Philosophy

[caption id="attachment_31275" align="alignright" width="300"] Image: Ensceptico[/caption] Following thinly-veiled death threats by a Muslim group against Trey Parker and Matt Stone (the creators of South Park) for portraying Mohammed dressed as a bear in a cartoon, Anderson Cooper interviewed the author of Infidel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali. I grew up as a…

A recent story in the New York Times draws attention to recent legislative attempts by creationists to force public schools to “teach the controversy” between evolution and creationism, and between the man-made global warming hypothesis and criticisms of it. Two recent developments have pushed the creationists to draw parallels between…

Heike Larson reviews Infidel, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Identifies and concretizes the principles by means of which one can fill one’s life with meaning and joy.

[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.…

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…

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…

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?…

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.

[caption id="attachment_33190" align="alignright" width="300"] Image: Petter Palander[/caption] 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…