Ayn Rand & Objectivism

Craig Biddle fields questions on the ideas that undergird liberty, the morality of communes, and the prospect of defending liberty with "non-coercive altruism." http://www.youtube.com/embed/18YochP4wVg

An American who considers all the places he might have been born will conclude (if he values his life and happiness) that he was lucky to have been born in America, the Land of Opportunity, the Land of Liberty. Those born anywhere in the industrialized (or even semi-industrialized) world will…

Everyone is aware that America faces a financial crisis involving the $16.3 trillion national debt, the impending “fiscal cliff,” and the long-term insolvency of entitlement programs. But America also, and more fundamentally, faces a moral crisis—a crisis that underlies and gives rise to the financial crisis—and we cannot effectively act…

Here's a video of a speech I gave at Liberty on the Rocks in Lafayette, CO last Monday. Enjoy! http://www.youtube.com/embed/ot5OyZSuU34 Like this post? Join our mailing list to receive our weekly digest. And for in-depth commentary from an Objectivist perspective, subscribe to our quarterly journal, The Objective Standard. Related: Ayn…

Another day, another dishonest hit piece on Ayn Rand. This time, though, Sanjay Sanghoee’s smear, penned for Huffington Post, despicably uses the tragedies surrounding the deadly Hurricane Sandy to misrepresent Rand’s views in order to smear her. Sanghoee begins his “argument” with the fantasy that Glenn Beck is somehow a…

In his recent interview with Rolling Stone magazine, President Obama, following the lead of other leftists, implies that Ayn Rand’s ideas are not for mature, intelligent adults, but rather for immature, ignorant teenagers—“17 or 18 and feeling misunderstood,” as he puts it. Much could be said of Obama’s comments on…

Barack Obama claims to have read Ayn Rand, which is hard to believe given how completely he misrepresents her views. Of course, Obama’s distortions of Rand’s ideas feed his political agenda of forcing wealth transfers and shackling producers, policies Rand certainly would have rejected as immoral and destructive. In a…

On Friday, I posted on TOS Blog explaining why evolutionary anthropologist Eric Michael Johnson failed, in a recent Slate article, to disprove Ayn Rand’s ethics. I also showed that his article betrayed a gross misunderstanding of Rand’s philosophy. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Johnson responded on Twitter: How shocking. A magazine dedicated…

Even if it were true that historical tribes had primitive rules that nod to modern altruism, this would not disprove Ayn Rand’s ethics.

Last night Diana Hsieh of Philosophy in Action interviewed Craig Biddle about common mistakes people make in thinking about ethics. The full podcast of the hourlong interview is now available. Discussion encompassed "people's wrong ideas about ethics, including ethics of duty, pragmatism, religious ethics, [and] collectivism." For Biddle's systematic treatment…