interview with a “Capitalist Pig”: Jonathan Hoenig on Hedge Funds, the Economic Crisis, and the Future of America

Justice Holmes and the Empty Constitution by Thomas A. Bowden

Energy at the Speed of Thought: The Original Alternative Energy Market by Alex Epstein

A Brief History of U.S. Farm Policy and the Need for Free-Market Agriculture by Monica Hughes

The Is–Ought Gap: Subjectivism’s Technical Retreat by Craig Biddle

BOOKS REVIEWED
Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism, by George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller (reviewed by Eric Daniels)

Life Without Lawyers: Liberating Americans From Too Much Law, by Philip K. Howard (reviewed by David Littel)

Fooling Some of the People All the Time Updated and Revised: A Long Short Story, by David Einhorn (reviewed by Daniel Wahl)

The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger, by Marc Levinson (reviewed by Heike Larson)

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, by David Allen (reviewed by Amy Peikoff)

The Objective Standard makes for great summer reading! How about giving gift subscriptions to the active-minded students and graduates in your reach? One mind at a time—that is how to fight for the future.

Enjoy the issue, and have a wonderful summer!

ARI Free Books to Teachers Program Shatters Record

2009-05-13T23:16:00.002-04:00

The following is a reprint of a message from Yaron Brook to ARI donors.

Dear Contributor:

Since the first of the year, you’ve read a great deal about the work that ARI has done—primarily through the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights—to bring public attention to the economic and political problems facing our country.

Our work on that front continues—and I will continue to update you, through letters and e-mails, on the great strides we are making in ensuring that Ayn Rand’s ideas are given increased consideration among policy-makers and the media.

But while we are all preoccupied with the news of the day, and the ever-increasing assaults on freedom and capitalism coming from Washington, ARI has continued to keep the long-term picture in clear focus.

Even as ARC has capitalized on an unprecedented public and media interest in Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand, and her ideas, ARI is completing what appears to be another marvelously successful year in our efforts to introduce young readers to Ayn Rand’s novels.

Results to Date

As of this writing, the total number of copies of Anthem, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged shipped to classrooms this school year is 342,984. This represents a 17 percent increase over last year’s total of 293,295—and represents a new all-time record for the program.

Since we inaugurated the Free Books to Teachers program with a pilot program in late 2002, the success of the program has been truly staggering. Adding the results above to the results from previous years, we can report the following for the lifetime of this program:

More than 1.4 million copies of the novels have been sent to teachers.
More than 30,000 teachers have participated in the Free Books to Teachers program since its inception.
Ayn Rand’s novels are being taught in an estimated 40,000 high school classrooms in the United States and Canada.
And because many of the novels are read in subsequent years by new groups of students, we now estimate that a total of nearly four million students have been introduced to Ayn Rand’s novels since this project began.

These achievements would not have been possible without the continued financial backing of our donors; so I thank you once again for your support of this program.

Feedback from Educators

Nearly every day we hear from teachers participating in the Free Books to Teachers program. Below are a few comments from the more than 300 we received from teachers this year. These are the impressions of teachers actually using the novels in their classrooms.

Their remarks, I believe, eloquently attest to the real impact that this program is having on students.

My students primarily come from lower-socio-economic homes and would have never had the chance to engage in such a rich lesson during these hard economic times when money for books is not available to us. I have seen a true personal and educational growth as students learn about Ayn Rand’s philosophy through her characters, plot, and the lessons provided for us.

—Bakersfield, CA

The Fountainhead started out as a road to the essay contest and college funds for my seniors, but has become so much more. The critical thinking and literary engagement that has come from reading this text is of amazing worth! . . . Rand was an amazing author; her texts are timeless.

—Baltimore, MD

I have never seen my students so excited about reading a book. Tenth graders who have refused to read any of the books that we’ve done so far finished reading Anthem weeks before it was required. Students who read The Fountainhead came in everyday to tell me how excited they were about the book. . . . Thank you from the bottom of my heart!

—Springville, UT

Thanks! Please keep this amazing program going! Over the past 7 years I have introduced over a 1,000 students to the work of Ayn Rand through the use of these books . . . I know it has helped to produce some exceptional debaters and influenced the writings of countless students. THANK YOU!

—Hope Mills, NC

I’m sure that you hear it all the time; however, I must tell you that my students cannot stop talking about Anthem. In fact, one student read it seven times! We have had some fascinating group discussions.

—Cocoa, FL

Thank you so much for the copies of Anthem and The Fountainhead. Our students will greatly benefit from the instruction of Ayn Rand’s contributions to world literature, and her enduring message of the triumph of the individual against all restrictive systems.

In an age of repetitive sound and thought, it is certainly a privilege to have Ayn Rand’s books in America’s classrooms.

—Laurel, MS

I am so appreciative of the Institute’s generosity and concern for education. I have been using the book for the past 5 years and will continue to do so in the future. I truly believe that the lessons learned from reading the book are totally applicable to the direction that our society seems to be moving in. Students enjoy reading the book and discussing how it is applicable to their lives, today. Once again, thank you for all that you do in providing an invaluable service to our students.

—Rosemont, PA

Conclusion

At the beginning of this letter, I alluded to the work we are doing at the Ayn Rand Center to combat the immediate challenge we face in Washington.

Make no mistake—the immediate challenges we face are severe.

But these challenges—among them the unprecedented intrusions of government into nearly every conceivable sector of our economy—represent a symptom, albeit an alarming one.

So while we will fight on the level of immediate, concrete political symptoms—and with ARC we have never been better able to do so—we must continue to treat the underlying disease of collectivism and unreason. The political battles must be fought now; but the culture must be repaired in the long term.

Through the Free Books to Teachers program; our essay contests (which have set new all-time records this year); the continued growth and success of the OAC and the Anthem Foundation for Objectivist Scholarship, we are continuing to work to address the fundamental, underlying problems that have led us to the political challenges we currently face.

It’s for this reason that I hope that I can count on your continued—and if possible, increased—support, as we prepare for the eighth year of the Ayn Rand Institute’s Free Books to Teachers program, and the 25th year of our annual essay contests.

Your continued and increased support will allow us to continue to tackle both the immediate problems—and ultimately, cure the underlying causes.

Thank you in advance for your consideration and your support.

Sincerely,

Yaron Brook
President and Executive Director

» Donate now

New Blog by Dianne Durante

2009-05-05T12:49:00.001-04:00

TOS contributor Dianne Durante has a new blog called Principles, History and Philosophy for Today’s News. “So far,” says Dianne, “there are essays on pirates (provoked by the Somali pirates) and on Cuban-American relations. This is a trial run for a website I'd like to produce that would offer short essays on major events in American history, with suggested readings from Ayn Rand and Objectivist scholars. If you're interested in using such a site or advertising on it, let me know.”

Leftist Fantasy vs. the True Story of the Atomic Bombs

2009-05-02T20:28:00.001-04:00

Bill Whittle of PJTV annihilates the leftist fantasy, most recently espoused by Jon Stewart, that our atom bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was “immoral,” and that Harry Truman was a “war criminal.” Whittle shows that our use of the atomic bombs saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers, who otherwise would have had to launch a massive ground invasion in which the death toll would have been astronomical. He also shows that our use of the bombs saved (at minimum) hundreds of thousands (and more likely millions) of Japanese lives.

Whittle’s video dovetails perfectly with John Lewis’s definitive essay on the subject: “Gifts from Heaven”: The Meaning of the American Victory over Japan, 1945. Watch the first, read the second, and send the links to anyone you know who is still confused about the facts surrounding America’s profoundly moral military decision. Americans need to demand of our government the same kind of decision with respect to Iran, and to demand it, Americans need to know the truth about our bombing of Japan.

Yaron Brook on Islamic Totalitarianism

2009-05-02T09:28:00.001-04:00

In Yaron Brook’s latest interview on PJTV, he discusses Islamic Totalitarianism and its primary sponsor, Iran; how the U.S. has turned the other cheek every time Iran has (directly or indirectly) attacked Americans; what the U.S. (and Israel) should do about this Iranian-sponsored assault on the West; and the need of a moral revolution in America to enable Americans to defend themselves not only from foreign assaults but also from domestic corruption.

The interview is superb; don’t miss it.

Help Fight for a Future of Reason and Freedom

2009-04-26T15:28:00.001-04:00

Dear Reader,

I’m writing to ask for your help.

Because of the parallels between Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and current events, Rand’s ideas are increasingly mentioned on talk shows, the internet, the news. This burgeoning interest in Rand’s philosophy is promising, but to fully grasp the practicality of Objectivism, people need to see how its principles apply in real life—which is not obvious.

The Objective Standard, now in its fourth year of publication, is dedicated to elucidating these principles and applying them to the cultural and political issues of the day. TOS consistently delivers crystal-clear, highly concretized essays on subjects ranging from “The Hierarchy of Knowledge: The Most Neglected Issue in Education” to “‘Just War Theory’ vs. American Self-Defense” to “Moral Health Care vs. ‘Universal Health Care’” to “The Mystical Ethics of the New Atheists” to “Reason or Faith: The Republican Alternative” to “Altruism: The Moral Root of the Financial Crisis.” Such articles change peoples’ minds—and TOS is the only periodical publishing them.

With the West being consumed by mysticism and altruism, people need not only to read Atlas, but also to see how the principles of Objectivism apply to their concerns—whether education or terrorism or religion or the economy. This is where you can help.

By giving gift subscriptions of TOS to active-minded friends, relatives, colleagues, intellectuals—whoever you think might be interested—you can help spread not only the ideas on which civilized society depends, but also the all-important understanding of what these ideas mean in practice. And now through May 8, to encourage a concerted effort among TOS fans and subscribers, we are cutting the prices of all gift subscriptions by 15%.

Please help us educate people about the practicality of Objectivism. Whether you can afford ten gift subscriptions or five or one, the price is right, and the future is worth it.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,
Craig Biddle, Editor

Three quick and easy ways to save now and profit later:

Place your order(s) online by clicking here.
Print and mail or fax our order form.
Or call us toll free at 800-423-6151.

John David Lewis's Charlotte Tea Party Speech

2009-04-20T21:42:00.002-04:00

Dr. Lewis has made available an edited version of his excellent Tea Party speech. The opening paragraphs are below. The whole speech can be found here.

The Charlotte Tea Party Speech
Dr. John David Lewis
Dept. of Political Science, Duke University
First delivered: April 15, 2009, Charlotte, North Carolina
Revised for publication: April 20, 2009.

[Permission is given to read this in full, wherever defenders of liberty may gather. Thank you to Char Cushman for the transcription, Andy Clarkson for the original video, and to Matthew Ridenhour for arranging the Charlotte Tea Party. A text version, in Word, may be seen here.]

It is high time for a tea party in America!

But to do this right, we need to understand what it means. So I want to think back for a moment to what happened over 200 years ago, at the time of the original Boston Tea Party.

The Founders of this nation brought forth a radical idea. It was truly radical, practiced nowhere before this time.

This idea was the Rights of Man. The Founders saw each of us as endowed with certain inalienable rights, rights that may not be separated from our nature as autonomous beings.

These inalienable rights are:

The Right to Life—the right to live your own life, to choose your own goals, and to preserve your own independent existence.
The Right to Liberty, which is the right to act to achieve your goals, without coercion by other men.
The Right to the Pursuit of Happiness, to act to achieve your own success, your own prosperity, and your own happiness, for your own sake.
And the Right to Property—the right to gain, keep, and enjoy, the material products of your efforts.

Unless I’m mistaken I don’t see anything here about a right to happiness. I see a right to the pursuit of happiness: the right to take the actions needed to attain one’s own happiness. Nor do I see any rights to things at all—no rights to food, clothing, healthcare or diapers. There is only a right to act to achieve those things. This is called freedom.

These rights to act—the rights to life, to liberty, and to the pursuit of happiness—are founded on a certain view of man. Each of us is an individual, autonomous, moral being, with the right to choose his own values and capable of directing his own life.

Look at the person next to you, and look in the mirror—do you see the individual sovereign human being, existing for his own sake, with the right to live, to love, and to act?

This idea—the Founders’ idea of the individual Rights of Man—led to a radical view of government. Government was not to be inherited by the force of an entrenched aristocracy as in Europe, imposed by the divine right of kings through generations of oppression, or enforced by the force of a club.

Government in America was to be designed and instituted by thinking men, for a single purpose: to protect and defend the Rights of Man.

This is what the American Declaration of Independence says: “To secure these rights, governments are instituted among men.” Thinking men, armed with the idea of rights, created a government limited to the protection of individual rights.

For centuries in Europe, the relationship between the people and the government had been that of serf to master: everyone was a servant of the ruling elite. In America, this was turned upside down: government became the servant of the individual. The very reason for a government—and its purpose—is to secure our inalienable, individual rights.

Read it all.

On April 22, Celebrate Exploit-the-Earth Day

2009-04-17T14:51:00.000-04:00

Because Earth Day is intended to further the cause of environmentalism—and because environmentalism is an anti-human ideology—on April 22, those who care about human life should not celebrate Earth Day; they should celebrate Exploit-the-Earth Day.

Exploiting the Earth—using the raw materials of nature for one’s life-serving purposes—is a basic requirement of human life. Either man takes the Earth’s raw materials—such as trees, petroleum, aluminum, and atoms—and transforms them into the requirements of his life, or he dies. To live, man must produce the goods on which his life depends; he must produce homes, automobiles, computers, electricity, and the like; he must seize nature and use it to his advantage. There is no escaping this fact. Even the allegedly “noble” savage must pick or perish. Indeed, even if a person produces nothing, insofar as he remains alive he indirectly exploits the Earth by parasitically surviving off the exploitative efforts of others.

According to environmentalism, however, man should not use nature for his needs; he should keep his hands off “the goods”; he should leave nature alone, come what may. Environmentalism is not concerned with human health and wellbeing—neither ours nor that of generations to come. If it were, it would advocate the one social system that ensures that the Earth and its elements are used in the most productive, life-serving manner possible: capitalism.

Capitalism is the only social system that recognizes and protects each individual’s right to act in accordance with his basic means of living: the judgment of his mind. Environmentalism, of course, does not and cannot advocate capitalism, because if people are free to act on their judgment, they will strive to produce and prosper; they will transform the raw materials of nature into the requirements of human life; they will exploit the Earth and live.

Environmentalism rejects the basic moral premise of capitalism—the idea that people should be free to act on their judgment—because it rejects a more fundamental idea on which capitalism rests: the idea that the requirements of human life constitute the standard of moral value. While the standard of value underlying capitalism is human life (meaning, that which is necessary for human beings to live and prosper), the standard of value underlying environmentalism is nature untouched by man.

The basic principle of environmentalism is that nature (i.e., “the environment”) has intrinsic value—value in and of itself, value apart from and irrespective of the requirements of human life—and that this value must be protected from its only adversary: man. Rivers must be left free to flow unimpeded by human dams, which divert natural flows, alter natural landscapes, and disrupt wildlife habitats. Glaciers must be left free to grow or shrink according to natural causes, but any human activity that might affect their size must be prohibited. Naturally generated carbon dioxide (such as that emitted by oceans and volcanoes) and naturally generated methane (such as that emitted by swamps and termites) may contribute to the greenhouse effect, but such gasses must not be produced by man. The globe may warm or cool naturally (e.g., via increases or decreases in sunspot activity), but man must not do anything to affect its temperature. And so on.

In short, according to environmentalism, if nature affects nature, the effect is good; if man affects nature, the effect is evil.

Stating the essence of environmentalism in such stark terms raises some illuminating questions: If the good is nature untouched by man, how is man to live? What is he to eat? What is he to wear? Where is he to reside? How can man do anything his life requires without altering, harming, or destroying some aspect of nature? In order to nourish himself, man must consume meats, fruits, and vegetables. In order to make clothing, he must skin animals, pick cotton, manufacture polyester, and the like. In order to build a house—or even a hut—he must cut down trees, dig up clay, make fires, bake bricks, and so forth. Each and every action man takes to support or sustain his life entails the exploitation of nature. Thus, on the premise of environmentalism, man has no right to exist.

It comes down to this: Each of us has a choice to make. Will I recognize that man’s life is the standard of moral value—that the good is that which sustains and furthers human life—and thus that people have a moral right to use the Earth and its elements for their life-serving needs? Or will I accept that nature has “intrinsic” value—value in and of itself, value apart from and irrespective of human needs—and thus that people have no right to exist?

There is no middle ground here. Either human life is the standard of moral value, or it is not. Either nature has intrinsic value, or it does not.

On April 22, make clear where you stand. Don’t celebrate Earth Day; celebrate Exploit-the-Earth Day—and let your friends, family, and associates know why.

John Lewis's Tea Party Interview

2009-04-17T14:12:00.001-04:00

In addition to John Lewis’s excellent tea party speech, Andy Clarkson has posted an interview with Lewis, which is also well worth viewing.

John Lewis on the Proper Meaning of a Tea Party

2009-04-17T09:47:00.001-04:00

Here’s a video of John Lewis’s excellent speech at yesterday’s tea party in Charlotte, North Carolina. (Thanks to Andy Clarkson for recording it)

A Snapshot of Obama's Obscene Foreign Policy

2009-04-15T09:37:00.001-04:00

Caroline Glick has written a good piece summing up the global situation in the wake of President Obama’s recent travels to Britain, France, the Czech Republic, Turkey, and Iraq. Here’s an excerpt:

Somewhere between apologizing for American history—both distant and recent; genuflecting before the unelected, bigoted king of Saudi Arabia; announcing that he will slash the US’s nuclear arsenal, scrap much of America’s missile defense programs and emasculate the US Navy; leaving Japan to face North Korea and China alone; telling the Czechs, Poles and their fellow former Soviet colonies, “Don’t worry, be happy,” as he leaves them to Moscow’s tender mercies; humiliating Iraq’s leaders while kowtowing to Iran; preparing for an open confrontation with Israel; and thanking Islam for its great contribution to American history, President Obama made clear to the world’s aggressors that America will not be confronting them for the foreseeable future.

Whether they are aggressors like Russia, proliferators like North Korea, terror exporters like nuclear-armed Pakistan or would-be genocidal-terror-supporting nuclear states like Iran, today, under the new administration, none of them has any reason to fear Washington.

Read the whole thing.

In addition to the abominations identified by Glick, the Obama administration is considering cutting a deal with Iran to the effect that, if the death-to-America-chanting theocracy will agree to “talks” regarding its atomic program, then America will permit it to continue enriching uranium and to go full steam ahead with its nuclear facilities.

Meanwhile, North Korea—which may already have enough plutonium to produce a half dozen atomic bombs, and which recently shot a multistage rocket over Japan—has vowed to “restore nuclear facilities it has been disabling and resume operating them, apparently referring to its five-megawatt plutonium-producing reactor and other facilities at the Yongbyon complex north of Pyongyang”—and to “reprocess spent fuel rods, also apparently referring to an activity at Yongbyon”—and to “‘actively consider’ building a light-water nuclear reactor.” In response, the Obama administration has done and likely will do nothing beyond participating in another round of finger shaking via the U.N. Security Council.

This Bush-like sellout of our security will continue until Americans repudiate the morality of altruism—which demands such self-sacrificial measures—and embrace the morality of rational egoism—which calls for the unwavering defense of America and her allies. Those who care to defend the civilized world need to discover the virtue of self-interest so that they can credibly advocate a foreign policy of self-interest. A good place to start is with Ayn Rand’s book The Virtue of Selfishness.

The Seals Have Done What 'God' Could Not

2009-04-13T10:10:00.001-04:00

Those who are thanking an alleged “God” for the rescue of American cargo ship captain Richard Phillips are engaging in a grave injustice. Phillips was saved not by “God,” who does not exist, but by Navy Seals, who deserve full credit for this marvelous feat.

Paraphrasing one of the protagonists from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, the brutes who believed they could defeat their betters by force have learned what happens when brute force encounters mind and force.

Cheers to the Seals!

What Is America's Stake in the Arab-Israeli Conflict?

2009-04-11T23:22:00.001-04:00

Who: Elan Journo, resident fellow at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights

What: A talk followed by Q&A

Where: American University (Washington DC), School of International Service building, room 203

When: Wednesday April 15, 8:30 p.m.

Contact: Jasmine Whiting, auobjectivists@gmail.com

Description: Many people claim that U.S. policy regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict has been destructive of our security—and that a change in direction is urgently needed. Echoing many of his predecessors and legions of commentators, President Obama has announced plans to make dealing with the Arab-Israeli conflict a “key diplomatic policy” of his administration. What kind of policy toward that ongoing conflict is actually in America’s interests? What policy can enhance U.S. security? What in fact have been the effects of Washington’s policy? Has it been unfair? If so, to whom—the Arab-Palestinian side, or Israel? In a presentation addressing these and other questions, Elan Journo of the Ayn Rand Institute will offer a secular moral case for principled U.S. support of Israel.

For more information on this and other ARI events, please visit www.aynrand.org/events_other.

ARC on the Tea Parties

2009-04-11T12:26:00.001-04:00

Dear Admirer of Ayn Rand,

Earlier this week, we wrote to you to promote a new video, titled "Atlas Shrugged and the Tea Party Revolts." Today we're writing to let you know that we are expanding this effort with two new videos, along with a new Web page of Tea Party resources.

The new videos expand upon the moral meaning of the Tea Party efforts, and the ideas that will be needed in order to make the defense of individual rights a success.

Once again, we want to bring these videos to as wide an audience as possible, and we encourage you to view them and, if you like them, pass them along to others. Remember also that you can watch our videos as they are produced by subscribing to our YouTube channel for updates.

We are also proud to present our new Web page, titled "ARC on the Tea Parties." There you'll find relevant material on the morality of capitalism, Atlas Shrugged, and ARC's tea party resources. Materials on the page include:

Flyers that can be used as Tea Party handouts
Speaker resources
Video presentations by ARC spokesmen
Radio interviews
Recordings of Ayn Rand
... and much more.

I'm grateful for the outpouring of activism that we have seen from our audience in recent times. I encourage you to continue, so that we may influence the culture towards Ayn Rand's vision of individual rights and laissez-faire capitalism.

Sincerely,

Yaron Brook
Executive Director
The Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights

Mob Rule Comes to Washington by Peter Schwartz

2009-04-06T17:07:00.000-04:00

In dealing with AIG, why are people pussyfooting around? They believe that the bonus money was stolen from the public and must be retrieved by any means possible. So why not bypass the niceties and just send in some well-armed “enforcers” to confiscate the bonus recipients’ cars and houses and bank accounts?

If this raises fear about ushering in mob rule, it’s too late. AIG employees have been crudely vilified, they have been targets of death threats, a U.S. senator has urged them to kill themselves, protestors “tour” their homes, they have had to hire security guards and AIG has removed its name from the front of its Manhattan offices.

This mass hysteria is being fueled by the government, which is proceeding on the premise of: “Get the money back first, rationalize later.” The House passed an extraordinary piece of punitive—and unconstitutional—legislation to tax away almost all the bonus money. New York’s attorney general, abetted by the threat of making their names public, has gotten many of the recipients to “voluntarily” return their bonuses. Perversely, the rights of captured Islamic jihadists generate greater concern in Washington.

All these actions are tantamount to rule by mob action.

A mob is driven by rampant emotionalism, with no concern for facts—facts such as: Are these particular recipients guilty of anything? Are they competent individuals, necessary to keep the company operational? Would they have resigned without the inducement of the bonuses? Didn’t Washington consent to the bonuses at the time of the bailout? Aren’t the recipients entitled to the bonuses by contract?

The essence of mob rule is arbitrary and unchecked force, in disregard of all rights. If so, then when the government spends our money with virtually no limits—then trillions of dollars are gleefully disbursed through unrestrained horse-trading and arm-twisting among members of Congress—when trillions more are poured down the rat holes of failing companies at the uncontrolled discretion of bureaucrats—when government “czars” can select a company’s CEO and dictate its product line—then what we have is government by mob rule. That is, we have government with arbitrary, unchecked power to do as it wishes—which means: government unconstrained by the principle of individual freedom.

Like any mob, Washington desires a scapegoat. It blames capitalism for the mortgage and credit crisis, in order to divert attention from the real culprit: government intervention. Every housing-related measure taken by Washington has made the standards for homeownership looser than they would be in a free market. Government has stepped in to override private companies’ aversion to undue risk. Regulators criticized banks for turning down too many mortgage applications. FNMA and FHLMC were created to encourage the issuance of mortgages that would not be prudent in a free market. The FDIC anesthetizes depositors against risks taken with their funds. And the entire Federal Reserve exists to pump paper money into the economy, and to keep interest rates artificially low—often below the rate of inflation—so that more lending occurs. Yet when this house of cards collapsed, it is capitalism that was denounced, and more government power that was demanded.

The administration’s latest proposal, for a “systemic risk regulator,” should leave little doubt that it seeks carte blanche in ruling the economy. This is a plan for an economic dictator, an “enforcer” who will have the frightening authority to oversee every decision that, in his opinion, significantly influences the economy.

Of course, once the mob-rule mentality takes hold, everyone becomes a potential target. If you obtain a mortgage or a college loan, the government may subject you too to “risk regulation.” You may be told that you can’t buy a plasma TV or take a vacation or quit your job, because the risk to your finances is “unacceptable.” But isn’t that a purely private decision?—you will indignantly demand. If government power keeps expanding, however, there may no longer be any private decisions.

Peter Schwartz is the author of The Foreign Policy of Self-Interest: A Moral Ideal for America. He is a distinguished fellow, and former chairman of the board, of the Ayn Rand Institute.

A Tea Party Without Egoism Is like a Republic Without a Chance

2009-04-05T10:47:00.003-04:00

Going to a Tea Party? Don’t leave home without copies of this flier (PDF), which reads:

A Tea Party Without Egoism Is like a Republic Without a Chance

America was founded on the individual’s rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. But, contrary to the beliefs of many Americans, these rights are, by their very nature, egoistic. The freedom to live one’s life as one sees fit, to act on one’s judgment, to keep and use the product of one’s effort, and to pursue one’s happiness is the freedom to act in a consistently self-interested manner. The politics of freedom is the politics of self-interest—and it is entirely incompatible with the widely accepted notion that self-interest is morally wrong and self-sacrifice is morally right. This—Americans’ acceptance of the morality of self-sacrifice—is the fundamental reason we are losing our Republic.

Those who want to fight for a return to the Land of Liberty must embrace the morality on which liberty depends: the morality of egoism. And to do so, they must understand its nature and implications; they must grasp what egoism is, why it is true, and what it means in practice. The Objective Standard is a quarterly journal dedicated to elucidating the principles of egoism and applying them to the cultural and political issues of the day. Everyone concerned with the future should be reading this journal today.

The flier, which can be printed in black & white or in color, is a great way to start conversations about the root cause of America’s problems and the corresponding solution. It also brings peoples’ attention to TOS, which is the source for in-depth articles on this and other issues from an Objectivist perspective.

Please distribute the flier liberally at the tea parties—and feel free to make it available from your own blogs and websites as well.

What Is America's Stake in the Arab-Israeli Conflict?

2009-04-03T23:35:00.000-04:00

Who: Elan Journo, resident fellow at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights

What: A talk followed by Q&A

Where: Travelodge Hotel, 925 Dixon Road, Toronto, Ontario, M9W 1J8

When: April 6 at 7:00p.m.

Admission: $25 for the general public, and $10 for students with identification. No need to RSVP.

For more information on this and other ARI events, please visit www.aynrand.org/events_other.

Does My Child Know Grammar Better Than Me?

2009-04-03T12:52:00.000-04:00

I would say that a debate is raging in our culture over whether or not we need to preserve the formal rules of grammar, but the sad truth is that there are too few defenders of grammar for a debate to rage. I am lonely in my fervency. Nevertheless, a few recent books and articles have brought the dispute between grammar snobs and grammar slobs to the fore.

Pundit of punctuation Lynne Truss tried to rally readers to her "zero tolerance approach to punctuation" with her bestseller Eats, Shoots, and Leaves. Alas, Birmingham, England didn't heed the call. In January, the city council abolished apostrophes from street signs, inviting criticism from pro-grammar organizations like the "Apostrophe Protection Society," and from our own students at VanDamme Academy, who condemned the decision in a paper written for Mrs. Battaglia's (or "Mrs. Battaglias," if we follow the Birmingham precedent) writing class. "If children grow up there, they will learn not to put apostrophes in possessive words," said 8-year-old Greta. "Usually kids learn from their surroundings."

This debate has also been given center stage unwittingly by President Obama. Obama, widely praised as a consummate intellectual, has been criticized by advocates of grammar for committing such common blunders as the inversion of "me" and "I."

In a February New York Times op-ed, Patricia T. O'Conner and Stewart Kellerman echoed the sentiments of many Americans when they defended President Obama against the "grammar junkies," claiming that the rules for pronouns are 19th-century creations that have no necessity in reality.

Really?

To illustrate my answer, I brought the following example into my Room 4 grammar class. Rather than the innocuous, "President Bush graciously invited Michelle and I," what if President Obama had said, "Michelle likes President Bush better than I." Is this a mere difference of opinion about the former President, or a scandal? The ambiguity is resolved with a universal understanding of the rules of grammar.

"Michelle likes him better than I," as my grammar students can tell you, contains an elliptical adverb clause with "I" as the subject, and means, "Michelle likes him better than I like him." On the other hand, "Michelle likes him better than me," contains an elliptical clause with "me" as the direct object, and means, "Michelle likes him better than she likes me."

So, if you whose children are gaining a thorough mastery of the rules of grammar have ever asked yourselves, "Does my child know grammar better than me?" the answer is no, he should know you better. And by the time he graduates, he will know better than to ask the question like that.

Follow this link for the latest VanDamme Academy Newsletter, which features this article and more.

A Critique of Global Warming Science and Policy: A panel discussion at UCLA

2009-04-02T17:54:00.000-04:00

What: A panel discussion challenging widely accepted views on global warming science and policy, followed by a Q&A

Who: Keith Lockitch, fellow of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, and Willie Soon, geoscientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Where: UCLA Campus, Ackerman Grand Ballroom, Los Angeles, California

When: Monday, April 13, 2009, at 7 p.m.

Admission: FREE. The public and media are invited.

Sponsored by: LOGIC, the UCLA Objectivist Club

More information: Visit http://www.clublogic.org/ or e-mail info@ClubLogic.org

Description: It is now widely believed that man-made greenhouse gases are causing an unnatural warming of the earth that will have devastating consequences for human life. Environmentalists and politicians are pressing for severe restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions aimed at preventing global warming. But are these beliefs and policies justified? What does the scientific evidence actually support regarding the causes of climate variability and the role of anthropogenic greenhouse gases? Are the predictions of catastrophic changes supported by scientific fact? Is government economic intervention aimed at severely restricting greenhouse gases an appropriate policy response? Panelists will address these critical issues in a lively discussion.

Bio: Dr. Keith Lockitch has a PhD in physics from University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee and is a resident fellow focusing on science and environmentalism at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. He lectures publicly on these topics, and his writings have appeared in such publications as the Washington Times and USA Today magazine. Dr. Lockitch is also a professor in the Objectivist Academic Center, where he teaches undergraduate writing and a graduate course on the history of physics. Before joining the Ayn Rand Institute in 2003, Dr. Lockitch was a postdoctoral researcher in physics at the University of Illinois and at Pennsylvania State University.

Bio: Dr. Willie Soon is an astrophysicist and a geoscientist at the Solar, Stellar, and Planetary Sciences Division of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He is also the chief science adviser of the Science and Public Policy Institute (based in Washington, D.C.). He writes and lectures on issues related to the sun, other stars, the Earth as well as general science topics in astronomy and physics. He is the author of The Maunder Minimum and the Variable Sun-Earth Connection published March 2004. (All views expressed are strictly of his own and do not reflect upon any other persons or institutions.)

Yaron Brook on Pajamas TV

2009-03-31T10:26:00.001-04:00

The Ayn Rand Center is pleased to report that, for the second time, ARC executive director Yaron Brook has appeared in an extended discussion on Pajamas TV. The discussion is titled "Is the Government in the Car Business?"

This new interview follows from another given on March 18, titled "Is Atlas Shrugging?" The Ayn Rand Center has created a new Web page to hold links to these videos; we encourage visitors to check this page often, as future appearances on Pajamas TV will appear there as well.

'Atlas Shrugged and Ayn Rand’s Morality of Egoism' Now Online

2009-03-27T18:23:00.003-04:00

Because of the burgeoning internet discussion about Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged and her ethics of selfishness, I’ve posted an expanded, written version my campus talk “Atlas Shrugged and Ayn Rand’s Morality of Egoism” to the TOS website. A permanent link to the essay can be found on our “About” page.

Enjoy!

The Financial Crisis: Free Markets as the Only Moral and Practical Solution

2009-03-26T04:27:00.000-04:00

Who: Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Center

What: A talk followed by a Q&A

Where & When:

Rice University, Houston, TX—March 31, 2009, 7:30pm
Keck Hall, Room 100 [map]
Contact: Manjari Narayan, rice.objectivism@hotmail.com
University of Texas, Austin, TX—April 2, 2009, 8:00pm
Jester Auditorium, Room 121A [map]
Contact: Alan McKendree, utobjectivism@gmail.com

These events are open to the public. Admission is FREE.

Description: Virtually everyone today regards the financial crisis as a failure of the free market. In this talk, Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, will argue that in fact it is the un-free market that has failed. It was not capitalism that held interest rates below the rate of inflation, spurring massive amounts of borrowing and a housing boom. It was not capitalism that gave us Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which promoted subprime lending and helped fuel the boom. It was not capitalism that gave us deposit insurance and the "too big to fail" doctrine, which encouraged risky financial practices.

These, and many anti-capitalist measures like them, Dr. Brook will argue, laid the groundwork for the financial crisis. The only cure, according to Dr. Brook, is to set the market free. But to do that, Americans must embrace capitalism as a moral system—one that should be defended without guilt.

For more information surrounding all ARI campus club talks, including detailed campus maps and campus club contact information, please visit www.aynrand.org/education_campus_calendar.

Please note: The above events is organized, hosted and sponsored by individual campus clubs. Although ARI provides financial support, educational materials and speakers for eligible student clubs, campus clubs are organizations independent of ARI.

The Monopoly Myth: The Case of Standard Oil

2009-03-25T23:34:00.000-04:00

Who: Alex Epstein, analyst at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights

What: A talk followed by a Q&A

Where & When:

Duke University, Durham, NC—March 30, 2009, 12:15pm
Duke Law School Building, Room 3043 [map]
Contact: Beth Laughton, Elizabeth.Laughton@law.duke.edu
University of North Carolina, Charlotte, NC—March 31, 2009, 7:00pm
Fretwell Building, Room 100 [map]
Contact: James Wadsworth, jwadswor@uncc.edu
University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA—April 1, 2009, 7:30pm
New Cabell Hall, Room 138 [map]
Contact: Sara Sherris, ss5dd@virginia.edu
University of Maryland, College Park, MD—April 2, 2009, 8:00pm
Adele H. Stamp Student Union, Benjamin Banneker Room [map]
Contact: David Crawford, david.crawford@gmail.com

These events are open to the public. Admission is FREE.

Description: America’s experiment with laissez-faire capitalism in the 1800s was a disaster, historians tell us, because businessmen used anticompetitive tactics to form giant, invincible monopolies. The textbook example of these evils of Big Business is John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Trust. In an era before government regulations and antitrust laws, the story goes, Rockefeller wielded market power to squelch innovative competitors and jack up consumer prices at will.

The textbooks need to be rewritten, argues Alex Epstein of the Ayn Rand Center. In his talk, Epstein tells the true story of Rockefeller’s rise to market dominance. Rockefeller’s success was not based on shady practices but on his company’s remarkable ability to bring the best oil to millions of Americans at the cheapest prices. Did Standard Oil abolish competition? Far from it. The company’s success actually made the oil market far more competitive, innovative, and productive. The story of Standard Oil, it turns out, does not reveal evils of Big Business but illustrates its great virtues.

For more information surrounding all ARI campus club talks, including detailed campus maps and campus club contact information, please visit www.aynrand.org/education_campus_calendar.

Bio: Alex Epstein has a BA in philosophy from Duke University and is an analyst focusing on business issues at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights.

The Real Meaning of Earth Hour by Keith Lockitch

2009-03-24T08:41:00.001-04:00

On Saturday, March 28, cities around the world will turn off their lights to observe “Earth Hour.” Iconic landmarks from the Sydney Opera House to Manhattan’s skyscrapers will be darkened to encourage reduced energy use and signal a commitment to fighting climate change.

While a one-hour blackout will admittedly have little effect on carbon emissions, what matters, organizers say, is the event’s symbolic meaning. That’s true, but not in the way organizers intend.

We hear constantly that the debate is over on climate change—that man-made greenhouse gases are indisputably causing a planetary emergency. But there is ample scientific evidence to reject the claims of climate catastrophe. And what’s never mentioned? The fact that reducing greenhouse gases to the degree sought by climate activists would, itself, cause significant harm.

Politicians and environmentalists, including those behind Earth Hour, are not calling on people just to change a few light bulbs, they are calling for a truly massive reduction in carbon emissions—as much as 80 percent below 1990 levels. Because our energy is overwhelmingly carbon-based (fossil fuels provide more than 80 percent of world energy), and because the claims of abundant “green energy” from breezes and sunbeams are a myth—this necessarily means a massive reduction in our energy use.

People don’t have a clear view of what this would mean in practice. We, in the industrialized world, take our abundant energy for granted and don’t consider just how much we benefit from its use in every minute of every day. Driving our cars to work and school, sitting in our lighted, heated homes and offices, powering our computers and countless other labor-saving appliances, we count on the indispensable values that industrial energy makes possible: hospitals and grocery stores, factories and farms, international travel and global telecommunications. It is hard for us to project the degree of sacrifice and harm that proposed climate policies would force upon us.

This blindness to the vital importance of energy is precisely what Earth Hour exploits. It sends the comforting-but-false message: Cutting off fossil fuels would be easy and even fun! People spend the hour stargazing and holding torch-lit beach parties; restaurants offer special candle-lit dinners. Earth Hour makes the renunciation of energy seem like a big party.

Participants spend an enjoyable sixty minutes in the dark, safe in the knowledge that the life-saving benefits of industrial civilization are just a light switch away. This bears no relation whatsoever to what life would actually be like under the sort of draconian carbon-reduction policies that climate activists are demanding: punishing carbon taxes, severe emissions caps, outright bans on the construction of power plants.

Forget one measly hour with just the lights off. How about Earth Month, without any form of fossil fuel energy? Try spending a month shivering in the dark without heating, electricity, refrigeration; without power plants or generators; without any of the labor-saving, time-saving, and therefore life-saving products that industrial energy makes possible.

Those who claim that we must cut off our carbon emissions to prevent an alleged global catastrophe need to learn the indisputable fact that cutting off our carbon emissions would be a global catastrophe. What we really need is greater awareness of just how indispensable carbon-based energy is to human life (including, of course, to our ability to cope with any changes in the climate).

It is true that the importance of Earth Hour is its symbolic meaning. But that meaning is the opposite of the one intended. The lights of our cities and monuments are a symbol of human achievement, of what mankind has accomplished in rising from the cave to the skyscraper. Earth Hour presents the disturbing spectacle of people celebrating those lights being extinguished. Its call for people to renounce energy and to rejoice at darkened skyscrapers makes its real meaning unmistakably clear: Earth Hour symbolizes the renunciation of industrial civilization.

Keith Lockitch, PhD in physics, is a fellow at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, focusing on science and environmentalism. The Ayn Rand Center is a division of the Ayn Rand Institute and promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.

Objectivist Summer Conference 2009 early registration discounts expire soon!

2009-03-19T23:17:00.001-04:00

We are writing to remind you that the deadline to take advantage of our deepest price reductions is just twelve days away.

Objectivist Summer Conference 2009 will take place from July 3 to July 11, 2009, bringing you nine days of social and intellectual stimulation that you'll find nowhere else during the year.

This summer's conference will be hosted at Boston's Seaport Hotel and World Trade Center, known for its comfortable and enjoyable accommodations and meeting spaces. In the surrounding downtown area attendees can explore fine dining, shopping, and historical landmarks.

Recent months have poignantly demonstrated the importance of philosophy in human life, as current events seem to spring directly from the pages of Atlas Shrugged. As most Americans look towards government to rescue them, our speakers show what alternative solutions Ayn Rand's philosophy can offer to today's world with presentations such as "The Separation of Church and State," by Onkar Ghate; "Principled Leadership," by John Allison; “'Humanity’s Darkest Evil:' The Lethal Destructiveness of Non-Objective Law," by Tara Smith; "Free Minds and Free Markets," by Peter Schwartz; and "Property Rights—and Wrongs," by Thomas A. Bowden. Other stimulating topics will be available as well, including history, psychology, drama, epistemology, mathematics, and the nature and necessity of friendship. In all there will be ten general session lectures and sixteen optional courses. Attendees may register for the entire nine-day conference, or use à la carte registration options to choose those parts that best fit their schedule and budget.

As usual, we also bring you a variety of special events and social opportunities, including two different dance worshops (Swing and Salsa), our annual opening and closing banquets and a special Independence Day celebration.

We look forward to creating a unique and memorable conference in Boston, and we hope to see you there!

Discount reminder: Even if you missed out on our special advance-planning bonus this year, you can still claim early registration price incentives (price reductions available through March 31). Details are available on our registration options and pricing page.

For more information visit the Objectivist Conferences Web site.

REGISTER ONLINE