Spring 2020 • Vol. 15, No. 1
From the Editor, Spring 2020
This issue begins TOS’s fifteenth year of publication, and I’ve never been more in love with this journal or what it represents or the work that my team, our writers, and I get to do. Continue »
Cover Article
Arts & Culture, Biographies
Justice for Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson was no child molester. The facts simply don’t support that horrific accusation. His acquittal in 2005 was the only evidence-based and morally defensible outcome.
Features
Arts & Culture, History
Zora Neale Hurston, Undefeated
Often scorned and rejected in her own day, Zora Neale Hurston was a pioneering writer who looked beyond the controversies of her time and sought to articulate a lasting vision of life—one free of bitterness or pettiness and full of grace and beauty.
Arts & Culture
Enrich Your Life with Poetry
What the sun can do for reality, poetry can do for life. It can inspire us with ideals, reveal the depth beyond the surface, burnish our lives with beauty, turn the simple into the sacred, and make us aspire past what things are to what they might be.
Politics & Rights, Science & Technology
Social Media and the Future of Civil Society
Social media at times may carry messages we abhor. Shooting the messenger, though, is not a solution but a path toward statism. If we want to safeguard the future of civil society, then we must defend the rights of social media companies.
Ayn Rand & Objectivism, Philosophy, Politics & Rights
Bosch Fawstin on Combating the Evil of Islam
Freedom of speech is the last leg of a free society—and Bosch Fawstin is on the front line in the battle against the Islamic assault on this pillar.
Shorts
Education & Parenting, Politics & Rights
My Sixth-Grade Socialist Indoctrination
I wonder how much better off my classmates might be today if, at that tender age, they were taught about earning money and spending it according to their own values—rather than about making sacrifices in the name of “virtue.”
Arts & Culture
The ‘Purely Musical’ Madison Cunningham
Madison Cunningham, just twenty-five, already has proven herself a consummate artist with the power to fuse melody, meaning, and an eclectic blend of musical styles to create grand works that can still fairly be described as pop songs.
Arts & Culture
Dorothy Fontana Was ‘a Damn Good Writer’
Dorothy Fontana, who died this week at the age of eighty, is best known for her work as a writer for the original Star Trek television series. But, in fact, she was one of the most remarkable women in Hollywood history.
Arts & Culture, Biographies
The Benevolent Spirit Behind Spongebob Squarepants
Stephen Hillenburg left a legacy of youthful enthusiasm and exuberant optimism.
Arts & Culture, Ayn Rand & Objectivism, Good Living
How Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth Saved My Life
So miserable was my pre-Goodkind, pre-Rand life, that had I not discovered their works, I might be dead today.