Philosophy

An independent thinker faces reality and thinks for himself. A second-hander faces other people and expects them to think for him.

[caption id="attachment_28169" align="alignright" width="241"] Image: Wikimedia Commons[/caption] In a recent Christian Science Monitor editorial, Vladimir Shlapentokh suggests that the popularity of Ayn Rand among Tea Partiers should “concern all Americans” and recommends that Tea Partiers distance themselves from the 20th-century philosopher and novelist. Why? According to Shlapentokh, Ayn Rand was…

In Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist, Tara Smith dives deep into the virtues on which life depends, showing why they are requirements and what they demand. Here are six quotes I particularly liked, from Smith's chapter on honesty: "As the refusal to fake reality, honesty consists in a deliberate,…

Here’s a beautiful (albeit harrowing) passage from Meslier’s Superstition in All Ages: What light could have been thrown into the minds of many famous thinkers, if, instead of occupying themselves with a useless theology, and its impertinent disputes, they had turned their attention upon intelligible and truly important objects. Half…

Burgess Laughlin reviews Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea, by C. Bradley Thompson with Yaron Brook.

Discusses the necessary conditions of a civilized society—or, the moral nuts and bolts of freedom and capitalism.

“Social Security is the most successful social program in the history of the world,” says Harry Reid, the Democratic senator of Nevada. Investors Business Daily replies: Successful? A program that socks future generations with trillions in higher taxes and lower standards of living? A program that’s already running in the…

On this day in 1992, a young Muslim woman stood on a train platform with only a duffel bag, a tenacious spirit, and an active mind. These were all she needed now. Before she wrote a best-selling autobiography, the stories of her childhood would have sounded as foreign to Westerners as…

Presents and concretizes the principles of action essential to a lifetime of happiness.

Here is the final batch of drawings of Mohammed, in defense of the requirements of human life and civilized society. In honor of “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day,” we have placed all of the drawings together on a single dedicated page, which can be found here. I wish to thank those…