History
Justice Holmes and the Empty Constitution (accessible for free)
Examines the meaning and consequences of Oliver Wendell Holmes’s famous dissent in Lochner v. New York, showing how and why it has devastated American jurisprudence, and indicating what future jurists must grasp and do in order to begin reversing the damage. Read the article.
Energy at the Speed of Thought:
The Original Alternative Energy Market
Surveys the history of the U.S. energy industry, with special emphasis on oil as the lifeblood of the modern world and on freedom as the condition that enabled oilmen to make it flow. Read the opening paragraphs (full article accessible to subscribers).
A Brief History of U.S. Farm Policy and the
Need for Free-Market Agriculture
Shows how the USDA has grown from a small, seemingly innocuous bureau promoting agricultural research to today’s freedom-thwarting, rights-violating, market-crushing behemoth. Read the opening paragraphs (full article accessible to subscribers).
Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and the World Today (accessible for free)
An Interview with Yaron Brook
Explains why, more than fifty years ago, Rand was able to project the kinds of crises we are seeing today. Read the interview.
Lest We Be Doomed to Repeat It
A Survey of Amity Shlaes’s History of the Great Depression
Provides an essentialized chronology of the era, focusing on the (ominously familiar sounding) policies of Herbert Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Read the opening paragraphs (full article accessible to subscribers).
Demystifying Newton: The Force Behind the Genius
Presents key evidence in support of the basic motive that drove Isaac Newton to decode the nature of the physical world, and leaves the widely accepted Freudian view of his motive wanting. Read the opening paragraphs (full article accessible to subscribers).
Errors in Inductive Reasoning
Examines several illustrative cases in which scientists failed to employ the principles of inductive logic properly and thereby arrived at faulty conclusions. Read the opening paragraphs (full article accessible to subscribers).
New Deal or Raw Deal? How FDR’s Economic Legacy Has Damaged America, by Burton Folsom Jr.
Read the opening paragraphs (full review accessible to subscribers).
Better Day Coming: Blacks and Equality, 1890–2000, by Adam Fairclough
Read the opening paragraphs (full review accessible to subscribers).
Deeper Than Kelo: The Roots of the Property Rights Crisis
Surveys the pivotal historic events that paved the way for today’s flagrant violations of property rights in America, documents the United States Supreme Court’s indifference to and complicity in the crimes in question, and indicates the solution to the crisis. Read the opening paragraphs (full article accessible to subscribers).
How the FDA Violates Rights and Hinders Health
Surveys the history, nature, and consequences of this behemoth government agency; shows that it is impractical and immoral; and indicates how, in the absence of the FDA, the free market could provide the highest possible level of drug safety and efficacy. Read the opening paragraphs (full article accessible to subscribers).
Vindicating Capitalism: The Real History of the Standard Oil Company
Examines the inception and rise of Standard Oil, demonstrates that the company’s immense success was the result not of so-called “anti-competitive” practices or “predatory pricing” but of its superior efficiency and productivity, and does long-overdo justice to one of the greatest producers of life-serving values in history: John D. Rockefeller. Read the opening paragraphs (full article accessible only to subscribers).
Darwin and the Discovery of Evolution
Surveys Darwin’s education, work experience, expeditions, and inquiries; examines his observation-based, hands-on approach to gathering data from which to draw conclusions; and highlights the objectivity and truth of his consequent theory of evolution. Read the opening paragraphs (full article accessible to subscribers).
Isaac Newton: Discoverer of Universal Laws
Examines key aspects of Newton’s discoveries, shows how he embraced and employed the scientific context established by giants who came before him (such as Galileo and Kepler), and indicates how he rose to even greater heights of explanation through a breathtaking unity of observation, experimentation, conceptual expansion, concept formation, generalization, induction. Read the opening paragraphs (full article accessible to subscribers).
Instrumentalism and the Disintegration of American Tort Law
Illustrates the utter insanity of today’s liability law, recounts the roots and original purpose of the law of torts, surveys the missing links and corrupt ideas that led to its destruction, and sheds light on the path to identifying a sound body of principles that will ground this field in the ultimate purpose of objective law: the protection of individual rights. Read the opening paragraphs (full article accessible to subscribers).
“Gifts from Heaven”: The Meaning of the American Victory over Japan, 1945
Identifies the ideology of sacrifice behind the Japanese aggression that culminated in World War II; documents America’s recognition of this ideology as the fundamental cause of the Japanese assault on the West; explains how America targeted, dismantled, and discredited this ideology, replacing it with the ideas, values, and institutions necessary for the establishment of a free society; and defends America’s use of the atomic bomb as a profoundly moral way to end the war. Read the opening paragraphs (full article accessible to subscribers).
The Morality of Moneylending: A Short History (accessible for free)
Presents an essentialized history of usury, showing that, just as moneylenders are being damned and blamed for today’s “sub-prime mortgage crisis,” so they have been condemned and castigated for alleged wrongdoing from the beginning of Western civilization. Brook zeros in on the economic and moral premises that give rise to contempt for this profession; he identifies the moral-practical dichotomy inherent in these ideas; and he discusses a unified set of principles that must be understood and embraced if moneylending is to be seen as the noble business that it actually is. Read the article.
“The Balm for a Guilty Conscience”: Moral Paralysis, Appeasement, and the Causes of World War II
Shows how altruism and egalitarianism—combined with guilt caused by these same factors in regard to World War I—led to British appeasement and compromise in the late 1930s, which, in turn, enabled the rise of Nazi Germany and necessitated World War II. Read the opening paragraphs (full article accessible to subscribers).
The Rise and Fall of Ancient Greek Justice: Homer to the Sermon on the Mount
Surveys the ancient Greek conception of justice and shows how this relatively healthy idea is later twisted into utter malignancy by Christianity. Read the opening paragraphs (full article accessible to subscribers).
Induction and Experimental Method
Examines the key experiments involved in Galileo’s kinematics and Newton’s optics, identifies the essential methods by which these scientists achieved their discoveries, and illustrates the principle that induction is inherent in valid conceptualization. Read the opening paragraphs (full article accessible to subscribers).
The Tragedy of Theology: How Religion Caused and Extended the Dark Ages (accessible for free)
A Critique of Rodney Stark’s The Victory of Reason
Critiques Rodney Stark’s best-selling book The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success. Bernstein’s analysis proves Stark’s thesis to be historically false and philosophically impossible. The fundamental factor that led to freedom, capitalism, and Western success, Bernstein shows, was not the Christian, scripture-based approach of applying “reason” to the goal of understanding “super-nature,” but rather the Aristotelian, observation-based method of applying reason to the goal of understanding actual nature. Read the article.
“No Substitute for Victory”: The Defeat of Islamic Totalitarianism (accessible for free)
Consults historical precedent to evaluate America’s response to the attacks of 9/11. Considering key historical attacks against America, along with her responses to those attacks, Lewis highlights the moral and practical issues involved, and draws vital lessons that Americans must grasp and apply in the current war—if we want to win it. Read the article.
The Decline and Fall of American Conservatism (accessible for free)
Examines today’s putatively splintered conservative movement, zeros in on the essence of its two dominant factions, and shows the movement to be only superficially split while fundamentally unified—and stultified—by the conservatives’ universal acceptance of a morality that is antithetical to liberty. Read the article.
William Tecumseh Sherman and the Moral Impetus for Victory
Presents the essential history of Sherman's march, showing how Sherman developed and implemented his ideas that lead to the North's victory in the Civil War, and drawing the moral lessons we can learn from this great man about how to properly approach and quickly defeat enemies of freedom. Read the opening paragraphs (full article accessible to subscribers).
The 19th-Century Atomic War
Demonstrates the power of philosophy in the field of physics by presenting the 19th-century experimental evidence in support of the atomic theory, and by showing how 19th-century physicists—in the grips of post-Kantian philosophy—belligerently dismissed the evidence and steadfastly denied the existence of atoms. Read the opening paragraphs (full article accessible to subscribers).
Enlightenment Science and Its Fall
Examines the profound philosophical history surrounding the rise and fall of reason as the recognized method of scientific inquiry in the 18th and 19th centuries. Read the opening paragraphs (full article accessible to subscribers).
Join Our Mailing List
To receive TOS updates and press releases, click here.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Subscribe to the journal for people of reason.
