Principles in Practice: The Blog of the Objective Standard

Principles in Practice: October 2007

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

After Ten Years, States Still Resist Assisted Suicide by Thomas Bowden

Posted by ARI Media at 1:17 PM

This month marks the tenth anniversary of Oregon’s pathbreaking assisted suicide law. But despite legislative proposals in California and elsewhere, Oregon remains the only state to have provided clear procedures by which doctors can help end their dying patients' pain and suffering while protecting themselves from criminal prosecution.

For a decade now, Oregon doctors have been permitted to prescribe a lethal dose of drugs to a mentally competent, terminally ill patient who makes written and oral requests, consults two physicians, and endures a mandatory waiting period. The patient's free choice is paramount throughout this process. Neither relatives nor doctors can apply on the patient's behalf, and the patient himself administers the lethal dose.

Elsewhere in America, however, the political influence of religious conservatism has thwarted passage of similar legislation, leaving terminal patients with nothing but a macabre menu of frightening, painful, and often violent end-of-life techniques universally regarded as too inhumane for use on sick dogs or mass murderers.

Consider Percy Bridgman, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who, at 79, was entering the final stages of terminal cancer. Wracked with pain and bereft of hope, he got a gun and somehow found courage to pull the trigger, knowing he was condemning others to the agony of discovering his bloody remains. His final note said simply: "It is not decent for society to make a man do this to himself. Probably this is the last day I will be able to do it myself."

What lawmakers must grasp is that there is no rational basis upon which the government can properly prevent any individual from choosing to end his own life. When religious conservatives enact laws to enforce the idea that their God abhors suicide, they threaten the central principle on which America was founded.

The Declaration of Independence proclaimed, for the first time in the history of nations, that each person exists as an end in himself. This basic truth--which finds political expression in the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—means, in practical terms, that you need no one's permission to live, and that no one may forcibly obstruct your efforts to achieve your own personal happiness.

But what if happiness becomes impossible to attain? What if a dread disease, or some other calamity, drains all joy from life, leaving only misery and suffering? The right to life includes and implies the right to commit suicide. To hold otherwise--to declare that society must give you permission to kill yourself--is to contradict the right to life at its root. If you have a duty to go on living, despite your better judgment, then your life does not belong to you, and you exist by permission, not by right.

For these reasons, each individual has the right to decide the hour of his death and to implement that solemn decision as best he can. The choice is his because the life is his. And if a doctor is willing (not forced) to assist in the suicide, based on an objective assessment of his patient's mental and physical state, the law should not stand in his way.

Religious conservatives' opposition to the Oregon approach stems from the belief that human life is a gift from the Lord, who puts us here on earth to carry out His will. Thus, the very idea of suicide is anathema, because one who "plays God" by causing his own death, or assisting in the death of another, insults his Maker and invites eternal damnation, not to mention divine retribution against the decadent society that permits such sinful behavior.

If a religious conservative contracts a terminal disease, he has a legal right to regard his own God's will as paramount, and to instruct his doctor to stand by and let him suffer, just as long as his body and mind can endure the agony, until the last bitter paroxysm carries him to the grave. But conservatives have no right to force such mindless, medieval misery upon doctors and patients who refuse to regard their precious lives as playthings of a cruel God.

Rational state legislators should regard the Oregon law’s anniversary as a stinging reminder that 49 of the 50 states have failed to take meaningful steps toward recognizing and protecting an individual's unconditional right to commit suicide.

Mr. Bowden is an analyst focusing on legal issues at the Ayn Rand Institute and is the author of The Enemies of Christopher Columbus.  A former attorney and law school instructor who practiced for twenty years in Baltimore, Maryland, his Op-Eds have appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Miami Herald, Los AngelesDaily News, and many other newspapers. Mr. Bowden has given dozens of radio interviews and has appeared on the Fox News Channel's Hannity & Colmes.

Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

PermaLink | Email this link to a friend | Write TOS about this post

Monday, October 29, 2007

Sea Treaty Drowns Property Rights

Posted by ARI Media at 11:21 PM

Irvine, CA—The Senate will soon decide whether to ratify the Law of the Sea Treaty, which deems most of the earth's vast ocean floor "the common heritage of mankind" and places it under United Nations ownership "for the benefit of mankind as a whole.”

"This treaty vests monopoly authority over most of the world’s seabeds in a U.N. agency that issues licenses burdened by complex regulations, fees, royalties, and mandatory land transfers," said Thomas Bowden, an analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute. "Licensees are required to give back half or more of the submerged land they explore, to be mined by the International Seabed Authority using the licensees' technology and know-how, with proceeds going to U.N. members such as Cuba, Uganda, and Venezuela, who contribute nothing to the productive process.

"The proposed treaty ignores the fundamental principle that unowned natural resources should become the private property of the people whose efforts make them valuable," Bowden said. "Although the ocean floor is full of potentially valuable minerals, they remain useless until some pioneer discovers how to retrieve them. Under this treaty, however, the deep-sea mining companies whose science, exploration, technology, and entrepreneurship are being counted on to gather otherwise inaccessible riches are treated as mere servants of a world collective.

"This treaty is an injustice that will hamper, if not halt, the exploitation of undersea wealth," Bowden said. "Because no self-respecting entrepreneur will work under such conditions, the U.N. regime will attract only the kind of lumbering state-owned enterprises that have historically failed to match the performance of private, profit-seeking companies."

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee recently held hearings on the treaty, which has the support of the Bush administration. The treaty, which President Reagan refused to sign in 1982, was submitted to the Senate by President Clinton in 1994 but never ratified. The treaty requires a two-thirds Senate majority for ratification.

"Governments have legitimate options regarding how to deal with undersea explorers' need to establish property rights in the deep ocean," Bowden said. "But it would be totally improper for America to declare eternal hostility to private property in the ocean floor by ratifying a treaty dedicated on principle to denying such rights."

Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

PermaLink | Email this link to a friend | Write TOS about this post

Friday, October 26, 2007

The Ayn Rand Lexicon: now available free on the Web!

Posted by ARI Media at 4:39 PM

Irvine, CA—Through a special arrangement with the publisher, the editor and the Estate of Ayn Rand, ARI has received exclusive permission to present The Ayn Rand Lexicon—now available in its entirety, free of charge, to Web visitors. Edited by Harry Binswanger, and with an introduction by Leonard Peikoff, this important book presents all of the key ideas of Ayn Rand's philosophy, in an encyclopedic reference of stunning breadth and depth.

From the back cover:

A prolific writer, best-selling novelist, and world-renowned philosopher, Ayn Rand defined a full system of thought—from epistemology to aesthetics. Her writing is so extensive and the range of issues she covers so enormous that those interested in finding her discussions of a given topic may have to search through many sources to locate the relevant passage.

The Ayn Rand Lexicon brings together for the first time all the key ideas of her philosophy of Objectivism, organized alphabetically by topic.

Through excerpts culled from Ayn Rand's many articles, lectures, and books, this work presents the Objectivist view on some 400 topics in philosophy, politics, art, economics, and psychology. The Lexicon thus serves as a mini-encyclopedia of Objectivism, complete with a conceptual index and extensive cross-references.

The Lexicon is both an intriguing introduction for the newcomer and a comprehensive sourcebook for readers already familiar with Objectivist ideas. Begun under Ayn Rand's personal supervision, this unique volume is an invaluable guide to her philosophy of reason, self-interest, and laissez-faire capitalism—the philosophy so brilliantly dramatized in her novels The Fountainhead, We the Living, and Atlas Shrugged.

Browse The Ayn Rand Lexicon.

Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

PermaLink | Email this link to a friend | Write TOS about this post

Monday, October 22, 2007

'Open Access' and the Tyranny of the FCC by Alex Epstein

Posted by ARI Media at 11:20 AM

In January the FCC will auction off the prized 700 MHz spectrum of wireless bandwidth. But instead of offering the spectrum to the highest bidder to employ it however he judges best (for example, a mobile video-on-demand service), the FCC will force the winner to employ a specific business model—an "open access" Internet network that forbids the spectrum-holder from controlling which devices and applications use its network, regardless of how much bandwidth they eat up. Why? Because the FCC and sundry lobbyists claim, "open access" is necessary for the "public interest."

Wireless companies have rightly criticized "open access" rules as restrictions on free competition that unfairly favor certain business models—namely that of leading lobbyist Google. But the injustice of "open access" is just a symptom of the deeper injustice used to justify it:  FCC's control of the "public airwaves" in the "public interest."

In today's discussions of FCC policy, it is taken for granted that airwaves are "public." But it shouldn't be. As philosopher Ayn Rand argued in a landmark 1964 essay, "The Property Status of Airwaves," airwaves should be private property.

Observe that the broadcast technology that makes the so-called public airwaves a value does not exist in nature. It is the creation of individuals—and, like all human-created values, its creators earn by their effort a right to their creation. When inventors and engineers first unlocked nature's potential to carry radio waves, and entrepreneurs began developing the commercial value of radio, the government had a responsibility to define property rights in this sphere—so that these innovators could own and utilize portions of the spectrum without interference by others.

There is an exact parallel here to property rights over newly available land. When the western frontier was opened in the 19th century, the government did not declare it public property. Rather, it parceled out the unowned land on a first-come, first-served basis, and then recognized a property right for those who made use of the land for five years. The same type of procedure—enabling pioneers to earn a property right to that which they render valuable—applies to any newly usable portion of spectrum. And, like land rights, once a property right to the use of a given frequency band in a given region is earned, it belongs to the owner unconditionally; he may use it to offer whatever content or services he judges best, or sell it to someone else to do the same.

If the government recognized airwaves as private property, the wireless industry and broadcast media would be transformed. Entrepreneurs would compete freely for ownership of spectrum, and over time, those who sold the most valued product would win out. We would see innovations at a pace undreamed of today—the pace of entrepreneurs and inventors, not the pace of central-planning bureaucrats.

Unfortunately, our government does not recognize airwaves as private property, and never has. In the 1920s, its response to the development of radio was not to define and protect property rights for the field's creators, but to nationalize them as "public property." Consider the injustice of this: the pioneers who envisioned the potential of radio technology, and took the risk of bringing it about, had no more right to their creation than we do, who created nothing.

Under the "public" airwaves regime, businesses do not own but merely "license" portions of spectrum—which the government has total authority to control in the "public interest." The use of spectrum is determined, not by the business that has purchased and earned it, but by the FCC—by whatever it feels is in the indefinable "public interest." In the realm of media, FCC bureaucrats can effectively censor viewpoints they dislike by revoking broadcast licenses or imposing huge fines. In the realm of wireless data, FCC bureaucrats and Congress can impose more onerous terms on a paying licensee anytime they wish—such as Google's proposal that licensees be forced to sell large portions of their bandwidth to competitors at FCC-dictated "reasonable" rates, no matter what it does to their business.

In all such cases, the creators with the best ideas and the willingness to prove them in a free market are throttled by lobbyists and government officials who can wheel and deal in Washington—and innovation suffers accordingly.

Americans need to start recognizing airwaves as the private property they really are, and demand the abolition of the FCC. Then the government can hold a fair and just auction for the 700 MHz spectrum, and the others, in which each spectrum is not licensed but sold—no strings attached.

Alex Epstein is an analyst 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 © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

PermaLink | Email this link to a friend | Write TOS about this post

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Atlas Shrugged and Today's Healthcare Controversy

Posted by ARI Media at 5:07 PM

Irvine, CA—This month is the 50th anniversary of the publication of Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand's novel about a group of high achievers who rebel against a society that shackles and condemns them. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, heralded the book's relevance to today's cultural-political debate. "While Atlas is 50 years old, it contains many timeless truths that are just as relevant today as they were when it was first published.

"Take the realm of health care. Most Republicans and Democrats are proposing forms of socialized medicine—under euphemisms like 'universal health care,' 'national health insurance,' etc. Everyone talks about how to protect patient's 'right' to health care—but no one talks about the rights of the doctors that create this value. This is a deadly evasion that one of the characters in Ayn Rand's novel, Dr. Thomas Hendricks, an eminent surgeon who quits the field, eloquently explains in describing his decision:

'Do you know what it takes to perform a brain operation? Do you know the kind of skill it demands, and the years of passionate, merciless, excruciating devotion that go to acquire that skill? That was what I would not place at the disposal of men whose sole qualification to rule me was their capacity to spout the fraudulent generalities that got them elected to the privilege of enforcing their wishes at the point of a gun. I would not let them dictate the purpose for which my years of study had been spent, or the conditions of my work, or my choice of patients, or the amount of my reward. I observed that in all the discussions that preceded the enslavement of medicine, men discussed everything—except the desires of the doctors. Men considered only the "welfare" of the patients, with no thought for those who were to provide it. That a doctor should have any right, desire or choice in the matter, was regarded as irrelevant selfishness; his is not to choose, they said, only "to serve." . . . I have often wondered at the smugness with which people assert their right to enslave me, to control my work, to force my will, to violate my conscience, to stifle my mind—yet what is it that they expect to depend on, when they lie on an operating table under my hands?'

"Countless outstanding doctors have already fled the field because of the sort of government coercion Dr. Hendricks describes," said Dr. Brook. "Anyone who truly cares about the state of American medicine should learn from Ayn Rand's character: we must liberate the providers of medical services and protect their right to practice medicine on their own terms and as they judge best."

Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

PermaLink | Email this link to a friend | Write TOS about this post

Monday, October 15, 2007

It Isn't Easy Being Green by Keith Lockitch

Posted by ARI Media at 6:40 PM

It isn't news that environmentalism has gone mainstream in a big way—with organic food in every grocery store, hybrid cars on every freeway, and every mass-market magazine declaring green the "new black." More than ever before, consumers are buying into environmentalist ideology—and buying products that purport to impact nature less, in order to impact nature less.

One would think that serious environmentalists would be thrilled about this trend—thrilled that the public seems willing to take ecological marching orders and do its duty to the planet. But they aren't: A backlash against "buying green" has arisen in environmentalist circles, with critics disparaging the new eco-consumers as "light greens," and condemning the "Cosmo-izing of the green movement."

Surprising? Not really. Not if one grasps the deeper meaning of environmentalism.

Most people have a mistaken view of environmentalism. They see it as a movement whose goal is to protect the environment so that we, and future generations, may continue to enjoy it. Environmentalists might call for certain sacrifices—like stern priests calling upon us to do penance for our sins—but people take their word for it that those sacrifices will turn out to be for the good of "society." People feel virtuous in paying more for those organic blueberries and spending time washing out tin cans and nasty cloth diapers, because they see it as a sacrifice for the "greater good." And although "going green" may demand some cost and effort, it need not—on this view—be too burdensome nor demand personal hardships that are too great.

But in fact, the goal of environmentalism is not any alleged benefit to mankind; its goal is to preserve nature untouched—to prevent nature from being altered for human purposes. Observe that whenever there is a conflict between the goals of "preserving nature" and pursuing some actual human value, environmentalists always side with nature against man. If tapping Arctic oil reserves to supply our energy needs might affect the caribou, environmentalists demand that we leave vast tracts of Arctic tundra completely untouched. If a new freeway bypass will ease traffic congestion but might disturb the dwarf wedge mussel, environmentalists side with the mollusk against man. If a "wetland" is a breeding ground for disease-carrying insects, environmentalists fight to prevent it being drained no matter the toll of human suffering.

It is simply not true that environmentalism values human well being. It demands sacrifices, not for the sake of any human good, but for the sake of leaving nature untouched. It calls for sacrifice as an end in itself.

Though environmentalists will often claim to be opposed to merely "indiscriminate" or "excessive" consumption of natural resources, their ideology actually drives them to oppose any act of altering nature for human purposes. The environmentalist goal of "preserving nature" unavoidably conflicts with the requirements of human life: Man's basic means of survival is to reshape nature to serve his ends, to take the raw materials of his environment and use them to produce values. But this requires "touching" nature, not leaving it untouched. Even organic crops require land and water and energy; even hybrid cars are built of metal and plastic and glass, and use up fuel. All human activity, on whatever scale, violates the environmentalist injunction to "leave nature alone."

This is why it is no surprise that environmentalist leaders would condemn "buying green" as a consumer trend. Says Michael Ableman, an organic farmer and environmental author: "The assumption that by buying anything, whether green or not, we're solving the problem is a misperception. Consuming is a significant part of the problem to begin with." In other words, the very act of consuming—i.e., pursuing material values in support of our lives—is a "problem."

Environmentalists are criticizing "buying green," because at root they are against buying anything.

Anyone who thinks that it's easy being "green"—that "eco-chic" is consistent with the principles of environmentalism—had better think harder about the true nature of the ideology they are helping bring into power. Environmentalists' call for minor sacrifices for the sake of some undefined "greater good" is the first stage in their call for sacrifice as such, for no human benefit whatsoever.

If environmentalists are now confident enough to start attacking "buying green" as superficial and hypocritical, we had better take them at their word and stop buying anything they have to sell, especially their poisonous ideology.

Keith Lockitch is a PhD in physics and a resident fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, Calif. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand—author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead."

PermaLink | Email this link to a friend | Write TOS about this post

Ban Belmont's Smoking Ban

Posted by ARI Media at 4:41 PM

Irvine, CA—Belmont, California, recently passed a measure banning smoking in, among other places, multiunit dwellings and outdoor restaurants in order to protect people from secondhand smoke.

"But those who don't wish to be exposed to cigarette smoke do not need a coercive ban to protect them," said Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute. "No one is forced to inhale cigarette smoke against his will—if property rights are protected.

Rather than protecting individuals from unwanted smoke, this measure tramples on the rights of property owners.

"Property owners, including restaurant proprietors and apartment landlords, should be free to decide whether or not smoking is allowed on their property and under what conditions. If a potential diner or tenant does not agree to the policy, he is free to take his business elsewhere. But he should not be free to impose his smoking preferences on others, at the expense of their use and enjoyment of their property, or the profitability of their business.

"Clearly, this is not an attempt to protect people from unwillingly inhaling smoke—it is an attempt by the city council to impose its anti-smoking views on Belmont citizens. But no habit could be as destructive as granting the government the power to dictate what we can and can't do on our own property.

"Those who value freedom and property rights should oppose this ban."

Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

PermaLink | Email this link to a friend | Write TOS about this post

Friday, October 12, 2007

Should Businessmen Go on Strike?

Posted by ARI Media at 4:37 PM

Irvine, CA—In a week characterized by important labor stoppages, Chrysler workers went out on strike in Michigan, British postal workers returned to work while threatening further walkouts, and registered nurses started a 48-hour strike in Northern California.

"Job actions by employees are commonplace, yet we never see similar protests by the individuals who create jobs in the first place," said Thomas Bowden, an analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute. "In her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, published 50 years ago this week, Rand's fictional hero, John Galt, gave voice to the undeserved suffering of businessmen when he said:

"There is only one kind of men who have never been on strike in human history. Every other kind and class have stopped, when they so wished, and have presented demands to the world, claiming to be indispensable—except the men who have carried the world on their shoulders, have kept it alive, have endured torture as sole payment, but have never walked out on the human race."

"John Galt was defending the businessmen who create and operate the companies that generate steel, oil, medicine, computers, and all the other goods and services on which our lives and happiness depend,"

Bowden said. "The entrepreneurs, the executives, the investors and bankers, the top-level managers—these are truly indispensable men and women on whose creativity all other workers depend for their jobs."

"Why," Bowden asked, "do so many of these capitalist heroes continue to toil away, creating jobs for a society that morally condemns their desire for personal profit as selfish and materialistic, and subjects them to government control as if they were beasts of burden? What keeps those individuals from going on strike? In Atlas Shrugged, Rand answers these questions, showing why nothing less than a moral revolution is needed to set businessmen free from the shackles of unearned guilt."

Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

PermaLink | Email this link to a friend | Write TOS about this post

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Why Businessmen Love Atlas Shrugged by Alex Epstein

Posted by ARI Media at 5:20 PM

If you ask any hundred successful businessmen chosen at random to name the book that has most inspired them, you will undoubtedly hear one title repeated over and over: Atlas Shrugged—Ayn Rand's epic novel, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this month. Why do businessmen love Atlas Shrugged?

Because, in the form of a thrilling novel with inspiring heroes, it does something no other book has ever done: it presents the pursuit of profit, the essence of business, as a profoundly moral activity.

Observe that while profit-seeking is widely recognized as economically indispensable, it is also widely regarded as morally tainted, if not outright immoral. This applies, not just to attempts to "profit" via theft or fraud, but to the pursuit of profit as such. For example, pharmaceutical companies who successfully develop and sell life-saving drugs, oil companies who explore the ends of the earth to extract a vital resource, and financiers who efficiently invest wealth through our dynamic financial markets are all routinely castigated for their high profits. And those who defend profit-seeking do so, not on moral grounds, but as an amoral means to a noble end: the "public good"—i.e., the good of everyone besides businessmen themselves.

To the extent honest, productive businessmen absorb this view of their profession—and most do, to some extent—they experience unearned guilt over their work, and are unable to morally challenge the ever-increasing taxes and regulations foisted on them for the "public good." Atlas Shrugged rocks their world.

The heroes of Atlas Shrugged are a group of great achievers, mostly businessmen, who, like businessmen today, live in a world that damns, shackles, and drains them. But these achievers refuse to accept this treatment; they fight back. They go on strike, refusing to work in a society that at once depends on their achievements but brands them immoral for seeking to profit from those achievements. They let the world see what happens when their "immorality" is removed. "We are evil, according to your morality," the leader of the strike, John Galt, tells the world in a radio address, "We have chosen not to harm you any longer. . . . We are dangerous and to be shackled, according to your politics. We have chosen not to endanger you, nor to wear the shackles any longer."

Without the great, profit-seeking industrialists, what remains is, as Galt puts it, "a world without mind"—a world without the thinker-creators who forge steel by the megaton, direct intricate transcontinental train networks, and bring new inventions to the masses—a world that quickly spirals downward into poverty and destruction.

As readers witness how the world treats the Atlases who carry it on their shoulders, and what happens when Atlas shrugs, they gain a new appreciation for these "dollar chasers," and begin to question the premise that the profit motive is immoral. Readers are joined in this moral-intellectual journey by one of the leading characters in the story, metal magnate Hank Rearden, who is one of the last to learn about the strike.

We meet Rearden at the triumphant culmination of his 10-year-quest to revolutionize the industrial world with Rearden Metal: an alloy far lighter, stronger, and cheaper than steel. When he succeeds, he expects to profit handsomely from sales to grateful customers eager to buy his magnificent new product. Instead, he is punished for his efforts—first by slander and denunciation from a society that damns Rearden Metal as a fraud ("a lethal product of greed")—then by the destruction of his profits by regulations that dictate, in the name of the "public good," how much he can produce and whom he must sell to—and finally by outright nationalization of his product. As his business is destroyed, the world suffers destruction with him—yet his critics still mindlessly damn his pursuit of profit, and demand "wider powers" for the government to curb it.

As Rearden suffers through all this for the sin of trying to make money by creating incredible value, he is led, with the help of the strike's leaders, to a profound moral realization. The selfish pursuit of profit that he so excels at—pursuing his own well-being by his own independent thought, production, and trade—is the essence of what human life requires, and therefore, the highest of moral virtues. "They had known," says Galt of Rearden and the other strikers, "that theirs was the power. I taught them that theirs was the glory."

Armed with, as Galt puts it, "the knowledge of [his] own moral value," Rearden is able to defend himself from government predations like never before. In response to accusations that he "works for nothing but his own profit," Rearden responds defiantly, "I work for nothing but my own profit—which I make by selling a product they need to men who are willing and able to buy it. . . . I do not sacrifice my interests to them nor do they sacrifice theirs to me; we deal as equals by mutual consent to mutual advantage—and I am proud of every penny that I have earned in this manner. . . . I refuse to apologize for my ability—I refuse to apologize for my success—I refuse to apologize for my money."

Unfortunately, while Rearden experiences a lifelong moral transformation from the story of Atlas, most of the readers of Atlas Shrugged do not. While many businessmen derive lasting inspiration from Atlas, they do not attain or pursue an enduring understanding of the moral virtue of profit—and certainly do not proudly defend their right to practice it freely. Thus, many of Atlas Shrugged's most vocal admirers at once proclaim adoration for the novel, while simultaneously attempting to justify their existence by appealing to some "higher cause" ("the environment," "diversity," "the community")—and certainly do not proudly stand up for their right to pursue profit in a free market. They engage in the same tried-and-failed tactics of behind-the-scenes lobbying and appeals to the "public good" that have led to the shrinking of economic freedom in the last 50 years, just as they did in the 50 years before Atlas Shrugged.

On the 50th anniversary of Atlas Shrugged, businessmen should make a point of rereading the novel. But this time, in addition to being inspired to greatness by its heroes, they should pay special attention to the book's radical moral philosophy—a philosophy that has the potential to truly change how they look at their lives and enable them to fight successfully for their freedom.

Alex Epstein is an analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, Calif. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand—author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead."

Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

PermaLink | Email this link to a friend | Write TOS about this post

'Pressuring' Iran While Ahmedinijad Strolls the Red Carpet

Posted by ARI Media at 1:15 PM

Irvine, CA—Some people fear that Washington is taking overly aggressive steps in an attempt to stop Iran's nuclear program. The U.S. is lobbying the UN to impose yet more, putatively tougher, sanctions on Iran. And the U.S. Senate has urged the White House to brand Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps as a terrorist organization—a designation that will allegedly enable Washington to deter Teheran's nuclear quest.

But according to Elan Journo, resident fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute, "in reality these supposedly tough measures are hollow; they cannot deter, let alone intimidate, Iran. That these measures are in fact a pretense at confronting Iran was underscored by Mahmoud Ahmedinijad's visit to New York City this week."

"The U.N. sanctions imposed on Iran several months ago were mere inconveniences that taught Iran that it has nothing to fear from us. More pinprick-sanctions, if they ever materialize, cannot stop Iran from waging its proxy terrorist war against us, nor from killing more U.S. troops in Iraq, nor from developing nuclear weapons. The notion of singling out the Revolutionary Guard Corps—an organ of Teheran's militant regime—as a terrorist organization is as ludicrous as narrowly declaring Hitler's SS as an enemy force. In reality our government has abdicated its responsibility to protect us from the threat of Iran.

"Far from confronting Iran, Washington is utterly meek—a fact highlighted during Ahmedinijad's flamboyant speaking tour in New York. Ahmedinijad is the head of a regime stained with the blood of hundreds upon hundreds of Americans, victims of an Iranian-backed terrorist war that began in 1979. Our leaders busily draft word-splitting sanctions and hollow declarations, but they cannot stir themselves sufficiently to reject the diplomatic protocol allowing world leaders visiting the UN to enter America—and to forbid Ahmedinijad from setting foot on U.S. soil.

"Why do our leaders behave like timorous, submissive lambs? Because they do not believe we have the moral right to stop Iran's nuclear quest. To do that would mean putting America's interests first, which today's prevailing ethical standard condemns as selfish, and immoral. Washington's moral premise rules out as illegitimate U.S. self-assertion; it rules out the dedicated pursuit of American self-defense. This does not mean we should launch another Iraq-like crusade to bring them elections; it means asserting ourselves in self-defense; it means protecting U.S. lives by destroying Iran's militant regime.

"Who could seriously believe that Washington is being 'tough' on Iran, when the Islamist Ahmedinijad is permitted to swagger into New York City?"

Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

PermaLink | Email this link to a friend | Write TOS about this post

A Foreign-Aid Controversy . . . Reminiscent of Atlas Shrugged

Posted by ARI Media at 1:11 PM

Irvine, CA—What does Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged have to do with a current debate over U.S. foreign aid? More than you might think.

The New York Times reports about the latest dispute over how U.S. foreign aid should be spent. One faction claims that, because the rising cost of food reduces how much can be bought, the government should reserve some money in a "safe box" designated to feed people facing chronic hunger—while others insist that U.S. aid money remain liquid enough to enable us to respond quickly to food emergencies.

But there's one crucial question that no one is asking: While there's much debate over the means of providing aid and while some critics fault our government's aid agency for inefficiencies—no one challenges the basic goal of doling out billions in foreign aid. The notion that Americans have a moral duty to sacrifice their hard-earned wealth to fund such a global welfare schemes is taken as self-evident.

But Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged levels a fundamental challenge to that widely accepted moral premise.

The startling view dramatized in her book is that welfare schemes such as foreign aid are profoundly unjust—and that we have no duty to sacrifice our wealth to feed and clothe the poor, regardless of whether they live across the globe or across the street. On the contrary, on Rand's view as projected in her novel and nonfiction works, those who earn their prosperity by production and trade have an absolute moral right to every penny of their income. Her revolutionary conception of morality holds that self-sacrifice is a vice and that pursuing one's rational self-interest is a virtue.

As for the 'have-nots' in Africa and across the world, their plight is a result of not having freedom and individualism; they are miserably poor because of their bloody tribalism and superstition—ideas that kept the Western world dirt poor for centuries. If Westerners were truly interested in helping them, they would teach them to embrace reason, individualism and capitalism—precisely the values responsible for the West's prosperity, but which are today being eroded through endless altruist policies. 

It is high time Americans learned to question not merely the means, but the very goal of foreign aid—and understand the truly destructive nature of the altruist morality that justifies it.

Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

PermaLink | Email this link to a friend | Write TOS about this post

Monday, October 08, 2007

Lecture: 'Atlas Shrugged and Ayn Rand's Morality of Egoism'

Posted by Craig Biddle at 3:22 PM

In celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of Atlas Shrugged, I’ll be speaking at UCLA this Thursday, October 11.

What: A talk on “Atlas Shrugged and Ayn Rand’s Morality of Egoism” by Craig Biddle

Where: UCLA - Los Angeles, California: Kinsey Pavillion (Knudsen) 1220B

When: Thursday, October 11, 2007, 7:00pm–9:00pm

Admission is FREE.

Description: In her novel Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand set forth a new morality, which she called rational egoism. In contrast to altruism—the idea that one should self-sacrificially serve others—rational egoism holds that one should selfishly pursue one’s own life-serving values. Against predation—the practice of sacrificing others for one’s own ends—Rand’s egoism holds that sacrificing others is immoral and impractical. In contrast to hedonism—the idea that pleasure is the standard of value—Rand’s egoism holds that the long-range requirements of one’s life and happiness constitute the standard of value. And against moral relativism—the notion that “anything goes”—Rand’s egoism holds that morality is absolute: Nothing “goes” except that which promotes one’s life while respecting the rights of others.

Rand’s egoism is a system of observation-based principles regarding the requirements of human life, personal happiness, social harmony, and political freedom. In this talk, celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of Atlas Shrugged, Craig Biddle presents the basic principles of rational egoism, contrasts them with the alternatives, and shows why everyone who wants to live happily and freely needs to understand and embrace them.

Craig Biddle is the editor and publisher of The Objective Standard and the author of Loving Life: The Morality of Self-Interest and the Facts that Support It. He is currently writing a book on the principles of rational thinking and the fallacies that are violations of those principles. In addition to writing, he lectures and teaches workshops on ethical and epistemological issues from an Objectivist perspective. He has spoken at Tufts, Johns Hopkins, NYU, and Lawrence University, among others.

If you’re in the area, I hope to see you there!

PermaLink | Email this link to a friend | Write TOS about this post

Saturday, October 06, 2007

Yesterday's Highlights: 'Success'

Posted by Lisa VanDamme at 10:49 AM

In a letter called "Yesterday's Highlights," I periodically describe my observations of classes to the VanDamme Academy parents. I have decided to share these highlights with readers of this newsletter as well. I hope you enjoy your glimpse into a VanDamme Academy classroom.

Dear Parents,

This week and last, I have had the pleasure of teaching poetry to Rooms 1-5. This gave me an opportunity to get to know each of the students a little better, and to share with them something I love.

In each class, we studied a poem that connects to the novel the class had recently completed. If you want to learn more about your child's education, help him study his poem, and ask him to explain how it relates to what he has been discussing in literature.

For example, Room 5 is memorizing the following gem of a poem, which I only recently discovered, and which immediately struck me as having an obvious connection to The Miracle Worker.

Success

If you want a thing bad enough To go out and fight for it, Work day and night for it, Give up your time and your peace and your sleep for it

If only desire of it Makes you quite mad enough Never to tire of it, Makes you hold all other things tawdry and cheap for it

If life seems all empty and useless without it And all that you scheme and you dream is about it,

If gladly you'll sweat for it, Fret for it, Plan for it, Lose all your terror of God or man for it,

If you'll simply go after that thing that you want. With all your capacity, Strength and sagacity, Faith, hope and confidence, stern pertinacity,

If neither cold poverty, famished and gaunt, Nor sickness nor pain Of body or brain Can turn you away from the thing that you want,

If dogged and grim you besiege and beset it, You'll get it!

BERTON BRALEY

The students were quick to identify and explain that this poem captured Annie Sullivan's dogged, dauntless determination to teach language to Helen Keller. They noted that she "gave up her sleep for it," immediately implementing ideas that struck her in the middle of the night; that she held Helen's obedience and grooming as "tawdry and cheap" compared to her need to learn language; that she endured the bodily pain of being slapped, kicked, stuck with a pin, and having her tooth knocked out, and never gave up on her goal; and that she lost all terror of God, man, and Captain Keller for it. Now, they have seen this theme demonstrated in the inspirational character of Annie Sullivan, and they have heard it eloquently captured in the words of Berton Braley.

Poetry is incredible fuel for the soul. After your children have memorized the poems, they will have a claim to them, and will have them at the ready when a relevant time arises. Just today, a parent shared with me a charming story of her daughters reciting their poem "Courage" to her when she was afraid to jump from the Jacuzzi into the pool.

I will take inspiration from "Success." This school is something I have had to "fret for" and "plan for," something that has at times taken all my "strength and sagacity," something I "schemed" and "dreamed" about. And my life would definitely be "empty and useless" without it. Thank you for helping all of us at VanDamme Academy achieve our "Success." We, in turn, will help your children to do the same.

Click here to sign up for the VanDamme Academy's free, e-newsletter, "Pedagogically Correct" featuring articles about the principles of teaching employed at the Academy, along with stories about the results they are achieving.

PermaLink | Email this link to a friend | Write TOS about this post

It's Time to Jump SCHIP

Posted by ARI Media at 10:41 AM

Irvine, CA—President Bush vetoed a bill on Wednesday that would have expanded the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which was established to insure children whose parents did not qualify for Medicaid but who could not afford private health insurance. The expanded program would have covered an additional four million children from households that have yearly incomes as high as $83,000. Bush declared that while he "strongly supports reauthorization of SCHIP," he regards its expansion as a dangerous step toward socialized medicine.

"But by declaring his support for SCHIP," said Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, "Bush has already endorsed the perverse moral principle that is leading us toward socialized medicine.

"In trying to justify any government welfare program—whether social security, food stamps, or socialized medicine—advocates appeal to the fact that the intended recipients need the service but are unable to pay for it. Thus, the fact that some families 'need' health care but can't afford it entitles them to it—and so the government must institute programs like Medicaid and SCHIP to ensure that they get it. Such appeals count on the unstated principle that 'need' is the criterion of moral value and standard of just desserts.

"In her novel Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand exposes the viciousness of this moral principle, showing how it sacrifices the productive and successful to the incompetent and indolent. 'A morality that holds need as a claim, holds emptiness—non-existence—as its standard of value; it rewards an absence, a defeat: weakness, inability, incompetence, suffering, disease, disaster, the lack, the fault, the flaw—the zero. Who provides the account to pay these claims? Those who are cursed for being non-zeros, each to the extent of his distance from that ideal. Since all values are the product of virtues, the degree of your virtue is used as the measure of your penalty; the degree of your faults is used as the measure of your gain' (Atlas Shrugged).

"This moral inversion underlies the demand for socialized medicine, which says that some people's need of health care gives them the right to make slaves of doctors, insurance companies, and hospitals. If we are to avoid the destruction of our health care system promised by socialized medicine, we must reject the perverse moral principle at its root and restore freedom to America's health care system."

Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

PermaLink | Email this link to a friend | Write TOS about this post

Friday, October 05, 2007

The Influence of Atlas Shrugged by Yaron Brook

Posted by ARI Media at 11:32 AM

On the 50th anniversary of its publication, Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand's epic about a group of businessmen who rebel against a society that shackles and condemns them, is everywhere. Hardly a day goes by without a mention of the novel in the media or by some prominent celebrity or businessman as the most significant book he's read. Meanwhile, Ayn Rand's novels, including Atlas Shrugged, are being taught in tens of thousands of high schools. And last year sales of the novel in bookstores topped an astonishing 130,000 copies—more than when it was first published.

As executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, I see the impact of Atlas Shrugged on a daily basis. I'm continually amazed by how many people, from every walk of life and every part of the planet, from high school students to political activists in countries from Hong Kong to Belarus to Ghana, eagerly tell me: " Atlas Shrugged changed my life."

Scores of business leaders, from CEOs of Fortune 500 companies to young entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, say they have derived great spiritual fuel from Atlas Shrugged. Many tell me that the novel has motivated them to make the most of their lives, inspiring them to be more ambitious, more productive, and more successful in their work. And many of America's politicians and intellectuals who claim to fight for economic freedom name Atlas Shrugged as the book that has most inspired them. I have no doubt that the novel has played a considerable role in discrediting socialism as an ideal and in making discussion of capitalism intellectually legitimate.

If you have read Atlas Shrugged and entered the universe of Dagny Taggart, Hank Rearden, and John Galt, you can understand why the novel has inspired so many in this way. Atlas Shrugged portrays great businessmen as heroic, productive thinkers, and it venerates capitalism as the only social system that leaves such minds free to create and produce the material values on which all of our lives depend. It gives philosophic and esthetic expression to the uniquely American spirit of individualism, of self-reliance, of entrepreneurship, of free markets.

But while many people appreciate these elements of Atlas Shrugged on a personal, emotional level, they are often uncomfortable on a moral level with the novel's arguments in support of business and capitalism.

Ayn Rand's ethical philosophy of rational selfishness—on which her admiration for successful businessmen and her impassioned defense of capitalism rest—constitutes a radical challenge to the dominant beliefs of our culture. Rejecting the prevailing ideas that morality comes from a supernatural being or from a societal decree, Rand holds that morality is a science that can be proved by reason. Rejecting the altruistic idea that morality consists of selflessly serving something "higher"—whether the Judeo-Christian God or a collectivist society—she maintains that the height of moral virtue is to rationally pursue your own selfish ends.

Socialism as a political ideal is dead. But the morality that spawned it—from each according to his ability, to each according to his need—still haunts us. So long as need and the "public interest" are regarded as moral claim checks on the ability of the productive, the continued growth of the government's control over the economy and our lives is inevitable.

Those who have read Atlas Shrugged are often struck by the similarity of the events in the novel to the disastrous events reported in the daily news—from the government's attempt to take over medicine to decaying infrastructure and collapsing bridges to the shackles on businessmen inflicted by Sarbanes-Oxley. The similarity is no accident: the justification for these government programs is the needs of the uninsured, the so-called public interest, and the necessity to curb the selfishness of businessmen. Without a moral revolution, we cannot win true economic or political freedom.

So while Atlas Shrugged has provided millions with inspiration and with some level of appreciation for the virtues of capitalism and the evils of statism, it has not had nearly the influence it could have had, had its underlying ideas gained wider understanding. Though it has changed individual lives, it has not changed the world. But I believe it could—and should.

Imagine a future America guided by the principles found in Atlas Shrugged—a culture of reason, where science is cherished and respected, not banished from biology classrooms and stem-cell research labs—a culture of individualism, in which government is the protector of individual rights, not its primary violator—a culture in which markets are not just regarded as the most effective option of an imperfect lot, but in which laissez-faire capitalism is recognized and venerated as the only moral social system—a culture in which business innovators understand that ambition, productive effort, and wealth creation are not just practical necessities, but moral virtues—a culture in which such innovators, proudly asserting their right to their work, are fully liberated and their productive genius fully applied to the generation of unimaginable economic progress.

This is the world that Atlas Shrugged challenges us to strive for. But in order to get there, the novel's full philosophic meaning must be grasped. This is precisely why the Ayn Rand Institute exists: to convey Rand's profound message. And her message is getting out, all the way to professional intellectuals, on campuses and elsewhere across America, who are taking up Ayn Rand's ideas with a seriousness that they never have shown before.

With more and more thinkers giving it the attention it merits, I am confident that the real influence of Atlas Shrugged has yet to be felt.

Yaron Brook is executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, CA. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand.

Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

PermaLink | Email this link to a friend |