Philosophy
Objective Moral Values
Zeros in on the nature of objective, life-serving values; demonstrates that man’s most fundamental value is his faculty of reason; and shows that both physical survival and spiritual health require keeping one’s thinking tied to reality (via reason) so that one’s ideas, values, actions, and emotions correspond to reality, too. Read the opening paragraphs (full article accessible to subscribers).
Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right,
by Jennifer Burns (accessible for free)
Islamic Imperialism: A History, by Efraim Karsh
Read the opening paragraphs (full article accessible to subscribers).
Obama’s Atomic Bomb: The Ideological Clarity
of the Democratic Agenda (accessible for free)
Examines America’s political climate in light of the unmistakably statist agenda emanating from Washington, and finds cause for optimism in the effect Obama is having on the minds of Americans—and cause for activism toward helping Americans to see the proper political alternative: not conservatism but capitalism. Read the article.
The Creed of Sacrifice vs. The Land of Liberty
Examines the morality of altruism, exposing its incompatibility with the basic principle of America (i.e., individual rights), identifying its philosophic roots, and showing that if Americans want to save America, they must repudiate this creed, root and branch. Read the opening paragraphs (full article accessible to subscribers).
How Morality is Grounded in Reality
Presents Ayn Rand’s solution to the so-called “is–ought” problem and shows how she identified the requirements of man’s life as the objective standard of moral value. Read the opening paragraphs (full article accessible to subscribers).
Objectively Speaking: Ayn Rand Interviewed, edited by Marlene Podritske and Peter Schwartz
Read the opening paragraphs (full review accessible to subscribers).
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.
The Is–Ought Gap: Subjectivism’s Technical Retreat
Examines the prevalent claim that moral principles cannot be derived from observable facts, and finds the problem in desperate need of a solution. Read the opening paragraphs (full article accessible to subscribers).
Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism, by George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller
Read the opening paragraphs (full review 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.
Altruism: The Moral Root of the Financial Crisis (accessible for free)
Zeros in on the fundamental cause of the problem, showing that widespread acceptance of the morality of self-sacrifice necessitated the kinds of laws, regulations, and decisions that have driven the financial markets into the gutter. Read the article.
Doubt vs. Certainty
Casts certainty on why the movie Doubt is leaving viewers wondering whether they can know anything for sure. Read the opening paragraphs (full article accessible to subscribers).
Religion vs. Subjectivism: Why Neither Will Do
Examines those alternatives and finds them equally life-thwarting and revealingly similar. Read the opening paragraphs (full article accessible to subscribers).
Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions,
by Dan Ariely
Read the opening paragraphs (full review accessible to subscribers).
Capitalism and the Moral High Ground (accessible for free)
Concretizes the selfishness-enabling nature of capitalism and shows why this feature makes it the only moral social system on earth. Read the article.
Reason or Faith: The Republican Alternative (accessible for free)
Analyzes the resounding Republican defeat and shows that the party faces a fundamental decision that will determine whether it orchestrates a comeback or stumbles into further defeat. Read the article.
Bubble Boy: Alan Greenspan’s Rejection of Reason and Morality
Exposes Greenspan as anything but a principled capitalist whose free-market ideas somehow failed. 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).
McBama vs. America (accessible for free)
Surveys the promises of John McCain and Barack Obama, shows that these intentions are at odds with the American ideal of individual rights, demonstrates that the cause of such political aims is a particular moral philosophy (shared by McCain and Obama), and calls for Americans to repudiate that morality and to embrace instead a morality that supports the American ideal. Read the article.
The Mystical Ethics of the New Atheists (accessible for free)
Examines the moral ideas of Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Richard Dawkins, exposes some curious truths about their ethics, and provides sound advice for theists and atheists alike who wish to discover and uphold a rational, secular morality. Read the article.
The Menace of Pragmatism
Examines the nature of this widely-accepted philosophy, identifies its remarkable "essence," surveys its disastrous implications, and provides pointers for effectively opposing this persistent philosophical problem. Read the opening paragraphs (full article accessible to subscribers).
Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein
Read the opening paragraphs (full review accessible to subscribers).
Proof of the Atomic Theory
Surveys the observations, experiments, and generalizations that led to the discovery and validation of the atomic theory of matter; and, using that process of validation as an example, outlines the three criteria that are essential to the proof of any broad theory. Read the opening paragraphs (full article accessible only to subscribers).
Reforming Philosophy: A Victorian Debate on Science and Society, by Laura J. Snyder
Read the opening paragraphs (full review accessible to subscribers).
Immigration and Individual Rights (accessible for free)
Zeros in on the basic principle of America and demonstrates that this principle mandates a policy of open immigration, debunks several common arguments for prohibiting or limiting immigration, shows why all such arguments are necessarily invalid, and indicates what Americans must do if we are to reestablish and maintain the kind of moral, rights-respecting immigration policy that was advocated by the Founders. Read the article.
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).
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 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).
Egoism Explained
A Review of Tara Smith’s Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist
Reviews Tara Smith’s latest book, Ayn Rand’s Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist, and finds it to be a welcome addition to the existing literature on the Objectivist ethics—and a sizable challenge for critics of egoism. 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.
The Educational, Psychological, and Philosophical Assault on Self-Esteem
Examines the misconceptions of self-esteem that are widely accepted and propagated by educators and psychologists today, illustrates the philosophical causes of those misconceptions in modern philosophy, and presents the correct view of self-esteem along with its philosophical roots in rational philosophy. Read the opening paragraphs (full article accessible to subscribers).
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.
Religion vs. Free Speech (accessible for free)
Demonstrates that the tenets of religion are incompatible with the right to free speech, and shows why those who want to establish and maintain freedom of speech must repudiate religion and embrace the rational, secular foundation for rights. Read the article.
Introducing The Objective Standard (accessible for free)
Outlines the philosophy on which The Objective Standard is based and indicates what is to come. Read the introduction.
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