Principles in Practice: The Blog of the Objective Standard

Principles in Practice: September 2006

Thursday, September 28, 2006

What to Do About Gasoline Prices by Alex Epstein

Posted by ARI Media at 6:26 PM

Now that gasoline prices are below $3 a gallon, calls for the government to "do something" to force prices lower have temporarily abated. But it is crucial for us to recognize that no matter what the price of gasoline is, such calls are wrong. All market fluctuations in the price of gasoline, up or down, are a good thing—and none of the government's business.

When customers' demand for gasoline increases relative to the supply, the sellers of gasoline raise their prices. As the producers and owners of gasoline, this is their right—and we should be glad that they exercise it. Not only do price increases encourage future production, but without such price increases, we would very quickly see shortages as customer demand for cheap gasoline far outstripped the available supply. Thanks to price increases, we can ensure our continued access to gasoline to the extent we are willing to pay for it—i.e., to the extent we value it. Most of us are willing to pay $3 a gallon for a 15-mile office commute—but might not be for a 15-mile drive to our pet's beauty salon, and so our personal consumption voluntarily decreases as prices increase.

In the realm of business, a higher price means that firms will only purchase oil or gasoline to the extent that they can make profitable use of it at those prices. An efficient airline will still be able to offer low prices while using high-priced jet fuel; a less efficient airline may not be able to. A company in China or India that uses oil to run highly efficient factories can make profitable use of oil at $70 a barrel; their laggard competitors may not be able to. Since nearly every product we use involves oil at some stage of production, we all gain vast benefits from oil being directed toward its most profitable uses.

There is no moral or economic justification for any politician or consumer to declare market prices "too high," and to use the government to coerce lower prices. To do so violates both the rights of gasoline producers and their productive customers to set voluntary prices—and, in doing so, causes destructive shortages. When shortages exist, how much gasoline one is able to get depends not on one's willingness to pay a mutually agreeable price, but on one's political pull to secure rations, or on whether one has time on one's hands to wait in endless lines (as in the 1970s).

There is only one sense in which we are entitled to tell the government to "do something" about gasoline prices: insofar as these prices are made artificially high by the government's many regulations on oil and gasoline production.

Consider oil refining regulations. Various state governments impose the absurd mandate that companies refine nearly 60 different "blends" of gasoline—despite the fact that cars using today's standard unleaded gasoline, even with the overall increase in driving, pollute very little by historical standards. Additionally, endless red tape and "environmental impact studies" forced by regulators hostile to industrial development, make new construction dramatically less profitable. The costs of such regulations are huge and raise the price of gasoline; according to the American Petroleum Institute, "the refining industry has spent over $47 billion over the last decade to comply with environmental and fuels regulations—expenditures that generally yield little or no return on investment."

Another costly set of regulations are those prohibiting domestic drilling on plentiful sources of oil. In the name of safeguarding a portion of the caribou habitat in an Alaskan wasteland, drilling is prohibited in ANWR—a potential source of 1 million barrels a day. Also off-limits is the entire Outer Continental Shelf of the United States—a far larger untapped source of oil. Chevron's recent discovery of an estimated 3 to 15 billion barrel reserve in the Gulf of Mexico invites the question: How many such troves are currently off-limits?

The government is right to take action if an oil company provably threatens or harms a person's property. But to impose huge costs on oil companies and their customers in the name of preserving untouched nature is unconscionable.

What should the government do about gasoline prices? Get its hands out of the market—and keep them off.

Alex Epstein is a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, CA. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand—author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead."

Copyright © 2006 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

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Western Governments Must Protect Right to Free Speech

Posted by ARI Media at 6:19 PM

Irvine, CA—The Berlin opera house, Deutsche Oper, has called off a production of Mozart's "Idomeneo" for fear that a scene featuring the severed head of Islam's prophet might lead to violence. This confirms the warnings, made by defenders of free speech during the Danish cartoon crisis, that the failure of Western governments to respond decisively to the death threats from offended Muslims could lead to self-censorship in the West.

"This decision demonstrates the disgraceful failure of Western governments to defend our right to free speech," said Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute.

"In 1989, when the Iranian Mullahs issued a fatwa calling for Muslims to murder Salman Rushdie and attack his publisher, Western governments did nothing. Last year, when violent mobs threatened the lives of the Danish cartoonists, Western governments did nothing. If a government does not ensure its citizens are able to express their views without fear of violent reprisals, free speech is dead.

"Western governments must reverse their trend of appeasement and declare their commitment to ruthlessly punish anyone who attempts to violate their citizens' right to freedom of speech."

Copyright © 2006 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

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Solon the Thinker: Political Thought in Archaic Athens

Posted by John David Lewis at 5:59 PM

A new book, Solon the Thinker: Political Thought in Archaic Athens (London: Duckworth, 2006) deals with the poetry of perhaps the earliest political thinker in history, Solon of Athens. Selected as Chief Official in Athens in 594 BC, he is often credited with laying the groundwork for the political constitution of Classical Athens, through a set of written laws that protected the freedom of the Athenians through a rational, even if ill-defined, legal process. This book considers, on a specialist's, level, Solon's poetry as the first extant political thought from ancient Greece.

About the Book

Solon the Thinker: Political Thought in Archaic Athens presents the hypothesis that Solon (ca. 640-560 BC) saw his beloved Athens as a self-governing, self-supporting system akin to the early Greek conceptions of the cosmos. Solon's polis (city-state) functions neither by divine intervention nor the force of a tyrant, but by its own natural, self-governing internal energy. An orderly, understandable polis is founded on the intellectual health of its people, depends upon their acceptance of justice and moderation as orderly norms of life, and leads to the rejection of tyranny and slavery in favor of freedom under written laws. Solon is the thinker who conceives this ideal for the Athenians, and the teacher who brings it to them.

But Solon's views of order are limited; each person in his own life is subject to the arbitrary foibles of moira, the inscrutable fate that governs human life, and that brings us to an unknowable but inevitable death. Solon represents both the new rational, scientific spirit that was sweeping the Aegean—and a return to the fatalism that permeated Greek cultural life. He deserves credit not only as a poet and a lawgiver, but as a thinker who was at the cutting edge of an intellectual revolution.

"John Lewis's Solon the Thinker contains a careful reading of the poetic fragments of Solon—not as poetry, but as political thought. Lewis's interpretation of these poems provides one with a greater understanding and appreciation of the political views of Solon—arguably the first (and only) Presocratic political philosopher—and his place in the history of ideas. Anyone interested in early Greek discussions of the polis, justice, tyranny, slavery, and freedom should find this book worthwhile reading." —Robert Mayhew, Professor of Philosophy, Seton Hall University

"In contrast to scholars who treat Solon's political reforms and his poetry in isolation from each other, John Lewis demonstrates that Solon's poetry is in fact a fertile source of important political ideas such as order, wisdom, moderation, justice, and law. Solon conceptualized freedom as a political ideal in opposition to tyranny, and he viewed the polis as a haven for human beings against the ravages of unrelenting destiny. Solon the Thinker is a major contribution to our appreciation of Solon as a poet and to our understanding of his pivotal role in the development of ancient Greek political thought." —Fred D. Miller, Jr., Social Philosophy and Policy Center, Bowling Green State University

Select Passages from the Book

From the Introduction:

"The purpose of this book is to examine the poetic fragments of Solon as early Greek political thought. The focus is on Solon's preserved poetry, not on laws or institutional reforms attributed to him by later writers, and not on his place in a literary or historical tradition. What rises out of Solon's verses is an all-embracing way of looking at his world—a way of understanding Athens and the men in it, of grasping the certainty of justice and the arbitrariness of fate, and of judging rulers both bad and good—that is rooted in a new world-view that was sweeping the Aegean world. His preserved verses, even though fragmentary, often cast in epic form, and motivated by an opaque rhetorical purpose, present an enlightened frame of reference, an energetic moral program, and a well-organized set of ideas. His words mark the birth of thought about the polis as a lawful, just community."

From Chapter One: 'I brought the people together': Solon's Polis as Kosmos

"Such ideas were part and parcel of new forms of thought that were sweeping the Aegean world. In Solon's day, Greek thinkers had begun to search for a singular principle underlying life on earth. This does not mean that they had a cosmology, a systematic view of the earth and the heavens. But their 'world-view' had a meaning more fundamental than cosmology: a basic understanding of how the world operates, and of their place in it. Such a world-view establishes, among other things, whether man is to be a plaything of omnipotent deities, a pawn in a capricious world without consistency, an autonomous being able to control his own fate, or an unstable and ill-defined mixture of these ideas. Such a world-view may be well thought out and explicit, or it may be implicit, unexamined and unconceptualized, expressed as an emotional 'gut feeling' or as an absolute that defies challenge and explanation; it may be riddled with contradictions, but it is implied in any generalization about the nature and purpose of human life in the world.

"For a peasant the world may not extend beyond the closest village, and the cycles of life may be no wider than agricultural seasons, religious festivals and wars. But the world-view of an archaic Greek thinker was expanding, encompassing wider ideas about the nature of life and offering answers to its basic questions… The new understanding was growing out of earlier developments, in which the creative acts of individuals added up to a cultural revolution."

From Chapter Five: 'Moira brings good and evil': Bios and the Failure of Dikç

"There is a searing paradox evident in Solon's claims about the polis, wisdom and human life. On the one hand his verses proclaiming his ability to know the inevitable consequences of human actions in the polis are emboldened with the kind of unalloyed certainty once relegated to the gods alone. As lawgiver he takes over where Dikç [Justice] dare not tread, seeing that which will be and claiming its inevitability in terms that are comprehensive and inescapable. Yet, the inability of any man to see the ultimate end of all things was a common tenet in early Greek thought, and Solon can claim no exception to this rule. Man's noos [mind] is ephemeral, and it is difficult or impossible to know the end of life itself. Solon's verses combine 'Dikç surely comes later' with 'the mind of the immortals is hidden from men', claiming both the ability to know 'what will be', and that 'what will be' is hidden to us. Some readers have argued that a division, or split, exists in his thought, between his revolutionary view of political matters and his traditional view of fate (Moira], and that his poem 13, the Hymn to the Muses, expresses this split. But what is the mess here: is it in Solon's ideas, or our understanding of him?"

From Chapter Seven: 'I set them free': Tyranny, Slavery and Freedom

"It is a serious oversight that Solon's first use of these terms (eleutheros) as political freedom should get so little emphasis. This point cannot be overstressed: Solon's is the first statement of political freedom in all of western thought. His special sense of freedom is its political nature. The word eleutheria exists in texts prior to Solon, but is not understood in distinction from political despotism. The four 'day of freedom' and 'cup of freedom' phrases in the Iliad exhaust Homer's uses of eleuther- forms. The Trojans who cry for eleutheria want to drive off foreign armies, in order to return to despotic rule under their king. Freedom means living under King Priam's rule, and slavery means being taken in personal bondage to work in a far off land. This is not political freedom; it is independence from foreign takeover. Eleuther- terms are otherwise used only rarely in poets before Solon…

"For Solon a free man is an Attic-speaking male whose personal autonomy inside the polis is protected from attacks by his fellows. Solon's poem 36 is the first statement in western thought to base a political order on a distinct idea of justice under enforced written laws, promoted by persuasion rather than divine commandment, and legitimated by a claim to have set its inhabitants free."

Order Solon the Thinker: Political Thought in Archaic Athens from Amazon.com.

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Wednesday, September 27, 2006

NY Sun Article on Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism

Posted by Alan Germani at 3:34 PM

Click here to read a good NY Sun article about the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism and its executive director, C. Bradley Thompson. And if you haven't already, you need to check out Dr. Thompson's contribution to the Fall 2006 issue of TOS, "The Decline and Fall of American Conservatism."

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7-Eleven dropping Venezuela-backed Citgo

Posted by Craig Biddle at 2:19 PM

Kudos to 7-Eleven! If U.S. businesses in general were so principled, we'd be living in a substantially safer world. (And if the U.S. government were principled enough to prohibit trade with dictatorships, we'd be living in Atlantis.)

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Sunday, September 24, 2006

Fall Issue of TOS

Posted by Craig Biddle at 6:38 PM

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

From the Editor

Letters and Replies

The Decline and Fall of American Conservatism
by C. Bradley Thompson

19th-Century French Painting and Philosophy
by Dianne Durante

The Jihad on America
by Elan Journo

For promotional purposes, the online version of "The Decline and Fall of American Conservatism" is accessible to all.

If you've not yet subscribed to TOS, now is the time to act. While supplies last, you can still begin your subscription with the inaugural issue. Subscribe today and we'll mail the first three issues to you right away.

If you'd like a free one-year print subscription (or renewal) to TOS, ask your college, alma mater, or local librarian to subscribe to the journal through EBSCO Subscription Services (with which the librarian will be familiar). If your efforts result in a library purchasing a subscription, I will give you a complimentary one-year subscription, gift subscription, or renewal to TOS. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at 800-423-6151.

Enjoy!

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Saturday, September 23, 2006

Israel Should Have Taken Out Hezbollah Leader

Posted by ARI Media at 12:23 AM

Irvine, CA—"Israel should have taken out Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah as he spoke in public to hundreds of thousands of flag-waving supporters this Friday in Beirut," said Yaron Brook, president of the Ayn Rand Institute.

"Nasrallah is as much an enemy of Israel as Osama bin Laden is an enemy of the United States. Both are Islamic terrorists seeking the destruction of innocent life to establish a global Islamic theocracy.

"If the United States had the opportunity to kill an avowed enemy such as bin Laden, along with thousands of Al-Qaeda supporters, it should not hesitate to do it. Neither should Israel."

Copyright © 2006 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

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Friday, September 22, 2006

The United Nations by Debi Ghate

Posted by ARI Media at 3:15 PM

Dear Editor:

Last week a rag-tag group of anti-American countries held their annual "club" meeting in Cuba as they have for the last 30 years. Nobody paid them too much attention and rightly so.

This week, another rag-tag group of anti-American countries, including some that attended the Cuba meeting, held their latest "club" meeting at the United Nations. This time everyone is paying attention to them and they have the world stage.

The United Nations is one of the world's most corrupt organizations. It allowed the Iranian president, who has called for the destruction of the United States and Israel, an opportunity to address its members. It allowed the Venezualean president to call for the world to unite against America.

That such a meeting occurs on American soil, that our U.N. "ambassador"remains present throughout these speeches, that our President chooses to speak on the same stage, and that we go to this group for "approval" when it comes to defending ourselves, is disgusting.

Copyright © 2006 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

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Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Why Our (Long-Overdue) Retaliation Against Iran Should Include Bombing Mosques and Madrassahs

Posted by Craig Biddle at 6:13 PM

America is not being attacked by bombs or hijacked airplanes or government buildings or military installations. We are being attacked by people—specifically, by Islamists: people who believe the Koran is true, take its precepts seriously, and thus actively seek the submission or destruction of non-believers. Where are Islamists being produced? Primarily in the mosques and madrassahs (colleges in which students are trained to be Islamists) of the states that sponsor terrorism—especially Iran and Saudi Arabia. Who is producing them? The mullahs, imams, and teachers are. Accordingly, we cannot put an end to this assault merely by taking out government buildings and military installations in enemy states. To put an end to it, we must eliminate those who preach or teach the idea that infidels must die. We must demonstrate that to spout such evil is to ensure personal destruction.

"But," some will ask, "don't people have a right to take their religion seriously?" No, they do not—not if taking their religion seriously means obeying "God's" or "Allah's" orders fully. People have a right to take their religion seriously only insofar as their religion does not call for murder or the violation of individual rights—and, as the "holy" books make crystal clear, every religion calls for murder and the violation of individual rights. Here are a few representative passages:

If your brother, the son of your mother, or your son or your daughter or the wife you embrace or your friend who is as your own soul entices you secretly, saying, "Let us go and serve other gods,"… you shall not yield to him or listen to him, nor shall your eye pity him, nor shall you spare him, nor shall you conceal him. But you shall kill him. [Deuteronomy 13:6–9]

If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. [John 15:6]

Fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them, take them captive, harass them, lie in wait and ambush them using every stratagem of war. [Koran 9:5]

If a Christian college in the U.S. called for its students to take the Bible seriously—that is, if it taught them that they must actually obey all of God's commandments—the teachers and administrators would be guilty of inciting the students to murder not only unbelievers, but also homosexuals, children who talk back to their parents, people who work on the Sabbath, and so on. Consequently, the teachers and administrators would rightly be thrown in jail. Christian colleges in America don't do this, of course, because Christianity has been tempered by the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, and because American Christians are required by the U.S. Constitution to disobey their alleged God in this regard. Disgruntled though some may be about this, they begrudgingly obey U.S. law so as not to spend their "unimportant life" in jail.

People have a right to believe whatever nonsense they want to believe, but they do not have the right to act on their beliefs if doing so means committing murder or violating individual rights. The individual is greater than "God" and morally must be protected from those who "just believe" otherwise. The U.S. government has a moral responsibility to protect American citizens accordingly.

The basic principle of a proper American foreign policy is that the U.S. government must hold the life and rights of each and every American—whether civilian or soldier—as of greater value than the lives and rights of all non-Americans in the world combined. Our government's sole responsibility is to protect Americans, and it morally must do so by whatever means necessary—with as little risk to the lives of our soldiers as possible.

A moral approach to the Islamist war against America does not consist in half-heartedly "engaging" one enemy tribe here, then another there, then another elsewhere—all the while sacrificing the lives and limbs of American soldiers. Nor does it consist in sending American soldiers into hostile territory when we have the means to destroy the enemy without risking the lives of our soldiers. Nor does it consist in retarding our operations or prolonging the war in order to avoid killing innocents or non-combatants in enemy territory. A moral approach to this god-awful problem consists in demonstrating, once and for all, the futility of taking Islam seriously, the futility of obeying the Koran, the futility of seeking the submission or destruction of disbelievers, the futility of attacking Americans. It consists in efficiently killing Islamists—especially those who make a "living" producing more Islamists.

In conjunction with the other elements in this 5-step plan, we should kill the Iranian preachers and teachers who chant and spout "Kill the disbelievers" and "Death to America." We should aim to kill all of them. And the best way to do this is to bomb the Iranian mosques and madrassahs when they are most likely to be occupied. Were we to do so, the practice of taking the Koran seriously and warring with America would suddenly become unattractive, and most (if not all) of the remaining Islamists in the world would quickly become mere Muslims, akin to the mere Christians next door. (As always, the deaths of all innocents in such a campaign are the sole responsibility of those who necessitate such retaliatory measures—and those apologists who evade the facts, drop context, and attempt to muddy the waters on such issues, thus delaying justice and necessitating the deaths of even more innocents.)

Of course, the Bush administration will not take such egoistic action against Iran, and we will pay dearly for the compassionate half-battle it will wage there instead. But if egoists do not say loudly and clearly what needs to be done, America will never take such action. And that will mean the end of America.

Speak up.

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A Talk by Dr. John Lewis

Posted by Craig Biddle at 6:04 PM

When: Wednesday, September 20, 2006, 7:30pm–10pm
Where: New York University, Kimmel Center, Room 914, 60 Washington Square South NY, NY 10012

Five years after Manhattan was viciously attacked by Islamic holy warriors, the world is still held hostage to their rants and their bombs. Iraq is in turmoil, Syria is emboldened, and Iran, in pursuit of nuclear weapons, intends to wipe Israel off the map and destroy the Great Satan—America. What went wrong?

This lecture will show how our failure to identify the ideology of our enemies—Islamic Totalitarianism—has made it impossible to confront them. Drawing on the lessons of America's victory over Japan, this lecture will challenge us to reject our assumptions about the nature of a "just war," and to demand the removal, by force, of Islamic Totalitarianism—State Islam—from the face of the earth.

Dr. John Lewis is in the Department of History and Political Science at Ashland University, Ashland, Ohio. He holds a PhD in classics from the University of Cambridge, a BA in history from the University of Rhode Island, and an Anthem Fellowship for Objectivist Scholarship. He has taught at the University of London, and was a visiting scholar at Rice University and at Bowling Green State University. Dr. Lewis is consulting editor of The Objective Standard, and has published in numerous classical journals, and in Capitalism Magazine. He is the author of Solon the Thinker: Political Thought in Archaic Athens, and is now completing a book, Nothing Less Than Victory: Military Offense and the Lessons of History.

All non-NYU guests must register for the event by sending an email to nyu@objectivistclubs.org.

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The Conservatives' War on Birth Control by Keith Lockitch

Posted by ARI Media at 11:01 AM

Religious conservatives are increasingly opposing birth control. The Bush administration has shifted funding from sex education endorsing condoms to programs preaching "abstinence only." And Bush F.D.A. appointees spent three years blocking nonprescription use of the "morning after" pill, despite overwhelming evidence of its safety. Shockingly, there has been an increasing number of Christian pharmacists refusing to fill contraceptive prescriptions—in some cases even for ordinary birth control pills for married women. What is behind this disturbing hostility to reproductive freedom?

Religious conservatives insist that their growing opposition to contraception is not the product of some sort of puritan, anti-sex agenda. What they are concerned about, they claim, is irresponsible sexual indulgence. They decry what they see as a culture of mindless promiscuity spawned by the advent of effective and easily available birth control.

But blaming birth control for the irresponsible actions of those who misuse it is like blaming Sudafed for crystal meth addiction. Like any other technology, contraception is a tool that can be used rationally or abused—and used properly it enables people to be more responsible about sex. It is bizarre to crusade against irresponsible sexuality by crusading for the renunciation of responsibility: the conscious, deliberate rejection of rational family planning in favor of reproductive roulette. Clearly, there is something deeper underlying the growing antagonism to birth control.

It is significant that in opposing contraception, conservatives declare that sex must be inextricably tied to reproduction—that it is morally wrong to pursue sexual pleasure while deliberately preventing pregnancy. "To demand sexual pleasure without openness to children is to violate a sacred trust," writes Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. But this implies a certain hostility to sexual pleasure, as such: not its irrational, promiscuous pursuit, but the very act of enjoying sex as something separate from reproduction. What explains such hostility?

Consider that sexual desire is a response to personal values. For a rational person, it is not a desire for mindless, indiscriminate indulgence, but a feeling that results from the embodiment in one's lover of one's highest, most important values. For a couple in a serious, committed, romantic relationship, sex is a celebration of their love—an expression, in the form of intense physical pleasure, of the joy that each partner derives from the other.

But such joy is a selfish pleasure—a rationally selfish pleasure. It is a pleasure that people pursue for the sake of their own enjoyment and happiness, whether they choose to have children or not. And this, fundamentally, is what religious conservatives have against it.

Virtue, according to Christianity, consists of sacrificing one's desires and goals in the name of fulfilling one's duties to God. Sex, on this premise, is at best a necessary evil—a sinful act, justifiable only by the duty to procreate. To deliberately prevent pregnancy by using birth control is to assert one's right to enjoy sex purely for its own sake—not as a means to procreation, but purely as an end in itself. And this is what conservatives find unacceptable. What they object to is that a couple using birth control is placing their own, personal happiness above obedience to religion. They object to contraception not despite the fact that it removes the fear of unwanted pregnancy, but precisely because it removes that fear.

To proclaim categorically, as Mohler does, that "every marriage must be open to the gift of children" is to demand that a couple sacrifice their own dreams and long-range goals to an alleged duty to "be fruitful and multiply." Even a couple who wants to have children must, on this premise, do so out of submission to divine will—not because they value children as a source of personal joy. The rejection of birth control is the demand that couples surrender the power—crucial to their own happiness in life—of choosing when, or whether, to have children, and instead allow themselves to be reduced, by means of their healthy sexual desires, to the role of stock farm animals, breeding uncontrollably.

Though they claim their intention is not to condemn sexuality as such, but merely its indiscriminate pursuit, religious conservatives are in fact opposed to sexual happiness. They are opposed to the fact that sex is an exalted pleasure that people pursue as an end in itself. Their war on contraception is not a war against the alleged excesses of the "birth control revolution"—it is a declaration of war against the pursuit of happiness.

Keith Lockitch is a resident fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, CA. The Institute promotes the ideas of Ayn Rand—best-selling author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead" and originator of the philosophy of Objectivism.

Copyright © 2006 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

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Faith vs. the HPV Vaccine

Posted by ARI Media at 10:56 AM

Irvine, CA—Following the landmark discovery of a vaccine that prevents infection by the most dangerous strains of HPV, a sexually transmitted disease known to cause cervical cancer, Michigan wants to require girls to get vaccinated. Yet some parents are refusing for fear their children will see it as a license to have premarital sex. It's an issue of morality, these parents claim.

"This is a false alternative," said Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute. "It is true that it is wrong for the government to force vaccinations for a disease spread only through sexual contact. But it is also wrong for parents to deprive their children of a life-saving vaccine, in the name of the puritanical view that premarital sex is inherently sinful.

"Parents should be free to have their children vaccinated or not, but they should make that decision based on medical evidence—not on religious dogma."

Copyright © 2006 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

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Monday, September 18, 2006

A Foreign Policy of Nihilism?

Posted by Craig Biddle at 3:40 PM

I hesitate to post on this story because its veracity is, as of yet, uncertain; but I cannot resist because, if it is true, it means that our foreign policy is not only altruistic but also, at least partly, nihilistic.

KABUL, Afghanistan—The U.S. military said Wednesday it is looking into the unauthorized release of a photo purportedly taken by an American drone aircraft showing scores of Taliban militants at a funeral in Afghanistan. NBC-TV claimed U.S. Army officers wanted to attack the ceremony with missiles carried by the Predator drone, but were prevented under rules of battlefield engagement that bar attacks on cemeteries….

The grainy black and white photo shows what NBC says are some 190 Taliban militants standing in several rows near a vehicle in an open area of land. The black outline of a box—apparently the sight of the drone—is positioned over the group.

NBC quoted one Army officer who was involved with the spy mission as saying "we were so excited" that the group had been spotted and was in the sights of a U.S. drone. But the network quoted the officer, who was not identified, as saying that frustration soon set in after the officers realized they couldn't bomb the funeral under the military's rules of engagement.

If this report is true, it means that the Bush administration has sacrificed the good to the dead. If that is not an act of nihilism, what is?

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Friday, September 15, 2006

Gene Therapy Cures Men Dying of Cancer

Posted by ARI Media at 11:40 PM

Irvine, CA—"Dr Steven Rosenberg and his team of scientists at the National Cancer Institute should be congratulated for developing a gene therapy that eradicated cancer from two dying men," said Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute.

The successful treatment using the patients' genetically modified version of their own white blood cells is reported today in the journal Science.

"Such a magnificent achievement shows the power of reason and science to unveil nature's secrets, create new life-enhancing technologies, and improve human life.

"At a time when reason and science are under attack in American universities, schools and churches, this new medical treatment reminds us that these are crucial values worth defending—and that our very lives depend on successfully doing so."

Copyright © 2006 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

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WHO Sides with Humanity Against Mosquitoes and Environmentalists

Posted by ARI Media at 11:37 PM

Irvine, CA—The World Health Organization, conceding that alternative methods to fight malaria have failed, will start encouraging the use of DDT around the world.

"For anyone who cares about human life, this is excellent news," said Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute. "The widespread use of DDT against malaria-carrying mosquitoes can prevent the infection of hundreds of millions of people every year and save millions of lives."

Before environmentalists managed to ban or severely restrict its use, DDT led to a dramatic reduction in malaria cases wherever it was used.

"The decades-long environmentalist opposition to DDT never had any basis in science: for half a century DDT use has been proven safe to humans and deadly to mosquitoes.

"The environmentalists responsible for banning or tightly restricting the use of DDT are responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people and for the untold suffering of hundreds of millions more, most of them children.

"The environmentalists' persistent opposition to the use of DDT shows that they are indifferent to human suffering. This is because environmentalism places the 'preservation' of nature above the requirements of human survival and prosperity. Given the choice of eradicating malarial mosquitoes with a man-made pesticide or condemning millions of people to suffering and death, committed environmentalists have consistently opted for the latter.

"Environmentalism is an anti-human ideology that must be eradicated intellectually in order to ensure that deadly diseases such as malaria can be eradicated physically."

Copyright © 2006 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

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Thursday, September 14, 2006

'Universal' Health Care Is Immoral

Posted by ARI Media at 9:35 AM

Irvine, CA—"Governor Schwarzenegger should be commended for his commitment to veto the California Health Reliability Act, which seeks to eliminate private medical insurance and establish a state-run health insurance system in California," said Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute. "But the basic issue is not, as the governor indicated, that the system would be too expensive. 'Universal' health care is immoral.

"Health care is not a right. The fact that someone cannot afford the latest medical test or treatment does not entitle him to force others to pay for it—just as he is not entitled to a free gym membership on the grounds it would improve his health.

"There is a crisis in health care, but its cause is government interference in the health care system. The solution is to leave doctors, patients and insurance companies free to deal with each other on whatever terms they choose—not to socialize American medicine."

Copyright © 2006 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

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Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Minimum Wage, Maximum Wrong

Posted by ARI Media at 4:40 PM

Irvine, CA—There is an accelerating trend of big-city governments passing minimum wage laws that far exceed either the state or federal minimums. Yesterday, contrary to this trend, Mayor Richard Daley vetoed a measure that would have raised Chicago minimums to $10.00 an hour plus $3.00 in fringe benefits by mid-2010.

"Daley's veto was right—but he and other political leaders should go further and abolish the minimum wage altogether," said Dr. Yaron Brook, president of the Ayn Rand Institute and a former finance professor. "By mandating a certain level of wages, the government violates the rights of both employers and employees to reach a voluntary agreement based on their own judgment of what they can afford.

"Those who provide jobs are not the slaves of city hall, and have a right to set the wages they are willing to pay. And those who are willing and eager to work for relatively low wages—either because they are unskilled, inexperienced or would rather have a low-paying job than no job at all—have a right to do so.

"In a capitalist system, the price of labor (i.e., wages) is determined in the same way as all other prices: by the individual judgments and voluntary decisions of buyers and sellers."

Copyright © 2006 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

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Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Military 'Solutions' Don't Work; Try Suicide!

Posted by Craig Biddle at 1:08 PM

Having observed the various unprincipled positions, non-positions, and evasions of conservatives, liberals, and in-betweenies regarding what to do about Iran, I was surprised this morning to discover a proposal even more boldly suicidal than any yet offered. This from Nicholas Kristof at the New York Times:

Iran could be persuaded to adopt a Japanese model: develop its capacity to the point that a bomb could be completed in weeks or months, but without testing or stockpiling weapons.

Granted, expert reassurances are easier to accept if you live in New York than in Tel Aviv, and the consequences of being wrong would be horrific. But however one judges the risks, the one thing we should have learned from Iraq and Lebanon is that military "solutions" can leave us worse off than before.

Read the whole thing.

As I have been saying for years, the Bush administration's military "solutions" (i.e., half-battles)—touted as "hawkish" and "aggressive" and "cowboy-like"—have zapped from American discussion the possibility of a genuine military solution. Consequently, here is where we are today: Military solutions don't work. Don't bomb the enemy; instead, allow it to get within weeks of completing a nuclear weapon—and try to keep it there!

Brilliant.

No, Mr. Kristof, we should not—as the neoconservatives would have it, and as President Bush will probably do—engage in "a few air raids" to "make the Iranian nuclear menace disappear." You're right; that won't work. Rather, we should engage in a massive and sustained air assault on Iran until all the Islamists there are dead. Yes, all of them. You see, dead Islamists can't