The Objective Standard Blog
Archive for October 2007
Thursday, October 11, 2007
A Foreign-Aid Controversy . . . Reminiscent of Atlas Shrugged
Irvine, CA—What does Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged have to do with a current debate over U.S. foreign aid? More than you might think.
The New York Times reports about the latest dispute over how U.S. foreign aid should be spent. One faction claims that, because the rising cost of food reduces how much can be bought, the government should reserve some money in a "safe box" designated to feed people facing chronic hunger—while others insist that U.S. aid money remain liquid enough to enable us to respond quickly to food emergencies.
But there’s one crucial question that no one is asking: While there’s much debate over the means of providing aid and while some critics fault our government’s aid agency for inefficiencies—no one challenges the basic goal of doling out billions in foreign aid. The notion that Americans have a moral duty to sacrifice their hard-earned wealth to fund such a global welfare schemes is taken as self-evident.
But Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged levels a fundamental challenge to that widely accepted moral premise.
The startling view dramatized in her book is that welfare schemes such as foreign aid are profoundly unjust—and that we have no duty to sacrifice our wealth to feed and clothe the poor, regardless of whether they live across the globe or across the street. On the contrary, on Rand’s view as projected in her novel and nonfiction works, those who earn their prosperity by production and trade have an absolute moral right to every penny of their income. Her revolutionary conception of morality holds that self-sacrifice is a vice and that pursuing one’s rational self-interest is a virtue.
As for the ‘have-nots’ in Africa and across the world, their plight is a result of not having freedom and individualism; they are miserably poor because of their bloody tribalism and superstition—ideas that kept the Western world dirt poor for centuries. If Westerners were truly interested in helping them, they would teach them to embrace reason, individualism and capitalism—precisely the values responsible for the West’s prosperity, but which are today being eroded through endless altruist policies.
It is high time Americans learned to question not merely the means, but the very goal of foreign aid—and understand the truly destructive nature of the altruist morality that justifies it.
Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.
Posted in: Ayn Rand and Objectivism, Foreign Policy and War, The Arts
Monday, October 8, 2007
Lecture: ‘Atlas Shrugged and Ayn Rand’s Morality of Egoism’
In celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of Atlas Shrugged, I’ll be speaking at UCLA this Thursday, October 11.
What: A talk on “Atlas Shrugged and Ayn Rand’s Morality of Egoism” by Craig Biddle
Where: UCLA – Los Angeles, California: Kinsey Pavillion (Knudsen) 1220B
When: Thursday, October 11, 2007, 7:00pm–9:00pm
Admission is FREE.
Description: In her novel Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand set forth a new morality, which she called rational egoism. In contrast to altruism—the idea that one should self-sacrificially serve others—rational egoism holds that one should selfishly pursue one’s own life-serving values. Against predation—the practice of sacrificing others for one’s own ends—Rand’s egoism holds that sacrificing others is immoral and impractical. In contrast to hedonism—the idea that pleasure is the standard of value—Rand’s egoism holds that the long-range requirements of one’s life and happiness constitute the standard of value. And against moral relativism—the notion that “anything goes”—Rand’s egoism holds that morality is absolute: Nothing “goes” except that which promotes one’s life while respecting the rights of others.
Rand’s egoism is a system of observation-based principles regarding the requirements of human life, personal happiness, social harmony, and political freedom. In this talk, celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of Atlas Shrugged, Craig Biddle presents the basic principles of rational egoism, contrasts them with the alternatives, and shows why everyone who wants to live happily and freely needs to understand and embrace them.
Craig Biddle is the editor and publisher of The Objective Standard and the author of Loving Life: The Morality of Self-Interest and the Facts that Support It. He is currently writing a book on the principles of rational thinking and the fallacies that are violations of those principles. In addition to writing, he lectures and teaches workshops on ethical and epistemological issues from an Objectivist perspective. He has spoken at Tufts, Johns Hopkins, NYU, and Lawrence University, among others.
If you’re in the area, I hope to see you there!
Posted in: Ayn Rand and Objectivism, Events, Philosophy
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Yesterday’s Highlights: ‘Success’
In a letter called "Yesterday’s Highlights," I periodically describe my observations of classes to the VanDamme Academy parents. I have decided to share these highlights with readers of this newsletter as well. I hope you enjoy your glimpse into a VanDamme Academy classroom.
Dear Parents,
This week and last, I have had the pleasure of teaching poetry to Rooms 1-5. This gave me an opportunity to get to know each of the students a little better, and to share with them something I love.
In each class, we studied a poem that connects to the novel the class had recently completed. If you want to learn more about your child’s education, help him study his poem, and ask him to explain how it relates to what he has been discussing in literature.
For example, Room 5 is memorizing the following gem of a poem, which I only recently discovered, and which immediately struck me as having an obvious connection to The Miracle Worker.
Success
If you want a thing bad enough To go out and fight for it, Work day and night for it, Give up your time and your peace and your sleep for it
If only desire of it Makes you quite mad enough Never to tire of it, Makes you hold all other things tawdry and cheap for it
If life seems all empty and useless without it And all that you scheme and you dream is about it,
If gladly you’ll sweat for it, Fret for it, Plan for it, Lose all your terror of God or man for it,
If you’ll simply go after that thing that you want. With all your capacity, Strength and sagacity, Faith, hope and confidence, stern pertinacity,
If neither cold poverty, famished and gaunt, Nor sickness nor pain Of body or brain Can turn you away from the thing that you want,
If dogged and grim you besiege and beset it, You’ll get it!
BERTON BRALEY
The students were quick to identify and explain that this poem captured Annie Sullivan’s dogged, dauntless determination to teach language to Helen Keller. They noted that she "gave up her sleep for it," immediately implementing ideas that struck her in the middle of the night; that she held Helen’s obedience and grooming as "tawdry and cheap" compared to her need to learn language; that she endured the bodily pain of being slapped, kicked, stuck with a pin, and having her tooth knocked out, and never gave up on her goal; and that she lost all terror of God, man, and Captain Keller for it. Now, they have seen this theme demonstrated in the inspirational character of Annie Sullivan, and they have heard it eloquently captured in the words of Berton Braley.
Poetry is incredible fuel for the soul. After your children have memorized the poems, they will have a claim to them, and will have them at the ready when a relevant time arises. Just today, a parent shared with me a charming story of her daughters reciting their poem "Courage" to her when she was afraid to jump from the Jacuzzi into the pool.
I will take inspiration from "Success." This school is something I have had to "fret for" and "plan for," something that has at times taken all my "strength and sagacity," something I "schemed" and "dreamed" about. And my life would definitely be "empty and useless" without it. Thank you for helping all of us at VanDamme Academy achieve our "Success." We, in turn, will help your children to do the same.
Click here to sign up for the VanDamme Academy’s free, e-newsletter, "Pedagogically Correct" featuring articles about the principles of teaching employed at the Academy, along with stories about the results they are achieving.
Posted in: Education
Saturday, October 6, 2007
It’s Time to Jump SCHIP
Irvine, CA—President Bush vetoed a bill on Wednesday that would have expanded the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which was established to insure children whose parents did not qualify for Medicaid but who could not afford private health insurance. The expanded program would have covered an additional four million children from households that have yearly incomes as high as $83,000. Bush declared that while he "strongly supports reauthorization of SCHIP," he regards its expansion as a dangerous step toward socialized medicine.
"But by declaring his support for SCHIP," said Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, "Bush has already endorsed the perverse moral principle that is leading us toward socialized medicine.
"In trying to justify any government welfare program—whether social security, food stamps, or socialized medicine—advocates appeal to the fact that the intended recipients need the service but are unable to pay for it. Thus, the fact that some families ‘need’ health care but can’t afford it entitles them to it—and so the government must institute programs like Medicaid and SCHIP to ensure that they get it. Such appeals count on the unstated principle that ‘need’ is the criterion of moral value and standard of just desserts.
"In her novel Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand exposes the viciousness of this moral principle, showing how it sacrifices the productive and successful to the incompetent and indolent. ‘A morality that holds need as a claim, holds emptiness—non-existence—as its standard of value; it rewards an absence, a defeat: weakness, inability, incompetence, suffering, disease, disaster, the lack, the fault, the flaw—the zero. Who provides the account to pay these claims? Those who are cursed for being non-zeros, each to the extent of his distance from that ideal. Since all values are the product of virtues, the degree of your virtue is used as the measure of your penalty; the degree of your faults is used as the measure of your gain’ (Atlas Shrugged).
"This moral inversion underlies the demand for socialized medicine, which says that some people’s need of health care gives them the right to make slaves of doctors, insurance companies, and hospitals. If we are to avoid the destruction of our health care system promised by socialized medicine, we must reject the perverse moral principle at its root and restore freedom to America’s health care system."
Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.
Posted in: Ayn Rand and Objectivism, Health Care, Individual Rights and Law
Friday, October 5, 2007
The Influence of Atlas Shrugged by Yaron Brook
On the 50th anniversary of its publication, Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand’s epic about a group of businessmen who rebel against a society that shackles and condemns them, is everywhere. Hardly a day goes by without a mention of the novel in the media or by some prominent celebrity or businessman as the most significant book he’s read. Meanwhile, Ayn Rand’s novels, including Atlas Shrugged, are being taught in tens of thousands of high schools. And last year sales of the novel in bookstores topped an astonishing 130,000 copies—more than when it was first published.
As executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, I see the impact of Atlas Shrugged on a daily basis. I’m continually amazed by how many people, from every walk of life and every part of the planet, from high school students to political activists in countries from Hong Kong to Belarus to Ghana, eagerly tell me: " Atlas Shrugged changed my life."
Scores of business leaders, from CEOs of Fortune 500 companies to young entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, say they have derived great spiritual fuel from Atlas Shrugged. Many tell me that the novel has motivated them to make the most of their lives, inspiring them to be more ambitious, more productive, and more successful in their work. And many of America’s politicians and intellectuals who claim to fight for economic freedom name Atlas Shrugged as the book that has most inspired them. I have no doubt that the novel has played a considerable role in discrediting socialism as an ideal and in making discussion of capitalism intellectually legitimate.
If you have read Atlas Shrugged and entered the universe of Dagny Taggart, Hank Rearden, and John Galt, you can understand why the novel has inspired so many in this way. Atlas Shrugged portrays great businessmen as heroic, productive thinkers, and it venerates capitalism as the only social system that leaves such minds free to create and produce the material values on which all of our lives depend. It gives philosophic and esthetic expression to the uniquely American spirit of individualism, of self-reliance, of entrepreneurship, of free markets.
But while many people appreciate these elements of Atlas Shrugged on a personal, emotional level, they are often uncomfortable on a moral level with the novel’s arguments in support of business and capitalism.
Ayn Rand’s ethical philosophy of rational selfishness—on which her admiration for successful businessmen and her impassioned defense of capitalism rest—constitutes a radical challenge to the dominant beliefs of our culture. Rejecting the prevailing ideas that morality comes from a supernatural being or from a societal decree, Rand holds that morality is a science that can be proved by reason. Rejecting the altruistic idea that morality consists of selflessly serving something "higher"—whether the Judeo-Christian God or a collectivist society—she maintains that the height of moral virtue is to rationally pursue your own selfish ends.
Socialism as a political ideal is dead. But the morality that spawned it—from each according to his ability, to each according to his need—still haunts us. So long as need and the "public interest" are regarded as moral claim checks on the ability of the productive, the continued growth of the government’s control over the economy and our lives is inevitable.
Those who have read Atlas Shrugged are often struck by the similarity of the events in the novel to the disastrous events reported in the daily news—from the government’s attempt to take over medicine to decaying infrastructure and collapsing bridges to the shackles on businessmen inflicted by Sarbanes-Oxley. The similarity is no accident: the justification for these government programs is the needs of the uninsured, the so-called public interest, and the necessity to curb the selfishness of businessmen. Without a moral revolution, we cannot win true economic or political freedom.
So while Atlas Shrugged has provided millions with inspiration and with some level of appreciation for the virtues of capitalism and the evils of statism, it has not had nearly the influence it could have had, had its underlying ideas gained wider understanding. Though it has changed individual lives, it has not changed the world. But I believe it could—and should.
Imagine a future America guided by the principles found in Atlas Shrugged—a culture of reason, where science is cherished and respected, not banished from biology classrooms and stem-cell research labs—a culture of individualism, in which government is the protector of individual rights, not its primary violator—a culture in which markets are not just regarded as the most effective option of an imperfect lot, but in which laissez-faire capitalism is recognized and venerated as the only moral social system—a culture in which business innovators understand that ambition, productive effort, and wealth creation are not just practical necessities, but moral virtues—a culture in which such innovators, proudly asserting their right to their work, are fully liberated and their productive genius fully applied to the generation of unimaginable economic progress.
This is the world that Atlas Shrugged challenges us to strive for. But in order to get there, the novel’s full philosophic meaning must be grasped. This is precisely why the Ayn Rand Institute exists: to convey Rand’s profound message. And her message is getting out, all the way to professional intellectuals, on campuses and elsewhere across America, who are taking up Ayn Rand’s ideas with a seriousness that they never have shown before.
With more and more thinkers giving it the attention it merits, I am confident that the real influence of Atlas Shrugged has yet to be felt.
Yaron Brook is executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, CA. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand.
Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.
Posted in: Ayn Rand and Objectivism, Philosophy
Friday, October 5, 2007
Columbus Day Celebrates Western Civilization by Thomas Bowden
On October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus discovered the New World, opening a sea route to vast uncharted territories that awaited the spread of Western civilization. Centuries later, the ensuing cultural migration culminated in the birth and explosive growth of the greatest nation in history: the United States of America.
It is fitting that we have set aside a day to honor the Great Explorer. On one level, Columbus Day honors the man himself for his many virtues. Columbus was a man of independent mind, who steadfastly pursued his bold plan for a westward voyage to the Indies despite powerful opposition–a man of courage, who set sail upon a trackless ocean with no assurance that he would ever reach land–a man of pride, who sought recognition and reward for his achievements.
We need not evade or excuse Columbus’s flaws–his religious zealotry, his enslavement and oppression of natives–to recognize that he made history by finding new territory for a civilization that would soon show mankind how to overcome the age-old scourges of slavery, war, and forced religious conversion.
Thus, the deeper meaning of Columbus Day is to celebrate the rational core of Western civilization, which flourished in the New World like a pot-bound plant liberated from its confining shell, demonstrating to the world what greatness is possible to man at his best.
On Columbus Day, we celebrate the civilization whose philosophers and mathematicians, men such as Aristotle, Archimedes, and Euclid, displaced otherworldly mysticism by discovering the laws of logic and mathematical relationships, demonstrating to mankind that reality is a single realm accessible to human understanding.
On Columbus Day, we celebrate the civilization whose scientists, men such as Galileo, Newton, Darwin, and Einstein, banished primitive superstitions by discovering natural laws through the scientific method, demonstrating to mankind that the universe is both knowable and predictable.
On Columbus Day, we celebrate the civilization whose political geniuses, men such as John Locke and the Founding Fathers, defined the principles by which bloody tribal warfare, religious strife, and, ultimately, slavery could be eradicated by constitutional republics devoted to protecting life, liberty, property, and the selfish pursuit of individual happiness.
On Columbus Day, we celebrate the civilization whose entrepreneurs, men such as Rockefeller, Ford, and Gates, transformed an inhospitable wilderness populated by frightened savages into a wealthy nation of self-confident producers served by highways, power plants, computers, and thousands of other life-enhancing products.
On Columbus Day, in sum, we celebrate Western civilization as history’s greatest cultural achievement. What better reason could there be for a holiday?
Mr. Bowden is an analyst focusing on legal issues at the Ayn Rand Institute and is the author of The Enemies of Christopher Columbus. A former attorney and law school instructor who practiced for twenty years in Baltimore, Maryland, his Op-Eds have appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Miami Herald, Los Angeles Daily News, and many other newspapers. Mr. Bowden has given dozens of radio interviews and has appeared on the Fox News Channel’s Hannity & Colmes.
Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.
Posted in: History
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Iraq’s Failing Government
Irvine, CA—In the wake of General Patraeus’s report, the Iraqi government has come under fire for failing to govern and police the country. Sectarian death squads, for example, fearlessly slaughter their victims, and in one town Islamists set up a Taliban-like theocracy—all under the nose of the local authorities and national government. President Bush himself signaled his dismay at how Iraq’s government has performed, and implored it to do more.
"But the deplorable conduct of Iraq’s government should not be surprising," said Elan Journo, analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute.
"A proper government is one that protects individual rights; it ensures your freedom from the initiation of physical force by others. The principle of such a government—the principle of individualism—holds that every man is an independent, sovereign being, that he is not an interchangeable fragment of the tribe; that his life, liberty, and possessions are his by right, not by the permission of any group. But so many of Iraq’s politicians are ethnic or religious collectivists, who regard the individual as subservient to the clan, tribe, sect. To them government is not the means of protecting individual rights, but of arrogating power to their group and wielding their sword over others. And as part of its suicidal crusade to bring Iraqis the vote, Washington avidly encouraged Iraqis to believe that their tribalism and devotion to Islam were legitimate foundations for a new government.
"So, Iraqis brought to power Islamists who are vehemently anti-American—an outcome that Bush had blessed in advance (‘democracy is democracy’ he explained). The current prime minister, like several of his predecessors, owes his job to the Islamist warlord-cleric Moktadr al Sadr, whose Madhi army has fought against American forces. Indeed, many politicians are little more than stooges for the various clans, sectarian groups, and private militias that operate their own death-squads with impunity. Little wonder that Iraq’s leaders have neither enacted rational laws, nor enforced the rule of law, while armed tribal and sectarian gangs savagely eradicate their rivals.
"If Iraqis are ever to achieve a proper government they must learn that their current ideas and practices are incompatible with freedom and peace. They must recognize that they need to adopt the ideal of individualism."
Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.
Posted in: Foreign Policy and War
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Anti-Smoking Paternalism: A Cancer on American Liberty by Don Watkins
Across the country, state and local governments are banning smoking on private property, including bars, restaurants, and office buildings. This is just the latest step in the government’s war on smoking—a coercive campaign that includes massive taxes on cigarettes, advertising bans, and endless multi-billion dollar lawsuits against tobacco companies. This war is infecting America with a political disease far worse than any health risk caused by smoking; it is destroying our freedom to make our own judgments and choices.
According to the anti-smoking movement, restricting people’s freedom to smoke is justified by the necessity of combating the "epidemic" of smoking-related disease and death. Cigarettes, we are told, kill hundreds of thousands of helplessly addicted victims a year, and expose countless millions to unwanted and unhealthy secondhand smoke. Smoking, the anti-smoking movement says, in effect, is a plague, whose ravages can only be combated through drastic government action.
But smoking is not some infectious disease that must be quarantined and destroyed by the government. Smoking is a voluntary activity that every individual is free to choose to abstain from (including by avoiding restaurants and other private establishments that permit smoking). And, contrary to those who regard any smoking as irrational on its face, cigarettes are a potential value that each individual must assess for himself. Of course, smoking can be harmful—in certain quantities, over a certain period of time, it can be habit forming and lead to disease or death. But many individuals understandably regard the risks of smoking as minimal if one smokes relatively infrequently, and they see smoking as offering definite value, such as physical pleasure.
Are they right? Can it be a value to smoke cigarettes—and if so, in what quantity? This is the sort of judgment that properly belongs to every individual, based on his assessment of the evidence concerning smoking’s benefits and risks, and taking into account his particular circumstances (age, family history, profession, tastes, etc.). If others believe the smoker is making a mistake, they are free to try to persuade him of their viewpoint. But they should not be free to dictate his decision on whether and to what extent to smoke, any more than they should be able to dictate his decision on whether and to what extent to drink alcohol or play poker. The fact that some individuals will smoke themselves into an early grave is no more justification for banning smoking than that the existence of alcoholics is grounds for prohibiting you from enjoying a drink at dinner.
Implicit in the war on smoking, however, is the view that the government must dictate the individual’s decisions with regard to smoking, because he is incapable of making them rationally. To the extent the anti-smoking movement succeeds in wielding the power of government coercion to impose on Americans its blanket opposition to smoking, it is entrenching paternalism: the view that individuals are incompetent to run their own lives, and thus require a nanny-state to control every aspect of those lives.
This state is well on its way: from trans-fat bans to bicycle helmet laws to prohibitions on gambling, the government is increasingly abridging our freedom on the grounds that we are not competent to make rational decisions in these areas—just as it has long done by paternalistically dictating how we plan for retirement (Social Security) or what medicines we may take (the FDA).
Indeed, one of the main arguments used to bolster the anti-smoking agenda is the claim that smokers impose "social costs" on non-smokers, such as smoking-related medical expenses—an argument that perversely uses an injustice created by paternalism to support its expansion. The only reason non-smokers today are forced to foot the medical bills of smokers is that our government has virtually taken over the field of medicine, in order to relieve us inept Americans of the freedom to manage our own health care, and bear the costs of our own choices.
But contrary to paternalism, we are not congenitally irrational misfits. We are thinking beings for whom it is both possible and necessary to rationally judge which courses of action will serve our interests. The consequences of ignoring this fact range from denying us legitimate pleasures to literally killing us: from the healthy 26-year-old unable to enjoy a trans-fatty food, to the 75-year-old man unable to take an unapproved, experimental drug without which he will certainly die.
By employing government coercion to deprive us of the freedom to judge for ourselves what we inhale or consume, the anti-smoking movement has become an enemy, not an ally, in the quest for health and happiness.
Don Watkins is a writer and research coordinator at the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, CA. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand—author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead."
Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.
Posted in: Health Care, Individual Rights and Law
Monday, October 1, 2007
U.N. Role Reversal for Bush, Sarkozy by David Holcberg
President Bush’s speech at the United Nations on Tuesday betrayed a deep misunderstanding of the nature of rights and the proper role of the U.S. government [Foreign, "U.N. Role Reversal for Bush, Sarkozy," September 26,2007].
According to Mr. Bush, everyone "has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food and clothing and housing and medical care." Also, according to Mr. Bush, the American government has a duty to provide for those needs, whether in America or anywhere else on the planet.
But Mr. Bush’s vision of an American paternalistic state with duties towards the world’s needy is in direct opposition to the vision and ideals of America’s founders.
Contrary to the president and the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, there is no such thing as a "right" to a given standard of living, to food, clothing, housing, medical care, or any other value. In other words, there is no such thing as a right to the values created by others. What individuals do have is a right to work to produce those values free of coercion by their neighbors or by the state.
Contrary to Mr. Bush, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is not "a landmark achievement in the history of human liberty"—it is a perversion of the true meaning and purpose of individual rights.
Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.
Posted in: Health Care, Individual Rights and Law
Monday, October 1, 2007
Don’t Ban Fast Food by Don Watkins
The proposed two-year moratorium on new fast-food restaurants in South Los Angeles will do nothing to make people lose weight. But it will make their lives less free and fulfilling.
Despite the demonization of the fast-food industry, places such as McDonald’s and Wendy’s provide Americans with a convenient source of tasty, affordable food. Millions of Americans enjoy these restaurants without ever becoming obese. To punish them—as well as potential fast-food restaurant owners and employees—in order to control what they eat is a shameful violation of their rights.
The government has no business dictating where and what people eat, or what their waist-lines should be. Those are decisions that properly belong to individuals. The Los Angeles City Council should reject this disgraceful ban.
Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.
Posted in: Health Care, Individual Rights and Law
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