In the philosophically muddled political culture we live in today, the prominent opposition to Marxism-inspired efforts to malign and undo the achievements of Western culture comes in the form of conservatism. In that context, it is increasingly common for conservatives to claim that Christianity was a key part of why the West became enlightened and industrialized, unlike other parts of the world. But is there truth to this claim? In his rigorous article, Frederick Seiler explores the role of religion in the scientific revolution to see how it may have helped or hindered the West’s embrace of science and reason.

I hope you enjoy this week’s articles,

Thomas Walker-Werth
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Modern cinema is replete with movies that claim to be love stories, but what many of them depict as “love” is really infatuation rather than the esteeming of another person’s values and character. In his new review essay, Tim White highlights a recent example of this tendency, Luc Besson’s new adaptation of Dracula, noting the film’s merits compared to many modern movies while examining the errors it makes in depicting the nature of love.

True love can of course exist in the form of close friendships as well as romantic relationships. This week, I have decided to highlight a classicTV series—1971’s The Persuaders!—that depicts loving friendship exceptionally well, and that depicts the fact that a life of wealth and pleasure won’t be satisfying without a meaningful purpose.

I hope you enjoy this week’s articles,

Thomas Walker-Werth
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Written and directed by Luc Besson
Starring Caleb Landry Jones, Zoë Bleu, Christoph Waltz
Distributed by SND (France)
Running time: 129 minutes
Rated R for graphic violence and brief nudity

Author’s note: This review essay contains major spoilers.

Dracula: A Love Tale (2025), arguably director Luc Besson’s most mature and ambitious film to date, elevates itself above most modern movies in two critically important ways: It engages deeply and sincerely with fundamental human values, and it respects its audience rather than lecturing them. It deserves meaningful praise on these grounds, but its reach ultimately exceeds its grasp because it tries to tell a love story without understanding what love is.

Sometime in the 15th century, Romanian prince Vladislav of Wallachia (a fictionalized version of Vlad the Impaler played by Caleb Landry Jones) leads a small army to victory against Ottoman invaders. He takes the field reluctantly; he would much rather be at home with his wife, Elisabeta (Zoë Bleu). They are in their mid-to-late thirties, but their relationship is passionate and youthful in its simplicity. They clearly adore one another, and their conversations imply that they would give up their political power in favor of a simpler life if they could.

While Vladislav is engaged in battle, a small band of Ottoman assassins hunts down Elisabeta, whom he believes has safely escaped the area. Vladislav rushes to her aid when he hears of the attack from a witness, but he is too late to save her.

Vladislav, enraged, confronts the local cardinal and accuses him of failing to “pray hard enough” for God to protect Elisabeta. When the cardinal protests that he is only God’s humble messenger and cannot force God to do anything, Vladislav responds: “Good. I have a message that I want you to deliver to him. Tell your God that, until he brings me back my wife, my life no longer belongs to him.” He then murders the cardinal and desecrates the chapel. For this transgression, God curses Vladislav with eternal unlife as the first vampire, Dracula. Over the next four centuries, Dracula scours the globe, searching tirelessly for Elisabeta, whom he is convinced will eventually be reincarnated.

Like countless stories throughout history, Dracula equates intense passion with love, but these are not the same thing. In the movie’s opening scenes, we see that Vladislav and Elisabeta have strong feelings for one another, but we never see where these feelings come from. Without knowing (or at least being able to reasonably infer) why they love one another, we cannot even say with any real confidence that the story we’re being told is a love story; we can, at best, only take the storyteller’s word for it.

Consider Bonnie and Clyde, who are almost always presented as having been deeply in love with one another. Together, they murdered at least twelve people, threatened and assaulted dozens of others, and stole around $2 million (in 2026 dollars). Both of them were evil—full stop. Does it make sense to say that evil people can experience true love? Most people can sense that there is something deeply wrong with such a claim, even if they can’t articulate why.

Now consider Aragorn and Arwen from Lord of the Rings, arguably one of the best examples of romantic love in fiction. Both are exemplars of outstanding moral character, and both fight to shield Middle-Earth from Sauron’s relentless malice. They treat one another and their friends with sincere affection, respect, and kindness. They want nothing more than to live a peaceful life together, but both are willing to die, if necessary, in defense of the good, the true, and the beautiful. Undeniably, the love shared by Aragorn and Arwen is romantic love in its purest form—its only real form, in fact. Does it make any sense to use the word “love” both in reference to them and to Bonnie and Clyde?

The essential (but not the only) element of romantic love is deep admiration of and respect for another person’s rational, life-serving values and character. Romantic love is a combination of such admiration and respect, and of physical (usually sexual) attraction.^[1] Without the former, the latter is nothing but infatuation or lust.

Throughout Dracula’s two-hour runtime, we see very little of Elisabeta’s moral character. In contrast, we learn a lot about Dracula’s character—and most of what we see is not good. He is driven by obsession bordering on lunacy, utterly indifferent to the hundreds of lives he destroys in pursuit of his goal. Realizing that finding the reincarnated Elisabeta on his own is impossible, he creates dozens of vampires to aid him in a worldwide search spanning centuries, condemning each of those people to the same eternal, unbearable curse from which he himself longs to be released. Perhaps Vladislav was a good person before Elisabeta’s death; we should concede that that is possible, and her love for him may initially have grown from genuine and legitimate admiration of his character. However, even if Vladislav was deserving of love before her death, he certainly is not afterward.

After four hundred years, Dracula’s search comes to an end when he meets Mina Murray, who looks identical to Elisabeta but is engaged to Jonathan Harker (Ewens Abid). He inserts himself into Mina’s social life, carefully observing her mannerisms to ensure that she is indeed Elisabeta reincarnated. Once he is certain, he gives her a music box that he originally gifted to her before her death, and the melody reawakens her memories of her past life. When she learns what Dracula has become and of the atrocities he has committed in her name, she responds not with moral revulsion but with desperation: She begs him to turn her into a vampire so that they can be together forever.

Here, Dracula displays a glimmer of moral clarity for the first of only two times in the film. He initially refuses to turn her, saying “You have your whole life ahead of you, and I only offer death.” When she persists, he relents, condemning the woman he supposedly loves to the same endless pain he originally brought on himself and has since forced on so many others. It should go without saying that true love precludes inflicting horrendous, long-term suffering on one’s partner, no matter how great the immediate temptation or perceived short-term gain. True love requires thinking deeply and carefully about the long-term well-being of oneself and one’s partner, and about what is required to achieve and maintain the well-being of both partners in reality, in harmony with one another and without contradiction or rationalization. It requires taking all of this seriously and acting accordingly, consistently over time. True love is a profoundly emotional experience, but it is not solely an emotional experience; it depends on and requires rational thought. “Love” that defies reason—and thereby inevitably undermines or even destroys the well-being of either partner or of anyone else—is not love in any meaningful sense.

When Dracula retreats to his castle with Elisabeta, Harker and an unnamed priest heavily implied to be Van Helsing (Christoph Waltz), who has been hunting Dracula for decades, gather a small army of Romanian soldiers and assault the castle. Dracula kills dozens and vows to kill all who come after him or his wife. When only Van Helsing is left standing, he and Dracula share the best dialogue in the film:

Dracula: So you are the priest who has chased my people for so many years.

Van Helsing: Yes—but rest assured, I didn’t come to fight you.

Dracula: Nor I. I fight God; I’m not interested in his servants.

Van Helsing: No. You’re not fighting God, my son. You’re fighting yourself.

Dracula: No. No, no. I fought and I killed in his name.

Van Helsing: We live and we breathe in his name. Why would he want us to destroy his creation? Man kills in his own name—and you’re doing it again.

Dracula: That is all just very fine words. God sent you here to kill me.

Van Helsing: God sent me here to save you.

Dracula: So God wants to save me now, after he denies me the right to die for centuries?

Van Helsing: But this is not a punishment. This is an opportunity. Repent, Dracula, for your salvation.

Dracula: She is my salvation.

Van Helsing: But you are her damnation.

They are interrupted when more soldiers arrive and renew the assault on the castle. Dracula, appearing to seriously consider Van Helsing’s words, kills more soldiers but ultimately surrenders when the priest corners him once more and says simply: “Save her.” Dracula allows Van Helsing to mortally wound him, which breaks the curse of vampirism and makes Elisabeta human once again, along with the other surviving victims of Dracula’s power.

As Dracula is dying, Elisabeta, beside herself with grief, asks why he would choose to leave her behind just as they finally have been reunited. His last words to her are: “Because I love you.”

Narratively, Dracula’s sudden change of heart doesn’t work because it’s unearned; it happens too quickly and with far too little internal struggle on his part. Such an extreme one-eighty does not believably transpire in a matter of minutes after four hundred years of single-minded obsession.

Rushed ending aside, Dracula does have something important to say, although its message has little to do with love. Dracula’s final act, morally speaking, is not nearly enough to redeem his past sins—but it’s not nothing, either. The film makes important points about free will, partial atonement, and imperfect justice, but it ultimately fails as a work of art because its actual theme diverges sharply from its intended theme. Its actual theme—the central idea that integrates and follows logically from the events of the plot when all the characters’ actions are considered in full context—is something along the lines of “Not all evil men are completely beyond redemption.”

The movie’s intended theme—something like “the power of love as a force for good”—could not have followed from the events of the plot nor been earned artistically, even under the best of circumstances, because Besson (who also wrote the screenplay) does not understand what love is and what it is not.^[2] Love—real love—is one of the highest and most precious values possible to man, and consistent moral virtue is the only foundation on which it can be built. A single act of sincere atonement at the end of a lifetime of wanton butchery is not morally worthless, but neither is it remotely akin to an act of real love.

Despite its fatal thematic flaw, Dracula is a well-acted and beautifully filmed tale of obsession, hope, regret, and justice (mostly with respect to Harker and Van Helsing in the latter case). It’s worth watching, and it’s one of the better films of 2025—it’s just not a love story. Even though it fails to show us what love is, it shows us with inadvertent clarity what love is not, and that, too, is a valuable lesson.

^[1] Romantic love can exist without mutual sexual attraction, but this is exceedingly rare.

^[2] It’s possible that Besson understands what love is but nonetheless chose to fundamentally misrepresent it in his screenplay for some reason, but this seems highly unlikely.

The 1960s and ’70s were replete with glamorous spy shows and movies. Many, from the James Bond movies to Danger Man, focused more on style than substance, offering simple storylines that served primarily as vehicles for an escape into a world of suave spies, international intrigue, and indulgence in all manner of pleasures.

However, a few delivered richer stories interwoven with valuable ideas. A stand-out example of this is The Persuaders! (1971), a short-lived series telling the story of two wealthy hedonists who gradually discover the values of justice, purpose, and friendship.

At the start of the series, American street kid turned successful oil investor Danny Wilde (Tony Curtis) and British aristocrat Brett Sinclair (Roger Moore) are indulging in all the pleasures that the Côte d’Azur has to offer. After a chance meeting at Nice airport, the two clash like children, showing off to win over the same women, racing their sports cars along the Riviera, and even trashing a restaurant in a fistfight over how many olives should go in a drink. They are bailed out of jail by the retired Judge Fulton (Laurence Naismith) on the condition that they use their influence, wits, and resources to help him track down and expose a notorious criminal ringleader he was unable to put away during his legal career. In convincing them that the dangerous mission is preferable to sitting in a French prison, he admonishes the two men about their hedonistic lifestyles, delivering what doubles as a meta-critique of the playboy protagonists popular in spy shows of the time. Referencing Wilde’s past success in building his massive fortune from scratch, he remarks,

You were a nothing who became something. And now, you’re a nothing again. . . You have a remarkable talent. . . But what have you done with it? You just drift around the world, gambling and womanizing. . . Yours is the glib tongue at a hundred mindless parties. . . Two adult men, both with immense potential—and you fight over an olive!

Fulton talks them into using their connections, skills, and reputations to help him catch his target. Over the episodes that follow, Fulton regularly tasks Wilde and Sinclair with new missions as he works to settle his regrets about all the criminals who escaped justice during his time as a judge. As well as appealing to the two men’s egos, Fulton initially must remind them that he has the power to have them put away for their many legal transgressions in the pursuit of pleasure, but over time, they begin to savor their new sense of purpose. Eventually, they even begin some crime-fighting missions of their own, often motivated by the desire to rescue or protect an innocent person victimized by some kind of criminal operation.

Although this pursuit of justice drives the show’s action, the heart of its story lies in the friendship that develops between Wilde and Sinclair. Their relationship evolves from childish competitiveness and bravado into what in modern terms might be called a “bromance.” They continue to chide each other over everything from their backgrounds and dialects to their driving skills and drink choices, but that banter quickly shifts from derogatory to affectionate. Curtis and Moore excel at portraying a loving friendship hidden behind a veneer of masculine antics, making the two’s admiration and care for each other plainly visible even in interactions that otherwise would seem foolish and argumentative. The evolution of their relationship is a pleasure to watch, and it makes it natural and satisfying to see the two risk life and limb for each other when things get serious.

Wilde and Sinclair’s friendship, much like their crime-fighting escapades, fills their lives with purpose once again. This is what makes The Persuaders! such an extraordinary example among spy shows of its era: It’s really a story about discovering what’s important in life. At the same time, it’s a lighthearted adventure that oozes 1970s aesthetics—from cars to clothes and much more—and that revels in the more unrestrained attitudes of that time with its risqué humor, especially around Wilde and Sinclair’s constant attempts to woo the women they meet in the course of their exploits.

Like most classic spy shows, The Persuaders! is a fun opportunity to enjoy action, glamor, and intrigue—but unlike many, it has at its core a valuable message about why the pursuit of a life-serving purpose, not merely of pleasure, gives a man’s life meaning. Its fifty-fifth anniversary is a great time to revisit its short, twenty-four-episode run and enjoy how fun yet thoughtful TV shows once were.

Welcome to the Spring 2026 issue of The Objective Standard, the rational alternative to conservatism and regressivism.

This issue begins our twenty-first year of publication. 2025 was a challenging year for TOS as we relaunched the journal on our new home at Substack, but now that the final kinks are ironed out, we’re delighted with what we’ve built in this new space. And we love that Substack enables you to share, comment on, and post about our articles so easily. We hope you’re enjoying these features, too.

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Now, to the contents of this eighty-first issue of The Objective Standard.

First up, in “Think and Fly High: Inspiration from Jonathan Livingston Seagull,” Daria Topchii, a junior fellow at Objective Standard Institute (OSI), highlights the beauty and virtues of Richard Bach’s novella. Although the story flies into mystical territory at times, it is essentially about the importance of independent thinking, purposeful living, and loving one’s life. It also has some remarkable similarities to passages and ideas in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. I think you’ll be delighted.

Continuing with the theme of beautiful stories and storytellers, Tim Chermak chronicles the life, works, virtues, and vision of the father of animated cinema in “Walt Disney and the Business of Creativity.” In this article adapted from his talk at LevelUp 2025, Tim makes a compelling case that Disney was, in fact, the greatest capitalist in American history and leaves us wishing that the great man had lived to see his most ambitious project realized.

Next up, we have the first TOS article from musician and art historian Rebecca Day. In “‘Our Souls Were Mates’: The Loving, Values-Based Friendship of James Dean and Eartha Kitt,” Rebecca dives into this short-lived yet rich relationship, showing how non-romantic love can be profoundly life-enhancing.

After that, Tim White shines a light on an alternative to what currently passes for American education in his review of The Subversive Art of a Classical Education: Reclaiming the Mind in an Age of Speed, Screens, and Skill-Drills by Michael S. Rose. The book sets out a blueprint for a better approach to schooling based on objective communication and encouraging independent thought.

In “Character Arcs and the Arc of Your Life,” Angelica Werth explores the growth arcs of three great fictional characters: Jane Austen’s Elizabeth Bennet, Ayn Rand’s Hank Rearden, and J. K. Rowling’s Neville Longbottom. In this article adapted from her talk at LevelUp Europe 2025, Angelica draws out the value from these stories and shows how the lessons these characters learn can help us turn our own lives into stories of virtue, growth, and success.

Next up, I explore the value and meaning of one of progressive rock’s seminal albums in “The Inspiring Individualism of 2112.” Not only are the album’s lyrics and the stories they tell powerful concretizations of individualism and reason—so, too, is Rush’s defiant refusal to compromise when their record label pressured them to abandon the style of music they loved. That steadfast commitment to their values earned them a place among rock royalty.

Moving from music to architecture, in “Can Robots Bring Back Beautiful Buildings?” I interview Arka Serezh, founder of Gondor Industries, a company dedicated to harnessing the power of robotics to bring beautiful stonework back into architecture in new and innovative ways.

I then review Mercy, directed by Timor Bekmambetov, an extreme example of the current tendency for some films to have high audience approval ratings but poor critical receptions. In this case, I believe many reviewers have mistaken the film’s core point, focusing on its depiction of AI rather than on its ideas about justice.

Then we have “Eleven Soaring Poems about Flight,” including works from Edmond Rostand, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and even such unexpected names as Wilbur Wright and our own Craig Biddle.

Next, in “Two Perspectives on Stopping Trump and Other Tyrants,” Nicholas Provenzo reviews two books, Robert Tracinski’s Dictator from Day One: How Donald Trump Is Overthrowing the Constitution and How to Fight Back and Ira Chaleff’s To Stop a Tyrant: The Power of Political Followers to Make or Break a Toxic Leader. Whether you’re concerned by Trump’s disregard for the Constitution, rights, and reason, or you’re battling rights-abusing leaders elsewhere in the world, Nicholas highlights the valuable insights these books contain for understanding and opposing the tyrants of today.

Lastly, OSI junior fellow Margherita Bovo makes her TOS debut with two philosophically rich reviews of important works: The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution by Carolyn Merchant and The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680–1790 by Ritchie Robertson. The first book pioneered the virulent movement known today as “ecofeminism” whereas the second is a welcome exposition on why the Enlightenment should be studied and lauded.

That’s it for this issue—I hope you enjoy the articles and reviews. If so, be sure to recommend and share them with friends on social media, in conversation, and especially on Substack. If you have a Substack publication of your own, please recommend The Objective Standard on your home page (see “recommendations” on your dashboard). And if you’ve not yet subscribed to the journal for people of reason, head over to TheObjectiveStandard.com and become a subscriber or upgrade your subscription today.

Thank you for your business and support,

Thomas Walker-Werth
Managing Editor
The Objective Standard

Author’s note: This article contains spoilers for Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull and for Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.1

Can a seagull inspire you to strive for excellence, intelligence, and skill? This one can.

The life of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, the eponymous bird protagonist of Richard Bach’s novella, is a powerful metaphor depicting the virtue of independence and the importance of personal achievement. As the story unfolds, however, these values are substantially undercut by mysticism and supernaturalism.2 Even so, the good outweighs the bad and makes this short book a thought-provoking and worthwhile read.

To live a life of meaning and joy, a conceptual being—whether a human or an anthropomorphic bird—must do more than merely survive. He must choose and pursue both material and spiritual values. Crucial among the latter is self-esteem, which Jonathan Gull earns through his relentless pursuit of excellence in flying.

Through Jonathan, Bach shows that striving for excellence can and should be joyful, not dutiful. By pursuing mastery in something we love to do, we place our aims and efforts in service of our happiness.

Jonathan sees that there is more to life than “look for food, sleep, and repeat.”

Most gulls don’t bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight—how to get from shore to food and back again. For most gulls, it is not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight. More than anything else, Jonathan Livingston Seagull loved to fly. (14)

His family and flock, however, didn’t see the sense in it.

“See here, Jonathan,” said his father, not unkindly. “Winter isn’t far away. Boats will be few, and the surface fish will be swimming deep. If you must study, then study food, and how to get it. This flying business is all very well, but you can’t eat a glide, you know. Don’t you forget that the reason you fly is to eat.” (14–15)

Although Jonathan tried for a few days to behave like the other gulls—“screeching and fighting with the flock around the peers and fishing boats, diving on scraps of fish and bread”—that was not for him. Soon, he “was off by himself again, far out at sea, hungry, happy, learning.” (15)

Jonathan’s passion for his art resembles that of the architect Howard Roark in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead (published twenty-seven years before Bach’s book). “I don’t build in order to have clients, I have clients in order to build,” Roark explained.3 And he cared not a whit about what others thought of his ways. He lived by his own mind and for his own aims. Likewise for Jonathan: He doesn’t fly in order to eat, he eats in order to fly. And he goes by his own judgment regardless of what others think or feel about it.

Jonathan’s pursuit of his own self-interested purposes in the face of opposition is a joy to behold. He speaks in explicitly moral terms about it and encourages others to look and see what he has discovered. For instance, addressing the Council Flock (the Elders and assembled gulls), he says,

Who is more responsible than a gull who finds and follows a meaning, a higher purpose for life? For a thousand years we have scrabbled after fish heads, but now we have a reason to live—to learn, to discover, to be free! Give me one chance, let me show you what I’ve found. (35)

Bach, at times, not only champions such self-interested purposes through his characters—he also, in one instance, explicitly rejects faith. “Forget about faith!” insists Jonathan’s teacher Chiang. “You didn’t need faith to fly, you needed to understand flying. This is just the same.” (59).

Unfortunately, the referent of “this” in that last sentence is the “trick” of knowing “that his true nature lived, as perfect as an unwritten number, everywhere at once across space and time” and that this nature enables him to surpass all limits including the laws of identity and causality. After accepting that he could transcend all such limitations, Jonathan closed his eyes and magically, instantaneously traveled to “some planet . . . with a green sky and a double star for a sun.” (58–59)

Of course, had the story intentionally and forthrightly involved magic and magical beings as part of its plot, as do, for example, Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, this could be unobjectionable, even delightful. Bach, however, does not establish such context. Rather, through his characters, he both indirectly and directly claims that reality and its laws can be transcended.

The story doubles down on this irrationality when Fletcher, Jonathan’s student, crashes into a cliff. “The trick, Fletcher, is that we are trying to overcome our limitations in order, patiently,” says Jonathan. “We don’t tackle flying through rock until a little later in the program.” (86)

Again, the problem isn’t that the novella includes mystical or supernatural elements. Good fiction can involve magic, time travel, or other fantastical premises as part of its world. When Harry Potter and his wizard friends run through the brick wall at “Platform 9 ¾,” we know it’s magic being performed by magical beings—and no one pretends it’s not magic. It’s part of the established setting of a magic-laden world. Here, however, Bach is not calling such events “magical” or treating them as magical. He is treating them as natural and non-magical—as the way reality is. Jonathan and Chiang are not presented as magical seagulls; they are presented as regular seagulls who transcend reality by, to paraphrase Ayn Rand, placing an “I wish” over an “it is”—and succeeding.

Although Bach initially presents Jonathan and Chiang as characters driven by curiosity, disciplined practice, and rational self-improvement, as the story progresses, they become increasingly nonsensical. For instance, Jonathan would advise his students, “Your whole body, from wingtip to wingtip . . . is nothing more than your thought itself, in a form you can see. Break the chains of your thought, and you break the chains of your body, too.” (76–77) And “Don’t believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding, find out what you already know, and you’ll see the way to fly.” (92)

Such contradictory aspects of the book undercut the qualities that otherwise make it wonderful and inspirational. If the gulls could master flying through the power of will or thought alone—with no need for rationality, independence, or recognition of the actual facts and laws of reality—then none of these qualities would be necessary, and the story would lose all value to a rational mind. The laws Bach has Jonathan and other independent-thinking gulls transcend are the very laws that enabled them to master their pursuits and achieve their aims. Bach’s heroes, for the most part, don’t violate the laws of aerodynamics; they genuinely, rationally understand them and train accordingly. They don’t will or think their way past physical constraints; they use their minds and train their bodies in accordance with the facts and thereby develop techniques that enable them to optimize their abilities within the constraints of reality. To paraphrase Francis Bacon, they command nature by obeying it—not by transcending it.

As I said earlier, the book is mixed. And the more important elements are its positive parts. So let’s return to those.

Whereas traditionally gulls think life is just about flying for food and staying alive, Jonathan shows that by thinking about our nature and testing our limits, we can choose meaningful aims and expand our horizons. His path demonstrates that the choice to think—to take ideas, alternatives, and consequences seriously—is the most fundamental and important choice in life. This is the path that most of the other seagulls have not taken, and it’s why their view of what is possible is so limited. As Jonathan says: “Instead of our drab slogging forth and back to the fishing boats, there’s a reason to life! We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill. We can be free! We can learn to fly!” (27)

His desire for and pursuit of constant advancement shows that, if we choose to question assumptions about our limitations, we can learn which limits are real and which are not. If we choose not to question, not to think, and instead to blindly accept what we’re told about who we are and how we can and should live, we place ourselves in cages of our own evasion. “‘Why is it,’ Jonathan puzzled, ‘that the hardest thing in the world is to convince a bird that he is free, and that he can prove it for himself if he’d just spend a little time practicing? Why should that be so hard?’” (90–91)

Jonathan sees the Flock’s premise—that the main purpose of life is eating to stay alive—as a widely accepted dogma that blinds the birds to the true meaning and purpose of life: the achievement of excellence in something you love to do. He disproves that dogma by choosing his aims, constantly improving his skills, and enjoying the process of creating a beautiful life.

His defiance of the Council Flock represents profound love of life; a refusal to let conformity quash the joy of living. Independent thinking and the pursuit of personal values—not group think or tradition worship—lead to a rational confidence in one’s ability to live, to learn, and to flourish in freedom.

[Jonathan] spoke of very simple things—that it is right for a gull to fly, that freedom is the very nature of his being, that whatever stands against that freedom must be set aside, be it ritual or superstition or limitation in any form.

“Set aside,” came a voice from the multitude, “even if it be the Law of the Flock?”

“The only true law is that which leads to freedom,” Jonathan said. “There is no other.” (83)

After being banished from the Flock for violating its norms, Jonathan lives by himself, using his mind and loving his life. But he eventually discovers that he is not alone. His adventures lead him to a community where his values and standards are shared: the seagulls’ “heaven.” There, he meets birds who organize their daily lives around mastering the art of flying—and loving it.

Here were gulls who thought as he thought. For each of them, the most important thing in living was to reach out and touch perfection in that which they most loved to do, and that was to fly. They were magnificent birds, all of them, and they spent hour after hour every day practicing flight, testing advanced aeronautics. (53)

The heaven in the novel is not really a heaven, but a community of thoughtful, purposeful seagulls held together by shared values and the pursuit of measurable achievements such as flight distance, speed, altitude, difficulty of maneuvers and techniques, precision, and control level. In this regard, the seagulls’ heaven is reminiscent of another literary heaven for freethinkers: Galt’s Gulch in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged (published thirteen years before Bach’s book). Whereas the seagulls’ heaven is a place where seagulls are free to think, to pursue their passions, and to achieve all that they can in a culture that sees all of this as virtuous, so too for people in Galt’s Gulch. As Rand puts it, the Gulch is a refuge for “the men of the mind.”4 In both stories, the heroes are those who recognize and uphold the principle that their minds are sovereign, that their lives belong to them, and the only proper laws are those that secure individuals’ freedom.

In the final analysis, although the book is mixed, it is beautiful and inspiring. My advice: Dismiss the irrational aspects of the novella as noise, and focus on the signal—its rational elements and the glory they convey. Although Bach betrayed his own hero to some extent by tarnishing him with mysticism, we can treat Jonathan as he deserves to be treated: as a rational, independent, purposeful, heroic bird who does the best within a story he couldn’t completely control. If we do, Jonathan can inspire us to think and fly high.

This article appears in the Spring 2026 issue of The Objective Standard.

Editor’s note: This article is adapted from a live talk and has been lightly edited. It retains the cadence and idiosyncrasies of an oral presentation.

If I were to ask you to name the greatest American entrepreneur of all time, you’d probably think of all the business titans, those some people call the “robber barons”; most people are going to think of names such as Rockefeller, Carnegie, J. P. Morgan, maybe Cornelius Vanderbilt. More recently, you might say Elon Musk, perhaps Steve Jobs.

One name that does not get enough credit is Walt Disney.

I want to convince you that Walt Disney is, in fact, the greatest American entrepreneur of all time. That’s largely because, unlike all the capitalists I mentioned, Walt transformed or created from scratch multiple entirely different industries, inventing new products and business models.

The Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, Fords—they started with large industries: Rockefeller was in oil, Ford transformed automobiles, Carnegie worked in railroads and then steel. If I could describe the industry Walt built or transformed, it was as intangible as storytelling—yet he built a multibillion-dollar company out of it. He proved that creativity itself could be a business.

Now, in any endeavor, creativity obviously helps, enhances, and accelerates your business. Rockefeller clearly applied creativity to the refining process. He applied creativity to his business model and the trust structure that made Standard Oil so effective in how it refined by-products from oil—everything from kerosene to gasoline. Vanderbilt employed creativity in the business model of lowering the fares on all his steamships and operating at a lower cost than everyone else to get people on his boats where he could sell them other things. He basically pioneered what we now consider the idea of a loss leader. If you’ve ever enjoyed a $1 hot dog at Costco, thank Cornelius Vanderbilt for that business model. It’s the same with Morgan in financing, Carnegie, all these guys. It wasn’t just automobiles that became the lasting legacy of Ford—it was the assembly line.

Further, until Disney, if you wanted to succeed in business, you needed either capital or access to people who would loan you capital. Walt proved that to build a business, you don’t need a ton of money to start a factory or to buy a bunch of inventory or land or to lay railroad track. Creativity, in some instances, can be a substitute for capital in capitalism. Of course, even the word capitalism was a name given to our free-market system by its opponents. It was supposed to be a pejorative, assuming that the only people who can thrive in a capitalist system are people who inherit wealth. Walt’s journey proves that to be complete nonsense. It’s especially spicy because his father was a card-carrying member of the American Socialist Party.

Walt and his brother, Roy, founded the Disney Brothers Studio together in 1923. He had previously started his first studio, which ended up going bankrupt before he was eighteen, and he had a choice: declare bankruptcy or escape via a paperwork loophole, which required saying that he was a minor and didn’t know what he was signing when he took on all this debt. He chose to go through formal bankruptcy because even though people were telling him that he could get out of this, he believed in doing business the right way and that his reputation and brand as a person mattered.

The first main contribution that Walt made, not just to the entertainment industry but to business as a whole, is this idea of brand—that your brand matters. He’s not the person who invented the idea of a brand—that had existed more than a hundred years before. If you went to a general goods store in the mid-19th century and said, “Hey, I want some flour and some eggs,” there would just be a giant barrel of flour or boxes of eggs. People didn’t really know what eggs they were getting or where the flour came from. Eventually, the store owners started realizing that if they could create a brand and say, “You’re buying this brand of toothpaste or you’re buying this brand of soap,” people would pay a price premium. What they were buying was certainty that this is the soap I get when I buy this brand, or this is the quality of flour I get when I buy this brand. It was a risk-mitigation strategy that gave a sense of quality control. If I go to any store in the country that carries this brand of soap, I know I’m going to get this certain quality of soap, eggs, flour, and so on.

Walt applied that to the idea of a person. He wanted the name Walt Disney to mean something. After he went bankrupt in Kansas City, he moved to Hollywood. He didn’t have money for a suitcase, so he literally fashioned one out of cardboard and tied it together. Yet, with the money he scrounged up, he bought a first-class ticket to California. He showed up and wanted to get into the moviemaking industry, but he had no contacts. He was the founder of a failed film company. He wanted to get into feature moviemaking, but he realized that he didn’t have any advantage there. So, he went into animation because he figured that it had a lower barrier to entry: less competition. But what he really wanted to do was make feature-length movies.

So, he gets into animation and quickly realizes that it’s hard. At the time, there was no such thing as a feature-length cartoon. Animated movies were typically five-minute shorts that played before a feature-length movie. Today, if you go to a movie, you have all the previews before the actual movie starts. Back then, before the actual movie, there’d be cartoons—a bunch of juvenile, amateur, slapstick humor. There wasn’t any storyline. It was just dumb cartoons for five minutes to give you a quick giggle before the movie started. They were not serious, and not a lot of thought went into them. Because of that, the movie distributors were not willing to pay a premium for these cartoons because they didn’t really affect ticket sales. What cartoon they threw before a movie did not change who was going to see it or how many people would show up.

Walt realized that if he could find a way to create a character—to create a brand—people would go out of their way to see a movie because his cartoon is attached to it. Then he would have a little pricing power in his negotiation with the distributors because he could show data and say, “Hey, people want to see this character. Therefore, I’m going to charge you more for the rights to use my cartoons.” Prior to Walt realizing this, the idea of branding didn’t really exist in Hollywood. Walt was the first person to realize that if a Walt Disney picture plays before a movie, it means something.

Today, if we hear that there’s a new Walt Disney movie, without any context, we sort of know what that movie will be about—or at a minimum, what it’s not going to be about. It’s probably going to be family friendly. It’s not going to have a bunch of sex, violence, or gore. It’s probably aimed at children. If someone asks me, “Tim, what’s your favorite Warner Bros. movie?,” I’d be like, “I don’t know. I have no idea which movies from my top-ten list are Warner Bros. films and which are not.” It’s probably the same for MGM, Paramount, all the other studios; I don’t know which movies are made by which studios. You could copy and paste the intro into any movie, and I would have no idea. But when you see the Disney Animation logo from the ’90s—my childhood—all sorts of nostalgia just floods. I think of seeing The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Pocahontas, or Toy Story in theaters. That logo and that brand mean something.

I have firsthand experience in this. When I was in college, I joined the Disney College Program. They are obsessed with the brand. I was probably the most overqualified person to ever take a minimum-wage job at Disney World because I went there not wanting money. I wanted to learn how they trained their employees, who are, by the way, called “cast members.” Everything follows this theme of “the show.” You don’t take your breaks in a break room—there’s “onstage” and there’s “backstage.” I had to go to “costuming” every day to pick up my costume because they don’t have uniforms; they have costumes. Everything at Disney is about this theme and this brand of “the show.”

I spent the first three days learning the company’s history—even though I only had a minimum-wage job working in attractions, which is a fancy way of saying I pressed the “on” button when you go on a ride. I had to go through three full paid eight-hour days on the history of the Walt Disney Company because they want someone in a minimum-wage job to know, if someone asked me, “Hey, what year was Mickey Mouse created?” I’d be like, “1928.” “What year was Disney Studios incorporated?” “1923.” “What year did such and such movie come out?” And I would know. They wanted even the lowest-level employees to be trained on the history and heritage of the company because an advantage to this day that Disney has over other entertainment companies is that sense of heritage and that brand. Can you imagine a Starbucks barista having to go through three full eight-hour paid days of training on the history of Howard Schultz? No other companies do anything close to this. Even janitors have to go through this—and by the way, at Disney, there are no janitors. There are “showkeepers.” They keep the show clean. Even a janitor has to go through three days of “traditions” training.

On the first day, I was almost fired. I was sent home because I showed up “in violation of the Disney look,” which is the standards they have for the brand—you have to have this all-American, clean-cut look. So, no tattoos; men aren’t allowed to have earrings; and your hair has to be a totally natural color—you can’t show up with pink or purple hair. That also means no facial hair for guys. Probably for women, too. If I showed up right now, my stubble would absolutely get me kicked out. They’d be like, “Go to Universal.”

I showed up, and I knew all this. Even before I got the job, I had read all sorts of biographies about Walt Disney and watched every documentary. I was obsessed with the man. But I got sent home on my first day because the manager came up to me and said, “You’re in violation of the Disney look.” And I was like, “What?” He said, “You have stubble.” I didn’t know what to say because it’s 7 a.m., and I shaved the night before at 10 p.m. because I knew that you had to shave before you went in. But apparently my “7 a.m. shadow” was too much. And so, they sent me home. He gave me a disposable razor and said, “Go shave.” I was mortified, like, “OK, what do I do if I work a fourteen-hour shift?” Because often during spring break, you work six or seven hours, take a long lunch break, and then work a whole shift after that. I said, “By the end of my shift, I will logically be in violation.” He just put his arm on me and said, “We’ll talk about that later. For now, you need to go shave.” Can you even imagine a modern corporation taking that level of seriousness with their employees’ look for a minimum-wage job? I was standing in the dark all day. People wouldn’t be able to see. But that’s how seriously Disney takes its brand.

Throughout the 1920s and throughout the entire company’s history, Walt and Roy were constantly almost broke. No matter how much money Walt made, his ideas on how to spend the money were always so much greater than the amount of money he made that they were almost always going out of business. No matter if they were talking hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions, tens of millions, eventually hundreds of millions, Walt would find a way to reinvest the money. It was Roy’s job to find a way not to go bankrupt. Roy eventually became the CFO, but at the start, he worked as a bank teller. They started this company together, but neither of them had any formal business background. What they knew was that they could crack through; they could find a way to carve out a name for Disney Brothers Studios. If they could convince distributors that their cartoon characters were better than the alternatives, they could charge more.

Walt worked really hard to develop a character called Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Most of you have probably never heard of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit because it was stolen from Walt in a paperwork contract hostile takeover when he got into negotiations with his distributor in New York. They just knew more about contracts than Walt did, and he didn’t realize that he had signed away the rights to Oswald. When a contract got into a particularly fierce negotiation, he found out basically overnight that the distributor had not only hired away all his animators from underneath him but also owned the rights to Oswald, this character that was ascending in popularity.

So, as the story goes, he’s on a train ride home to California from New York City, and he calls his wife, Lillian, and says, “I think I have an idea. I’m going to create this new character. It’s going to be a mouse. I’m going to name him Mortimer.” And Lillian says, “Oh, my god, that is the literally worst name I have ever heard in my life. Please do not name him Mortimer.” And Walt, whose family is Irish, says, “What about Mickey?” And so, they said, “OK, that’s fine. We’ll name him Mickey.” The idea was that Mickey was going to be this mouse who was really Walt in animated form. It’s this spunky, punchy, all-American character who you just can’t help but root for. He’s always doing things and getting into things he shouldn’t be, but he finds a way. He has this can-do, all-American attitude of “I’m going to figure out how to get what I want in life.” And in the early Mickey shorts, Walt is the voice; it’s just him in falsetto.

They come out with Mickey Mouse, and cash starts flowing in. Walt has finally achieved this brand where he can charge more money from the distributors because people are calling movie theaters and saying, “Is there a Mickey Mouse cartoon before this movie?” And if there’s not, they’re going to another theater because they want to see Mickey before the movies. This had never happened before. It caught the whole industry off-guard because people didn’t care about cartoon shorts, in the same way that none of you in this room, me included, would ever call AMC before going to a movie and say, “What trailers are playing before the movie?” They’d be like, “I don’t know.” You’re like, “Well, that’s going to affect whether I go here or to Regal.” People were doing that because they wanted to see Mickey Mouse cartoons.

Then the Great Depression hit. The Disney Brothers Studios was largely saved from the worst parts of the Great Depression, at least relative to other studios, because they never overexpanded in buying movie theater chains. Almost every other studio did. They figured, when times were good in the roaring twenties, “We’re going to vertically integrate, and we’re going to make these movies, but we’re also going to own the physical movie theaters.” Disney, whether it was his wise business strategy or frankly lack thereof, didn’t want to do that. He wanted to put all the money back into making better Mickey cartoons so they could add more detail. He would hire actual artists to train the animators to become better artists. If you go back and watch cartoons and anything animated from the 1920s and ’30s, you’ll notice that Mickey Mouse and anything coming out of Disney Animation at the time, which includes The Three Little Pigs, is just better than the animations from any other studio out there. The art is noticeably better. The animation is smoother, more lifelike. That’s where Walt put all his money. This is another trend we’ll see time and time again in the company’s history: He never cared about profit in the way we may think of it. He thought of profit as the fuel with which he could fund more of his ideas. He didn’t do things for profit—he did things for excellence. He knew that if his vision of excellence in his head could be achieved in real life, then money would follow because people would want to pay to participate in that. Automatically, because of that mindset, whether he knew it, he had a longer-term vision for a lot of his business endeavors than short-term profit.

Disney was one of the only studios that wasn’t really hit hard by the Great Depression, but they were still struggling because people were going to fewer and fewer movies. And so, the Mickey character was doing well, but the overall economy was not. We think unemployment is bad now, at about 4 percent, but we had 25 percent unemployment during the Great Depression. Roy was struggling to figure out how to make more money because Walt kept finding ways to spend it. So, Roy contacted a guy named Kay Kamen, who became legendary in the Disney mythology. Kamen came up with the idea of merchandising: “What if we license some of our brand assets to other manufacturers, other companies, and then split the profits?”

So, he reached out to a company called Ingersoll-Waterbury, and asked, “What if we license Mickey Mouse to appear on a watch?” The watch cost $3. This is back in 1933, the height of the Great Depression, so it’s about $75 if you adjust for inflation, which wasn’t really affordable to the average person. Ingersoll was going out of business. The Disney company was also flirting with bankruptcy in 1933, despite all the millions of dollars Walt had made. And Ingersoll said, “All right, it can’t hurt if we do this, and no one buys it. It’s not like it costs a ton of money to make a couple thousand watches.” So, they try it. The first day, they sell eleven thousand watches. Within a couple years, they’ve sold so many watches that Ingersoll-Waterbury—which had been going out of business—had to scale up from just shy of three hundred employees to just shy of three thousand. It ten timesed the size of the company solely because of the Mickey Mouse watch. They had to add new factories and shifts. Over time, they sold twenty-five million of these watches. Now, most people have probably never heard of Ingersoll-Waterbury, but you might know of the company that they later changed their name to: Timex. The Mickey Mouse watch literally saved and made the company Timex that we know today. It also saved Walt Disney Studios.

The Mickey Mouse watch partnership brought in such a flood of money that Walt was able to pursue a new way of spending it all: making a feature-length cartoon. Again, until this time, people thought of cartoons, even Disney shorts, as five-minute previews before the actual movie. There had been no such thing as a feature-length cartoon. Today, there are plenty of movies—Disney movies, DreamWorks movies, and other studios that have made feature-length cartoons. At the time, it was regarded as preposterous that someone would sit down and watch a seventy-five-minute cartoon. But he announced, “We’re going to make a feature-length cartoon.” It’s important that this happened in the middle of the Great Depression because most historians agree that there is no way that Walt would have been able to assemble the talent and basically absorb all the best artists and animators in the country had it not been during the Great Depression. Any animator worth their salt, if they were working at another company, wanted to work for Disney because they wanted to be part of history. This was like being a rocket scientist in the 1960s—you would work at NASA, or you’d go find a new job, because why would you even want to be a rocket scientist in the 1960s and not work at NASA? That’s what the Disney studio felt like in the 1930s.

He started making this movie, and the critics labeled it immediately as “Disney’s folly.” They expected it to fail. Every critic out there was like, “Clearly, this is going to suck, and no one is going to sit through a seventy-five-minute cartoon.” “It’s hilarious that he’s even trying.” And it’s a shame that they said this about someone as accomplished as Walt, because at this time, he has already won Academy Awards. His name was a very respected one because of The Three Little Pigs and Mickey Mouse. He was globally famous. People would line up even in Europe to meet him. But virtually everyone thought he was just throwing his reputation away on this “stupid” feature-length movie.

He picked a fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm—Snow White—to be his first animated film. He estimated that it would cost about $250,000. But eventually they had to go to Bank of America and get loans. Then they had to go back and get more loans, and they had to go back and get even more loans. It got to the point where banks weren’t going to loan them money anymore because the project ballooned from $250,000 to $1.5 million. Keep in mind, this had never been done before. It’s like when Elon Musk promises that we’re going to be on Mars in two years, when instead it might be fifteen years, but you know, close. He has no real idea what the project scope is because it’s never been done before. Finally, one of the bankers from Bank of America called him in early 1937 and said, “The board of Bank of America is making me fly out. You need to show me what you have. Whatever rough cut you have, I need to see it, so we know what we’re funding.” Keep in mind that every time they sent $100,000, that’s like the modern equivalent of sending millions. This has never been done before, so the bank might lose all its investment. If you owe the bank $100,000, that’s your problem; but if you owe the bank $100 million, that’s the bank’s problem. They were getting nervous. They were pumping a ton of money into this, and they had no idea what they were even investing in.

So, the banker goes and sees this movie. After, he doesn’t mention it. They’re making small talk. They’re walking back to the banker’s car for him to catch his flight back to New York. Walt is getting really nervous because the guy hasn’t even brought up what he thinks of the film. They’re just small-talking all the way to the car. The banker opens the door and sits in the backseat. A professional driver is about to drive him off—and just as an aside, he looks up at Walt and says, “Oh, by the way, that picture of yours: that’s going to make a pile of money.” Then he shuts the door, drives away, and they continue funding it.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs came out in December 1937. No animated film longer than fifteen minutes had ever been attempted. Snow White’s about seventy-five minutes long. All sorts of artistic techniques that had never been attempted in a film are present in this movie. Even how the color palettes in Snow White feel aesthetically is different from the cartoons at the time. They tried to avoid really bright colors because that was common in most shorts back then. Walt realized that people wouldn’t watch a seventy-five-minute movie of constantly bold colors. It needed to be a little bit more earthy, a little bit more muted so that when they use color, you notice it. He also went out of his way to make sure that it wasn’t just a musical. There’s music in it, but the music feels natural and inherent to the plot. It’s not like Snow White steps up and suddenly sings a song, because that’s what most cartoon animated features were—this slapstick, juvenile, amateur approach to filmmaking that didn’t really have a sense of plot. Walt was obsessed with story as well. That’s what made Snow White work: It was a story.

His studio was the first ever to have a story department, where he spent millions of dollars a year employing story artists who weren’t animators. Their full-time job was making sure that the story worked, that the characters had character arcs, and that the plot was going somewhere—that an adult could watch it and enjoy it because it actually had a story. I think to this day, that’s what separates most Disney and Pixar films from their competition. Kids like them, of course, but there’s usually a plot arc and character development, so adults get something out of it as well. Walt understood that if this was going to work, yes, kids have to like it, but who’s going to drive the kids to the movie theater? Parents. So, adults also have to like it.

Snow White debuts in December 1937 at the Carthay Circle Theater. All of Hollywood’s top brass shows up. Shirley Temple’s there, Clark Gable, everyone who’s who in Hollywood is at this premiere. No one knows how it’s going to go because no one has ever seen a feature-length cartoon before. Imagine what it’s like being Walt Disney in that theater that night: He’s either about to achieve his lifelong dream of making a feature-length animated movie, or he’s about to be utterly humiliated and go completely bankrupt because, at this point, he had mortgaged his house. Keep in mind, at the time when they started creating the movie, he was a decamillionaire already. He had more money than he knew what to do with, but he put everything back into making Snow White. They even mortgaged the future profits of Mickey Mouse and other characters at the Disney studio.

If this doesn’t work, Disney is going out of business, and Walt’s going to be working for the bank the rest of his life to pay off the debt. I can’t even fathom what that would have felt like when that movie started, how nervous he was standing in the back of the room, like, “Are people going to like this? Are they going to applaud?” They get to the end of the movie and, spoiler alert, Snow White dies. The movie’s like a hundred years old, so that’s on you if you haven’t seen it. She eats a poisoned apple. There’s this horrible scene where you see the hand of Snow White drop the apple, and she’s dead. This shocks the crowd because up until this point, there has never been an animated movie that has any sense of pathos or feeling or substance. People were expecting jolly dwarfs dancing around to music. And that’s what act one and two of this movie are. But the final third of the movie starts to get serious, and you realize, “Oh, this is not a movie just for five-year-olds.” Walt looks over, and there’s this scene where Snow White is in her glass coffin. She’s dead, and the dwarfs are crying. Walt said that they had only the best people animate that scene because he realized it was going to make or break his entire career. If this scene worked, and they could get people to feel something, the movie would work. If it didn’t, the movie wouldn’t work. Walt looks over and into the crowd and sees Clark Gable crying; and in that moment, Walt is just, “We did it. This movie is going to work.” The whole theater was crying. Every animator, Disney himself, and everyone in the theater testified that everyone was just losing it because they didn’t expect the movie to have this much pathos.

Snow White went on to make $8 million off a budget of $1.5 million. If you adjust that for inflation and other variables such as how so many of the people who saw this movie were children who were getting in cheaper than a normal ticket price, it would have made about $1.5 billion in today’s money. And this was in the middle of the Great Depression. Today, it would be a top-ten movie of all time. Yet foreign markets were largely locked out because in the mid- to late-1930s, Hitler took over Europe and started shielding Nazi Germany from any Western influence, including Disney movies. The Asian market—China, Japan, etcetera—didn’t really exist for all intents and purposes. So, comparing global box-office numbers from today to then, there are many people who make a compelling argument that Snow White is the greatest box-office hit of all time, and it’s not even close.

Walt risked everything to make this movie happen. This is a theme throughout Walt’s life—he was never satisfied with making a bunch of money and just enjoying it. His money was fuel for the next crazy project he dreamed up. This is why I respect him so much, because as an entrepreneur myself, honestly, I can’t fathom taking that level of risk. When you finally achieve a nice life—you can fly first class, you can buy a new car, and you finally afford to buy your own house—Walt takes multiple mortgages against his house. He sells his Moon Roadster. He cashes out his life insurance policy. Had he died of a heart attack from the stress, his family would have been broke.

But it works. And he doesn’t just do it once; he does it multiple times throughout his career. It reminds me of Howard Roark from the book The Fountainhead, who says, “I don’t build in order to have clients, I have clients in order to build.”^[1] Walt is a real-life Howard Roark. If you have read The Fountainhead, the more you study Walt, the more you’ll see that the parallels are crazy. Throughout his life, he’s finding ways to reinvest his profits into doing cooler things, and often it doesn’t work.

That’s the takeaway I see as a business owner that gives me hope—everything you do isn’t going to be awesome. Everything is not going to be a hit. He makes Snow White, and it is just rolling in the dough. He spends all the money building a brand-new, state-of-the-art campus in California. It was like the Google of its time, one of the first corporate centers to have air conditioning. He has a cafeteria where employees can get food. There are volleyball courts and softball fields. The Disney studios in Southern California in the 1930s and ’40s after Snow White were Silicon Valley before Silicon Valley. He pays for Pinocchio. He pays for Dumbo. He pays for Fantasia. All these movies lost money in the 1940s. Every movie he does for about ten years after Snow White bleeds money. By the end of the 1940s, he was broke again.

He made all this money and reinvested all of it, and it didn’t quite work, but the business model saved them. The Disney company today is really an artifact of Walt’s vision of how he thought about business. Let’s use some modern numbers. The Disney company last year made about $91 billion in gross revenue. Only about 10 percent of that was box-office revenue. Walt understood early on that he needed to build characters and brands that transcend an individual movie and has lasting value over time. It all starts from making movies, characters, and experiences that emotionally resonate with people. The Walt Disney Company makes about five times more money on merchandising and experiences as it does at the box office. If you’ve ever gone on a Disney cruise, if you’ve gone to Disneyland or Disney World, or your child has Moana figurines, Mickey Mouse plush toys, Star Wars action heroes, or all the various toys in licensing, the company makes five times as much money on that as on movie revenues.

Disney went public in 1957. Unlike most publicly traded stocks today—which are basically Ponzi schemes in which the investors want to sell the stock for a higher price than they paid for it by finding someone dumber to buy the stock at a higher price—Walt did not do this as a liquidity event. He did it for the old-fashioned reason: They needed money to grow. Because even in the mid-1950s, after they’d technically started Disneyland—this is after Cinderella saved the company in 1950 from the “lost decade” of the 1940s—even after all this, they were still broke because Walt kept coming up with creative ways to spend the money. So, they had to go public. Roy had run out of banks and institutional investors, life insurance companies, and whatnot to loan them money. There were no larger financial institutions that could extend the Disney company any more credit. They had to offer equity to the general public. But Walt did not want to do this. He understood the loss of control, but Roy eventually told him there’s no other way.

If you had invested $10,000 in the 1957 initial public offering, that $10,000 would be worth a little bit more than $30 million today. Now I know most of you are probably thinking, well, yeah, but the stock market has grown a ton since then, plus inflation. What did the general market do during that time? Well, if you invested $10,000 in a broad-based S&P index fund, which didn’t actually exist back then, but we can extrapolate what it would have been worth based on overall market returns, $10,000 invested in the broad market today would be worth about $8 million. So, the Walt Disney Company outperformed the market over fifty-plus years by more than four times. That’s crazy. It’s one of the greatest retail investments in the history of American capitalism.

Disney understood that if you create a brand, characters, and stories that people resonate with, they will have long-lasting effects beyond the initial movie. Hollywood operated back then and still operates on a venture-capital model where about 75 percent of movies lose money, even with all we know about audience polling and testing. Only 25 percent of films make any profit whatsoever. The average movie today costs between around $20 million and $50 million. Disney took a different approach and still does. They’re willing to spend $50 to $200 million on a movie because, even if it breaks even, they want to take bigger bets. If they establish larger-than-life characters that transcend that movie so that people are thinking of them—so the characters have cultural staying power fifty years later—the company will make its money back in the long run.

I mentioned earlier that Dumbo was one of the movies that came out in the early 1940s, and it lost money. It was a commercial failure, as were Bambi, Fantasia, and Pinocchio. But I took my daughter Rose to Disney World for the first time earlier this year, and we went on the Dumbo ride. That day, she also happened to be wearing a Dumbo dress. A hundred years later, Disney is still taking my money from a character in a movie that apparently lost money. The question becomes: Did it really lose money? Disney is always playing a longer game than its competitors. Walt was always looking for ways to bring his visions into reality because he was not OK with the cognitive dissonance of an idea existing in his mind and him not being able to make it real. I think the only entrepreneur who even comes close would be Elon Musk. I’ve told many people that Musk is basically Walt Disney with a higher SAT score. Walt and Roy had multiple shouting matches about Walt spending all their money over the years, and Roy threatened to quit multiple times because he was like, “Why can’t we just take two years and enjoy some of the profits and not spend it all immediately?” Walt was not OK with that.

Next, he planned, envisioned, and funded Disneyland (in California), which was the first-ever example of a theme park, as opposed to just an amusement park. There were also carnivals, but they were sketchy and not family friendly. Walt envisioned: What if there was a park that was clean, where you would want to bring your young family, and that had a theme? The theme was obviously Disney characters, movies, the ideas of imagination, wonder, and fantasy. Again, people labeled it Disney’s folly because they thought there’s no way this is going to work. They’re spending so much capital on this. Even at the time, as rich as he was by the mid-1950s, he didn’t have money for it. He cashed out everything: his life insurance policy, the mortgage on his house, and it still wasn’t even close to enough. They got a huge loan from Bank of America. It still wasn’t enough. They had to get ABC to fund the remainder of Disneyland. ABC at the time was one of the three major networks: CBS, NBC, and ABC. ABC was getting its butt kicked across the board. It was a distant third to NBC and CBS. None of the major shows on TV at the time were ABC shows. So, they asked Walt, “Hey, could you make a show for us basically for free? If you do, we will pay for the remainder of the park’s construction.” The result was The Wonderful World of Disney, which many of you probably recognize. I just watched The Sandlot on TV with my daughter this past week. It was the Sunday night movie on The Wonderful World of Disney, which is still going seventy years later.

So, they built the park. It opened, and it was an absolute smash hit. It was printing money. The first day was an epic disaster, though. The asphalt wasn’t all dry, so people’s shoes were melting into the pavement. There was a plumber strike because the union was negotiating with them, and the plumbers intentionally sabotaged a lot of the plumbing to cause a disaster. But Walt and his team figured it out. The park made tons of money. It’s just another example of Walt investing everything in an idea that he thought would work.

Where we’re standing right now (near Disney Springs) is what Walt called the Florida Project. Most people don’t realize that Disney World was never supposed to be just a theme park. Disney imagined, “What if I could build a for-profit city in a special economic zone that could prove to the whole world how mighty American capitalism can actually be, without the constraints of normal government planners and oversight?” He got a special charter from the state of Florida to start a private for-profit city. To this day, the water, road system, and emergency services in and around Disney World are managed by the Disney company, not the state of Florida. It was never supposed to be just a theme park; it was supposed to be a sprawling complex where Disney would build, own, and operate the hospitals. There would be a university system, housing, transportation, and parks. He was actively recruiting all the top companies at the time; he wanted Ford, GM, and GE to move their headquarters or R&D departments here because he wanted it to be the most futuristic city in the world with the smartest minds and the most cutting-edge research. He wanted to prove that there was a better way of running a city.

But in 1966, Walt discovered that he has lung cancer. He was a lifetime smoker, and he passed away in December 1966. That vision died with him. The executives didn’t know what to do because Walt had all the vision and creativity of his company in his mind. So, they turned it into another theme park. Many of you have probably been to EPCOT. What most people don’t realize is that EPCOT is an acronym. There’s a reason it’s always capitalized. EPCOT stands for “Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow.” It was supposed to be a functioning private, for-profit city that would show the world the magic of the American free enterprise system, almost a permanent world’s fair with actual people living and working there full-time. But that dream died with Walt.

What is your favorite Disney movie of all time? I heard Cars, Aladdin, Mulan, and Snow White. I’ve asked this of many audiences, and every time people shout out tons of movies. But when I do this, no one ever names a Disney movie that came out in the twenty-five-year period from when Walt died in 1966 to when The Little Mermaid came out in 1989—the start of the Disney renaissance period, the 1990s. For about twenty-five years before that, there was a period of creative bankruptcy in the Walt Disney Company in which they didn’t make good movies. The company lost its mojo. That creative driving force that Walt brought to the studio every day was gone. I don’t know if in any other company in the history of the United States, one person has made that much of an impact on the enterprise.

In the last known scene from Walt’s life, he’s lying in a hospital bed in Burbank, California. He’s with his brother Roy, and Roy is rubbing his feet, which have become really swollen. Walt is lying in the hospital looking up at the ceiling tiles. He’s pointing out, “Here’s where I want the hospital. Here’s where I want the athletic fields. We’ll build housing over here. We’ll have garbage chutes that’ll run underground this way so that there’re never garbage trucks or garbage on the streets. Everything’s going to be underground. We’ll have parking over here. We’ll have one amusement park over here just to bring people to visit.” He’s sketching out where everything is going to go in the Florida project. And he grows tired, his eyes slowly close, and Walt passes away on December 15, 1966.

No entrepreneur since has captured the world’s imagination the way Walt Disney has. The company that he started back in 1923 eventually formally changed its name to honor the founder. It’s no longer Disney Brothers Studio. It’s the Walt Disney Company. That’s a good representation of why I think Walt Disney deserves his spot among the greatest American entrepreneurs of all time, if not the greatest American entrepreneur of all time.

This article appears in the Spring 2026 issue of The Objective Standard.

^[1] The Fountainhead, directed by King Vidor (Burbank, CA: Warner Bros., 1949).

Arka Serezh is the founder of Gondor Industries, a company pioneering robotically cut stone for architecture and sculpture. I interviewed him at the premises of The Stonemasonry Company in Stamford, England, where he has established his first robotic stonemasonry operation.

Thomas Walker-Werth: How did you get into stone masonry? When did you realize that this is something you’re passionate about?

Arka Serezh: I moved to the United Kingdom when I was eighteen to study mechanical engineering, and I got really interested in 3D printing, partly because being able to 3D model something and then print it and get it into the real world—sometimes in just a day—is fascinating. I kept refining my skill at 3D modeling because I wanted to make more interesting things. I realized that I’m really interested in aesthetics—I wanted to design beautiful things. So, I’ve printed hundreds of objects over the past nine years, mostly for fun. I have a 3D printer in my dining room.

At the same time, I was trying to figure out professionally what I wanted to do. I always preferred taking my own initiative and didn’t like being told what to do. After a couple of terrible internships, I realized that I’m much better off learning things by myself than being put into someone else’s box. So, in 2020, I dropped out from my master’s degree to start a company that applied machine learning to find optimal solutions for engineering drones and cars. For example, if you want a drone to fly longer, you need a bigger battery, which means more weight, which means you need different motors, different electronics, a different chassis. It’s complex to find those trade-offs, so we developed a platform where engineers can plug in their parameters and then run optimization with AI to figure out the best solution. It was my first shot at entrepreneurship, and it was heavily on the engineering side—it wasn’t really aesthetic. At that point, I didn’t quite realize that I was missing that.

We managed to raise $1.7 million, but we realized that it’s impossible to sell this type of solution for a range of reasons. So, we wound down the company, and I got lost again because I knew I didn’t want to work within that industry, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do next. I worked at a range of early-stage medical technology hardware companies. That’s when I realized that I’m much more keen on design and aesthetics rather than pure engineering and figuring out the optimal solution for a problem.

Out of curiosity, I started learning more about architecture. I got a job with a construction robotics startup in the United States, and I helped them figure out how to take a robotics business to market in the construction industry. I knew that robotics could completely transform construction, but that’s a field you need to understand before trying to introduce robotics into it. You need to be on-site, you need to understand the workflows, you need to understand how the industry works.

I started wondering what kind of construction I wanted to work in. I looked at it from a materials perspective, starting with wood. I looked at the workflow of how you build framing and realized that it was very competitive. A lot of companies were going after this opportunity, and I wasn’t a big fan of wooden houses. Then I started looking at stone. By that time, I was familiar with early attempts of applying robotics to stone, and I found that very appealing from an aesthetics perspective. When you see a robot carving stone with water cooling the tool and the sun shining onto the stone, it just looks divine.

One of the obvious, go-to markets within that specific field is making sculptures and busts. If you look at the most beautiful buildings, such as Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, you will see that sculptures are integrated very deeply into the architecture. Since I was a kid, I really enjoyed stone buildings. When I was twelve, I visited Place Saint-Michel in Paris, which is just incredible. That strong memory pushed my curiosity further.

Here in the UK, we have many stone buildings, which means there is a big restoration market. So, I started diving deeper into and learning more about this industry by speaking with architects and founders in construction. That led me to meet the CTO of AUAR, a company applying robotics to cutting timber. They had an available robot that was too small for their needs and taking up their space, which they were willing to let me take.

He introduced me to The Stonemasonry Company. They had all the infrastructure I needed to bring the robot to them and retrofit it to cut stone. So that’s what I did. I finished my first carving at 4 a.m. on December 24. I’m now working on improving the process and getting early clients.

The UK is where the stone renaissance is happening. The Stonemasonry Company innovated on post tensioning stone (a technique for creating whole flights of stairs that are only supported at the top and bottom without a wall to bear into, held in the air with steel cables tensioned within the stone, giving the impression that they are floating). They reapplied this technology and started developing whole buildings massively cheaper and faster than possible before. Yet, most of their work is done by hand, so it lacks ornamentation because of the time it would take to incorporate it.

Recently, robots have developed quite a lot. Now, they have the ability to bring back ornamentation. It’s still going to be cheaper to cut in straight lines, but now it can be much cheaper to do ornamentation than it used to be. We’re currently deeply integrating our robots into the manufacturing workflow of The Stonemasonry Company with a goal to automate as much as possible and run the factory 24/7.

Walker-Werth: Stonemasonry is typically associated with classical architecture, but what you’re doing is more innovative. Could you tell me a bit about the style that you like to do with stonemasonry and how that’s innovative and different aesthetically as well as technically?

Serezh: We’re hoping to pioneer a new style. Exactly what that style is right now is not totally clear. One of the fundamental questions in architecture is the question of the line. Do we want the line to be curved like in Art Nouveau? Do we want it to be straight like in Art Deco and more modernist buildings? Or do we want it to be a mix like in Gothic architecture? With robotics and the current state of things, it does make sense to choose at least a mixture of curved and straight lines. What it is going to enable in terms of style is yet to be seen.

I toured Antoni Gaudí’s work in Barcelona recently. He’s famous for Art Nouveau and very curved lines. My opinion is that when there are too many curves, it seems quite alien. I wouldn’t want to spend too much time in his buildings. Maybe it’s just too unfamiliar to me compared to, let’s say the Gothic style, which is much more prevalent throughout the world and much easier to see, so I’m more accustomed to it. But there is demand for a new aesthetics—something comfortable but innovative.

Can there be aesthetics where we, for example, see machined lines that are very well integrated into the design? There have been examples like this, particularly within 3D printing. The way 3D printing works is that it essentially heats up plastic and then puts down a layer down, then goes up and puts the next layer on top, gradually creating a 3D object. When you get close to a 3D-printed object, you will see the lines. Certain methods have gotten so good that you really cannot see the lines, but what is quite interesting is that if you add a texture, the lines can become an integrated part of the design. So, it looks really good, and the lines stop being a defining feature.

The question I’m asking myself right now is: Is there a certain aesthetics where we combine the finishing, manufacturing lines of the robot and integrate them in a way that looks good? Even in Sagrada Familia, if you look at the beams closely, you will see lines from how the stone was machined. But most people will never look, so the lines don’t matter much. When it comes to a sculpture, you cannot have those lines because people will admire it closely—you need to have a sculptor finish those lines by hand.

But with architecture such as the Ionic capital where the stone is three meters above you, you probably wouldn’t see those lines. That’s where you can get insane cost savings with robotic stone processing. But, as Ayn Rand demonstrated in The Fountainhead, it doesn’t make sense to use new methods to just copy-paste what previously was done. It’s a chance to innovate a better solution. What is the solution that integrates the benefits and the flows of this method with a new style of architecture? I don’t have an answer to that question yet, but I really hope to have it quite soon. Realistically, because my company is so new, it makes sense to focus on markets that already exist instead of pushing a new aesthetics and architecture on people. But I think that as we scale up, this is the question that we will be answering.

Walker-Werth: You mentioned Rand’s philosophy and how that’s inspired you. She talked about how ornamentation on buildings can sometimes be a dishonest attempt to make a building look like something it isn’t, such as sticking a Doric arch on the front of somebody’s ordinary house. But you used to see companies ornamenting their buildings in the Victorian era—if you look at railway stations in London, they’re covered in this beautiful ornamentation because the railways were trying to out-compete other competitors and present a certain image. Nowadays everything’s very bland and basic, I think largely because there’s not the money, and people lack creative spirit these days. Do you think ornamentation makes sense in modern architecture, and if so, when is it honest and integrated to use it?

Serezh: My company is pretty much based on the idea that we should bring back ornamentation. The question of honesty is something that I grapple with a lot with respect to this, particularly when it comes to experimentation and the final outcome on the building. We need to be able to experiment with new aesthetics because at the end of the day, you can’t fully grasp how a building will look in real life with a 3D model or virtual reality. If we want to push forward, we need to experiment, and some of those experiments are not going to be good.

I think that a lot of experiments in architecture right now have gone way too far. A lot of focus is on reusing wasted materials. I am a big fan of the circular economy—my dissertation was essentially on developing computer vision technology to improve it in factories—but there is a difference between strapping broken aluminum panels onto a building and calling it a marvel of architecture, or building a house out of it that looks completely horrific, versus being much more thoughtful about what is possible now and what we do can that looks good.

What looks good is a very difficult question. I’m a big fan of integration in architecture. For example, when you walk in Notting Hill, you really like that area because all the houses are built in a similar style, and it brings pleasure—there is ornament, there is a change of scenery that doesn’t make it look super boring. I believe ornamentation is really important within architecture. Architecture is a public art, and if you follow that logic, an architect is an artist, and we want to enjoy the art that comes out of it. Ornamentation can add beauty as part of a carefully designed building, an integrated street, or a larger development. It will look dishonest and fake when the ornamentation doesn’t integrate with the building’s purpose—Greek statues on a London townhouse, for example. But integration with a purpose—such as the statue of Atlas at the Rockefeller Center in New York or floral motifs on a building to match the planting on the street outside—can add the kind of beauty and detail that’s often missing today. You still see some basic use of sculpture in some modern buildings, but it either tends to be very basic or not well integrated with the building itself.

Modernist architects have produced some nice things, such as the work of Frank Lloyd Wright. But I believe the widespread blandness of modernist architecture is going out of fashion. People are bored with it. But I don’t think there is yet a holistic school of thought, the way Bauhaus was, to answer the question of what is the new aesthetics.

Bauhaus was such a small movement—I believe about six hundred students graduated from it, and only a little more than one hundred students got degrees. Yet somehow, alongside other things, it focused us on the simplest manufacturing methods, driving down costs, and making everything as minimalistic as possible. It doesn’t need to be a big movement to get change to happen.

Cutting costs, like Bauhaus encouraged, can make economic sense on a certain level, but as a result, we lose the cultural appreciation of ornamentation. When there is no ornamentation around us, people start designing other things such as interiors and even software without ornamentation as well. So gradually you start converging on this minimalism everywhere in the culture. I think we are at the stage where it’s gotten boring for people, and the question is: What’s next?

Walker-Werth: In what way do you see ornamentation helping both a designer and a potential client, such as a business or a homeowner, express an idea, and what themes would you be expressing through it?

Serezh: I was just in Barcelona for four days, and as I was walking around, there were certain things specifically related to ornamentation that brought me a lot of joy. For example, I was walking with my girlfriend past all these already beautiful buildings in Barcelona, and we saw the Royal Palace of Music and had to check it out because it looked incredibly beautiful. It had sculptures outside and a gorgeous interior. We went to see flamenco there, and it’s literally one of the most beautiful music halls I’ve ever been to—they have statues coming from the walls inside it, and the ceiling is made of stained glass windows. And it was all built in three years. I cannot really believe that all of that was built in three years in the early 20th century.

For me, architecture is about enjoying my life outdoors. I spent four months in Los Angeles last year, which is a city built for cars. It’s not built for humans. You cannot walk most places. It’s definitely one of the worst cities I’ve ever been to, and the architecture is quite horrific as well. It’s hard to build for humans in a city like that. For us in the UK, there is so much stone craft. It’s much easier to build a beautiful house here than in the United States because there is a certain expectation here, like in Barcelona. There, they started building everything in a traditional style, and then a couple of people came and said, “I want to stand out!” and hired Gaudí and built buildings like Casa Batlló, which is a quite weird but very beautiful building. It definitely stood out among all the other architecture. I was also in Madrid for two days before Barcelona, and the thing that I remember quite well from there is the street signs. They have a ceramic plate with a portrait of a person whom the street is named after or a certain activity which that street is known for. It’s quite simple to make, it looks fun, and I was impressed that they wanted to embody a certain celebration of the human spirit—something heroic, something glorifying. It gives you directions while at the same time expressing a positive idea.

That’s really what I want to do—create beautiful outdoor environments that celebrate human achievement.

Walker-Werth: How has Rand’s philosophy helped you in terms of how you’ve approached business and how you’ve approached thinking about your work and your values?

Serezh: I didn’t even know what integrity meant until I read The Fountainhead. She shows it through her characters in a way that you cannot unsee—through Howard Roark’s fierce commitment to building what he wants in his way and his refusal to compromise his ideas. If you read the introduction to the book, that’s exactly what she was trying to do—show the ideal man in the form of Roark and use other characters to portray his virtues and the opposite traits further.

Rand helped me realize that if I want to maintain integrity, I needed to pursue aesthetics. Growing up in a conservative family, I didn’t have much creative outplay. But once I read Rand’s books, studied integrity, and thought deeply about what’s important to me, what I wanted to work on, and what I want to create in the world, it became clear that aesthetics is a big part of it.

From there, I started figuring out what problem I wanted to solve in the market. Consumer electronics, websites, and so forth—all those things have really big problems. But with the way architecture is going, I saw an opportunity to apply the latest technology to take it in a better direction. I’ve never felt as satisfied working on anything, and I’ve never worked as hard on anything as what I’m doing right now, and I believe one of the core reasons for that is because I’m maintaining high integrity.

My goal is to build beautiful buildings, which is what Roark was doing. At the same time, I want to apply the latest industrial methods, which is a core element of Atlas Shrugged. In a way, I would not be doing what I’m doing right now if I wasn’t inspired by Rand. She also showed me the value of industrialization. As we grow up, we don’t really see what drives the world. Her stories show how different industries interconnect and support our technological society. I believe that working in manufacturing is one of the most important things that you can do because that’s what drives the world forward.

To commemorate Rand’s inspiration that inspired me to start Gondor Industries, I decided to make five marble busts of Rand for collectors and private individuals who were inspired by her novels. I came up with a concept where the pedestal for the bust is her books and commissioned a digital sculptor to design it. I named the robot after Steven Mallory, the hero and sculptor in The Fountainhead. In that sense, the robot is making the bust of its namesake’s creator. I hope it will be one of the greatest artistic tributes ever made to her work. The first bust is a study that we’re carving out of limestone and will be kept as property of the company. The five marble busts will be made per order, and only five will ever be made.

Walker-Werth: I can’t wait to see them!

This article appears in the Spring 2026 issue of The Objective Standard.

Starring Chris Pratt, Rebecca Ferguson, and Kali Reis
Written by Marco van Belle
Distributed by Amazon MGM Studios
Rated PG-13 for violence, bloody images, some strong language, drug content, and teen smoking.

Imagine that you are wrongly accused of murdering someone close to you. You don’t have an advocate to defend you or a jury to convince of your innocence. Rather, you’re sealed in a room with no access to the outside and given a mere ninety minutes in which to argue your case to an AI that has already calculated with a supposed 97.5 percent probability that you have committed the crime.¹ If you can’t get that percentage below ninety-two, you’re dead.

This is the dystopian premise of the new thriller Mercy, set in Los Angeles in 2029. It follows the “trial” of LAPD detective Chris Raven (Chris Pratt), who must fight for his life after being accused of murdering his wife. His opponent is Maddox (Rebecca Ferguson), the AI “judge, jury, and executioner” created as part of the Mercy Program, which Raven advocated and spearheaded. His one hope is the vast array of surveillance data to which Maddox has access.

Many viewers and critics have approached Mercy as a warning about how AI and intrusive government surveillance could combine to destroy privacy. Although that risk is conveyed by the film’s setting—a world in which the LAPD, Maddox, and the accused (for the duration of the trial) have access to everything recorded by almost every internet-connected mobile device and camera in the city—that isn’t the film’s fundamental point. Rather, a hint of its main idea lies in the context that gave rise to the LAPD’s decision to create the Mercy Program: an out-of-control violent crime epidemic. Raven and the city’s officials argued that for the city’s residents to be able to live in peace, a fast, efficient, and impartial method of capturing, prosecuting, and executing violent criminals was necessary.

Raven knows—or at least is completely convinced—that he’s innocent, and yet he finds himself judged guilty by a system he thought was infallible. After seeing the evidence, he begins to wonder whether he may have committed the crime and then forgotten through alcohol-induced amnesia. It’s only when he resolves to dive deeper into the mystery and use his remaining time to find the truth that he starts to uncover evidence that innocent people may have been put in front of Mercy and later executed. Raven comes to realize that the Mercy Program has bypassed citizens’ essential right to a fair, public hearing in the name of cutting crime levels, forcing suspected criminals into a “trial” in which Maddox’s “judgment” is supreme.

It becomes clear that Maddox lacks intuition—the human ability to subconsciously combine our experiences (including those we can’t consciously recall), emotions, and value judgments—which can enable us to spot signs that evidence may be misleading. Contrary to Maddox’s expectations, his rigorous exploration of seemingly unrelated evidence, guided by intuition, ultimately helps him uncover the surprising truth. At the end of the film, Raven—having discovered that both Maddox’s errors and human mishandling of evidence have led to unjust executions—remarks that both humans and AIs are capable of error. Although Maddox appears, unlike a human, to exercise flawless logic, she can miss signs and wrongly attribute importance to evidence because she lacks both a subconscious mind and a capacity to integrate emotions and value judgments with her logic.

Many reviewers have criticized Mercy for not exploring the rectitude of using AI in a criminal justice process and have called it a pro-AI film, but it is by exploring Maddox’s lack of intuition (her inability to experience “gut feelings”) that the film reaches its core idea: Whatever level of crime a society may be facing, a decision over a person’s life and freedom cannot be entrusted to a single judge. Rather, that person must have the means to defend himself to other human beings in a context that is open to scrutiny and challenge. The film conveys this idea successfully thanks to its captivating mystery and series of plot twists. It also delivers a compelling character arc for Raven during the film’s hundred-minute run time. He goes from a grieving alcoholic to a character who heroically struggles to uncover the truth about the previous Mercy Program trials and prioritizes justice over his loyalty to his friends in the process.

The fact that the film is interesting and entertaining is reflected in its audience reception, which contrasts dramatically with its critical ratings. At the time of writing, it has an 81 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes against a 20 percent critic score.2 The negative reviews that dominate mainstream-press articles about the film focus heavily on its relatively low budget, resulting in a limited range of locations (most of the story takes place in the Mercy Program’s chambers, with the events under examination displayed through a holographic interface) and a reliance on CGI for action sequences. They also deride the choice of Pratt for lead actor and the film’s limited exploration of Raven’s marriage and alcohol issues.3 Some of these are reasonable things to mention in a review, although Pratt was much better than one might expect from some of his past roles, and Raven’s backstory added value to the main storyline. The fundamental problem with these reviews, however, is that they fail to engage with the film’s core moral idea.

If there’s anything substantive to criticize about Mercy, it’s that despite her lack of intuition, Maddox acts too much like a human being. It’s realistic that by 2029, AIs will have become terrifyingly believable when imitating human emotion and mannerisms; and for much of the film, Ferguson’s performance believably captures an AI doing a very close approximation of human behavior. But it’s clear toward the end that Maddox is not merely imitating: “She” experiences doubt and chooses to act against her programming out of what appears to be emotion—sympathy for Raven’s evident heartbreak over his wife’s death and his frustration at knowing he’s innocent, as well as dismay over realizing that she’s made errors. She is shocked that Raven’s “gut feeling” about an aspect of the case turns out to be correct despite apparently contrary evidence, and she recognizes this as a sign that the way she evaluates cases is flawed and that humans possess an ability she lacks. She does not understand that the human brain can integrate evidence and spot patterns subconsciously as well as consciously—and this flaw is why she is unable to fairly judge those who are put in front of her despite her extensive resources and processing capabilities.

Although this portrayal leans into the common misconception of the technology we now call “AI” as potentially sentient and conscious (which there is no reason to believe it is or is likely to become), it does not impede the film’s ability to deliver both an exciting story and a relevant idea about the nature and importance of a proper justice process. Mercy is a far better film than its critical reception suggests, and anyone who values an entertaining story conveying a life-serving theme about justice is sure to enjoy it.

This article appears in the Spring 2026 issue of The Objective Standard.

The Dream of Flight

Wilbur Wright

“The desire to fly is an idea handed down to us by our ancestors who, in their grueling travels across trackless lands in prehistoric times, looked enviously on the birds soaring freely through space, at full speed, above all obstacles, on the infinite highway of the air.”

Wilbur Wright (1867–1912) was an American bicycle mechanic turned pioneer of aviation who, along with his brother, Orville, designed, built, and flew the first powered airplane. Although this is not technically a poem, it is sufficiently poetic to classify it as such.

First Flight over My Garden from Le Catinque de l’Aile

by Edmond Rostand

trans. Timothy Sandefur

I had a garden in the hills, it’s my retreat.
But this evening, rising from the countryside
The aeroplane, followed by some shepherds’ eyes,
Arrived and inflicted a blow against my peace.

So low the tiles on my roof began to shake,
This beast—there are no mountains anymore for him—
Passed above my garden like a Spanish wind,
Casting shadows on my sand, reflections on my lake.

I wanted to be mad, you lovely canvas beast.
I love to watch the eagles, stars up in the east;
I came up to these hills to seek a calm abode

And keep all to myself this rolling sky.
—But instead it was with tears of joy and pride
That I wept to see my sky become a road.

Edmond Rostand (1868–1916) was a French poet and writer best known as the creator of Cyrano de Bergerac.

“To a Skylark”

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from Heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden lightning
Of the sunken sun,
O’er which clouds are bright’ning,
Thou dost float and run;
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

The pale purple even
Melts around thy flight;
Like a star of Heaven,
In the broad day-light
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight,

Keen as are the arrows
Of that silver sphere,
Whose intense lamp narrows
In the white dawn clear
Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.

All the earth and air
With thy voice is loud,
As, when night is bare,
From one lonely cloud
The moon rains out her beams, and Heaven is overflow’d.

What thou art we know not;
What is most like thee?
From rainbow clouds there flow not
Drops so bright to see
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.

Like a Poet hidden
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,
Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:

Like a high-born maiden
In a palace-tower,
Soothing her love-laden
Soul in secret hour
With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower:

Like a glow-worm golden
In a dell of dew,
Scattering unbeholden
Its aëreal hue
Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view:

Like a rose embower’d
In its own green leaves,
By warm winds deflower’d,
Till the scent it gives
Makes faint with too much sweet those heavy-winged thieves:

Sound of vernal showers
On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awaken’d flowers,
All that ever was
Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.

Teach us, Sprite or Bird,
What sweet thoughts are thine:
I have never heard
Praise of love or wine
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

Chorus Hymeneal,
Or triumphal chant,
Match’d with thine would be all
But an empty vaunt,
A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

What objects are the fountains
Of thy happy strain?
What fields, or waves, or mountains?
What shapes of sky or plain?
What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

With thy clear keen joyance
Languor cannot be:
Shadow of annoyance
Never came near thee:
Thou lovest: but ne’er knew love’s sad satiety.

Waking or asleep,
Thou of death must deem
Things more true and deep
Than we mortals dream,
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

We look before and after,
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Yet if we could scorn
Hate, and pride, and fear;
If we were things born
Not to shed a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

Better than all measures
Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures
That in books are found,
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow
The world should listen then, as I am listening now.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) was a notable poet in the English Romantic movement, known for writing the verse drama Prometheus Unbound.

The Arrow and the Song

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) was an American poet and educator best known for writing “Paul Revere’s Ride.”

Sympathy

by Paul Laurence Dunbar

I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,
And the river flows like a stream of glass;
When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals—
I know what the caged bird feels!

I know why the caged bird beats his wing
Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
For he must fly back to his perch and cling
When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
And they pulse again with a keener sting—
I know why he beats his wing!

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,—
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings—
I know why the caged bird sings!

Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872–1906) was an American poet, novelist, and playwright. The title of Maya Angelou’s autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, was inspired by Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem “Sympathy,” which resonates with themes of confinement and her longing for freedom.

High Flight

by John Gillespie Magee Jr.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds,—and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air . . .

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew—
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

John Gillespie Magee Jr. (1922–1941) was a Canadian Air Force fighter pilot and war poet.

(W)right You Are!

by Eva Roerner and Felix du Bois-Reymond

There was a man from the United States of America: Wright!
The police, man and horse,
came out in full force,
when he went for his afternoon flight.

Eva Roerner (1889–1977) was a German painter and printmaker. Felix du Bois-Reymond was a German writer.

The Flying Wonder

by Stephen Vincent Benet

Said Orville Wright to Wilbur Wright,
“These birds are very trying.
I’m sick of hearing them cheep-cheep
About the fun of flying.
A bird has feathers, it is true.
That much I freely grant.
But must that stop us, W?”
Said Wilbur Wright, “It shan’t.”
And so they built a glider, first,
And then they built another.
–There never were two brothers more
Devoted to each other.
They ran a dusty little shop
For bicycle repairing.
And bought each other soda-pop
And praised each other’s daring.
They glided here, they glided there,
They sometimes skinned their noses.
–For learning how to rule the air
Was not a bed of roses–
But each would murmur, afterward,
While patching up his bro.
“Are we discouraged, W?”
“Of course we are not, O!”
And finally, at Kitty Hawk
In Nineteen-Three (let’s cheer it!),
The first real aeroplane really flew
With Orville there to steer it!
–And kingdoms may forget their kings
And dogs forget their bites,
But not till Man forgets his wings,
Will men forget the Wrights.

Stephen Vincent Benet (1898–1943) was an American poet, short story writer, and novelist.

Astronomy

by James T. Franklin

Oh science sequestered much,
And by wisdom’s gentler touch,
Accelerated more!
Did not they voice give the command
That man must venture from his strand
In quest of other distant land,
Or was it ancient lore?

For sure into his peaceful breast,
Thou breathed the spirit of unrest,
And bade him search the skies:
Thou pictured earth a moving sphere
Whose revolutions make the year,
And whispered to his listening ear,
“Search heaven and be wise.”

Thy presence round him, charming fell.
And break did it the magic spell
That ignorance had wrought:
And plain did seem the merry race
Of myriad planets thrown in space—
Just how each kept in his place,
Has fostered wondrous thought.

And oft the would-be infidel
Has list the story that you tell
And wisely gave a nod;
For now the planet checkered sky
And tangle comments hissing by
Have seized and borne his thoughts on high,
Acknowledging a God.

No day has dawned, no sunbeam shone,
Where thought of man has not yet gone:
And the rugged panoply,
Encasing of his mental frame,
Doth burst with unbounding fame
And conquers heaven in thy name,
Science of the canopy.

Ah! could the Alexander brave
Be resurrected from his grave?
Weep he would no more,
That no worlds to conquer still
He had; for science would fulfil
The very letter of his will,
Of worlds, would give him more.

James T. Franklin (active 1890–1902) was an American poet who wrote poetry for the 1899–1900 Paris World’s Fair.

Big Kite

by Craig Biddle

My father gave to me a kite,
But I’d no need in its lone flight;
For though it had a nine-foot span,
’Twas not enough to lift this man.

I took it down to old Byrd Park;
On one small face it made its mark.
There was a boy that it could lift;
My present then became my gift.

His small face grew to big brown eyes;
My hand held out, “See if it flies.”
Big wind picked up as if on cue—
Big kite. Big day. Big high it flew.

Now when in flight that kite I see,
It is enough to lift—lift me.

Craig Biddle (1962-present) is the editor-in-chief of The Objective Standard and executive director of Objective Standard Institute. He wrote this poem when he was nineteen years old.

In Honor of Charles Lindbergh

by Efrén Rebolledo

Like the spirits
That Dante placed in the Realm of God
Comes flying through the ether
Like a flash of light
To alight bonfires of enthusiasm in our bosom
And illuminate our minds with the light of hope.

Efrén Rebolledo (1877–1929) was a Mexican orientalist, poet, diplomat, and lawyer.

This article appears in the Spring 2026 issue of The Objective Standard.

True friendship—a trade of spiritual values between two people who admire each other’s characters—is one of the most enriching aspects of a full life. A heartwarming example of this is the short-lived but value-packed friendship between James Dean and Eartha Kitt. In her first TOS article, musician Rebecca Day explores this life-affirming relationship and what it demonstrates about the deep love true friends can share.

Another key aspect of a full life is the ability to think clearly. Language is our tool of comprehension, yet more and more people in the West today leave school with little understanding of how to use it properly, stymying their ability to think and communicate. Michael Rose’s new book The Subversive Art of a Classical Education is a line in the sand against this trend, as Tim White expounds in his new review.

I hope you enjoy this week’s articles,

Thomas Walker-Werth
Managing Editor

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Michael S. Rose’s new book, The Subversive Art of a Classical Education: Reclaiming the Mind in an Age of Speed, Screens, and Skill-Drills, is the most interesting sort of paradox: the sort that would be most beneficial to those least likely to recognize its value. Beautifully written and skillfully argued, the book is an oasis to parents and educators already well-aware of the dire state of education in America, but the very language that makes it so impactful to the initiated may make it significantly less accessible to those who most need to hear what Rose has to say.

Rose, headmaster at Cincinnati Classical Academy and a respected leader of the modern classical education movement, knows his craft inside and out. This is immediately clear from the very first page, whereupon he laments the near-total abandonment of evidence-based grammar instruction in schools today:

The grammar revolutionaries—for so they fancy themselves—have declared independence from the tyranny of the semicolon, the oppression of the properly placed modifier, and the authoritarian regime of the complete sentence. . . . What these revolutionaries fail to understand is that grammar is not a constraint upon expression but its very possibility. The irony that shadows their rebellion is that in casting off the supposed chains of grammatical structure, they have not liberated thought but confined it to a smaller, meaner province, where clarity is impossible and precision unknown. (3–4)

It is surely no accident that Rose chose to address grammar in the first of the book’s thirty chapters. Although proper grammar is not a sufficient condition of clear communication, it is a necessary condition, and it is one of the most often (and most unjustly) maligned subjects in most schools today. I, too, would have opened with grammar had I written a similar book, and for the same reason that Rose almost certainly did: to simultaneously invite those readers who already are or can be persuaded of the book’s theme while actively repelling those who have preemptively rejected it.

However, it is in the second chapter that the book’s potential fault line becomes apparent. Rose writes with energy, passion, and linguistic fluency that color his prose toward the ethereal; his explanations and descriptions are enchanting to those who can parse them easily—and seemingly pretentious to those who can’t. Rose’s writing is emphatically not pretentious, but it is likely to be read that way by those who have not themselves enjoyed the benefits of a classical education in some form. He writes:

To diagram a sentence is to examine the intricate architecture of thought itself, exposing the hidden scaffolding where subject leans into predicate and clauses weave their filigree of nuance and intent. It is an exercise both maddeningly meticulous and beautifully transcendent, where the mundane grammar of daily speech unfurls into a vast latticework of logic and interdependence. Here, prepositions cling like ivy to their objects, modifiers dangle precariously, and conjunctions bridge the chasms between ideas, all laid bare, stark and luminous, under the unforgiving precision of diagrammatic lines. (11)

I find this passage beautiful because I know exactly what it means—but I’m not one who needs to be convinced of either its truth or its elegance. I worry that readers not already well-versed in both grammar and diagramming sentences will, by the fact of their not having been inducted into the inner sanctum of these nearly forgotten sciences, struggle to digest the very argument whose purpose is to clarify their value.

Fortunately, Rose’s writing is not consistently exposed to this risk of self-sabotage. A few pages later, he elucidates a point in plainer language that is more likely to land as intended with whom I presume to be the book’s target reader:

The student who has mastered sentence diagramming possesses something that no algorithm can replicate: insight into the architecture of thought itself. Yes, the sentence diagramming student develops the ability to identify parts of speech but more importantly the capacity to see how they relate to create meaning. He slowly develops the wisdom to understand why certain structures serve certain purposes better than others. This understanding cannot be programmed because it is not merely about following rules but about grasping the principles that give those rules their purpose and power. (16)

The contrast in accessibility between these two passages is striking. Throughout the remainder of the book, Rose continues to alternate between these two styles. This intermittent (and likely unintentional) conceptual gatekeeping is arguably the book’s only significant flaw. In every other respect, it is masterfully written and densely packed with value for readers who are ready to meet Rose on his terms.

The Subversive Art of a Classical Education is divided into six parts, each dealing with a particular, widespread, and deeply poisonous aspect of modern pedagogy to which classical education is the proposed antidote.^[1] The first of these parts, titled “Subversive Acts of Language,” unapologetically reasserts the now-unfashionable ideas that language has objective meaning; that clear communication is possible only to those who understand this; and that any educational theory or framework that fails to offer students a rigorous foundation of linguistic precision has, by that fact, already failed. Readers who follow and generally accept Rose’s propositions in this section are conceptually cleared for takeoff and are likely to find enormous value in the remaining sections as well.

The second part, “Subversive Acts of Engagement,” covers slow reading, memorization, handwriting, and poetry, emphasizing the importance of learning foundational skills manually before introducing tools or technology meant to facilitate the execution of those skills. To this end and among other strategies, Rose advocates teaching students to read with print books before allowing them to read on screens, noting that

digital interfaces. . . treat all text as functionally equivalent: as information to be processed rather than as an encounter to be experienced. This flattening of textual hierarchy represents a profound loss, not merely of critical distinction but of appropriate response to the different types of claims that different texts make upon us. (48)

Here, Rose highlights one of many differences between most kinds of print books and nearly all modern web copy, the latter of which is almost always “optimized” for scannability and searchability at the expense of depth, clarity, nuance, and often any significant meaning at all. Importantly, Rose is not anti-technology; he argues only that, in many cases, pedagogically safe and responsible use of technology requires both thoughtfully cultivated habits and a certain foundation of more tactile experiences.

Part three, “Subversive Acts of Mind,” focuses on the subjects of thinking as such, geometry, storytelling, history, and the foundations of Western civilization. The most notable common thread running throughout this section concerns the fact that sustained thought necessarily incurs difficulty and discomfort—and that this is a feature of thought, not a bug. Rose pulls no punches when he laments the widespread failure of modern teachers to accept this fact and to reiterate it to their students: “We have accomplished the remarkable feat of reducing ‘critical thinking’ to a slogan, a catchphrase, a marketing term—everything except the actual act of thinking critically” (93).

If the book’s first part, “Subversive Acts of Language,” is its heaviest hitter in intellectual terms, then the fourth part, “Subversive Acts of Beauty,” is the emotional heavyweight champion. Rose’s chief argument in this section is that irony and insincerity are insidiously corrosive to children’s minds in an educational context because the consistent acceptance of both inculcates a belief that can be enormously difficult to reform in adulthood: the belief that the very values that make life worth living don’t matter. Rose argues here that children must be shown how and why to engage sincerely with beauty in art, music, and even science without embarrassment or apology. He notes:

There is something quietly rebellious in defending beauty today, precisely because it confronts the dreary utilitarianism of the age. It dares to say that man is not merely a producer and consumer. It asserts that his spirit longs for what is lovely. The arch and the dome, the statue and the song, still speak with a power that spreadsheets and memes cannot match. Beauty is not a luxury. It is a signpost pointing beyond ourselves. To exclude it is not progress but forgetfulness. It is a forgetting of who we are and what we need. (153)

Part five, “Subversive Acts of Digital Resistance,” rejects the notion that it is paranoid or old-fashioned to be concerned about the dangers of technology and instead advocates stringently evidence-based evaluations of the particular ways in which we allow children to use digital devices. In this section, Rose pushes back hard against “technological determinism”: the increasingly common (if usually subconsciously held) belief that things such as smartphones, social media, and generative AI are now inevitable facts of life that we must accept and use uncritically. He instead advocates “technological discernment,” which is exactly what it sounds like: the idea that any given form or use of technology must prove itself to be the best means of achieving our rational goals in education and in life more broadly; we must not merely assume it to be the best means, and we must not deny or downplay its risks, especially where child development is concerned.

The sixth and final part of the book, “Subversive Acts of Reclamation,” is conceptually the broadest. Here, Rose identifies five methodological pillars of classical education and argues for their continued importance in the modern world: the view of teaching as an explicitly philosophic endeavor, the nonnegotiable use of clear language, the unique value of Socratic dialogue, the advantages of a liberal-arts approach to education, and the importance of teaching in such a way that children can not only learn effectively but love doing so. Whereas most of the book is clearly valuable to both parents and teachers, the final part speaks mostly to the latter; it leans more heavily on principles of formal pedagogy and encourages teachers to further study particular texts.

One of Rose’s smartest decisions was to end every chapter with a list of books recommended to those who wish to dive deeper into that subject. Each reading list offers a healthy mix of material—some aimed at professional educators, some at parents, and some at curious laymen. Even the book itself serves as a testament to the importance of the words within; the hardback edition features an elegant black case with beautiful silver foil, and the rich, cream paper—along with the unassailable choice of Garamond for the body text font—lends tactile credibility to both Rose’s ideas and the seriousness with which he defends them.

The Subversive Art of a Classical Education is, without question, one of the most important, valuable, and well-written books on the subject. Despite its sophistication sometimes limiting its intelligibility to its target audience, it remains an expertly argued and beautifully crafted handbook for those who have chosen to undertake one of the most sacred responsibilities possible to man: custodianship of a child’s mind and soul.

This article appears in the Spring 2026 issue of The Objective Standard.

^[1] Classical education is a specific pedagogical model traditionally focused on Latin and Greek history, language, and culture; art and music; and writing and rhetoric as moral civility. Math and science are generally taught well and thoroughly but are somewhat less emphasized than these other subjects.

During his brief but influential career, actor James Dean starred in three acclaimed films that left an indelible mark on the movie industry: East of Eden, Rebel Without a Cause, and Giant. Becoming the caliber of actor who was able to do this took a lot of work and inspiration. In the early 1950s, on the recommendation of his acting coach, he moved from Hollywood to New York City to audition for Broadway plays. The relocation was a catalyst for his acting career—but it was a person, not a place, who inspired him artistically for his defining cinematic role.

Soon after moving to the city, he met singer and performer Eartha Kitt, whose attention-grabbing role as Teddy Hicks in the 1954 play Mrs. Patterson would establish her as a Broadway star. Dean had lived in Los Angeles during his college years at UCLA, and Kitt had lived in New York for most of her life, but both were originally from small towns. Dean spent most of his childhood on a farm in Indiana, and Kitt was born in rural South Carolina. They bonded over their roots and their love of New York’s vibrant performing arts scene.

Although their friendship lasted only a few years due to Dean’s early death in 1955, they bonded deeply and quickly over their shared values. They studied movement together in dance studios for their respective crafts, getting in touch with their bodies for stage presence and character development. They also got lost in conversation, talking out problems in their personal and professional lives. They spent time people watching, viewing it as a valuable tool for character study.^[1] They strengthened their connection over cups of coffee between dance sessions.

Kitt and Dean’s friendship shows us how people can grow individually from deep connections built on dedication to purpose, a passion for life, and honesty as a guiding principle.

“I Want to Move Like You”

Photographer Dennis Stock has a collection of candid photographs of Dean from 1955. He asked the budding actor if he could photograph him for Life magazine, and for almost a month, he shadowed Dean and took photos. During one of their sessions, Stock accompanied Dean and Kitt on an outing in New York City. His black-and-white photos show them huddled and talking at a small corner table in a restaurant, Kitt with cigarette in hand, looking intently at Dean, his back to the camera (he was shy offstage). The snapshots also document the dance classes they took together, with Kitt showing him ballet moves and poses to help with flexibility and confidence.

After these sessions, they’d often make the short trip to their favorite meetup spot, a little coffee shop near Times Square. The two would talk about work; Dean wanted to get more in touch with his body for physical roles, and Kitt’s lifelong experience as a dancer meant that she was well-positioned to help him. They would talk about difficulties from their childhood. Dean’s mother died in 1940 when he was only nine years old, and Kitt was born on a cotton plantation in 1927, surviving neglect and sexual abuse before moving to New York as a young girl.

Kitt appreciated Dean’s ability to understand her without explanation, but she later revealed that their regular coffee get-togethers were sparked by his seeing her perform live. He had asked her, “I want to move like you, can you teach me how to move my body like you do on stage?”^[2]

According to Kitt, their coffee sessions were filled with “little tete-a-tete conversations.”^[3] As she related,

He was like my brother. . . . He wanted to learn from me how to move on the stage the way I do, so I taught him how to control his body and how to let the words physically carry you from this point to that point. I was in a play and he’d just done his first film so we were both becoming known at that time. It was a good time.^[4]

Kindred Spirits

Kitt’s career reached a high point in New York after the 1953 release of her timeless Christmas single “Santa Baby.” Around this time, Dean landed several guest-star roles on television, increasing his popularity. As both became prominent public figures, they continued to value artistry more than the attention that came with being stars.

For Dean, the preparation for a film role mattered more than seeing his name in lights at the film’s premiere. He wasn’t chiefly concerned with the finished product but with the work it took to get to that point—with the understanding that the quality of the work will (or at least should) influence the success of the final product more than anything. In his words, “The gratification comes in the doing, not in the results.”^[5]

He found a kindred spirit in Kitt, who shared a similar philosophy and drew her own artistic fuel from a wealth of experience. She viewed living itself as a learning opportunity, saying, “I’m in school every day. My tombstone will be my diploma.”^[6]

Pressures of Fame

As Dean’s career grew due to the success of his breakout film East of Eden (an adaptation of the John Steinbeck novel), he struggled to handle the pressure. Artistry agreed with the introverted actor, but celebrity did not.

Dean was always thinking, mostly from curiosity but also from bouts of insomnia, and he had a penchant for making late-night phone calls. Kitt was his top choice to ring, and she always answered.^[7] “Our souls were mates,” she would recall some thirty years later.^[8] Her daughter, Kitt Shapiro, later shared that her mother’s relationship with Dean was non-romantic, but “she was very protective of him.”^[9]

As Kitt began to notice Dean struggling with the demands of Hollywood, she decided to talk to him about it. For her, their friendship wasn’t one of mere convenience but radical candor.

She traveled to Las Vegas to perform while Dean prepared for a role in Hollywood. She took time away from rehearsal to visit him, and he took her for a spin in his new car, a Porsche 550 Spyder, on Mulholland Drive. She reportedly expressed concern over his purchase of the infamous, featherweight racing car and told him, “James, I don’t like this car. It’s going to kill you.”^[10] Others, such as friend and fellow actor Alec Guiness, warned him as well.^[11]

Not long after, on a sunny California day in September 1955, Dean took a drive with his mechanic, Rolf Wütherich, and headed to a race. On the way, a vehicle made a left turn in front of Dean, and the two cars collided. The crash resulted in Dean’s death. Wütherich and the other driver sustained injuries but recovered.

Initial reports suggested Dean’s speed could have been a factor. He had received a speeding ticket earlier the same day. But witnesses of the crash shared that they didn’t think that the actor was going too fast when they saw the driver of the other car turn in front of Dean’s.^[12] Later, the driver stated in an interview with the Tulare Advance-Register newspaper that he didn’t see the actor’s vehicle before making his turn, leading some to conclude that the car’s small frame and silver color made it hard to see against the glare of the sun.^[13]

The Premiere of Giant

A month after the crash, Dean’s second major film, Rebel Without a Cause, premiered, solidifying his legacy as a youthful actor who transformed the way male characters were often played, taking on roles of emotionally nuanced dreamers rather than stoic traditionalists. Then, a little more than a year after his death, Giant premiered in 1956. Following the life of Jett Rink, a ranch hand discounted by his peers who eventually strikes oil on an inherited property, the posthumous release brought the late actor’s artistic spirit back to life. Dean didn’t just play the character of Rink—he embodied him, using different postures and detailed mannerisms with his hands to give the character individuality. He delivered lines with intensity and precision still talked about today, outshining his veteran costars Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson. Kitt’s direction at the dance studio was an instrumental force behind the magnetism of his role in the film. Dean received posthumous Academy Award nominations for Best Actor for both films.

Dean’s death affected Kitt for the rest of her life, and she honored his memory by speaking about her late friend whenever given the opportunity until her death from colon cancer in 2008. When reminiscing, she always used the nickname she gave him, “Jamie,” though most called him “Jimmy.” She spoke about his need for meaningful conversation and how it fostered a connection between them that eventually didn’t require words:

He wanted to communicate with you and he wanted you to communicate with him. He didn’t like to be in a conversation that didn’t make sense. That’s why a lot of times we didn’t have to talk to one another because we understood what the other one was thinking even if the words weren’t spoken.^[14]

While covering her memoir, Confessions of a Sex Kitten—a nod to her sultry stage presence and role as Catwoman in the 1960s Batman TV series—Vanity Fair featured an excerpt that illuminated the essence of their relationship:

Kitt found in Dean a “giver who wanted to receive, to be stimulated, to be ignited, to spark in order to spark.” She credited Dean with helping her understand ‘that all was okay in me, that I need not be afraid of myself or my ability to think and use my thinking to challenge others.’^[15]

Although they only knew each other closely for a handful of years, the impact of their friendship was not lessened by its brevity. Nor does its briefness take away the important lessons we can glean from closeness such as theirs. Their friendship helps us understand that the best relationships don’t simply entertain us or indulge us. When a friendship is formed on a foundation of shared values, the positive effects extend beyond the relationship itself. We are shaped by it and grow over time because of it. We aren’t transfixed—we are transformed.

This article appears in the Spring 2026 issue of The Objective Standard.

^[1] Hadley Hall Mears, “C’est Si Bon: Eartha Kitt’s Transformative Life,” Vanity Fair, January 22, 2021, https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/01/eartha-kitt-old-hollywood-autobiography?srsltid=AfmBOoruPJyirZZqgMo7enjbbjJ7t5gSIvHYs2j6GK7I3WNiY6X4gNaq.

^[2] “The Friendship of Eartha Kitt and James Dean,” Past Hollywood History, April 24, 2019, https://pasthollywoodhistory.home.blog/2019/04/24/the-friendship-of-eartha-kitt-and-james-dean.

^[3] “Friendship of Eartha Kitt and James Dean.”

^[4] “Friendship of Eartha Kitt and James Dean.”

^[5] Sarah Berger, “James Dean Quotes: 11 Things the ‘Rebel Without A Cause’ Actor Said to Remember the Icon on 60th Anniversary of His Death,” International Business Times, September 30, 2015, https://www.ibtimes.com/james-dean-quotes-11-things-rebel-without-cause-actor-said-remember-icon-60th-2120074.

^[6] History.com Editors, “Eartha Kitt Speaks Out against the Vietnam War,” History, last modified February 18, 2025, https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/january-18/eartha-kitt-speaks-out-against-vietnam-war-lady-bird-johnson.

^[7] “Eartha Kitt Recalls the Last Time She Ever Saw James Dean,” Far Out Magazine, June 15, 2020, https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/james-dean-eartha-kitt-relationship-final-moments/.

^[8] Mears, “C’est Si Bon.”

^[9] Stephanie Nolasco, “Eartha Kitt’s Daughter Speaks Out about Star’s Relationship with Orson Welles, James Dean,” Fox News, January 16, 2018, https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/eartha-kitts-daughter-speaks-out-about-stars-relationship-with-orson-welles-james-dean.

^[10] Rob Finkelman, “The Curse of the Little Bastard: James Dean Never Stood a Chance,” Street Muscle Magazine, October 19, 2015, https://www.streetmusclemag.com/features/the-curse-of-the-little-bastard-james-dean-never-stood-a-chance/.

^[11] Ryan Parker, “Alec Guinness Warned James Dean about His Car One Week before Deadly Crash,” The Hollywood Reporter, July 11, 2017, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/alec-guinness-warned-james-dean-his-car-one-week-before-deadly-crash-1019948/.

^[12] Samantha Stutsman, “James Dean’s Death: Inside the 24-Year-Old Actor’s Tragic Car Crash, 70 Years Later,” People, September 30, 2025, https://people.com/james-dean-death-everything-to-know-11820454.

^[13] Mark Gray, “Inside the Haunted Life of Donald Turnupseed, the Other Man in James Dean’s Fatal Car Crash,” People, November 8, 2025, https://people.com/donald-turnupseed-james-dean-death-11777017.

^[14] In Love with James Dean, “Eartha Kitt on James Dean’s Death”; Kitt appears on Larry King Live in 2005, 4:47, posted April 29, 2015.

^[15] Mears, “C’est Si Bon.”

Art, as Ayn Rand observed, is a concretization of the author’s values and ideas, and good art is that which contretizes life-supporting ideas effectively and compellingly. Different art forms concretize ideas in different ways—fiction does so through stories that depict the choices characters make and the changes they undergo as a result. In her new article—adapted from her thought-provoking talk at LevelUp Europe 2025—Angelica Werth analyzes three great character arcs from such diverse authors as Jane Austen, J.K. Rowling, and Ayn Rand, drawing out the ideas and values that can inspire us to live better lives.

I hope you enjoy this week’s articles.

Thomas Walker-Werth
Managing Editor

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Editor’s note: This article is adapted from a live talk and has been lightly edited. It retains the cadence and idiosyncrasies of an oral presentation.

Many of us tend to think of fiction as primarily fun or entertaining. Good stories are fun, and we should enjoy them. However, we can also get other benefits from good stories that are less obvious but no less valuable. The people who create good stories look at the world and at others, and they observe things closely. When they create their stories, they condense what they’ve observed into characters, plotlines, and ideas that run throughout the work. All this contributes to making characters memorable and stories good. But some stories do even more than that. Some stories emphasize character arcs that are deliberately developed by the author for a specific, life-serving purpose. These are especially useful learning opportunities.

A character’s “arc” is the trajectory of the fundamental way in which he changes throughout the story. Many times, we think of this in terms of a good change. If you look up “character arc” on Google Images, you’ll get many different versions of diagrams with steps that look something like this: The protagonist starts off one way, encounters challenges, makes choices, undergoes change, and ends up significantly transformed for the better.^[1] That is a positive character arc, but there are also negative character arcs; change does not necessarily have to be for the better. You could have a decay arc, for example. If you think about Anakin Skywalker in the Star Wars prequel trilogy—when he’s becoming Darth Vader—that’s a decay arc. There are also knowledge arcs in which the character is learning something throughout the course of the story; in Atlas Shrugged, Dagny Taggart goes through a knowledge arc. In other cases, the reader learns information throughout the story that recontextualizes the character or his actions in a significant way. In Harry Potter, Professor Snape is an example. He doesn’t significantly change throughout the story, but our view of him does as we learn more about him.

These are all valid types of character arcs. They all have their place in storytelling, but they’re not the kinds of arcs that I will focus on here. I will stick to the kind I first talked about: growth arcs. In a growth arc, a character needs to change to meet a challenge. It’s not just a change for no reason. This has some overlap with Joseph Campbell’s identification of a particular story structure that he dubbed the “hero’s journey,” but it’s not the same thing.^[2] A hero’s journey includes the hero facing challenges and overcoming them, but he doesn’t necessarily have to change his fundamental essence to do so; the character may only need to gather certain knowledge or skills. We could think of Harry Potter—he doesn’t change fundamentally as a person. He is emotionally ready to fight Voldemort from the time he is eleven, which we can see at the end of the first movie. He acquires new skills and new knowledge, and he matures a little bit over the course of six years, but his fundamental values don’t change. He goes through a hero’s journey but not a growth character arc.

Why should we study growth character arcs? Why are they so valuable? To answer that, we first need to step back and ask, “What is the purpose of art? What does art do?” Fundamentally, art takes abstract ideas—such as love, courage, justice, or friendship—and concretizes them. To concretize an idea through fiction is to show its nature and consequences through a specific event or series of events—things we can see and/or hear. Done well, this creates a form of the abstraction that is vivid and memorable; we can think of a particular abstraction, and this representative character or story will hop into our minds. If we think about a character with a misguided idea of justice, we might think of Javier from Les Miserables. He and other lifelike, vivid characters are memorable because they show us strongly and clearly that certain ideas and values—if acted on—have certain consequences. No accidents or chance events interfere with the portrayal of ideas and their consequences in a good work of art.

This makes these characters valuable examples for thinking and communication as well as inspiration. As we’ll see, if a character is going through a growth arc, then he becomes an embodiment of the lesson that he learned through that arc. Specifically, in an integrated work of fiction, at least some of the main characters will have arcs that embody the theme of the work or an aspect of the theme. We’ll see how this works as we go through some examples. I’ll give you the theme of each story, and we’ll see what lessons the characters learn as well as how the lessons illustrate their respective themes.

The theme of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged is “the crucial value of the human mind.” Everything in that book is intended to convey that theme. The book is more than a thousand pages; the story has a lot going on, and all of it is intended to illuminate, illustrate, or show some element of this theme.

Much of what I’m saying will apply to some extent to other forms of art as well. Movies, TV shows, video games, and (to a lesser extent) painting, sculpture, and many other art forms all have a theme. If we look at a work of art and identify its theme—if we try to say what this artwork shows us about the creator’s view of life (or even the universe as a whole)—then we can do a couple things. We can explore whether the artwork bears out its idea and presents it convincingly, and we can evaluate whether the work is life serving or not. Does the theme convey an idea that is good for human life—or bad for it? Here, we’ll focus on growth arcs found in books that have life-serving themes—books in which it’s easy to see how the lessons that the characters learn might help us improve our own lives.

If we study character arcs deliberately in this way, we can do at least two things: (a) We can learn or be reminded of the specific life-serving lessons that the characters are learning; and (b) if we step back and look at the structure of a character arc, we can start to create them in our own lives. We can look at people, situations, and challenges and say, “I’m going to make this part of my growth arc. I’m going to make this an opportunity to improve myself and my life.”

Next, we will look briefly at the stages of a growth arc. Then we will go through them in three examples. From each of those examples, I will pull out the lesson, unpack it within the context of the theme, and highlight a few points that may be useful. The examples will be Lizzy Bennet from Pride and Prejudice, Hank Rearden from Atlas Shrugged, and Neville Longbottom from Harry Potter. In the case of the first two, I will not spoil the endings. In the case of Harry Potter, I will spoil the end of Neville’s arc, but I will only rely on material in the movies, not what is exclusively in the books. I think these three are all phenomenal works of fiction with lots of great ideas and lots of value, but they’re from different eras, different genres, and different authors. You can find great arcs and great themes in the works of many authors, in any genre and any era. Finally, we’ll wrap up with a few takeaways to help you apply this to your life.

There are many different ways to break down character arcs, some with as few as three steps and some with as many as twelve. Here, I will use seven steps because most fleshed-out character arcs have at least these seven elements.^[3]

These stages refer to events in both the characters’ external world and to some extent the characters’ internal worlds. What are they thinking? What are they feeling? What are they going through? This is important because we all live this way, too. We have people we talk to, things we doing, stuff that’s happening in the outside world around us. We also have our thoughts and our feelings. We experience life as both external events and actions and as internal ones—so it’s helpful to use a character arc structure in which we can see both of those.

The first step is the initial state. What’s happening with the character when we start the story? Internally, he has limited awareness. Whatever his or her core problem is, the character is either not at all aware of it or has only limited awareness.

Step two is the catalyst. Something happens that sets the main conflict in motion or draws the character into it. Perhaps he meets somebody, or something changes in his situation. This leads to increased awareness; he is now, to some extent, aware of the problem or aware of whatever the challenge will be.

But change is hard, so next comes step three: resistance and struggle. Depending on the nature of the challenge, there may be external problems or mostly internal struggles. In a really well-integrated work of fiction, you have some of both. Depending on the length and complexity of the work, the character will face one or more tests that he must work hard to get through. At some point in that process, he commits to change; at some point he says, “I need to do something differently.”

This is step four: transformation. To get there, the character must undergo some self-reflection and learning, which can be instructive for readers as well.

Then comes step five: trial by fire. In sci-fi or fantasy, this might be a big battle. In other genres, it might be more subtle. But there’s a big, high-stakes challenge through which we see that the character has changed or transformed. He’s putting his new character traits to work.

Then there’s the follow-up from that in step six. Because we’re talking about growth arcs, these will be mostly positive things; there may be external rewards and/or emotional rewards, such as pride.

In real life, even if we actively work on ourselves and we make a change, that’s not the end; it’s not like we reach virtue, and we’re done growing. We must keep doing it over and over. Over time, it becomes easier because it becomes part of us. But, often, there are still struggles wherein we will have to prove that the lesson truly stuck. This is the seventh step of a growth arc: a resurrection or a final attempt. The character must be tested one more time before the author concludes, “OK, now he has it.” At that point, he is finally and fully a new, better version of himself. In summary:

1. Initial state | limited awareness

2. Catalyst | increased awareness

3. Resistance | struggle

4. Test(s) and committing | self-reflection and learning

5. Action | transformation

6. Consequences/resurrection | reward/final attempt

7. New state | new state

Elizabeth Bennet: Reality Orientation

Lizzy Bennet from Pride and Prejudice is the second oldest of five daughters. Her father is a gentleman, so she and her sisters have a certain social status, but they’re not very wealthy. The daughters will not inherit the estate, which leaves them with a problem because this is early-19th-century England—it’s not socially acceptable for them to work, and they don’t have any skills that they could make money with anyway. Their only option to avoid poverty is to marry men who are at least moderately wealthy. Lizzy does not want to marry for money; she wants to marry for love and have a happy life. But she’s not in a rush, even though they live in a small town with few eligible bachelors. Her mom wants her daughters to have good, comfortable, stable lives, but she’s overbearing in how she tries to achieve that. Mrs. Bennet is very direct, over-the-top in her emotional reactions, and sometimes even rude in social contexts. Despite these pressures, Lizzy finds things to enjoy in her life. She’s close to her older sister, she likes to read, and she likes to go for walks. She’s generally pretty content at the beginning of the story.

Then the catalyst happens: Two eligible bachelors arrive in their small town. They’re both very wealthy and handsome, and they show up to a ball. One is friendly and starts to fall in love with Lizzy’s older sister, Jane, right away. The other one is Mr. Darcy, who is standoffish and kind of arrogant. His friend encourages him to dance with people and have a good time, but Mr. Darcy says he doesn’t want to dance and that it would be intolerable to dance with any of the ladies there. His friend replies that there are many pretty girls there, but Mr. Darcy disagrees. He looks at Lizzy and says, “She is tolerable; but not handsome enough to tempt me.”^[4] Lizzy heard him. She is quite offended, though she laughs it off because that’s her character; she’s fun and playful and she likes to laugh at people being stupid or silly. Lizzy is not yet aware of the problem, but this is the incident through which she will become aware of it. She must meet Mr. Darcy to start her journey.

Throughout the next third or so of the book, Lizzy grows to dislike Mr. Darcy more and more. Different things happen, the most dramatic being that she hears a lie about Mr. Darcy. She believes it even though she doesn’t know the person telling it well. If it were true, it would mean he is an immoral person. The next time they’re at a dance together, Mr. Darcy asks Lizzy to dance, and she says no. She’s hesitant and doesn’t want to get involved with him. Later, he convinces the friend who is falling in love with Lizzy’s older sister to leave town because he doesn’t think that it would be a good match. This obviously leaves her sister heartbroken; and Lizzy, being close to her sister, is very upset about this. So, throughout the course of several chapters, Lizzy comes to dislike Mr. Darcy more and more. Mr. Darcy is trying to make amends for the initial offense in his own way, but Lizzy is completely oblivious to this. He corrects other people’s rudeness to her, asks her to dance, and so on. She wonders what this could possibly mean but makes no effort to find out; she goes right on with her life.

Then comes her big test after Mr. Darcy proposes to Lizzy, who has been completely unaware of the fact that Mr. Darcy is interested in her. He proposes in a rude way, saying, in effect, “Your family is way beneath me, but for whatever reason, I still love you. So, will you marry me?” Unsurprisingly, she refuses in no uncertain terms. When he asks why she doesn’t like him, she explains the things that she thought problematic about his behavior and reveals the lie that she had heard about him. Mr. Darcy leaves but then writes her a letter in which he tries to explain the two big problems: why he convinced his friend to leave town and the lie about his previous behavior.

This is Lizzy’s big test. She has the evidence on the table—what will she do with it? She thinks it over seriously. At first, she doesn’t want to believe it. Then, she realizes that it could be true; if she rethinks the behavior of the people involved, it’s possible. She realizes that she didn’t have enough evidence to evaluate the damning claim about Mr. Darcy. She was completely flattered by the liar and offended by Mr. Darcy, so she was inclined to believe the one who had flattered her even without evidence. She says, “Pleased with the preference of one, and offended by the neglect of the other, on the very beginning of our acquaintance, I have courted prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away, where either were concerned.”^[5] In this moment she commits to change. Jane Austen writes lovely scenes for several of her heroines wherein they realize they’ve erred and need to do better; the scenes include a thorough, thoughtful understanding of the heroine’s mistakes and what she needs to change. This is Lizzy’s moment of change.

She has the chance to put it into action when she meets Mr. Darcy again by accident after the failed proposal. Lizzy is determined to be nicer to him and to be more objective about his behavior. She takes seriously the fact that the people closest to him, such as his sister and the housekeeper who’s known him since he was four years old, have a very high regard for him that does not match what she had thought about him before. Mr. Darcy, too, goes through a bit of an arc and is behaving differently by this stage. I won’t spoil the ending, but the theme of the work is that you need to be focused on reality; you need to keep your mind connected to what is going on if you want to be happy, live a good life, find the right partner, and make the right decisions. Lizzy learns that if you want to be happy, you cannot let prejudice blind you to the facts.

These growth arcs often include push and pull factors—something that’s nudging the character gently (or not so gently) toward doing better and something else that’s enticing him or some kind of reward if he succeeds. In Lizzy’s case, the push is the evidence of Mr. Darcy and the pull is the romance—the facts that a potential relationship is there as well as something about Mr. Darcy that appeals to her despite her initial dislike of him. Her key opportunity for change is Mr. Darcy’s letter; if she had disregarded that, she would never have gone through the change that she did.

Hank Rearden: Integrity

Next, we have Hank Rearden from Atlas Shrugged. Hank is not the main character, but he’s an important character. He is a successful businessman who owns many steel-related businesses. When we first meet him, he has just invented a new alloy: Rearden Metal. It’s cheaper, lighter, and stronger than steel; and it’s now real rather than theoretical, so he should be ecstatic. And he is—at first, when he’s at work seeing this metal being poured—but then he goes home. Then we realize that he is, in fact, very lonely. He reflects on the fact that he feels loneliest when he’s happy or has achieved something. This is because of his family (but he doesn’t know that yet). He lives with his wife, mother, and brother, all of whom expect him to sacrifice for them because they are his family—even though they don’t care about him. They don’t care about the things that he cares about. In fact, they tell him sometimes that he is a terrible person, a terrible brother, a terrible husband. He thinks that they must be right. He knows what he’s doing at work, but when it comes to his emotions and his people skills, he doesn’t feel confident.

His arc has a double catalyst. The first is meeting Francisco d’Anconia at a party. Francisco is a wealthy businessman from an aristocratic family. Early in life, he was very productive, but then he turned into a playboy who doesn’t work, wastes his money, and is promiscuous. Hank has a pretty low opinion of him, but when they meet, Francisco thanks Hank for his achievements. He offers Hank gratitude and encourages him to think about who is benefiting from his work. At first, the honesty and the gratitude completely shock Hank, and he’s startled into a vulnerable position. Then, he remembers what he thinks he knows about Francisco and rejects the aristocrat’s friendship.

Next comes Hank’s relationship with Dagny Taggart, the heroine of the story and herself a capable businesswoman. They work together on a joint project after knowing each other professionally for some time. Then, after a massively successful first test, they begin an affair. It’s a celebration of their victory, but at the same time, Hank feels that it’s wrong. He’s cheating on his wife, so in a sense it is wrong, and he condemns both himself and Dagny for it. He has an intense emotional struggle because, on one hand, he knows that she is the kind of person he wants in his life. On the other hand, he feels a sense of duty to his wife despite her almost total lack of positive qualities.

Then comes a series of tests for Hank, a number of things in his personal and professional life that directly threaten or undermine what he cares about most. For instance, the government tries to stop him from selling Rearden Metal to the people he wants to sell it to. They blackmail him a few times. Also, his wife learns about his affair and demands that he stop it. When she learns with whom Hank is sleeping, she demands even more insistently—and he refuses.

Later, Dagny goes missing. This really distresses Hank because it disrupts what is, at this point, a strong bond between the two of them. He had been seeing how she loves her life fully and without guilt. She’s an integrated person who has inner peace no matter what’s happening around her because she knows what she stands for—and why. She knows what she wants and what she will do about it. Being able to absorb those lessons from Dagny—especially about having the same standards and fundamental approach to her personal life and her work—leads Hank to realize that he deserves better and that he can, if he behaves in a more integrated and principled way throughout his life, be happier, though it will take a lot of effort. He also realizes that he had been thinking about love and sex in the wrong way—as though they were separate things. He starts to realize that that’s not true at all—his attraction to Dagny is rooted not primarily in her beauty but in her character.

The climax of their relationship comes when, as a result of government blackmail, Hank is about to give up the rights to Rearden Metal. If he refuses, the government will make the affair public. The story takes place in the 1950s, so Dagny’s reputation would be completely destroyed. Dagny says that she doesn’t care, and she makes it public without Hank’s knowledge. Afterward, he realizes that Dagny has met someone else, so he has a conversation with her in which he lets her go and integrates all the lessons he’s been learning from her, from Francisco, from his battles with the government, and from thinking through his values. Around the same time, he also cuts off his family, realizing that they are completely in the wrong for hating him and for abusing him—while also depending on him, no less. After integrating these lessons about love and justice, he is content and proud. He has a long conversation with Dagny about it, of which this is a representative sample:I love you. As the same value, as the same expression, with the same pride and the same meaning as I love my work. . . as a shape of my world, as my best mirror. . . . I, who took pride in my ability to achieve the satisfaction of my desires, let them prescribe the code of values by which I judged my desires.^[6]

He’s applying what he’d been applying in one field (work) where he hadn’t been applying it before (his personal life), and by integrating those he becomes one full person who consistently acts on his values. Hank starts appreciating that you can cherish the same fundamental, core values in a situation at work, in a challenge, in an opportunity, and in a person. He also realizes that he shouldn’t be letting other people prescribe his values—he must think for himself in ethics just as he does in steelmaking.

Hank’s resurrection comes when armed government agents attack his most important steel mill. He’s oddly calm during this attack because he realizes that although the government can take specific things from him—a mill or a particular person—they can’t take the values that those things and those people embody. They can’t take his mind or his values—the most important elements of his self.

As I mentioned before, the theme of Atlas Shrugged is the crucial value of the human mind; Hank learns to apply his mind fully and in all areas of his life. He’d been applying it at work, and that’s why he’d been so successful. He hadn’t been applying it with his family or romantic relationships. He finally learns that he is capable of doing so and that he must do so if he wants to be an integrated person. He learns that morality is not a duty forced upon him but the means by which he can live and thrive.

The “pushing” forces in Hank’s story are the politicians and the people who are morally aligned with them, including his wife and his brother. The “pulling” forces are his mentors, Francisco and Dagny, who were showing him another way. They weren’t preaching at him—they were appreciating him, connecting with him, and being role models. His main opportunities were meeting Francisco and having the relationship with Dagny—in short, getting to observe and interact with these people and connect with them in a way he had never really connected with people before.

Neville Longbottom: Courage

When we meet Neville, he’s a shy, pitiable, clumsy little boy. He has been raised by a strict grandmother who has high expectations of him and who scares him a little bit. His family members worry that he is not magical, which would carry a major stigma in the story’s world. He comes to Hogwarts (the school for wizards) nervous, unconfident, and afraid that he doesn’t belong there—but he tries anyway. For the first few years, we see him trying: standing up for himself; sticking to his values in small, quiet ways; and doing OK despite having many problems.

The core of his growth arc kicks off in the fourth book and movie. In this story, a new, intense, and suspicious teacher arrives to teach defense against the dark arts. This teacher, Professor Moody, shows them the torture curse. This is significant because Neville’s parents were tortured to insanity by that very curse, which is why he lives with his grandparents. Seeing what happened to his parents in the form of a classroom demonstration absolutely terrifies Neville, but it also makes him realize that he currently has no way to stop the people who inflict such pain on others. This is the catalyst that sets him on the path to realizing that being good at magic isn’t just about being accepted or having friends—it’s a way to defend the things and people he cares about.

Neville really puts that into action in the next movie when Bellatrix Lestrange, the lead torturer of his parents and a follower of the Dark Lord, escapes from prison. Now he is really focused, really determined, and a little bit angry. Her escape gives him a sense of purpose. He’d already joined a group that was studying defense against the dark arts to prepare to defend themselves against the Dark Lord (Voldemort) and his followers, but now Neville really commits to the cause. He works harder than anyone has ever seen him work. Before, he had been driven by fear; he’d been afraid of making mistakes. Now, he’s driven by purpose. He has something he cares about that he’s working toward, and he starts to succeed. As he does, Harry and his other allies cheer him on and give him advice.

Neville finally has an opportunity to use his training at the end of the fifth movie. Initially, Harry doesn’t want to bring him along because he still thinks of Neville as a clumsy, forgetful boy who’s not that good at magic and lacks courage. But Neville points out that all their training was supposed to be about fighting the Dark Lord, and this is the first chance he’ll have to do something real. He doesn’t want to just have the skills—he wants to use them. So, he goes, he fights the followers of the Dark Lord, and defends his friends. He’s scared; he’s never faced these kinds of people—brutal torturers and murderers. But he does what he has to do to keep his friends safe.

Neville becomes a hero. He knows that he has the right to be in the wizarding world and that he belongs at Hogwarts. Later in the series, when the Dark Lord has taken over Hogwarts, Neville leads the student rebellion. He’s now putting his courage and skills to work against the people who are torturing and hurting him and his fellow students. He stands up for those who cannot stand up for themselves, as well as mentoring them and teaching them some of what he’s learned. Finally, Neville has the chance to kill Voldemort’s snake, which is essential to the villain’s defeat. He stands up to Voldemort in front of everyone. This is his transformed state; he is now brave, courageous, and standing up for what he loves. He is no longer just a citizen of the wizarding world but a hero of it.

Overall, the theme of Harry Potter is the power of love. We see different kinds of love throughout the series, including familial love, romantic love, and love between friends. Neville learns to defend what he loves. It’s not enough to feel that you love things or people—loving them means standing up for them. His “push” is wanting to be prepared to defend himself and his friends against Voldemort’s followers and perhaps wanting to avenge his parents. His “pull” is the support of his friends. His opportunities for becoming the kind of person he wanted to be and the kind of wizard he wanted to be were the study group in the first case and the student rebellion in the second case, and he seized those opportunities with both hands.

***

Now that we understand what a growth arc looks like, how can we apply this to our own lives? Most obviously: The specific lessons the characters learn could be things that would help you in your own life, whether they’re areas you need to work on or simply principles worth remembering or thinking about. We can train ourselves to view challenges not only as obstacles but as opportunities to develop new skills or to change a mindset that might be holding us back.

We can build our own growth arcs by setting a standing order always to be on the lookout for allies and mentors who share our deepest values. Notice how much of a role other people played in Lizzy’s, Hank’s, and Neville’s journeys. It wasn’t the teachers, parents, or authority figures who had the biggest impact (although such people certainly can be role models and allies)—it was the friends who were supporting them or the romantic partner who inspired them. We can try looking for “push” and “pull” factors in our own lives—forces that nudge us away from behaviors that may not be good for us and toward better alternatives. Applying this reframes challenges and lets you see struggles not as just something inevitably there that you get through as best you can but as opportunities for you to decide that you will become the kind of person who can deal with it.

If we recognize the power of real-life growth arcs and consistently pursue them in our own lives, we find that we really can become the heroes of our own lives.

This article appears in the Spring 2026 issue of The Objective Standard.

^[1] Yen Cabag, “How to Write Character Arcs: Adding Depth to Your Story’s Players,” TCK Publishing, accessed January 15, 2026, https://www.tckpublishing.com/how-to-write-character-arcs/.

^[2] The term “hero’s journey” originated with Joseph Campbell, who wrote a book called The Hero with a Thousand Faces, in which he looked back at mythology and old stories and asked “What do these heroes have in common? What is the structure that all of these stories share?” What he articulated has since served as a blueprint for many fiction writers.

^[3] Amy Jones, Character Arcs & Archetypes, (Glastonbury, England: Wooden Books Ltd., 2023), 33.

^[4] Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (Ware, England: Wordsworth Classics, 2007), 13.

^[5] Austen, Pride and Prejudice, 177.

^[6] Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, (New York: Signet, Kindle edition), 804-05.

In recent weeks, Donald Trump’s lack of principle has been on display perhaps more than ever. After failing to fulfill his promise to defend the Iranian protesters, he sidestepped that crucially important issue to focus on his obsession with conquering Greenland, needlessly threatening more destructive tariffs and penning an embarrassing letter to the prime minister of Norway blaming that country for not awarding him a Nobel Peace Prize. This kind of behavior is expected from Trump at this stage, but it points to the president’s dangerous fixation on his own image at the expense of due process and individual rights. Nicholas Provenzo’s double review of two new books about dealing with dictators shines a light on the cultural trends that have given rise to two Trump presidencies and the steps Americans must take in order to protect what remains of the freest nation on Earth.

The cultural trends that have made our current situation possible go back centuries and ultimately stem from a widespread abandonment of the principles of the Enlightenment—the ideas that reason is man’s means of knowledge and that all people should be free to use their reason to identify and pursue their values. Good books on the Enlightenment—especially accessible, clearly written ones—are a rarity in today’s academia. This week, Margherita Bovo reviews one of those rare diamonds in the rough, Ritchie Robertson’s The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, drawing out the core Enlightenment values that so many other writers seem to misunderstand or overlook altogether but which are crucial to achieving happiness and building a better society.

I hope you enjoy this week’s articles.

Thomas Walker-Werth

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Editor’s note: This is an expanded version of a review that was first published on 22 January.

In early 1776, when many Americans still hoped for reconciliation with Britain, Thomas Paine published Common Sense, stripping monarchy of its pretenses and making the case for American independence. Later that year, as Washington’s army reeled from defeat, Paine opened The American Crisis with the reminder that “these are the times that try men’s souls,” urging perseverance when retreat seemed tempting. His purpose was straightforward: to name a crisis, state its moral stakes, and rally free people to act.

We face similar problems today: widespread denial of reality in various ways, political tribalism, institutional decay, and a growing threat to constitutional government that many dismiss as routine partisanship. Robert Tracinski’s book, Dictator from Day One: How Donald Trump Is Overthrowing the Constitution and How to Fight Back, offers solutions to these problems. While many Americans minimize Trump’s abuses—his defiance of legal limits, attacks on independent courts, and personal use of presidential power—Tracinski makes an especially alarming point: “We are not risking a constitutional crisis. The crisis is already here. In many cases, the constitutional crisis has already passed, and the Constitution lost” (125).

For decades, most major intellectual and political movements have turned away from the principles that sustain a free society. So-called “Progressives” have elevated egalitarian collectivism over individual rights, attempting to redefine justice as overt racism, sexism, and the “soft bigotry of low expectations” rather than treating people as their actions warrant. Conservatives—failing to defend individualism and capitalism on secular, principled grounds—retreated into faith, nationalism, and a politics more reactionary than principled. The result is the moral cesspool that enabled Donald Trump’s rise.

As Tracinski argues, Trump is not a bulwark against cultural decline but its embodiment; he is evasion of reality, resentment, and abandonment of principle concentrated in a single person. Trump’s appeal lies in a false vision of liberty or law, and in the real emotional rewards of tribal combat and the spectacle of a leader who promises to punish the tribe’s enemies. Tracinski grounds his argument in concrete, repeated actions that reveal a governing premise incompatible with constitutional restraint. Trump does not merely test the boundaries of executive power; he explicitly denies that such boundaries exist at all. Tracinski interprets Trump’s assertion that Article II allows him to do “whatever I want as president” as a statement of governing principle: that presidential power is personal, discretionary, and unconstrained by law. As Tracinski puts it, Trump “is already exercising power on his personal whim, unchecked by other branches or organs of government” (12).

Trump put his governing principle into practice when he ordered executive officials to defy congressional subpoenas wholesale—not through particularized claims of executive privilege, but by rejecting Congress’s authority to investigate him at all. Tracinski emphasizes that Trump’s posture was not a routine separation-of-powers dispute but an attempt to render Congress irrelevant, to “knock down any competing center of power, any barrier or check against the dictator” (14). The issue, he insists, is not partisan conflict but the concentration of power in a single person.

The same governing logic governs Trump’s treatment of the courts. When judges enjoined unlawful executive actions, Trump did not engage their reasoning; he attacked their legitimacy, dismissing them as partisan actors—“Obama judges”—and treating judicial review itself as political interference. Tracinski documents repeated instances in which court orders were ignored, delayed, or met with deception and open contempt, including defiance of unanimous Supreme Court rulings in immigration cases. This is why Tracinski describes the emerging legal regime as “Calvinball jurisprudence,” a system in which “there are no fixed rules” except that “this administration always wins” (72).

Trump applied this logic most aggressively to law enforcement and the legal system itself. Tracinski details how Trump treats prosecutorial authority as an instrument of personal loyalty, pressuring officials to protect allies and pursue perceived enemies. He further documents Trump’s use of executive power to intimidate and neutralize the legal profession—revoking security clearances, canceling government contracts, and imposing economic penalties on law firms that represented Trump’s critics. The result, Tracinski warns, is a system in which “opponents will have no right to mount a defense in court, while [the president’s] allies will have the right to unlimited legal support” (76). In parallel, Trump asserted control over congressionally appropriated spending, conditioning the release of funds on personal or political favor and reversing the Constitution’s allocation of the power of the purse.

For Tracinski, these actions are not isolated abuses or excesses of temperament. Taken together, they constitute a coherent pattern: the systematic replacement of objective law with discretionary, personal rule. That system, Tracinski argues, is not a speculative future danger but a present reality already underway—asserted, normalized, and advancing, though not yet fully entrenched.

To Tracinski, Trump’s quest for personal power would not be possible in a culture that broadly understood liberty and individual rights. Trump’s rise thus reflects a deeper cultural surrender; when a culture no longer understands or values liberty, it turns instead to authoritarians, accepting whim over principle and loyalty over law as substitutes for a rights-respecting government.

Tracinski’s central insight is that authoritarianism does not arrive all at once and rarely takes the form citizens expect. It emerges gradually, as rights-respecting legal institutions lose their capacity to constrain power, and the behaviors that support a free society erode. He states: “It’s not something that will happen or might happen. It is a present reality, not a mere future possibility. But it is something that is still going on and not complete” (12). That slow corrosion—rather than a single dramatic rupture—is the danger he asks readers to confront.

Ira Chaleff’s To Stop a Tyrant: The Power of Political Followers to Make or Break a Toxic Leader offers a complementary perspective. Unlike Tracinski, Chaleff does not analyze any specific contemporary political leader; instead, his focus is on tyranny in the abstract and the ethical responsibilities of followers within hierarchical institutions, regardless of context. Whereas Tracinski focuses on the constitutional and moral dimensions of creeping authoritarianism, Chaleff examines how subordinates enable or resist destructive leadership. As he warns,

When fires are small, we can smother them with a blanket or a bucket of sand. When they become conflagrations, all we can do is escape with our lives, retreat, and attempt to create fire breaks. So it is with the escalation of a leader with authoritarian tendencies to one who becomes a full-blown tyrant (25).

Chaleff’s emphasis is on timing and responsibility: the cost of delay, and the way ordinary acts of compliance can harden into laws and precedents that are difficult or impossible to reverse. “The unique lens of this book is its focus not on the tyrant, but on their followers,” says Chaleff. “However destructive tyrants are, they would be impotent without followers, willing or coerced to execute their designs” (18).

The contrast between the two books is instructive. Chaleff writes to those navigating hierarchical structures, emphasizing that “early resistance is required to emerging tyrannical behavior—not just when the leader reaches the apex of the political pyramid, but at every stage of their ascendance” (275). Here, Chaleff is explicit that tyrants do not rule alone. In contrast, Tracinski writes to citizens confronting a threat to the political framework of a free society. Chaleff offers tools for resisting within organizations, insisting that “followership is tested at its moral core” when power turns abusive (187). He rejects moral passivity outright, arguing that in such circumstances “‘just following orders’ is itself a crime” (187), and calls instead for what he terms “courageous followers,” who “seek ways to counteract the toxicity, including removing the destructive leader if necessary” (21). Tracinski, by contrast, offers a moral and philosophic case for resisting emerging authoritarianism at the level of constitutional government—and why such resistance is necessary in the first place. Together, the books illuminate both the individual and institutional failures that enable tyranny to grow—and the principles that must be revived if liberty is to be preserved.

What makes Dictator From Day One especially valuable is that Tracinski does not treat today’s authoritarian drift as primarily a matter of partisan tribalism or executive overreach, although both are real and major factors. He instead roots the problem in a deeper abandonment of principle: the erosion of objective law itself. From that diagnosis follows his central prescription: “To oppose Trump, we need a spirit that we might call militant liberalism”—a stance defined by confronting abuses early, consistently, and without apology (137). His argument is not for violence but for a rational and consistently principled approach—to insist that no violation of constitutional limits is too small to contest. In a system that depends on citizens holding politicians accountable, passive hope that problems will solve themselves is surrender. “The habit of normal politics is to pick our battles and look for a measured response in order to appear moderate and ‘reasonable,’” says Tracinski. “But in the current context, the more moderate we appear, the more this assures everyone that we are still in normal times, not in a crisis.” (125)

Dictator From Day One is a vital book precisely because it aims to do what many readers most resist: confronting the reality that the constitutional crisis is well underway. As Tracinski explains, “The purpose of this book is to grab its readers and shake them awake” (1). It is a warning—one meant “to show the scope, speed, and detail with which we are being sold into serfdom” (4). Rather than promising that norms or institutions will save themselves, the book challenges readers to acknowledge the crisis, confront it, and recover—or discover—the vigilance that a free society requires while resistance remains possible.

Chaleff’s contribution should not be overlooked, especially for those working within government, the military, or other large organizations where pressures toward conformity can be immense. He focuses on how tyranny is enabled—or resisted—inside institutions themselves, warning that “the autocrat counts on the bureaucratic culture to do his bidding and dirty work: to be conformist followers” (65). For Chaleff, ethical dissent is not merely refusal but active counteraction, often by exposing abuses, since “the more this can be done in full ‘sunlight,’ the harder it will be for the prototyrant to nullify principled bureaucrats” (188). This emphasis on ethical dissent from within institutions is a valuable complement to Tracinski’s broader, principle-based argument. But it is Tracinski who names the stakes for the American republic itself.

The essential choice these books present is not between left and right or between competing policy agendas. It is the choice between a political order bound by objective law and one defined by whim, leading to widespread violations of rights. Chaleff shows how tyranny gathers helpers—warning that “conformist followers go about their business, falling in line with whatever dictates emanate from the toxic leader” (278). Tracinski shows why it must not prevail. A free society depends on citizens who refuse to excuse abuses merely because they come from their preferred political party, and who recognize that every concession to arbitrariness weakens the political framework that protects their own lives and liberties.

Read Chaleff to understand how individuals can and should navigate moral choices inside compromised institutions. Read Tracinski to grasp both the principles at stake and the only form of resistance adequate to a constitutional crisis: public, principled, and uncompromising opposition to the erosion of objective law. Taken together, the two books are illuminating—but if one is forced to choose, it is Tracinski’s account that proves decisive, because it identifies both the nature of the crisis and the kind of resistance a free society requires.

Whatever you take from these books, choose to act—not from fear or partisanship, but from the conviction that your life is yours by right, and that a free republic remains worth defending while the means to do so remain.

This article appears in the Spring 2026 issue of The Objective Standard.

London: Penguin Books Ltd., 2022 (originally published 2020)
1,008 pp., $18.99

The Enlightenment was a cultural current almost everyone has heard about—yet today it is not a major concern for many scholars nor for people interested in history and philosophy. Misleading stereotypes about thinkers of this movement include that they advanced a cynical version of reason, aimed to erase emotions, supported mechanistic theories, and hated religion. Some descriptions of the age allude to the widespread interest in science or mention that philosophers were often involved in politics, but it is hard to find an accurate explanation of the reasons that led to such phenomena and the ways thinkers acted in those cases. Today, most scholars and people interested in philosophy regard the Enlightenment as a two-dimensional, cold, and outdated cultural movement that is less relevant than other movements, such as postmodernism. Ritchie Robertson’s The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680–1790 (2020) acknowledges these problems and strives to avoid them. The work is written in a precise, nonacademic style that helps anyone curious about the Enlightenment approach the subject.

Robertson starts by declaring that his aim is to give a “rounded picture of the Enlightenment” and to focus on the practical consequences of reason (xvii). He deals with many facets of the Enlightenment, starting with happiness, reason, and passion in the first chapter, then the Scientific Revolution, toleration, religion, apostasy, science, sociability, practical disciplines, aesthetics, society, history, cosmopolitanism, the forms of government, and revolutions in the following thirteen chapters.

The way Robertson introduces the Enlightenment is both accurate and original. His first key argument is that, according to most Enlightenment thinkers, “the goal of life was happiness” and that it could be found in this world here and now, despite the fact that suffering is real (1). Robertson explains how philosophers from the Enlightenment conceived of happiness and the way they aimed to reach it, which led to “a commitment to understanding . . . the causes and conditions of human betterment in this world” and the rejection of anything that caused irrational fear, such as superstition and ignorance (37). They recognized that men, instead of being guided by “blind faith,” should be guided by reason (21). In his Preliminary Discourse, for example, Jean Le Rond d’Alembert claimed that, to build a useful system of knowledge, one must grasp that human understanding does not start with abstractions but with sense data; reason does not work against the senses but is based on and requires them.^[1] Further, Enlightenment thinkers generally understood that gaining knowledge does not require renouncing emotions.^[2] For instance, René Descartes, Alexander Pope, and Chevalier de Jacourt remarked on the importance of passions in human life and the possibility of their coexistence with reason. During the Enlightenment, human beings were not considered “first and foremost rational, endowed by God with the gift of reason in contrast to the animals” (261). The conception of humankind developed during the 18th century was more secular and rounded, and it aimed to account for not only reason but all the human passions and vices. Contrary to popular belief, Enlightenment views on morality broadly did not posit an idealized fantasy of men as behaving emotionlessly despite often leading to the conclusion that reason was the proper means of understanding emotions and dealing with desires.

This respect for reason fed the Scientific Revolution, the development of which Robertson covers extensively. This series of discoveries began with thinkers such as Descartes, Francis Bacon, and Isaac Newton who sought to understand the world around them without reference to a mystical deity. In their Encyclopedie, Denis Diderot and Jean Le Rond d’Alembert continued the revolution by applying the Baconian and Newtonian scientific approaches to nature to find a way to learn about reality after rejecting the biblical narrative (60–63). Robertson points out that Voltaire (1694–1778), who is often remembered only for his literary production and his battle against Christian fanatics, was one of the first thinkers to advance Newtonianism in France and continental Europe (62).

Many thinkers at this time used science as a weapon against myriad forms of mysticism, though Robertson is aware that during the Enlightenment “scientific knowledge was [viewed as] the enemy of superstition, but not of religion” (83). However, he does not omit that thinkers challenged both the Old and New Testaments. According to Voltaire, for example, St. Paul was an authoritarian figure; he also noted that the miracles Jesus allegedly performed were impossible (191). At the same time, not every Enlightenment thinker was willing to believe that the world was governed by brute matter only, which was sometimes seen as the alternative to a religious view of the world.^[3] Deism (the belief in the existence of an impersonal God that created the universe but does not interfere with human life) was more popular than atheism, though many atheists and some Deists were wary of Christian dogma creeping into Deistic teachings. Deists’ main goal was to find a way to free men from the fear of the unknown and from the violence of fanatics. Humans were beginning to understand that they did not have a reason to fear a God above—their actions could be judged according to rational criteria rather than biblical dogmas or governmental decrees.

As Robertson concludes, it became clear that authorities could not rely on personal beliefs as the only standard to judge someone’s actions without the support of concrete evidence. Toleration, as it was usually discussed then, was not relativism, but the rejection of the imposition of dogma on individuals. Thus, despite popular portrayals to the contrary, there was much disagreement between Enlightenment thinkers about moral issues.^[4] For instance, Cesare Beccaria (1738–1794) argued that punishing suicide (as many states did at that time by fining the relatives of those who ended their lives) was pointless. Charles Louis de Secondat baron of Montesquieu (1689–1755) claimed that it is unjust to deprive someone of an escape from an intolerable life, whereas Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) firmly condemned suicide.^[5]

The Enlightenment was also a time when individuals interacted in new social frameworks to communicate ideas (277). The 18th century has been called “the sociable century” because coffeehouses, salons (often run by women, who were starting to find their own intellectual dimension and autonomy more frequently than in the past), and scientific or philosophic societies were venues for key discussions (365). Robertson’s work provides a reliable description of the Republic of Letters, a community of scholars who interacted at a distance via letters and newspapers, trying to find other means besides printed books to spread and discuss ideas while avoiding censorship. The Republic of Letters chose Latin as their international language and aimed to share their discoveries with one another and with people all over Europe. This is an instance of the Enlightenment ideal of being “a cosmopolitan or ‘citizen of the world’” (601). To learn about the world meant, in part, to write a secular history, which could reconstruct the development of the Earth and of human beings starting from empirical evidence rather than religious stories about past events. Voltaire was a prominent figure in this field. In his Essai Sur les Mœurs et L’esprit des Nations (1756), he aimed to write an integrated history including both Christian and non-Christian cultures and to prove false the chronology put forth in the Bible (556–58).

The Enlightenment was, overall, a movement that saw philosophy as an instrument for living in this world and used it to promote practical changes in reality as well as to introduce innovations not only in history, science, metaphysics, and morality but also in industry, agriculture, and education. This attitude was embodied by the Encyclopedie, “a vast panorama of knowledge” that aimed to understand and communicate the way the human mind works, as well as how truth can be achieved and applied in any field from art to politics to manual labor.

The conclusion of the book deals with the objections the Enlightenment faced, mainly from the left. It also offers a valid yet short rejection of Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s Dialektik der Aufklärung (Dialectic of Enlightenment), a work published in 1944 that became the main reference point not only for those who criticize the Enlightenment but also for those who are approaching it for the first time and looking for a guide. This work contributed to creating a false image of the Enlightenment that led to hostility toward it in the contemporary world. Roberston points out that stating that such a movement led to totalitarian regimes or to horrific events such as the Holocaust, as that book does, is utterly implausible (769–70).^[6] He remarks that many critics, Adorno and Horkheimer included, define the Enlightenment too narrowly, ignoring the diversity of views and approaches that nevertheless fall not only in the period of the Enlightenment but within its spirit of rational inquiry and curiosity. According to Robertson, Horkheimer and Adorno “produced a scattergun assault on many aspects of modernity” rather than focusing on the Enlightenment itself (775). Moreover, they built a narrative that uses capitalism as a strawman while acknowledging the horrors of Nazism and fascism—but ignoring the atrocities of Soviet socialism (775).

Robertson’s book focuses on the ideas that underpin what the Enlightenment was, including the most famous (such as those about reason, science, and religion), and also those concepts developed during the 18th century that aren’t often associated with it (including happiness, cosmopolitanism, and the renovation of history as a formal discipline). Robertson puts every key idea in relation to the historical and philosophic context of that time and gives many examples of arguments by philosophers of that age. He focuses on the most famous thinkers of the Enlightenment, such as Voltaire and Kant, but he provides a more rounded description of their ideas than one often finds. In this book, Voltaire is remembered not only for his literary works and his battle for tolerance but also for his works on history and science. Robertson mentions Kant as a very influential thinker of that age and a supporter of what he considered to be reason but also makes clear that many of his ideas contradicted the values of the Enlightenment (31).

The author also describes the ideas of lesser-known thinkers of that age—including Pierre Louis Maupertuis (1698–1759), Ludovico Antonio Muratori (1672–1750), and Émilie du Châtelet (1706–1749)—and the influence each of them had. Further, the book deals with the way the Enlightenment developed not just in France and England (the two nations generally associated with this age) but in many other European countries, including Germany and Italy. Robertson takes the Enlightenment era very broadly in this work, which includes several philosophers from the 17th century (e.g., Descartes and Spinoza), yet this might help readers understand the steps that led to the movement in the 18th century, avoiding a common depiction of that age as an isolated moment in human history.

The Age of Reason is much more complex than many philosophy books claim and much more valuable than some of its detractors claim. The tools it provided to fight superstition, understand human beings, and improve life are still useful today—and always will be. Ritchie Robertson is fully aware of this when he reminds the reader that “freeing people from false beliefs” was the “overriding purpose of enlightened thought and activity” (xvii), which is a task to keep in mind now, in a time when freedom of thought and of research are “under threat” (780). His book, with its nuanced portrayal and clear writing, is a valuable way to rediscover the power of the Enlightenment.

This article appears in the Spring 2026 issue of The Objective Standard.

^[1] The first of the two introductions to the Encyclopedie. Cfr. Jean Baptiste le Rond d’Alembert, Discours préliminaire à l’Encyclopedie, Édition électronique (ePub, PDF) v.: 1, 0: Les Échos du Maquis, 2011, Discours préliminaire à l’Encyclopédie, 6–7.

^[2] Max Horkheimer and Theodore Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment (New York: Seabury Press, 1972), 23.

^[3] According to materialism, matter and its movements are the only cause of all phenomena, including thoughts and emotions.

^[4] Andrej Elzanowski, “Moral Progress: A Present-Day Perspective on the Leading Enlightenment Idea,” Argument: Biannual Philosophical Journal 3, no. 1 (June 2023): 9–26, Moral Progress: A Present-day Perspective on the Leading Enlightenment Idea, 14–15.

^[5] It is important to note that Kant was not an Enlightenment thinker, yet he is commonly associated with this cultural movement.

^[6] Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment.

All of us who have had our lives transformed by Ayn Rand’s ideas have an “origin story” for how we discovered them. For many, that includes a “gateway drug”—something adjacent to or influenced by Objectivism that introduced us to rational philosophy. One of the most common of these is the progressive rock band Rush. Their intricate, philosophically rich, and emotionally resonant music attracts and fuels active minds—especially their epic storytelling masterpiece “2112,” influenced by Ayn Rand’s Anthem. That song, and the album of the same name, turn 50 this year, which is the perfect time to celebrate it and Rush’s firm refusal to compromise on their musical values.

If compromise is rife in music, it’s even more ubiquitous in politics. In recent days, we’ve heard President Trump say that the United States will come to the aid of the Iranian protestors if the regime there starts killing them. It has—and yet Trump is backpedaling, willing to accept the regime’s denial of its vicious rights violations. A principled president would stand firm in his support—verbal or military—for those seeking to overthrow Khamenei’s dictatorship. Craig Biddle’s article on why free countries should support these protestors—written during one of the previous uprisings in 2018—is even more vital today, when freedom-loving Iranians are facing brutal suppression at the hands of the barbarian theocracy under which they struggle to live. Let’s hope they succeed in overthrowing it this time.

I hope you enjoy this week’s articles.

Thomas Walker-Werth

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