May 12, 2011 | Philosophy, Politics
Writes Philosopher Onkar Ghate over at CSM:
How, people wondered, could Rand have foreseen all this? Was she a prophet? No, she answered. [Ayn Rand] had simply identified the basic cause of why the country was veering from crisis to new crisis.
Was the solution to “go Galt” and quit society? No, Rand again answered. The solution was simultaneously much easier and much harder. “So long as we have not yet reached the state of censorship of ideas,” she once said, “one does not have to leave a society in the way the characters did in Atlas Shrugged.... But you know what one does have to do? One has to break relationships with the culture.... [D]iscard all the ideas – the entire cultural philosophy which is dominant today.”
Now, if you’ve only seen the movie, the fact that "Atlas Shrugged" is not a political novel might surprise you. But the book’s point is that our plight is caused not by corrupt politicians (who are only a symptom) orsome alleged flaw in human nature. It’s caused by the philosophic ideas and moral ideals most of us embrace. ['Atlas Shrugged': With America on the brink, should you 'go Galt' and strike?]
For more on Rand's philosophy read Leonard Peikoff's Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand.
May 11, 2011 | Politics
Writes Richard Salsman over at Forbes:
President Obama deserves a modicum of praise for finally allowing a
team of U.S. Navy Seals to kill mass-murderer and al Qaeda kingpin Osama
bin Laden last weekend, but only disdain for delaying the operation for
so long, and harsh condemnation for extolling “extraordinary sacrifice”
at his Ground Zero visit. Like his feckless predecessor, Mr. Obama
deserves the lowest grade for continuing to appease political-militant
Islam, as evidenced by the tender care and deep respect he bestowed on
bin Laden during the burial at sea.
“Shameful” is the only word fit to describe a U.S. foreign policy
that did nothing to bin Laden after 2005, when he first occupied his
conspicuous compound in Abbottabad, just 30 miles from Pakistan’s
capitol and close to the Pakistan Military Academy, which counted among
its notable visitors U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Admiral
Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Pakistan’s foreign
minister Salman Bashir told the BBC recently that in mid-2009 his
nation’s intelligence services (ISI) told the Obama regime about bin
Laden’s not-so-secret hide-out.
The CIA and Pentagon gave Mr. Obama a specific raid plan last August,
yet he dithered and remained reluctant to take military action. In time
it’ll likely be revealed that Mr. Obama gave the go-ahead only because
he feared leaks would reveal him to be weak and appeasing.
Of course, Barack Obama isn’t the only U.S. president who hoped to
give bin Laden a pass.
Read the rest.
May 7, 2011 | Education, Politics
Another brilliant op-ed over at Forbes by Yaron Brook and Don Watkins of the Ayn Rand Institute:
[...] The truth is that Ryan actually proposes increasing government spending in the coming years–just at a lower rate than current projections. So why are Ryan’s critics so up in arms?
Because Ryan’s plan dares to touch (albeit, merely to scratch) the
untouchable entitlement state. Ryan’s plan would, among other things,
trim and reorganize Medicare and Medicaid and reduce federal support for
education. To the plan’s critics, this amounts to “reverse-Robin Hood
redistribution,” as former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Blinder put it.
“[A]bout two-thirds of Mr. Ryan’s so-called courageous budget cuts
would come from programs serving low- and moderate-income Americans,
while the rich would gain from copious tax cuts.”
The “reverse-Robin Hood” line suggests that Ryan’s plan robs from
“the poor” and gives to “the rich.” But cutting entitlements is not
robbery–and cutting taxes isn’t a gift.
Entitlements are essentially government handouts: the government
takes money from some people in order to finance other people’s
retirements, doctor’s visits, and whatever else the government deems
worthy. They are unearned benefits. It is shameful that in a
civilized society we have to say this, but getting less loot is not the
same thing as being robbed.
A tax cut, meanwhile, is not a government handout–it is a reduction
of how much of your income the government takes. Whether you’re a
millionaire, billionaire, or an ambitious stock boy, a tax cut means you
get to keep more of what you earn.
In this context, consider president Obama’s recent budget speech,
in which he criticized Ryan’s plan for implying that “even though we
can’t afford to care for seniors and poor children, we can somehow
afford more than $1 trillion in new tax breaks for the wealthy.” When
Obama speaks of what “we” can afford, he is obviously smuggling in the
premise that all wealth rightfully belongs to society and that the
government–as society’s representative–will dole out that wealth as it
sees fit.
We reject that premise. On our view, you earned your wealth and it
belongs to you, and no politician has any business talking about how
much of your money he can “afford” to let you keep.
Read the rest of It’s Time To Kill The ‘Robin Hood’ Myth.
May 6, 2011 | Politics
Reports Bloomberg in Schools Find Ayn Rand Can’t Be Shrugged as Donors Build Courses on John Allison, former chairman of bank holding company BB&T Corp's strategy to spread Ayn Rand's laissez-faire principles on U.S. campuses:Allison, working through the BB&T Charitable Foundation, gives schools grants of as much as $2 million if they agree to create a course on capitalism and make Rand’s masterwork, “Atlas Shrugged,” required reading.
Allison’s crusade to counter what he considers the anti- capitalist orthodoxy at universities has produced results -- and controversy. Some 60 schools, including at least four campuses of the University of North Carolina, began teaching Rand’s book after getting the foundation money. Faculty at several schools that have accepted Allison’s terms are protesting, saying donors shouldn’t have the power to set the curriculum to pursue their political agendas, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its June issue.
So donors should give their money "with no strings attached" to causes that support some professor's own political agenda that the donor opposes?
“We have sought out professors who wanted to teach these ideas,” says Allison, now a professor at Wake Forest University’s business school in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. “It’s really a battle of ideas. If the ideas that made America great aren’t heard, then their influence will be destroyed.”
What about the possibility of giving money to professors who share your agenda?
Allison, who promotes Ayn Rand’s writings, will likely
generate more conflicts on campuses as he seeks to expand his
foundation’s gifts to 200 schools nationwide. [...] As private donors gain more power on campuses, it’s just
the kind of shift away from state control that Rand would
applaud.
That some anti-reason, anti-capitalist professors despise Ayn Rand and have banned her from their curriculum (whether out of malice or in many cases pure ignorance) only reveals their academic bias. Ayn Rand's ideas are part of the conversation over the battle of ideas.
Thanks to John Allison students who are interested will now be able to study Rand in an academic setting and come to their own conclusions.
Apr 15, 2011 | Politics
Writes Dr. Locke in On Tax Day Thank the Rich and Support Lifting the Tax Yoke off Them:
On Tax Day consider some basic facts. The wealthiest 1% of the
taxpayers pay 34% of all federal income taxes. The top 50% pay 96% of
the total bill. This means that the least wealthy 50% pay almost
nothing. In short, the income tax system soaks the rich. In the name of
justice, the President, Congress and the American public should be
demanding a tax cut that lowers the tax bill of the wealthy.
But the opponents of tax cuts do not want justice. They want
redistribution of wealth. They want to confiscate the income earned by
the wealthy and give it to people who have not earned it. They want the
rich--which includes the most productive people in society--to be the
servants of the poor.
Read the rest...
Apr 7, 2011 | Philosophy, Politics
C. Bradley Thompson unmasks Neoconservatism over at Cato Unbound:
The culmination of the neoconservatives’ political philosophy is their call for a “national-greatness conservatism.” Following Irving Kristol and Leo Strauss, David Brooks, William Kristol, and a new generation of neocons proclaimed the “nation” as the fundamental unit of political reality, “nationalism” as the rallying cry for a new public morality, and the “national interest” as the moral standard of political decisionmaking. This new nationalism, according to Brooks, “marries community goodness with national greatness.”
The moral purpose of national-greatness conservatism, according to David Brooks, is to energize the American spirit; to fire the imagination with something majestic; to advance a “unifying American creed”; and to inspire Americans to look beyond their narrow self-interest to some larger national mission—to some mystically Hegelian “national destiny.” The new American citizen must be animated by “nationalist virtues” such as “duty, loyalty, honesty, discretion, and self-sacrifice.” The neocons’ basic moral-political principle is clear and simple: the subordination and sacrifice of the individual to the nation-state.
Politically, Brooks’s new nationalism would use the federal government to pursue great “nationalistic public projects” and to build grand monuments in order to unify the nation spiritually and to prevent America’s “slide” into what he calls “nihilistic mediocrity.” It is important that the American people conform, swear allegiance to, and obey some grand central purpose defined for them by the federal government. The ideal American man, he argues, should negate and forgo his individual values and interests and merge his “self” into some mystical union with the collective soul. This is precisely why Brooks has praised the virtues of Chinese collectivism over those of American-style individualism.
In the end, the neocons want to “remoralize” America by creating a new patriotic civil religion around the idea of “Americanism”—an Americanism that will essentially redefine the “American grain.” The neoconservative vision of a good America is one in which ordinary people work hard, read the Bible, go to church, recite the Pledge of Allegiance, practice homespun virtues, sacrifice themselves to the “common good,” obey the commands of the government, fight wars, and die for the state.
[...]
Neoconservatism is a systematic political philosophy. The neocons’ talk about moderation and prudence is really only meant to disarm intellectually their competitors in the conservative-libertarian movement who want to defend the Founders’ principles of individual rights and limited government. The neocons preach moderation as a virtue so that ordinary people will accept compromise as inevitable. But a political philosophy that advocates “moderation” and “prudence” as its defining principles is either dishonestly hiding its true principles, or it represents a transition stage on the way to some more authoritarian regime—or both.
My deepest fear is that the neoconservatives are preparing this nation philosophically for a soft, American-style fascism—a fascism purged of its ugliest features and gussied up for an American audience. This is a serious charge and not one I take lightly. The neocons are not fascists, but I do argue they share some common features with fascism. Consider the evidence... [Neoconservatism Unmasked]
Read the full article at Neoconservatism Unmasked.
