Mar 19, 2007 | Dollars & Crosses
Who: Dr. Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum
Dr. Yaron Brook, president of the Ayn Rand Institute
Dr. Wafa Sultan, outspoken critic of Islam and author of the forthcoming
book "The Escaped Prisoner: When God Is a Monster"
What: A panel discussion on the threat of Islamic totalitarianism and how to deal with it
Where: UCLA Campus: Moore 100, Los Angeles, CA
When: Thursday, April 12, 2007, at 7:00 PM
Admission is FREE.
Description: From the Iranian hostage crisis to September 11 to the London subway attacks to the Iraqi insurgency--it is clear the West faces a grave threat from a committed enemy. Conventional wisdom holds that the enemy is a rogue group of fanatics, who have hijacked a great religion in order to justify their crimes. It tells us there is no way to permanently eliminate these violent groups, that we have entered an "age of terror" and that we must give up the desire for a decisive victory.
But is the conventional wisdom right?
A distinguished panel of Middle East experts will provide new and illuminating answers to the most important questions of our time: Is the West ready to concede victory so easily? Are the terrorists a fringe group of fanatics, or are they part of a much wider ideological movement? What threat do they pose to the West? What can the West do to ensure victory? Is peace possible?
While the experts will answer these complex questions from diverse points of view, they all agree on one thing: Islamic totalitarianism is a real threat, and the right response necessitates engaging in a principled, ideological battle to defend the West from the jihad declared against it.
Speakers' Biographies:
Dr. Yaron Brook is executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute and a recognized Middle-East expert who has written and lectured on a variety of Middle-East issues. Dr. Brook has served in the Israeli Army and has discussed the Israeli-Arab conflict and the war on Islamic totalitarianism on hundreds of radio and TV programs, including FOX News (The O'Reilly Factor, Your World with Neil Cavuto, At Large with Geraldo Rivera), CNN's Talkback Live, CNBC's Closing Bell and On the Money, and a C-SPAN panel of experts on terrorism.Dr. Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum. He taught history at the University of Chicago and at Harvard University, and lectured on policy and strategy at the Naval War College. He currently teaches at Pepperdine University. Dr. Pipes is the author of twelve books and numerous articles. He is a columnist for the New York Sun and he appears weekly in Israel's Jerusalem Post, Italy's L'Opinione, Spain's La Razón, and monthly in the Australian and Canada's Globe and Mail. His Web site, DanielPipes.org, is among the most accessed Internet sources of specialized information on the Middle East and Islam. Mr. Pipes has appeared on ABC World News, CBS Reports, Crossfire, Good Morning America, NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Nightline, O'Reilly Factor, The Today Show, the BBC and Al Jazeera.
Dr. Wafa Sultan is a secular Syrian-American writer and thinker, Dr. Sultan is known for her participation in Middle East political debates, widely circulated Arabic essays and television appearances on Al Jazeera, CNN and Fox News. Dr. Sultan was shocked into secularism by the atrocities committed against innocent Syrian people by the Muslim Brotherhood in 1979, including the machine-gun assassination of her professor in front of her eyes at the University of Aleppo, where she was a medical student. On February 21, 2006, she appeared on Al Jazeera, where she scolded Muslims for treating non-Muslims differently and for not acknowledging the accomplishments of non-Muslim societies, including their greater freedom and capacity for producing wealth and technology. She named the Islamic threat to the West as "a battle between modernity and barbarism which Islam will lose." A video of her appearance, widely circulated on Web logs and through e-mail, has been viewed an estimated 12 million times. Her outspokenness has brought her both threats and praise. Dr. Sultan is currently working on a book to be called "The Escaped Prisoner: When God Is a Monster."Mar 18, 2007 | Dollars & Crosses
The print version of the Spring issue of The Objective Standard is now online online. The contents include: The "Forward Strategy" for Failure by Yaron Brook and Elan Journo, The Rise and Fall of Ancient Greek Justice: Homer to the Sermon on the Mount by Robert Mayhew, Induction and Experimental Method by David Harriman, Egoism Explained: A Review of Tara Smith's Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist by Diana Hsieh. For promotional purposes, the online version of "The ‘Forward Strategy' for Failure" is accessible to all.Mar 14, 2007 | Dollars & Crosses
President Bush's strategy of bringing democracy to Iraq and the greater Middle East promised to bring security for America, but the so-called forward strategy for freedom has failed dismally. Was its failure due to a botched application of the policy? Was it a case of "idealism" run amok?
Neither, argue Dr. Yaron Brook and Elan Journo of the Ayn Rand Institute. In a forthcoming essay, "The 'Forward Strategy' for Failure," they explain why no amount of tinkering with the policy's implementation could have averted disaster. They argue--contrary to the implication of the Iraq Study Group's report--that the democracy crusade is proof, not of the futility of idealistic foreign policy, but of an ideal that repudiates the basic goal of U.S. national security. Bush's policy, the essay demonstrates, was doomed to failure because of the particular moral ideal driving it--the ideal of self-sacrifice.
That ideal, Brook and Journo argue, was manifest in the Bush administration's commitment to putting the whims of tribalist Iraqi mobs above the rights of Americans to live in freedom and security. The same pernicious ideal shaped the battle plans Washington issued to our military--battle plans that prevented our troops from using all necessary force to win or, tragically, to defend themselves. Bush's forward strategy is a pretense at pursuing U.S. national security, while in reality diligently renouncing that goal and strengthening Islamic totalitarians by ushering them into political office.
Outlining a path toward achieving U.S. national security, the essay indicates the nature of a rational foreign policy--and what a real "war on terrorism" should look like. America is capable of triumphing over Islamic totalitarianism--as the West triumphed over Nazism and Japanese imperialism sixty years ago--but to pursue such a strategy for victory requires the conviction that Americans have an unqualified right to exist and defend their freedom. That conviction is a result of holding the right moral values. The chief value Americans should embrace is the moral ideal of self-interest, a largely unknown ideal. It leads to a foreign policy that is both moral and practical.
"The 'Forward Strategy' for Failure," which will be published in the spring 2007 issue of The Objective Standard, is immediately available online at the journal's Web site: http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2007-spring/forward-strategy-for-failure.aspThe essay draws on a lecture presented by Dr. Brook at the Ford Hall Forum in Boston on October 22, 2006; an audio recording of that event is available as an MP3 download or streaming audio from WGBH Boston: http://forum.wgbh.org/wgbh/forum.php?lecture_id=3228Mar 13, 2007 | Dollars & Crosses
Irvine, CA--House leaders are promoting a new measure that would require all public corporations to hold annual shareholder votes to voice approval or disapproval of executive compensation.
"While this measure is being portrayed as protecting the rights of shareholders," said Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, "it is in fact a violation of those rights."
"If a majority of shareholders wishes to hold an annual vote to voice approval or disapproval of their board's executive compensation decisions, they have long been free to implement such a policy. But most companies and shareholders have judged that such votes are not in their interest, and it is not hard to imagine why--they do not want to give anti-CEO pundits and politicians yet more fuel to grandstand about 'excessive' CEO pay.
"To force shareholders and companies to adopt such policies against their judgment is not to protect shareholder rights, but to violate them wholesale."Mar 12, 2007 | Dollars & Crosses
Irvine, CA--Israeli and Palestinian leaders recently sat down to discuss a peace deal--but the U.S.-brokered talks were fruitless. Many voices, such as the "New York Times," acknowledge that "the biggest single obstacle to peace" is the refusal of Hamas, a member of the Palestinian "unity government," to recognize Israel and renounce violence. But, we are told, if Israel would only make more generous concessions to the Palestinians and bolster their "moderate" leaders, then negotiations can yield peace.
"But we must reject the underlying premise of such talks," said Elan Journo, junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute. "It is absurd to debate which combination of concessions Israel should offer and to which faction of Palestinians--because the very notion of diplomatically engaging the Palestinians is illegitimate. If there's to be peace, the Israelis must end the threat of Palestinian terrorism by military force.
"Israel's goal of peace is impossible to achieve diplomatically, because a legitimate negotiation presupposes that both sides share the goal of peace. But the Palestinians--both the self-righteously militant Hamas and the supposedly moderate Fatah--seek to destroy Israel. There is no way to negotiate with enemies who want to kill you. To engage them in talks is to concede their right to kill you; after that, all that's left to debate is the size of the rewards the murderers will collect and in what installments.
"The Palestinian war must end eventually--and either they will triumph and wipe Israel from the map, or else Israel will protect the lives of its citizens and defeat the Palestinians. Instead of pressuring Israel to appease the Palestinians--and thus encouraging their aggression--the United States should endorse and champion Israel's moral right to defeat them. If Palestinians learn that their war against Israel is futile, if their aggression is punished--they will give up their cause. That is a necessary first step on the road to peace."Mar 7, 2007 | Dollars & Crosses
Irvine, CA--Last Thursday European Union authorities threatened Microsoft Corp. with fines that may reach a billion dollars for "overcharging" rival companies for proprietary information.
"European regulators should have no power to determine what the price of Microsoft's intellectual property should be," said Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute. "That is Microsoft's right."
"The European Union justifies its assault on Microsoft's property rights by claiming that the company 'has abused its virtual monopoly power' and engaged in 'unfair' competition by setting 'unreasonable' prices.
"But the only thing that is abusive and unfair in this case is the European Union's use of force to violate Microsoft's rights in order to help its competitors. Microsoft has no power to force anyone to buy its products; if its prices were truly unreasonable given the interests of its customers, then its customers would not pay them. What prices are reasonable should be up to the choice and judgment of buyers and sellers--not European bureaucrats who, by their own admission, think Microsoft should charge nothing for its proprietary information."