Summer 2023 • Vol. 18, No. 2
From the Editor, Summer 2023
Welcome to the Summer 2023 issue of The Objective Standard. I hope you enjoy the issue—and that you’ll join the six hundred or so people coming to Phoenix for 2023’s most life-enhancing conference! Continue »
Cover Article
Good Living, Philosophy, Politics & Rights
Navigating Today’s Seductive and Destructive Language (A Study of Package-Deals and Anti-Concepts)
If we want to understand and protect the values on which human life and liberty depend, we need clear understandings of the terms we use in thinking about them. Toward this end, it is helpful to understand the fallacy that Rand called “package-dealing” and the nature of what she called “anti-concepts.”
Features
Ayn Rand & Objectivism, Economics, History, Philosophy, Politics & Rights
Adam Smith, Ayn Rand, and the Philosophic Foundation for Freedom
Adam Smith and Ayn Rand are widely considered to offer merely different flavors of pro-capitalist thought. But their differences are greater—and far more consequential—than their similarities.
Philosophy
The Ethics of Belief
William Kingdon Clifford was a 19th-century English mathematician and philosopher. In this essay, “The Ethics of Belief,” originally published in 1877, he argues that “it is wrong always, everywhere and for any one, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.”
Shorts
Education & Parenting, Politics & Rights
Schools Foment Shootings by Undermining Self-Esteem
Not only do many educators and parents fail to encourage and help children learn how to think and become efficacious, they also paint the whole of mankind as incompetent, or worse, self-destructive.
History, Politics & Rights
Brits Should Reject Monarchy and Embrace Rights
If freedom-loving Brits are serious about the moral principles on which liberty depends, they must oppose the monarchy and advance a vision of a free British republic.
Reviews
Good Living, Philosophy
Living for Pleasure: An Epicurean Guide to Life by Emily A. Austin
Living for Pleasure is a fun and much-needed introduction to the ideas of one of the world’s greatest philosophers. Epicurus’s teachings about reason, desire, and tranquility are as important now as they were twenty-three hundred years ago.
History, Reviews
The Stasi Poetry Circle: The Creative Writing Class That Tried to Win the Cold War by Philip Oltermann
The Stasi Poetry Circle offers an unusual glimpse of the relationship between communist totalitarianism and the poetic impulses of both its victims and their victimizers.
Politics & Rights, Reviews, Science & Technology
The Case for Nukes: How We Can Beat Global Warming and Create a Free, Open, and Magnificent Future by Robert Zubrin
The Case for Nukes is a refreshingly rational overview, not just of the merits of nuclear power, but of the potentially wonderful future of the human race and the ideas we must embrace and reject if we want to create a better future for ourselves and our descendants.
Education & Parenting, Reviews
How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren
How to Read a Book was incredibly important and valuable when it was first published in 1940, and it remains so today. It’s so packed with clear, accessible, and oft-overlooked wisdom that even expert readers will find it an indispensable addition to their libraries.
Arts & Culture, Reviews
What’s Love Got to Do With It? Directed by Shekhar Kapur
What’s Love Got to Do With It? is a well-written and refreshingly thoughtful film that shows the crucial importance of honesty and independent thinking in achieving happiness. It is a sensitive yet incisive study of the clash between Islamic and Western cultures—and between collectivism and individualism.
