Charlie Kirk was murdered because someone felt his “hateful” speech should be silenced.
Iryna Zarutska was murdered because someone felt “that white girl” should die.
Angela Michelle Carr, Jerrald Gallion, and Anolt Joseph Laguerre Jr. were murdered because someone felt that black people should die.
Hundreds of victims of school shootings—from those at Columbine High to Sandy Hook Elementary to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High—were murdered because someone felt that killing them would be good.
The victims of 9/11, 7/7, and 10/7 were murdered because Muslims have faith that God exists, that his will is the moral law, and that he wants them to kill infidels. Likewise, homosexuals are hanged or beheaded in the Islamic world because Muslims have faith that God wants gay people dead.
Giordano Bruno, Michael Servetus, Hypatia, and other freethinkers were murdered because Christians had faith that God exists, that his will is the moral law, and that he wants them to kill heretics. Similarly, homosexuals throughout the ages have been killed by Christians who had faith that God wants gay people dead.
Countless millions of men, women, and children were murdered by communists who communally agreed that the proletariat (“working class”) should do whatever it takes to eliminate the bourgeoisie (“business-owning class”). Likewise, six million Jews were killed by Nazis because they formed a consensus that this was the right thing to do.
What underpins all this carnage? What is the causal common denominator?
The fundamental action underlying and giving rise to all such murderous behavior is the choice to treat something other than reason as a means of knowledge—and thus something other than reason as a guide to action.
The murderers of Kirk, Zarutska, Carr, Gallion, and Laguerre felt that they should kill these people—and acted accordingly. They treated feelings as a means of knowledge.
The jihadists of 9/11, 7/7, and 10/7, the Muslims and Christians who’ve killed gay people, and the Christians who murdered Bruno, Servetus, and Hypatia had faith that they should kill these people—and acted accordingly. They treated faith as a means of knowledge.
The communists and Nazis who slaughtered millions did so because they communally agreed that they should. They treated consensus as a means of knowledge.
None of these killers offered facts or evidence in support of the idea that they should kill the people they killed; nor could they have, as there are no facts to support the propriety of murder. None genuinely knew that they should kill their victims; you can’t know what isn’t so. They merely felt, had faith, or agreed that they should—and then treated that non-means of knowledge as a means of knowledge.
Those who accept absurdities commit or condone atrocities.
Man’s only means of knowledge is reason—the faculty that identifies and integrates the evidence of his senses. Reasoning involves perceptual observation, conceptual integration, and the formation and use of principles: general truths about the nature of reality, human nature, and the requirements of human life and social harmony.
Key among these principles is that of individual rights: the recognition of the fact that each individual’s life belongs to him (not to a group, a god, or a guy with a gun)—that he is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others—and that in order for human beings to live together peacefully (rather than as warring animals), they must renounce the initiation of physical force, leaving each individual free to act in accordance with his own rational judgment. (Force, under this principle, may be used only in retaliation against those who initiate its use.)
The principle of individual rights is not a gift from “God” or the government, nor is it a matter of mere preference or opinion. Rather, it is a truth that anyone can grasp—if he observes reality, uses reason, and refuses to pretend that feelings, faith, or consensus are means of knowledge.
Although there is no evidence to support the notion that murdering people or initiating force against them is good, a world of evidence supports the idea that in order to survive and thrive as human beings, we must use reason, produce life-serving goods and services, trade value for value by mutual consent to mutual benefit, and refrain from initiating force against one another—so that everyone can live his life as he sees fit.
In light of such observations and truths, we can draw a vital conclusion. We can achieve a civilized society only to the extent that we recognize and uphold two fundamental principles:
Reason is man’s only means of knowledge, his proper guide to action, and his basic means of living.
Initiating physical force against human beings is factually immoral and properly illegal—because to the extent that force is used against a person, it stops him from acting in accordance with his basic means of living: the judgment of his reasoning mind.
The measure of a society’s civility is precisely the extent to which its citizens and government recognize and uphold these principles.
Imagine a society that did so fully.
Let’s build it.
Quite a succinct summation of why faith must always end up in the use of force, and why murder is wrong regardless of what ideology prompted it. Well said!
Your articles present a crucial dichotomy between reason and its alternatives, yet they contain devastating contradictions that undermine the very principles you champion. I will trace these failures to their root in your methodological inconsistencies and psychological evasions.
You correctly identified that abandoning reason for mysticism leads to carnage. You state man's only means of knowledge is reason and that individual rights forbid initiated force. I agree. But you then commit a profound act of context-dropping by equating Charlie Kirk with Giordano Bruno and Hypatia. This is a false equivalence that corrupts the concept of a "martyr for reason." Bruno and Hypatia were murdered for advocating reason, science, and intellectual freedom against religious dogma. Kirk was murdered while advocating Christian theocracy and faith-based politics—the very antithesis of reason. You use the concept while denying its essential meaning.
To be a martyr for reason, one must actually advocate reason, not merely be a victim of violence while preaching mysticism. This package-deal blurs the line between reason and its enemies. The cause of violence is always some form of mysticism, making it strange to mourn a man who worked to whitewash Christianity, Russian aggression, and collective supremacy.
Your emotional response to Kirk's murder—a rightful outrage at initiated force—has overridden your rational judgment of his ideas. You have engaged in tribing, not thinking, by aligning with a political ally against a common "woke" enemy. This is an appeasement of Christianity, the dominant primacy of consciousness that constitutes the root evil in Western society. The proper Objectivist response would condemn the murder while explicitly rejecting Kirk's advocacy of faith. Instead, you sanctify him. His death is not a blow to Christianity but a human sacrifice that will strengthen its tyranny. Whether killed by woke activists or cultish Christians, his martyrdom serves to collectivize people and demand new sacrifices for the "common good."
Why did you propose mourning Kirk? Opposing murder doesn't imply endorsing the victim's character, especially a fascist Christian ideologue. You know such people cannot be honest intellectuals or defend justice. This represents intellectualization—abstract focus on "murder is wrong" while evading "who was murdered."
In "Thinking vs. Tribing," you isolate the method of subordinating one's mind to a group. Yet you fail to see how your tribal definition of Objectivism as "the philosophy of Ayn Rand" exemplifies this error. You define thinking as using reason to grasp reality, but define Objectivism by reference to a person. This appeal to authority violates the Primacy of Existence, placing Rand's consciousness above reality as the standard. The valid definition is the philosophy of the explicit, conscious, and consistent application of the primacy of existence and integration by the epistemological razor. Your definition packages methodology with potentially flawed applications.
Your tribal identification uses conservative alignment as a defense-value. The real tragedy is that in building coalitions against subjectivism, you undermine Objectivism's philosophical foundation. Rationality dies not because of people who have lost their minds, but because of those defenders who have successfully appeased them and completely repented of their intelligence before those who have none. You become just another conservative intellectual mourning conservative victims rather than a consistent advocate of reason.
Your non-response to the systematic anarchist critique confesses this evasion. The argument is devastating: the minarchist state you defend must initiate force through taxation and territorial monopoly, violating the Non-Aggression Principle you uphold. States fund themselves through compulsory taking and enforce anti-competitive monopolies; they override reason as a means of knowledge by arbitrary commandments. The state is the social embodiment of god (or mental passivity and dependence on others). Your silence reveals you've chosen tribal identity over philosophical consistency.
The deeper inconsistency lies within the Randist position itself. You claim individualism yet in foreign policy treat societies and states as metaphysical primaries, engaging in tribal collectivism. The real principle is the sovereign individual versus the sovereign collective. A consistent Objectivist foreign policy would defend any individual's rights and property anywhere. It would oppose all wars except defensive wars by individuals for their own lives, property, and selfish future. It would be a policy of privatization, deregulation and focused on individuals and networks of free individuals rather than countries. Such wars would target only specific aggressors, not entire societies. An Objectivist cannot see society as a primary; it must see only persons, literally judging conflicts as a dispute between two or more concrete and separate individuals, not two tribes.
You have developed a localized psycho-epistemological dysfunction. You operate with high efficacy championing reason against faith in most domains. But where your Objectivist tribal identity is threatened, you default to authority-orientation and context-dropping. This creates an integrity gap between your professed method and practice. You are living with a pocket of irreality—Ayn Rand's "sanction of the victim." You focus on ethics too much, without any attention to architectural requisites, while depending on Rand in effect: your axioms are compromised by your dependency. You cannot function fundamentally, preferring conformity to orthodox Objectivism's image.
The solution requires you to confront that professional success depends on consistent reason, not tribal orthodoxy. You must amputate stolen concepts, dissolve package-deals, and follow your epistemological razor to its logical conclusion. True intellectual leadership means always maintaining principle, even if inconvenient.
You should stop your pragmatism and focus on fundamentals. Understand proper architecture without depending on others. The foundation is perceptual reality—your own direct perception of existence. The irreducible axioms are mirrors of the self-evident: existence exists, you are conscious, and A is A.
A rational philosophy builds upward in clean, dependent on self-evident layers from metaphysical base to epistemological method to ethical framework to social principles. Each layer depends only on those beneath it. The most abstract principles remain the most stable while applications evolve with new knowledge. The most abstract principles do not care about their applications: after rationality will follow properly, for instance, not necessarily egoism, but rational ethics.
I'm convinced of egoism. Egoism and altruism form all possible ethical systems and are the most consistent. But still, you shouldn't put it on the same level as the reasons for its existence and understanding. Egoism cannot be defined unless you fully understand what it means to exist or what egoism distinguishes and explains in reality.
Rational architecture is open for extension but closed to contradiction. New knowledge integrates hierarchically without threatening the core. The system grows like a tree, not a closed loop. It provides tools for self-critique, making itself obsolete by making you epistemologically self-sufficient.
One of the tragic flaws in Rand's system, not so difficult to correct, is the terrible architecture of her ideas. Ideas are worthless without a proper hierarchy and context, that is, without order in the architecture: politics cannot have metaphysical significance, appeals to Rand cannot be a rational method of proof, Objectivism cannot make sense if it stands above individual consciousness or if it cannot, even in theory, be subject to change or inadequacy.
Until you implement this architecture, you remain a partially compromised advocate for reason—brilliant in most applications but systematically evasive where your principles should lead to their most radical conclusions. Philosophical consistency is the only solid foundation for effective cultural change.