Jan 22, 2016 | Politics
From Oscars’ Diversity Controversy: Michael Caine Speaks Out : People.com
As the diversity debate embroiling the Academy Awards continues, Michael Caine is the latest star to speak out – and he’s not holding back. For the second year in a row, no actors of color received Oscar nominations, a reality that has prompted some stars to boycott the show and examine the deeper issues surrounding race and the entertainment industry.
When asked to address the controversy during a BBC Radio 4 interview this week, Caine said, per The Hollywood Reporter: “There’s loads of black actors. You can’t vote for an actor because he’s black. You got to give a good performance, and I’m sure there were very good [performances].”
[…]
Caine’s comments come around the same time current Best Actress Oscar nominee Charlotte Rampling raised eyebrows for telling French Radio network Europe 1 on Friday morning that the Oscars are “racist to whites” and speaking out against the possibility of a quota system to ensure [racial] diversity. Her comments stand in contrast to other actors who have spoken out, including fellow nominee Mark Ruffalo, past winner George Clooney and Jada Pinkett Smith.
Grammys host LL Cool J has also added his voice to the debate. Speaking to the Associated Press Thursday after receiving his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, he said his advice to fellow African America actors is, “Don’t get bitter, get better.” “Is there room for improvement? Yes,” he said. “But let’s just put the work in. And ultimately, if the work is good enough, and it’s great enough and there’s enough of it, the door gets kicked in.”
On the issue of race quotas the philosopher Ayn Rand had this to say almost a half century ago:
Instead of fighting against racial discrimination, they are demanding that racial discrimination be legalized and enforced. Instead of fighting against racism, they are demanding the establishment of racial quotas. Instead of fighting for “color-blindness” in social and economic issues, they are proclaiming that “color-blindness” is evil and that “color” should be made a primary consideration. Instead of fighting for equal rights, they are demanding special race privileges.
They are demanding that racial quotas be established in regard to employment and that jobs be distributed on a racial basis, in proportion to the percentage of a given race among the local population. For instance, since Negroes constitute 25 percent of the population of New York City, they demand 25 percent of the jobs in a given establishment.
Racial quotas have been one of the worst evils of racist regimes. There were racial quotas in the universities of Czarist Russia, in the population of Russia’s major cities, etc. One of the accusations against the racists in this country is that some schools practice a secret system of racial quotas. It was regarded as a victory for justice when employment questionnaires ceased to inquire about an applicant’s race or religion.
Today, it is not an oppressor, but an oppressed minority group that is demanding the establishment of racial quotas. (!)
The call for “diversity” — racial quotas — in awards based on the color of ones’ skin is racist. The only thing that should matter is the performance. Imagine if such a standard were applied to the NBA? Would that be justice?
Dec 4, 2015 | Culture
On November 30, 2015, the Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property released a new issue paper, The Gene Revolution, by Amanda Maxham, a research associate and writer at the Ayn Rand Institute.
Dr. Maxham explores how innovations in biotechnology, enabled by the intellectual property rights that protect them, have led to the “Gene Revolution,” where scientists use genetic engineering to dramatically improve human life. In order to combat widespread misinformation about genetically modified organisms (GMOs), she traces mankind’s long history of improving plants, animals, and microorganisms to better serve our needs.
In particular, Dr. Maxham looks at twenty-nine different GMOs, including insulin, flu vaccines, cheese-making enzymes, apples, cotton seeds, and pet fish, as examples of the endless possibilities the “Gene Revolution” holds for the betterment of humanity–if we can overcome the groundless mistrust and strive to protect the future of scientific innovation.
Dec 3, 2015 | Business, Politics, Sci-Tech
A half century ago the famous philosopher Ayn Rand identified the principle that motivates the haters of success. In her essay “The Age of Envy” she called it the “Hatred of the good for being the good”:
Today, we live in the Age of Envy.
“Envy” is not the emotion I have in mind, but it is the clearest manifestation of an emotion that has remained nameless; it is the only element of a complex emotional sum that men have permitted themselves to identify.
Envy is regarded by most people as a petty, superficial emotion and, therefore, it serves as a semihuman cover for so inhuman an emotion that those who feel it seldom dare admit it even to themselves. …That emotion is: hatred of the good for being the good.
This hatred is not resentment against some prescribed view of the good with which one does not agree…. Hatred of the good for being the good means hatred of that which one regards as good by one’s own (conscious or subconscious) judgment. It means hatred of a person for possessing a value or virtue one regards as desirable.
As a concrete illustration of this principle, ponder the envy-filled “progressive” “social justice” warrior Devon Maloney’s response to Zuckerberg’s donation of 45 billion dollars to charity:
Studies have shown that billionaire altruists like Zuckerberg are increasingly directing the course of American science, for example, and can supercharge research that has otherwise been bogged down in public sector and governmental bureaucracy – thus saving thousands if not millions of lives. But it also means that the rich are still effectively buying the future they’d like to see, no matter how selfless their intentions may be.
Apparently they should build a future that Maloney wants to see.
International philanthropy and the western world’s desire to eradicate poverty and disease can’t ever truly rid themselves of their imperialist roots; as many critics have pointed out, the white savior industrial complex has never been more pervasive in global culture. When you have an extra $45bn lying around, nothing you do with that money will come without strings, whether you craft those strings or not. Simply by creating and overseeing the world’s largest social network and one of the most influential corporations on Earth …. Mark Zuckerberg himself continues to reproduce the inequality he and his wife are taking aim at with their pledge. […] if it took Max Chan Zuckerberg’s birth to give her parents the courage and determination to destroy their own ivory tower for the needs of the many, we should all be praying that she’ll get a few more siblings in the coming years.
One wonders what kind of Ivory Tower of envy and hatred Maloney lives in.
Zuckerberg and other entrepreneurial businessmen have the ability to create values (like Facebook) and make money at the same time — Maloney has little or none. Ergo the “white industrial complex/ivory tower” (capitalism) is wrong and must be destroyed.
Quoting from Galt’s Speech in Atlas Shrugged:
They do not want to own your fortune, they want you to lose it; they do not want to succeed, they want you to fail; they do not want to live, they want you to die; they desire nothing, they hate existence, and they keep running, each trying not to learn that the object of his hatred is himself . . . . They are the essence of evil, they, those anti-living objects who seek, by devouring the world, to fill the selfless zero of their soul. It is not your wealth that they’re after. Theirs is a conspiracy against the mind, which means: against life and man.
Nov 16, 2015 | Politics
Attacks like the one on January 7, 2015, against the newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris are becoming all too common. Threats by Islamic terrorists and dictatorial regimes have been happening since Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against Salman Rushdie in 1989. In this talk, Ayn Rand Institute senior fellow Onkar Ghate discusses how to defend freedom of speech in the face of religious attacks. This talk was recorded on Saturday, July 4, 2015, at the Objectivist Summer Conference 2015 in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Sep 24, 2015 | Philosophy, Politics
“The safeguards provided by an objective legal system hinge on a proper understanding of what objective law is. This lecture by Tara Smith, professor of philosophy and holder of the BB&T Chair for the Study of Objectivism at the University of Texas – Austin, clarifies objectivity itself — not in epistemological detail, but in application to everyday living — and then charts its requisites for a proper legal system. We see how the function of government sets the terms for the just exercise of state power and how confusions about objectivity result in its corruption.” — Ayn Rand Institute
