The Objective Standard Blog

The Objective Standard Blog

Thursday, March 11, 2010

The Spring Issue of TOS

Posted by Craig Biddle at 12:45 PM

Spring 2010

The print edition of the Spring issue of TOS is at press and will be mailed shortly; the online version will be accessible to subscribers beginning March 20; and the Kindle edition will be delivered to Kindle subscribers on March 30. For promotional purposes, we are making Steve Simpson’s article “Citizens United and the Battle for Free Speech in America” available on our website early and for free.

The contents of the Spring issue are:

From the Editor

Letters and Replies

ARTICLES 

Citizens United and the Battle for Free Speech in America by Steve Simpson

Government-Run Health Care vs. the Hippocratic Oath
by Paul Hsieh

The Virtue of Treating People Like Animals: Why Human Health Care Should Mirror Veterinary Health Care
by Sarah Gelberg

The Practicality of Private Waterways
by J. Brian Phillips and Alan Germani

Norman Borlaug: The Man Who Taught People To Feed Themselves
by Audra Hilse

Making Life Meaningful: Living Purposefully
by Craig Biddle

BOOKS REVIEWED

Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Reviewed by Heike Larson

Winning the Unwinnable War edited by Elan Journo
Reviewed by Grant W. Jones

Why Are Jews Liberals? by Norman Podhoretz
Reviewed by Gideon Reich

Capitalism Unbound by Andrew Bernstein
Reviewed by Ari Armstrong

Essays on Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged edited by Robert Mayhew
Reviewed by Daniel Wahl

The Sparrowhawk Series by Edward Cline
Reviewed by Dina Schein Federman

Born to Run by Christopher McDougall
Reviewed by Daniel Wahl

Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin
Reviewed by David H. Mirman

Newton and the Counterfeiter by Thomas Levenson
Reviewed by Daniel Wahl

If you have not yet subscribed to TOS, why not do so today? You can subscribe online or by calling 800-423-6151.

Labels: , , , , , , , , , ,

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Capitalism: The Only Moral Social System

Posted by TOS Admin at 2:14 PM

Craig Biddle will be delivering his talk “Capitalism: The Only Moral Social System” at the following universities next week:

  • February 22, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Grainger Hall, Morgridge Auditorium (Room 1100) [map] 7:00pm
  • February 23, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Willey Hall, Room 125 [map] 7:30pm
  • February 24, Ohio State University, Wexner Center for the Arts, Performance Space [map] 6:00pm
  • February 25, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Physics Building, Room 204 [map] 7:00pm

Admission is FREE and open to the public.

Description: Capitalism is widely recognized as the practical social system because, wherever and to the extent that it is implemented, it leads to wealth and prosperity. But this same system is widely regarded as immoral because it enables people to act fully in their own self-interest—that is, to act on their own judgment and to keep, use, and dispose of the product of their own effort. In this talk, Mr. Biddle demonstrates why, far from making capitalism immoral, the fact that it enables everyone to act selfishly and own property is what makes it not only the most practical but also the only moral social system ever devised.

Image: Wiki Commons

Labels: , , , ,

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

The Logical Leap: Induction in Physics

Posted by Craig Biddle at 12:46 PM

The Logical Leap: Induction in PhysicsPenguin has announced that July 6, 2010 is the official release date for David Harriman’s book, The Logical Leap: Induction in Physics.

Here’s the blurb from the back cover:

A groundbreaking solution to the problem of induction, based on Ayn Rand’s theory of concepts

Inspired by and expanding on a series of lectures by Leonard Peikoff, David Harriman presents a fascinating answer to the problem of induction—that is, the epistemological question of how we know the truth of inductive generalizations.

Ayn Rand presented her revolutionary theory of concepts in her book Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. As Dr. Peikoff subsequently explored inductive reasoning, he sought out David Harriman, a physicist who has taught philosophy, for his expert knowledge of the scientific discovery process.

Here, Harriman presents the result of collaboration between scientist and philosopher. Beginning with a detailed discussion of the role of mathematics and experiment in validating generalizations in physics—looking closely at the reasoning of scientists such as Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Lavoisier, and Maxwell—Harriman skillfully identifies the method by which we discover laws of nature. Refuting the skepticism that is epidemic in contemporary philosophy of science, Harriman offers demonstrable evidence of the power of reason. He then argues that philosophy itself is an inductive science—the science that teaches the scientist how to be scientific.

You can see the Table of Contents and First Pages at Falling Apple Science Institute, and you can preorder the book at Amazon.com. For a preview of Harriman’s work on this subject, see his TOS articles:

Labels: , ,

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Altruism vs. America

Posted by TOS Admin at 2:32 PM

[The following is an excerpt of from Craig Biddle’s article “The Creed of Sacrifice vs. The Land of Liberty.” Citations have been omitted here but are available in the article, which is accessible for free.]

The correlation between the morality of sacrifice and the violation of rights is no accident. It is a causal relationship. To see why, we must zero in on the little-understood essence of altruism.

Altruism is not about moral obligation as such; it is about a specific kind of moral obligation. Altruism does not call for a person to serve others if he has made an agreement or a commitment to do so—as in the case of a doctor who contracts to provide a patient with medical care in exchange for payment, or an employer who contracts to pay an employee in exchange for his work. Such obligations are chosen obligations, obligations stemming from mutually beneficial agreements, agreements in which both parties gain a life-serving value. Altruism is not about chosen obligations. It is about “unchosen” obligations or “duties.”

As the altruist philosopher John Rawls explains, whereas regular obligations “arise as a result of our voluntary acts,” duties “apply to us without regard to our voluntary acts.” We have a duty “to help another, whether or not we have committed ourselves to [doing so]. It is no defense or excuse to say that we have made no promise . . . to come to another’s aid.”

A “duty” is non-optional; it is something you must do regardless of what you want, regardless of what you think is in your interest, regardless of what you would choose to do if you had a choice in the matter. In the words of the foremost advocate of this idea, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, “duty is a necessitation to an unwillingly adopted end,” and its “specific mark” is “the renunciation of all interest.”

Altruism is the morality of “unchosen” obligations—obligations you must honor regardless of your values, desires, interests. This fact points to why altruism not only calls for self-sacrifice but also necessitates the initiation of physical force. British philosopher John Stuart Mill explains:

It is a part of the notion of duty in every one of its forms that a person may rightfully be compelled to fulfill it. Duty is a thing which may be exacted from a person, as one exacts a debt. Unless we think that it may be exacted from him, we do not call it his duty. . . . There are other things, on the contrary, which we wish that people should do, which we like or admire them for doing, perhaps dislike or despise them for not doing, but yet admit that they are not bound to do. . . .

Observe what this means in regard to the relationship of “duties” and rights. Whereas a “duty” is an (alleged) obligation that one has apart from one’s choices or interests and that one “may rightfully be compelled to fulfill,” a right is a prerogative to act in accordance with one’s choices and interests so long as one does not violate the same rights of others. In other words, “duties” and rights are utterly incompatible. They are mutually exclusive. A person can have one or the other—but not both.

The French philosopher Auguste Comte (who coined the term “altruism”) puts this clearly: Because “to live for others” is “for all of us a constant duty” and “the definitive formula of human morality,” it follows that “[a]ll honest and sensible men, of whatever party, should agree, by a common consent, to eliminate the doctrine of rights.” Altruism, explained Comte, “cannot tolerate the notion of rights, for such notion rests on individualism.” On the premise of altruism, “[rights] are as absurd as they are immoral. . . . The whole notion, then, must be completely put away.”

The morality of altruism is incompatible with the principle of rights, and the theoreticians of altruism are clear on this point. In order to “completely put away” the concept of rights in America, however, the pushers of altruism will have to convince Americans to abandon their love of liberty—which is easier said than done.

Historically, Americans have been profoundly attached to liberty. Their country, after all, was founded on the right to liberty. They have even called their country the “Land of Liberty.” Putting away this principle will require persuading Americans to accept altruism fully, consistently, as a matter of principle. How do the opponents of rights propose to accomplish this goal? By taking their cue from John Stuart Mill, who explained precisely how to do it. “[T]he direct cultivation of altruism, and the subordination of egoism to it,” wrote Mill, “should be one of the chief aims of education, both individual and collective.”

Nor can any pains taken be too great, to form the habit, and develop the desire, of being useful to others and to the world . . . independently of reward and of every personal consideration. . . . [E]very person who lives by any useful work, should be habituated to regard himself not as an individual working for his private benefit, but as a public functionary; and his wages, of whatever sort, not as the remuneration or purchase-money of his labour, which should be given freely, but as the provision made by society to enable him to carry it on. . . .

American intellectuals and politicians have taken Mill’s advice. Over the past century, intellectuals have advocated altruism and condemned egoism at every turn. They have sought to habituate Americans to regard themselves not as individuals but as public functionaries. They have tried to sap the American spirit of individualism and to instill the altruistic spirit of collectivism. And they have done so to great effect. The American philosopher John Dewey, for instance, called for “saturating [students] with the spirit of service” and making “each one of our schools an embryonic community life, active with the types of occupations that reflect the life of the larger society.” To those who contend that schools should instead teach children the facts of history, science, literature, and the like, Dewey replied: “The mere absorbing of facts and truths is so exclusively individual an affair that it tends very naturally to pass into selfishness. There is no obvious social motive for the acquirement of mere learning, there is no clear social gain in success thereat.”

Dewey’s philosophy launched the “progressive education” movement, which has dominated American schools and saturated students with the spirit of service for almost a century. Given the wild success of this movement, is it any wonder that so many Americans today accept the propriety of sacrificial service to the community as an unquestionable absolute?

And while Dewey and company have focused on “educating” students for sacrificial service, other intellectuals—led by the American philosopher William James—have focused directly on forcing youth to do their “duty.”

James called for “a conscription of the whole youthful population,” which he appropriately called a “blood tax.” Contemporary political theorist Benjamin R. Barber advocates “a national service program, universal and mandatory.” And sociologist Charles Moskos explains that “[a]ny effective national service program will necessarily require coercion,” and he rebuffs those who “de-emphasize the role of the citizen duties in favor of a highly individualistic rights-based ethic.” We should, he says, “extend the concept of national youth service to include quasi-military civilian services . . . cast in terms of civic duty.”

Such educational and political efforts have given rise to an increasingly pliable citizenry, a steady stream of service-oriented legislation, and the establishment of numerous altruistically motivated institutions, from the Peace Corps, to Volunteers in Service to America (aka AmeriCorps), to Learn and Serve America, to the Corporation for National and Community Service, to the President’s Council on Service and Civic Participation, to the recent efforts by Congress and the Obama administration—which, if successful, will eclipse all preceding efforts combined.

The purpose of the $5.7 billion Serve America Act, recently passed by Congress and signed into law by Obama, is “to integrate service into education,” to encourage “many more Americans to give a year” of their lives, and to “increase service early in life” because “service early in life will put more and more youth on a path to a lifetime of service.” One advocate of the law hails it as the “quantum leap in community service that we’ve all been looking for.” Another exclaims: “The stars are aligned for national service.”

It seems that they are.

Following the lead of the state of Maryland—which, in 1993, became the first state in America to require community service as a condition of high school graduation—hundreds of school districts across America have established similar policies. And, today, pressure is growing not only for all students to be required to serve, but for everyone in general to be required to serve.

The Congressional Commission on Civic Service Act, a bill introduced on March 11, 2009, reads, in part: “The social fabric of the United States is stronger if individuals in the United States are committed to protecting and serving our Nation by utilizing national service and volunteerism.” The goal of this bill is, in part, to “improve the ability of individuals in the United States to serve others”; and, in part, to identify the “issues that deter volunteerism and national service, particularly among young people, and how the identified issues can be overcome.” Toward these ends, the bill calls for Congress to consider “[w]hether a workable, fair, and reasonable mandatory service requirement for all able young people could be developed,” and “[t]he effect on the Nation, on those who serve, and on the families of those who serve, if all individuals in the United States were expected to perform national service or were required to perform a certain amount of national service.”

Such is the state of the Land of Liberty today: The government is passing and enforcing an ever-increasing number of laws and regulations that violate our rights. It is nationalizing private corporations and nullifying private contracts. It is mandating community service for students and investigating the possibility of mandatory service for everyone. And—as if the foregoing were not enough to cause alarm—the government is now asking Americans to inform on fellow citizens who oppose the government’s statist measures.

On August 4, 2009, the following request was posted to the blog of the White House Briefing Room:

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

In light of all the evidence above—which barely scratches the surface of the mounting government power over the lives of Americans—the unavoidable conclusion is that the Land of Liberty is slipping down the slope to tyranny. The fundamental cause of this slide—the basic reason it is happening—is the widespread and increasing acceptance of the morality of altruism.

By accepting the morality of altruism, Americans accept the notion that they have a “duty” to serve “the common good”; and by accepting this “duty,” they thereby reject the basic principle of America: individual rights. The two are mutually exclusive. It is altruism or America. Indeed, it is altruism vs. America. And altruism is winning.

If Americans want to reverse this trend, they will have to challenge the creed of sacrifice at its root, which will require intellectual independence and substantial courage because the philosophic root of altruism is: religion. . . . [Read the whole article.]

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Labels: ,

Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Virtue and the Realization of Human Life: Response to Roderick Long on Ayn Rand

Posted by Wendell Hoenir at 5:38 PM

In my last post, I responded to Will Wilkinson's allegation that Ayn Rand's ethical egoism cannot support the principle of individual rights, because the egoist has no self-interested reason to refrain from using force against others. Wilkinson contended that bureaucrats who feast at the public trough seem to fulfill their self-interest even though they live by force. In response, I asked whether they might be able to live a better, happier life by becoming producers rather than looters.

But many who read Ayn Rand's works are troubled by Wilkinson's question about why it is in the egoist's self-interest to refrain from predation on others, and it is worth expanding on the answer. The question arises again in the series of posts from Cato Unbound that originally motivated Wilkinson's comment. I want to briefly sketch an answer to one of these posts, by philosophy professor Roderick Long. Long also asks the question about how egoism supports rights, and offers an answer that he regards as superior to Rand's. His position rests on a misunderstanding of Rand's view on the relationship between means and ends.

To explain his answer to the predation problem, Long invokes a distinction from the history of ethics:

But what, in Rand's view, connects our self-interest with the moral claims of others? For most of Rand's aforementioned "eudaimonist" predecessors, the requirements of moral virtue were conceived as a constitutive part of the agent's own interest; the Epicureans were the only major dissidents, regarding virtue instead as an instrumental strategy for attaining this interest (rather like Hobbes, in a way, though the Epicureans are surely closer to the main line of eudaimonism than Hobbes is). Rand appears to waver between these two approaches, treating the individual's ultimate good sometimes as a robust human flourishing that has virtue as a component, and sometimes as mere survival to which virtue is only an external means.
Long sees this distinction as relevant to answering the predation problem because if we adopt the "constitutive" view rather than the "instrumental view," and regard a man's honesty and integrity as proper parts of his self-interest, then his being a man of honesty and integrity automatically contributes to his self-interest, whereas his use of force against others would contradict these virtues and automatically count against his self-interest. Long thinks that he sees elements of this "constitutive" view in Rand's fiction:

The constitutive approach predominates in her novels; the chief reason that Rand's fictional protagonists (such as architect Howard Roark in The Fountainhead or railroad executive Dagny Taggart in Atlas Shrugged) do not cheat their customers, for example, is pretty clearly that they would regard such parasitism on the productive efforts of others as directly inconsistent with the nobility and independence of spirit that they cherish for themselves, and not because they're hoping that a policy of honesty will maximize their chances of longevity.
Long rightly stresses that elsewhere in her work, Rand urges that virtue is not an end in itself but a means to the end of human life. This suggests that she regarded virtue as "instrumental" to self-interest, rather than as a proper or constitutive part of it. But Long contends that this instrumental view of virtue is harder to square with an obligation to refrain from initiating force against others. If virtue consists of whatever achieves one's self-interest, and self-interest is constituted only by generic material gain, then regularly mugging one's neighbor would be virtuous. Long urges that we adopt the view that self-interest is constituted by virtue, but contends that Rand does not hold what he takes to be this more defensible view.

Long's argument begins from a faulty assumption: that there is a firm distinction between the "instrumental" and the "constitutive" in value theory, that a means to an end cannot itself be part of the end.

Rand does regard the virtues as means, not as "ends in themselves." But her point in rejecting the idea that virtue is "its own reward" is to distance her view from the altruistic view that severs the tie between virtue and the happy life. "Virtue is not its own reward or sacrificial fodder for the reward of evil. Life is the reward of virtue." Her point is not necessarily to regard virtue as a mere means to an end—as if engaging in virtuous action were external to the end of life or as if virtuous action were not itself living.

Consider further that virtues are the principle-directed actions we must engage in to live a distinctive kind of life, a human life, which is itself constituted by distinctive types of values, values of both the body and the spirit. Life is an end in itself, and part of what this means is that living is both means and end, the means to more of itself. The question to answer, then, is what is this action of living?

In an underappreciated passage in "The Objectivist Ethics," Rand makes this brilliantly clear:

Value is that which one acts to gain and/or keep—virtue is the act by which one gains and/or keeps it. The three cardinal values of the Objectivist ethics—the three values which, together, are the means to and the realization of one's ultimate value, one's own life—are: Reason, Purpose, Self-Esteem, with their three corresponding virtues: Rationality, Productiveness, Pride (pg. 25). [my emphasis].
Reason, purpose, and self-esteem are the values that most crucially constitute the distinctively human way of living—as such they are both means to and part of the end. And the virtues are actions in service of these values.

Reason, purpose and self-esteem are the fundamental means to the ultimate end, which is human life. We need reason to identify the facts of reality that bear on solving the problem of survival, we need to identify the relationship of our actions and goals to our life and happiness—which is the value of purpose, and we need self-esteem to motivate these actions by reminding us that we are capable of succeeding in them and worthy of doing so.

The crucial nature of these cardinal values to a life of happiness is exhibited in Rand's fiction when her characters are shown enjoying work, and enjoying it even when it is not a part of their chosen career. When Roark can't find commissions, for example, he finds purpose in his life by working in the quarry. And when Dagny exiles herself from the railroad, she creates tasks for herself—like clearing brush and clearing paths—just because "what she needed was the motion to a purpose, no matter how small or in what form" (563).

Life itself is a process of action, and the actions that are central enough to an organism's life are by that fact also essential parts of that organism's distinctive form of life. Ayn Rand uses the language of "man's survival qua man" to describe the distinctive virtues and values that compose a distinctively human life.

To draw a parallel: A plant's distinctive life qua plant is more than its life qua a mass of cells; its life includes the way its cells are organized to interact with each other, to allow its leaves to reach toward the sun and its roots to burrow into the earth. Were a plant to be harvested and sliced into salad bits, many of its cells would still live, but the plant's life qua plant would cease.

By the same token, a man's distinctive form of life involves more than heartbeat and respiration, and more than walking and eating and reproducing. Distinctive to human life is the way our actions are organized and integrated by the operations of a rational mind. A man in a comatose state has lost this distinctive organizing principle. His cells and his brain stem may continue to function, but his is not man's life qua man.

Being in a comatose state is not the only way to live a less than fully human life. When people fail to live lives of reason, purpose, and self-esteem, they may not exactly be vegetables, but they are not living the full, flourishing lives that they could. Wilkinson's beltway bureaucrats, to the extent that they parasitize others, live "lives" of force rather than lives of reason, of the promiscuous "why not?" instead of the purposeful "what for?", and of neurosis about whether they can maintain their ongoing parasitism, rather than self-esteem.

Which man lived a more confident, self-secure life: Thomas Edison, or Al Capone? Which man does a Rahm Emmanuel or a Timothy Geithner more closely resemble? And in our current situation, how long will either be able to maintain even the façade of the productive law-abiding citizen, rather than that of the gangster?

Images:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Da_Vinci_Vitruve_Luc_Viatour.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Leonardo_Flowers.jpg

Labels: ,

Monday, January 25, 2010

The Philosophic Foundations of Freedom: A Conference on the Principle of Individual Rights

Posted by TOS Admin at 10:14 PM

Here’s an announcement from the UCLA Objectivist Club about an upcoming conference:

What is liberty? Why is it desirable? How is a free society achieved?

Today, it is relatively uncontroversial that freedom is good, but there is widespread disagreement about what it actually constitutes and how to implement it. Some believe that liberty amounts to the wishes of a democracy being carried out; others believe that it is being faithful to a literal interpretation of the Constitution and the Founding Fathers. But is there an objective basis in philosophy for determining what freedom is in principle and in practice?

Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, laid out such philosophic principles: A free society requires limited government that enacts and enforces objective laws for the sole purpose of protecting individual rights. It is where the government does not interfere, by penalty or reward, in thought, production, or trade. It requires a separation of church and state, science and state, education and state, and economics and state.

The Philosophic Foundations of Freedom Conference will focus precisely on these philosophic fundamentals, with numerous talks and Q&A sessions, a leadership seminar on intellectual activism, as well as a panel with a special guest, Alex Kozinski, the Chief Judge of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Saturday, January 30, 2010–Sunday, January 31, 2010

Click here for full event details.

Labels: , , ,

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Force versus Egoism and Happiness: Response to Will Wilkinson on Ayn Rand

Posted by Wendell Hoenir at 11:35 PM

Commenting on the recent revival of interest in Ayn Rand, libertarian blogger Will Wilkinson recently asserted that while "Rand's emphasis on the role of individual rights in generating creativity and entrepreneurial effort remains enlightening," her moral justification for individual rights fails. Wilkinson, himself a former Ayn Rand enthusiast who became disenchanted with Objectivism, dismisses Rand's argument with stunning brevity:

On the face of it, Rand needs to solve the compliance problem—why should a rational egoist comply with constraints on self-interested action?—and the way to solve the compliance problem is to show that mutual restraint is generally to mutual advantage. But I don't think Rand ever shows this. Instead she goes off the rails trying to argue that rational thought, and therefore a distinctively human life, is impossible in the absences [sic] of a strong version of the non-coercion principle, and that predation or parasitism are never in an individual's self-interest. None of that is convincing. (A strong version of the non-coercion principle is not in effect, but we're doing fine thinking rationally and living human lives. Lots of people live long and satisfying lives of institutionalized parasitism and predation, especially in and around Washington, DC.)
Wilkinson's objection unjustly attributes a bizarre kind of naiveté to Rand's argument. Does Wilkinson really believe that in Rand's view all rational thought and happiness must cease immediately in a society that adopts even the tiniest amount of coercion? This interpretation is difficult to square with Atlas Shrugged, in which John Galt, Hank Rearden, and Dagny Taggart make important discoveries, produce innovations, and at least at times draw substantial happiness from these achievements, in spite of the coercion to which they are subject.

Rand's point, quite obviously, is that the greater the extent of force used against individuals, the less they are able to act on their own judgment, and thus the less happy they can be. As Leonard Peikoff summarizes in Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

In all its forms and degrees, from private crimes to the incursions of the welfare state to full dictatorship, the principle is the same: physical force, to the extent it is wielded or threatened, denies to its victim the power to act in accordance with his judgment.
In the context of the present mixed economy, Wilkinson's contention that we are "doing fine thinking rationally and living human lives" is ridiculous. Surely we are doing better than cave men and Medieval serfs, but as the present financial crisis illustrates, we could obviously be doing a lot better—and the crisis is demonstrably a result of government coercion.

Wilkinson's only remotely plausible objection is his allegation that Rand's egoist has no reason to refrain from coercion because it seems as though he can profit from predation and parasitism. The example of comfortable beltway bureaucrats feeding off the public trough could lend one pause. But how are we to evaluate Wilkinson's smug contention that these people live satisfying lives—and his implication that they would not live better lives if they were producers rather than plunderers?

Wilkinson is a fan of empirical "happiness studies," which measure people's self-reported happiness under different social and economic conditions. He is happy to trot out empirical evidence alleging that people in richer countries are happier than those in poorer ones, that those in less-religious countries are happier than those in more-religious ones, and that those in more-individualist cultures are happier than those in more-collectivist cultures. On one occasion, Wilkinson even provided evidence in support of the idea that people who earned their wealth reported greater satisfaction than those who inherited it or otherwise obtained it through luck. Why would this not bear on our evaluation of the happiness of those comfortable beltway bureaucrats?

Of course all of this data comes to little, because happiness is not merely the short-term feeling of satisfaction one might enjoy while sitting in comfortable house, or the elation of winning political power over the producers—and self-reported happiness is far from objective data. Wilkinson himself admits that we can be wrong about how happy we are. If that's true, then we'd better not measure the self-interest of an act by the extent to which it affords us temporary material comfort or superficial self-satisfaction. Instead we must appeal to philosophic principles that measure the value of an action or policy to the life of a being who survives by reason—principles such as the virtues of independence, production, honesty, and integrity—none of which support the initiation of force.

Happiness is not a fundamental standard of value, though it is a consequence of the achievement of values. Contrary to Wilkinson's claim that Rand never sought to understand the relationship between the use of force and the achievement of one's own happiness, her most crucial passage on the matter defines happiness as "a state of non-contradictory joy" and connects directly to the question of predation or parasitism on others:

Happiness is possible only to a rational man, the man who desires nothing but rational goals, seeks nothing but rational values and finds his joy in nothing but rational actions.

Just as I support my life, neither by robbery nor alms, but by my own effort, so I do not seek to derive my happiness from the injury or the favor of others, but earn it by my own achievement. Just as I do not consider the pleasure of others as the goal of my life, so I do not consider my pleasure as the goal of the lives of others. Just as there are no contradictions in my values and no conflicts among my desires—so there are no victims and no conflicts of interest among rational men, men who do not desire the unearned and do not view one another with a cannibal's lust, men who neither make sacrifices nor accept them.

Labels: , ,

Thursday, January 21, 2010

The Missile Gap and the Morality Gap

Posted by Wendell Hoenir at 2:46 PM

In my post about the contradiction between the technological sophistication of the Burj Dubai and the primitive superstition on display in the mosque at its pinnacle, I argued that this disparity is another example of the general disparity in progress between science and morality. But what accounts for this gap?

Two reviews in last week’s New York Times Book Review provide a clue.

The first, commenting on the first Soviet test of an atomic bomb in 1949, speaks of the nuclear arms race with the United States that followed:

Those years are some of the most complicated in American history. Great successes, like the Marshall Plan, combined with one monumental failure: the beginning of a catastrophically unwise arms race. Somehow, rational decision was piled upon rational decision to create something utterly irrational. Four decades later, two countries with few disputes over land had lavished trillions of dollars and rubles on world-destroying weapons.
The second, also a story of postwar technological intrigue, comments on how Werner von Braun, onetime architect of the Nazi V-2 program, could have acquired respectability for his work on the U.S. space program:

[In the author’s view,] von Braun escaped from the sphere of moral judgment with the help of the American authorities, who wanted to employ him in the missile and space programs. [The author’s] aim is to make him answerable, if only posthumously, for what he did. And he has a more general point to make, too: scientists and engineers, by claiming to be "apolitical," often escape being held to account for what they help to produce. In other words, von Braun is an egregious example of a more general phenomenon.
What is the "more general phenomenon" here, and what does it have to do with the passage from the first review?

The first passage characterizes Soviet and American military decisions as equally rational. But why would anyone describe the actions of a brutal totalitarian regime as equal in rationality to those of the government of a free nation? One could portray Soviet decisions as "rational" only by judging their effectiveness as a means to an end, without judging the rationality of the end itself. That is, one could consider the Soviet construction of a bomb to be a "rational" means of defending the regime against foreign threats only by leaving aside the question of whether it is rational for an oppressive regime to maintain its grip on power in the first place.

The view that rationality judges only of means, not of ends, is the "general phenomenon" of which von Braun and too many other scientists are guilty. These scientists assume that they need not evaluate the ends for which their discoveries and creations are used, and that scientific rationality has nothing to contribute to the evaluation of these ends. Science, they think, is "value free," and the ends of action can only be judged non-scientifically.

This "general phenomemon" is a contemporary version of a view made famous by the British philosopher, David Hume, who wrote in his Treatise of Human Nature, "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions." But is it not obvious that to enslave a whole society and threaten with death the rest of the world is irrational? By contrast, is it not obvious that some of von Braun's endeavors—his assistance in the development of the U.S. space program, and the life-giving technology it spawned—were rational while his support of the Nazis was not?

Not according to Hume. Our evaluation that the threat of mass death is evil and the protection of innocent life is good may seem to be a basic, uncontestable value judgment, but Hume claims that only sentiment supports it. This view, that moral value judgments bottom out in subjective preferences, wrought havoc across the landscape of 20th-century value theory, in which a variety of neo-Humeans propounded versions of "non-cognitivism" about ethics, to the point where it became a commonplace among college freshmen that all values are relative.

It is with some relief that non-cognitivism in value theory is sounding a modest retreat in academia. The philosophic vacuum resulting from complete value subjectivism had to be filled, eventually. New theories, some drawing on the wisdom of the ancients, purport that value can be a natural property like any other. Ayn Rand was ahead of her time when she advanced a version of this view in Atlas Shrugged, contending that what is good for a living organism is simply what furthers its distinctive form of life.

But our culture has yet to catch up with any of this philosophic insight. Journalists regard Soviet and American military decisions as equally "rational," and scientists regard morality as irrelevant to judging the ends of their research. This is why our moral progress has not kept pace with our scientific progress. Few people have come to realize that morality is a science and that the ends of human action can be rationally assessed on the basis of their life-based objective value.

Images: Wikimedia Commons (1, 2)

Labels: , ,

The Source and Nature of Rights, Part IV

Posted by TOS Admin at 2:25 PM

Part four of Craig Biddle’s six-hour seminar The Source and Nature of Rights has been posted to UFM’s website and is accessible for free. In this section, Mr. Biddle concludes his discussion of Ayn Rand’s ethics and theory of rights.

Labels: , , ,

Monday, January 18, 2010

The Towering Contradiction

Posted by Wendell Hoenir at 2:53 PM

The beginning of the new year and decade bore witness to the opening of the world's newest tallest building: the Burj Dubai in the UAE. Like many other commentators, Landon Thomas of the New York Times noted the dire economic situation Dubai faces as it celebrates this moment of triumph:

All the same, the tower’s success by no means signals a recovery in Dubai's beaten-down real estate market, where prices have collapsed by as much as 50 percent and many developers are having trouble finding occupants for their buildings.
Unlike other commentary, Thomas goes further in noting paradoxes surrounding the spectacle of the opening:

With its mix of nightclubs, mosques, luxury suites and boardrooms, the Burj is an almost perfect representation of Dubai’s own complexities and contradictions. It will have the world’s first Armani hotel; the world’s highest swimming pool, on the 76th floor; the highest observation deck, on the 124th floor; and the highest mosque, on the 158th floor.
When humanity achieves the technical feat of erecting a 2,717-foot skyscraper in the desert and places a mosque on one of its highest floors, one is tempted to reflect on the builders’ hierarchy of values, in this case as expressed by the literal, physical hierarchy of the superstructure. Of greater importance than worldly pursuits to these builders are certain values of the spirit.

But what pursuits of the spirit do a mosque, or a church, or a synagogue represent and encourage? Religious buildings—whether cathedrals or minarets—often feature architecture that reaches for the sky. But everyone knows that the heavens are cold and lifeless. And "reaching for new heights" would be a fitting metaphor to describe religious devotion were it not for the fact that so many religions encourage us to grovel, to submit, to lay down our spirits for the service of a higher power.

What is the human spirit, in the end? Our spirit, if it is anything, is our "glassy essence," what distinguishes us from all other living beings: our rational mind. But the reasoning mind is precisely what religious faith bids us to ignore or abandon. There are still those religious thinkers (mostly obscure figures in the West) who think that God's existence might be proved rationally. But this is not the attitude that motivates the masses or their religious leaders to build monuments to an all-powerful, unseen deity, to which all of their worldly pursuits must be subordinate.

Many have noted the disparity between mankind’s technological and moral progress. Often the example is the invention of advanced weaponry which is subsequently used to slaughter masses of people. But if morality pertains to human flourishing on Earth, and if human reasoning is what enables that flourishing, then war is not the only example of this disparity. The contradictions of the Burj Dubai illustrate it, as well.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/palander/ / CC BY 2.0

Labels: , ,

Friday, January 15, 2010

The Source and Nature of Rights, Part III

Posted by TOS Admin at 10:51 AM

Part three of Craig Biddle’s six-hour seminar The Source and Nature of Rights has been posted to UFM’s website and is accessible for free. In this section, Mr. Biddle continues his discussion of Ayn Rand’s ethics and theory of rights.

Labels: , , ,

Wednesday, January 06, 2010

Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged on Stossel, Jan 7

Posted by TOS Admin at 9:50 PM

From the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights:

The Ayn Rand Center is excited to announce that Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand’s magnum opus, will be the subject of the Thursday, January 7, edition of Stossel on the Fox Business Network.

The program airs at 8 p.m., eastern time, and features interviews with leading Objectivist intellectuals including Yaron Brook, president of the Ayn Rand Center, John Allison, chairman of BB&T Corp., and C. Bradley Thompson, executive director of the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism.

If you’re not able to view the upcoming airing, please check your local listing for a possible rebroadcast.

Labels: , ,

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Two New Audio Articles

Posted by TOS Admin at 2:27 AM

Audio versions of Paul Hsieh's article "How the Freedom to Contract Protects Insurability" and Richard M. Salsman's article "Altruism: The Moral Root of the Financial Crisis" have been posted to our Audio page. These recordings are accessible for free and can be played directly on our website or downloaded to your MP3 player.

Enjoy!

Labels: , , , ,

Wednesday, December 09, 2009

The Winter Issue of TOS

Posted by Craig Biddle at 12:11 PM

The print edition of the Winter issue is at press and will be mailed shortly; the online version will be accessible to subscribers beginning December 20. For promotional purposes, we are making Robert Mayhew’s review of Jennifer Burns’s Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right available on our website early and for free.

The contents of the Winter issue are:

From the Editor

Letters and Replies

ARTICLES

Pharmacide: The Pharmaceutical Industry’s Self-Destructive Effort to Loot America
by Cassandra Clark

Antitrust with a Vengeance: The Obama Administration’s Anti-Business Cudgel
by Eric Daniels

What the “Affordable Health Care for America Act,” HR 3962, Actually Says
by John David Lewis

The California Coastal Commission: A Case Study in Governmental Assault on Property Rights
by Paul Beard

The Barbary Wars and Their Lesson for Combating Piracy Today
by Doug Altner

Objective Moral Values
by Craig Biddle

BOOKS REVIEWED

Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right by Jennifer Burns
Reviewed by Robert Mayhew

Heaven and Earth: Global Warming, the Missing Science by Ian Plimer
Reviewed by Gus Van Horn

Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed by Christopher C. Horner
Reviewed by Daniel Wahl

Islamic Imperialism: A History by Efraim Karsh
Reviewed by Andrew Lewis

The Israel Test by George Gilder
Reviewed by Daniel Wahl

Due to popular demand, we have extended our 60% off sale through January 1. Online subscriptions—including gift subscriptions—are only $19. If you have not yet subscribed to TOS, now is the perfect time to give it a try. And if you are looking for the perfect gift for an active-minded friend or relative, what could be better than a steady stream of clearly written, easy-to-read articles addressing current events and cultural issues from a rational, principled perspective? You can purchase gift subscriptions online or by calling 800-423-6151.

Enjoy your holidays!

Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

The Source and Nature of Rights, Part II

Posted by TOS Admin at 10:39 AM

Part two of Craig Biddle’s six-hour seminar, The Source and Nature of Rights, given at Universidad Francisco Marroquín in October, has been posted to UFM’s website and is accessible for free. In this section, Mr. Biddle begins presenting the principles of Ayn Rand’s ethics that give rise to her theory of rights.

Labels: , ,

Capitalism: The Only Moral Social System

Posted by TOS Admin at 12:34 AM

Craig Biddle’s talk Capitalism: The Only Moral Social System, given at Universidad Francisco Marroquín on October 28, has been posted to UFM’s website and is accessible for free. Enjoy!

Labels: , , ,

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Don't Say Grace, Say Justice

Posted by Craig Biddle at 6:42 PM

The religious tradition of saying grace before meals becomes especially popular around the holidays, when we all are reminded of how fortunate we are to have an abundance of life-sustaining goods and services at our disposal. But there is a grave injustice involved in this tradition. It is the injustice of thanking an alleged God for the productive accomplishments of actual men.

Where do the ideas, principles, constitutions, governments, and laws that protect our rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness come from? What is the source of the meals, medicines, homes, automobiles, and fighter jets that keep us alive and enable us to flourish? Who is responsible for our freedom, prosperity, and well-being?

Is freedom a gift from God? It is not. Freedom, the absence of physical coercion, is a political condition resulting from the rational, principled thought and action of men—men such as Aristotle, John Locke, the Founding Fathers, Frederick Douglass, and American soldiers.

Did God make the ambrosia that melts in your mouth, or the asthma medicine that keeps your child alive, or the plush recliner in which you relax, or the big-screen TV on which you watch your favorite show? Did God create the jetliners that bring friends and family from afar, or the stealth bombers that keep the barbarians at bay, or the music that warms your heart and fuels your soul?

Since God is responsible for none of the goods on which human life and happiness depend, why thank him for any such goods? More to the point: Why not thank those who actually are responsible for them? What would a just man do?

Justice is the virtue of judging people rationally—according to what they say, do, and produce—and treating them accordingly, granting to each man that which he deserves. If someone spends the day preparing a wonderful meal, justice demands that he, not God, be thanked for doing so. If someone provides his family with a warm, safe, comfortable home, justice demands that he, not God, be thanked for providing it. If a policeman or fireman or doctor saves someone’s life, justice demands that he, not God, be thanked. If a loving spouse or child or parent or friend provides you with great joy, justice demands that he, not God, be acknowledged accordingly. If a philosopher discovers the principles on which freedom depends—and if others put those principles into practice—justice demands that they, not God, be given credit.

To say grace is to give credit where none is due—and, worse, it is to withhold credit where it is due. To say grace is to commit an act of injustice.

Rational, productive people—whether philosophers, scientists, inventors, artists, businessmen, military strategists, friends, family, or yourself—are who deserve to be thanked for the goods on which your life, liberty, and happiness depend. This holiday season—and from now on—don’t say grace; say justice. Thank or acknowledge the people who actually provide the goods. Some of them may be sitting right there at the table with you. And if you find yourself at a table where people insist on saying grace, politely insist on saying justice when they’re through. It’s the right thing to do.

Labels: , , , , ,

Saturday, November 14, 2009

The Source and Nature of Rights, Part I

Posted by TOS Admin at 8:41 PM

The video of part one of Craig Biddle’s six-hour seminar, The Source and Nature of Rights, has been posted to the website of Universidad Francisco Marroquín. In this first hour, Mr. Biddle surveys common theories of rights—from God-given rights to man-made rights to so-called “natural” rights—and explains why each fails to ground rights in reality. In part two, which has yet to be posted, he begins his presentation of Ayn Rand’s theory of rights.

Labels: , ,

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

The Berlin Wall and the Meaning of its Fall

Posted by Craig Biddle at 2:03 PM

Here’s a superb 2-part discussion by Yaron Brook and Onkar Ghate about the history of the Berlin Wall and the significance of its fall.

Labels: , ,

Thursday, October 01, 2009

The Fall issue of TOS has been Posted and Mailed

Posted by Craig Biddle at 4:11 PM

The print edition of the Fall issue has been mailed, and the online version has been posted to our website. (Due to production difficulties, the print edition was mailed a few days late. I apologize for the delay.) The contents of the Fall issue are:

From the Editor

Letters and Replies

ARTICLES
Obama’s Atomic Bomb: The Ideological Clarity of the Democratic Agenda
by John David Lewis

America’s Self-Crippled Foreign Policy: An Interview with Yaron Brook, Elan Journo, and Alex Epstein

An Unwinnable War?
by Elan Journo

The Creed of Sacrifice vs. The Land of Liberty
by Craig Biddle

The Rise of American Big Government: A Brief History of How We Got Here
by Michael Dahlen

How the Freedom to Contract Protects Insurability
by Paul Hsieh

How Morality is Grounded in Reality
by Craig Biddle

BOOKS REVIEWED
Objectively Speaking: Ayn Rand Interviewed edited by Marlene Podritske and Peter Schwartz
Reviewed by Dina Schein Federman

The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder
Reviewed by Daniel Wahl

Fred Astaire by Joseph Epstein
Reviewed by Scott Holleran

The Garden of Invention: Luther Burbank and the Business of Breeding Plants by Jane S. Smith
Reviewed by Daniel Wahl

If you have not yet subscribed to TOS, there is no time like now. You can subscribe online or by calling 800-423-6151.

Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Rationally Selfish Radio with Dr. Diana Hsieh

Posted by Craig Biddle at 1:08 PM

I’d like to recommend a new podcast program called Rationally Selfish Radio, hosted by Dr. Diana Hsieh. Dr. Hsieh posts two podcasts per week, discussing a broad spectrum of topics—from how an introvert can meet people, to the conditions under which a person can morally accept an inheritance, to the essential factors in choosing a career, to the nature and status of cosmological arguments for the existence of God. She has also interviewed me (on the subject of sacrifice vs. liberty) and plans to interview other writers and intellectuals in the future.

In the nine episodes to date, Dr. Hsieh has consistently zeroed in on the principles pertaining to the subjects at hand; she has applied them with precision and with clarifying examples; and she has done so in an entertaining and easy-to-follow manner. (Don’t be thrown by her slow talking in episode #1; she picks it up in subsequent shows.) I highly recommend Rationally Selfish Radio to anyone interested in the application of sound philosophy to good living. Click on, tune in, live well!

Labels: , ,

Monday, September 14, 2009

The Fall Issue of TOS

Posted by Craig Biddle at 3:54 PM

The print edition of the Fall issue is at press and will be mailed shortly; the online version will be accessible to subscribers beginning September 20. For promotional purposes, we are making both John David Lewis’s article “Obama’s Atomic Bomb: The Ideological Clarity of the Democratic Agenda” and Paul Hsieh’s article “How the Freedom to Contract Protects Insurability” available on our website early and for free.

The contents of the Fall issue are:

From the Editor

Letters and Replies

ARTICLES
Obama’s Atomic Bomb: The Ideological Clarity of the Democratic Agenda
by John David Lewis

America’s Self-Crippled Foreign Policy: An Interview with Yaron Brook, Elan Journo, and Alex Epstein

An Unwinnable War?
by Elan Journo

The Creed of Sacrifice vs. The Land of Liberty
by Craig Biddle

The Rise of American Big Government: A Brief History of How We Got Here
by Michael Dahlen

How the Freedom to Contract Protects Insurability
by Paul Hsieh

How Morality is Grounded in Reality
by Craig Biddle

BOOKS REVIEWED
Objectively Speaking: Ayn Rand Interviewed edited by Marlene Podritske and Peter Schwartz
Reviewed by Dina Schein Federman

The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder
Reviewed by Daniel Wahl

Fred Astaire by Joseph Epstein
Reviewed by Scott Holleran

The Garden of Invention: Luther Burbank and the Business of Breeding Plants by Jane S. Smith
Reviewed by Daniel Wahl

If you have not yet subscribed to TOS, why not subscribe today? You can do so online or by calling 800-423-6151.

Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

Thursday, September 03, 2009

Yaron Brook Interviewed by Larry Greenfield

Posted by Craig Biddle at 12:10 PM

Here is part one of a four-part interview with Yaron Brook, conducted by Larry Greenfield of The Claremont Institute.

Labels: , , , , , ,

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Craig Biddle on the Doc Thompson Show August 17

Posted by TOS Admin at 2:02 PM

Monday, August 17, at 4:05 p.m. (EST), Craig Biddle will be interviewed on the Doc Thompson Show (WRVA, Richmond, VA) about his book Loving Life and Ayn Rand’s morality of selfishness. The show can be heard online at www.wrva.com (click on “Listen Live”).

Labels: , , ,

Saturday, August 01, 2009

NYT Article on BB&T, John Allison, and Ayn Rand

Posted by Craig Biddle at 7:52 PM

Andrew Martin has a nice article in today’s New York Times, titled “Give BB&T Liberty, but Not a Bailout.” The piece is, for the most part, positive, and I highly recommend it.

I must point out, however, that the article includes a smear by subjectivist philosopher Brian Leiter, who expresses his wish that Rand is “irrelevant” and that her ideas are “simple-minded in the extreme” and “embarrassing.” Well, I suppose her ideas would be embarrassing to someone such as Leiter, who, in the article, exposes his method for answering such questions as whether or not a given person is a philosopher: Take a poll.

The reason why Rand’s philosophy is not for Leiter & Company is that it is for those who are willing to think for themselves rather than follow the herd, and who are not embarrassed by clear, straightforward arguments, which characterize Rand’s work.

Labels: , ,

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Summer Issue of The Objective Standard

Posted by Craig Biddle at 1:10 AM

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

From the Editor

Letters and Replies

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

Justice Holmes and the Empty Constitution by Thomas A. Bowden

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Enjoy the issue, and have a wonderful summer!

Labels: , , , , ,

Sunday, April 26, 2009

Help Fight for a Future of Reason and Freedom

Posted by Craig Biddle at 3:28 PM

Dear Reader,

I’m writing to ask for your help.

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,
Craig Biddle, Editor

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

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

Labels: , , ,

Friday, April 17, 2009

On April 22, Celebrate Exploit-the-Earth Day

Posted by Craig Biddle at 2:51 PM

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Labels: , , ,

Friday, March 27, 2009

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

Posted by Craig Biddle at 6:23 PM

Atlas Shrugged

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

Enjoy!

Labels: , , ,

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

The Spring Issue of TOS

Posted by Craig Biddle at 8:41 PM

The print edition of the Spring issue is at press and will be mailed shortly; the online version will be accessible to subscribers beginning March 20. For promotional purposes, we are making “Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and the World Today: An Interview with Yaron Brook” and “Altruism: The Moral Root of the Financial Crisis” by Richard M. Salsman available early and to all.

The contents of the Spring issue are:

From the Editor

ARTICLES
Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and the World Today
An Interview with Yaron Brook

America’s Unfree Market
by Yaron Brook and Don Watkins

Altruism: The Moral Root of the Financial Crisis
by Richard M. Salsman

Lest We Be Doomed to Repeat It: A Survey of Amity Shlaes’s History of the Great Depression
by Ari Armstrong

Of Freedom and Fat: Why Anti-Obesity Laws Are Immoral
by Stella Daily

Houston, We Have a (Zoning) Problem
by J. Brian Phillips

Doubt vs. Certainty
by Gena Gorlin

Religion vs. Subjectivism: Why Neither Will Do
by Craig Biddle

BOOKS REVIEWED
Greenspan’s Bubbles: The Age of Ignorance at the Federal Reserve, by William A. Fleckenstein with Frederick Sheehan
Reviewed by Joe Kroeger

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, by Dan Ariely
Reviewed by Eric Daniels

Concierge Medicine: A New System to Get the Best Healthcare, by Steven D. Knope, MD
Reviewed by Michael Garrett, MD

If you have not yet subscribed to TOS, why not subscribe today? You can do so online or by calling 800-423-6151.

Enjoy!

Craig Biddle, Editor
The Objective Standard

Labels: , , , , , ,

Friday, December 05, 2008

The Forthcoming Issue of TOS

Posted by TOS Admin at 3:57 PM

The print edition of the Winter issue of The Objective Standard is at press and will be mailed shortly; the online version will be accessible to subscribers beginning December 20. For promotional purposes, “Capitalism and the Moral High Ground” and “Reason or Faith: The Republican Alternative” are available early and to all.

The contents of the Winter issue are:

From the Editor
Letters & Replies

ARTICLES
“Capitalism and the Moral High Ground” by Craig Biddle
“Reason or Faith: The Republican Alternative” by John David Lewis
“Net Neutrality: Toward a Stupid Internet” by Raymond C. Niles
“Bubble Boy: Alan Greenspan’s Rejection of Reason and Morality” by Gus Van Horn
“The Assault on Energy Producers” by Brian P. Simpson
“Demystifying Newton: The Force Behind the Genius” by Gena Gorlin
“Errors in Inductive Reasoning” by David Harriman

BOOKS REVIEWED
New Deal or Raw Deal? How FDR’s Economic Legacy Has Damaged America by Burton Folsom Jr. (reviewed by Eric Daniels)
Better Day Coming: Blacks and Equality, 1890–2000 by Adam Fairclough (reviewed by Gus Van Horn)

If you have not yet subscribed to TOS, you can do so online or by calling 800-423-6151. And the Standard makes a great Christmas gift for your active-minded friends, colleagues, and relatives. Everyone concerned with the future should be reading this journal today.

Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Don't Say Grace, Say Justice

Posted by Craig Biddle at 8:23 PM

The religious tradition of saying grace before meals becomes especially popular around the holidays, when we all are reminded of how fortunate we are to have an abundance of life-sustaining goods and services at our disposal. But there is a grave injustice involved in this tradition. It is the injustice of thanking an alleged God for the productive accomplishments of actual men.

Where do the ideas, principles, constitutions, governments, and laws that protect our rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness come from? What is the source of the meals, medicines, homes, automobiles, and fighter jets that keep us alive and enable us to flourish? Who is responsible for our freedom, prosperity, and well-being?

Is freedom a gift from God? It is not. Freedom, the absence of physical coercion, is a political condition resulting from the rational, principled thought and action of men—men such as Aristotle, John Locke, the Founding Fathers, Frederick Douglass, and American soldiers.

Did God make the ambrosia that melts in your mouth, or the asthma medicine that keeps your child alive, or the plush recliner in which you relax, or the big-screen TV on which you watch your favorite show? Did God create the jetliners that bring friends and family from afar, or the stealth bombers that keep the barbarians at bay, or the music that warms your heart and fuels your soul?

Since God is responsible for none of the goods on which human life and happiness depend, why thank him for any such goods? More to the point: Why not thank those who actually are responsible for them? What would a just man do?

Justice is the virtue of judging people rationally—according to what they say, do, and produce—and treating them accordingly, granting to each man that which he deserves. If someone spends the day preparing a wonderful meal, justice demands that he, not God, be thanked for doing so. If someone provides his family with a warm, safe, comfortable home, justice demands that he, not God, be thanked for providing it. If a policeman or fireman or doctor saves someone’s life, justice demands that he, not God, be thanked. If a loving spouse or child or parent or friend provides you with great joy, justice demands that he, not God, be acknowledged accordingly. If a philosopher discovers the principles on which freedom depends—and if others put those principles into practice—justice demands that they, not God, be given credit.

To say grace is to give credit where none is due—and, worse, it is to withhold credit where it is due. To say grace is to commit an act of injustice.

Rational, productive people—whether philosophers, scientists, inventors, artists, businessmen, military strategists, friends, family, or yourself—are who deserve to be thanked for the goods on which your life, liberty, and happiness depend. This holiday season—and from now on—don’t say grace; say justice. Thank or acknowledge the people who actually provide the goods. Some of them may be sitting right there at the table with you. And if you find yourself at a table where people insist on saying grace, politely insist on saying justice when they’re through. It’s the right thing to do.

Labels: , , , , ,

Friday, November 21, 2008

The Menace of Pragmatism: How Aversion to Principle Is Destroying America

Posted by ARC Media at 1:14 AM

Who: Dr. Tara Smith, professor of philosophy at the University of Texas and speaker for the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights.

What: A talk explaining the influence and the destructive nature of pragmatism in our culture. A Q&A will follow.

Where: National Press Club, 529 14th Street NW, 13th floor, Washington, DC 20045.

When: Monday, December 8, 2008, at 6:30 pm.

Admission: FREE. The public and media are invited.

Description:

Shouldn't we be pragmatic?

While Americans disagree vehemently about all manner of moral and political issues, beneath that disagreement rests the shared presumption that the way forward is always through moderation and compromise. In intellectual method—i.e., in our way of addressing problems and disagreements—Americans are united as pragmatists. Contrary to pragmatism’s image of reason and practical good sense, however, pragmatic methodology is actually self-destructive.

This talk explains what pragmatism is and the countless ways it is manifested across the cultural spectrum. It analyzes the major elements of pragmatism’s appeal as well as its fundamental errors. It also surveys the vast damage that pragmatic methods inflict, damage that is spiritual as well as material. Finally, the talk considers the most effective means of dethroning this pervasive—and destructive—mindset.

Bio: Tara Smith is a professor of philosophy at the University of Texas, where she currently holds the Anthem Foundation Fellowship for the Study of Objectivism. She is the author of the books Moral Rights and Political Freedom, Viable Values: A Study of Life as the Root and Reward of Morality, and Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist, as well as numerous articles.

For more information on this talk, please e-mail media@aynrandcenter.org.

###  ### ###

Dr. Tara Smith is available for interviews now and after her talk.

Contact: David Holcberg
E-mail: media@aynrandcenter.org          
Phone: (949) 222-6550, ext. 226

For more information on Objectivism’s unique point of view, go to ARC’s Web site. The Ayn Rand Center is a division of the Ayn Rand Institute and promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.”

Copyright © 2008 Ayn Rand® Center for Individual Rights. All rights reserved.

Labels: , ,