Spring 2009 -- Editor’s Note: In an interview conducted some 12 years ago with Navigator magazine (the predecessor of this publication), David N. Mayer, the author of " Completing the American Revolution " discussed specific institutional changes he would like to see enacted by a new American constitution. We asked Mayer if and how his beliefs have changed on these issues.
That’s the charge that Newsweek columnist and Slate Magazine editor Jacob Weisberg has laid against the advocates of markets in a recent..
Richard Henry Tawney (1880–1962) was a British historian who spent most of his career at the London School of Economics. He wrote widely on
March 2006 -- Some of the most frightening images from Nazi Germany can be seen in Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, the cinematic...
“Men and women are different,” says a frustrated soldier to a young girl who’s been questioning his authority in Jafar Panahi’s lighthearted
BOOK REVIEW: Edward W. Younkins, Editor, Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged: A Philosophical and Literary Companion (Ashgate Publishing, Aldershot
Robert Thurman has always had a problem with his temper, he tells us in Anger, the fifth in a series of books about the seven deadly sins...
Winter 2005 -- I don’t watch TV—we’ve lived more than fifteen years without cable—and I’m not a big fan of film. My personal escape is
May 2008 -- I’m not supposed to like Americanizing Shelley, at least not according to the unwritten code of my profession. It doesn’t affect
Individualism seemed to have few accomplishments and fewer adherents, back when I first encountered it, some forty-five years ago...
A lot of my listeners will often call up and say, “I preferred you when you were a Libertarian.” I always tell them I never was a....
You’re right to point out the contrast I make between capitalism and morality.” So said New York Times columnist John Tierney in response...
There Will Be Blood. Starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Martin Stringer, Kevin J. O’Connor, Jacob Stringer, Matthew Braden Stringer, Ciar
On September 10, former Brocade CEO Greg Reyes is scheduled to report to prison, facing a sentence of eighteen months. The crime alleged against him was something called “backdating options.” Viewed in its worst possible light, that amounted to a minor sort of bookkeeping chicanery. Viewed more favorably, Reyes brushed aside a regulation universally acknowledged to be idiotic. And that is accepting the government’s allegations. According to Reyes’s own version of events, he simply relied on his financial department. No matter. He is being sent to prison.
February 2002 -- Pierre Boulez (1925– ), perhaps the most highly esteemed postwar composer, has finally achieved what he wanted. Throughout his long career, Boulez has done his best to provoke and intimidate the bourgeois establishment. Unfortunately for him, the general public has contentedly ignored him, and his influence has been significant only among the most abstruse composers and theorists of the ivory tower. Consequently, his cultural power has been largely limited to a circle of French art institutions (such as the Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique) that would perish faster than a Peugeot in a Minnesota winter without generous government subsidies.
December 2004 -- I have grown to think that life is a cosmic whack-a-mole game, where we are the moles and reality is the whackor. We make subterranean thought tunnels, mazes of connections, deep caverns of speculation, but sooner or later we must stick our heads up out of a hole. Reality whacks us or it does not, depending on whether our conclusions are right or wrong. If we do not get whacked, we should continue to enjoy the sunshine of being right. If we do get whacked, we should retreat to our tunnels, recompute our plans, and stick our heads up again. We should not assume that a whack is a moral judgment—it is only the result of an error. We should not resign ourselves to life in darkness. Being wrong is a human condition, not a cosmic judgment. We must always stick our heads out because how else can Charles Tomlinsonwe discover the judgment of reality? We learn by observing the effect of reality on our actions. Is it a good idea to pick a fight with the big guy? Whack! Does she lust for me? Whack! There is no need to think about the possible reaction to this proposal. Whack! Is this a good way to make money? Whack! No need to think about anything. Whack! Whack! Whack!
December 2004 -- The world is covered with OPS. It is the detritus of thousands of years of human activity. It is the leavings of the billions of people who have lived before us on this planet—the ideas that work hidden in the muck of those that don't, the religions, the political principles, the edicts of kings, and the propositions of tyrants. Everything in our world is covered with a thick, gooey atmosphere of Other People's Stuff. Everything needed for survival is included in OPS, and most people choose to stay there for their entire lives. It is comfortable in OPS, because the essential work of life—thinking—is taken care of by other people. The OPS rules are such things as: have faith; from Charles Tomlinsoneach according to ability, to each according to need; follow the rules; don't make waves; and sit down and hush.
Jan/Feb 2005 -- The United States Supreme Court announced the much-anticipated federal sentencing law decisions in early January. The line of cases that started with Apprendi v. New Jersey and continued through Blakely v. Washington reached its culmination in the decision of United States v. Booker. But just when you'd think that there aren't any surprises left, the Court took another bizarre turn. There has been a consistent split of 5-4 in all but one of these cases. (The exception is Ring v. Arizona, for reasons involving particular death penalty issues.) The lines are not conservative-liberal: Justices Scalia, Stevens, Ginsburg, Souter, and Thomas have been on one side, while Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justices O'Connor, Breyer, and Kennedy have been on the other.
October 2007 -- This summer, as Ayn Rand ’s Atlas Shrugged approaches its fiftieth anniversary, I have just passed my forty-fifth year of living with that astonishing book. Thinking back across the decades, I find I am most surprised by how little progress has been made in advancing her philosophy of Objectivism . When I first encountered Atlas Shrugged , it struck me as a work so emotionally inspiring and theoretically lucid that I imagined a thousand pens must leap to defend it. But of course they didn’t.
March 2008 -- Recently I was talking to a prominent local businessman about how hectic our respective schedules are. Toward the end of the conversation he said, with an air of frustrated exhaustion, “And on top of my daily business doings, there’s also all of the groups calling for charitable contributions.” He added: “You have to help them, of course.” In no way was he being resentful; he was just stating what was, to him, a truism. I took his comment to mean: “Yes, I’m selfish during the day making my own living—so therefore I must also give time, effort, and money to those who help others.”
Spring 2009 -- Editor’s Note: In an interview conducted some 12 years ago with Navigator magazine (the predecessor of this publication), David N. Mayer, the author of " Completing the American Revolution " discussed specific institutional changes he would like to see enacted by a new American constitution. We asked Mayer if and how his beliefs have changed on these issues.
That’s the charge that Newsweek columnist and Slate Magazine editor Jacob Weisberg has laid against the advocates of markets in a recent..
Richard Henry Tawney (1880–1962) was a British historian who spent most of his career at the London School of Economics. He wrote widely on
March 2006 -- Some of the most frightening images from Nazi Germany can be seen in Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, the cinematic...
“Men and women are different,” says a frustrated soldier to a young girl who’s been questioning his authority in Jafar Panahi’s lighthearted
BOOK REVIEW: Edward W. Younkins, Editor, Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged: A Philosophical and Literary Companion (Ashgate Publishing, Aldershot
Robert Thurman has always had a problem with his temper, he tells us in Anger, the fifth in a series of books about the seven deadly sins...
Winter 2005 -- I don’t watch TV—we’ve lived more than fifteen years without cable—and I’m not a big fan of film. My personal escape is
May 2008 -- I’m not supposed to like Americanizing Shelley, at least not according to the unwritten code of my profession. It doesn’t affect
Individualism seemed to have few accomplishments and fewer adherents, back when I first encountered it, some forty-five years ago...
A lot of my listeners will often call up and say, “I preferred you when you were a Libertarian.” I always tell them I never was a....
You’re right to point out the contrast I make between capitalism and morality.” So said New York Times columnist John Tierney in response...
There Will Be Blood. Starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Martin Stringer, Kevin J. O’Connor, Jacob Stringer, Matthew Braden Stringer, Ciar
On September 10, former Brocade CEO Greg Reyes is scheduled to report to prison, facing a sentence of eighteen months. The crime alleged against him was something called “backdating options.” Viewed in its worst possible light, that amounted to a minor sort of bookkeeping chicanery. Viewed more favorably, Reyes brushed aside a regulation universally acknowledged to be idiotic. And that is accepting the government’s allegations. According to Reyes’s own version of events, he simply relied on his financial department. No matter. He is being sent to prison.
February 2002 -- Pierre Boulez (1925– ), perhaps the most highly esteemed postwar composer, has finally achieved what he wanted. Throughout his long career, Boulez has done his best to provoke and intimidate the bourgeois establishment. Unfortunately for him, the general public has contentedly ignored him, and his influence has been significant only among the most abstruse composers and theorists of the ivory tower. Consequently, his cultural power has been largely limited to a circle of French art institutions (such as the Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique) that would perish faster than a Peugeot in a Minnesota winter without generous government subsidies.
December 2004 -- I have grown to think that life is a cosmic whack-a-mole game, where we are the moles and reality is the whackor. We make subterranean thought tunnels, mazes of connections, deep caverns of speculation, but sooner or later we must stick our heads up out of a hole. Reality whacks us or it does not, depending on whether our conclusions are right or wrong. If we do not get whacked, we should continue to enjoy the sunshine of being right. If we do get whacked, we should retreat to our tunnels, recompute our plans, and stick our heads up again. We should not assume that a whack is a moral judgment—it is only the result of an error. We should not resign ourselves to life in darkness. Being wrong is a human condition, not a cosmic judgment. We must always stick our heads out because how else can Charles Tomlinsonwe discover the judgment of reality? We learn by observing the effect of reality on our actions. Is it a good idea to pick a fight with the big guy? Whack! Does she lust for me? Whack! There is no need to think about the possible reaction to this proposal. Whack! Is this a good way to make money? Whack! No need to think about anything. Whack! Whack! Whack!
December 2004 -- The world is covered with OPS. It is the detritus of thousands of years of human activity. It is the leavings of the billions of people who have lived before us on this planet—the ideas that work hidden in the muck of those that don't, the religions, the political principles, the edicts of kings, and the propositions of tyrants. Everything in our world is covered with a thick, gooey atmosphere of Other People's Stuff. Everything needed for survival is included in OPS, and most people choose to stay there for their entire lives. It is comfortable in OPS, because the essential work of life—thinking—is taken care of by other people. The OPS rules are such things as: have faith; from Charles Tomlinsoneach according to ability, to each according to need; follow the rules; don't make waves; and sit down and hush.
Jan/Feb 2005 -- The United States Supreme Court announced the much-anticipated federal sentencing law decisions in early January. The line of cases that started with Apprendi v. New Jersey and continued through Blakely v. Washington reached its culmination in the decision of United States v. Booker. But just when you'd think that there aren't any surprises left, the Court took another bizarre turn. There has been a consistent split of 5-4 in all but one of these cases. (The exception is Ring v. Arizona, for reasons involving particular death penalty issues.) The lines are not conservative-liberal: Justices Scalia, Stevens, Ginsburg, Souter, and Thomas have been on one side, while Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justices O'Connor, Breyer, and Kennedy have been on the other.
October 2007 -- This summer, as Ayn Rand ’s Atlas Shrugged approaches its fiftieth anniversary, I have just passed my forty-fifth year of living with that astonishing book. Thinking back across the decades, I find I am most surprised by how little progress has been made in advancing her philosophy of Objectivism . When I first encountered Atlas Shrugged , it struck me as a work so emotionally inspiring and theoretically lucid that I imagined a thousand pens must leap to defend it. But of course they didn’t.
March 2008 -- Recently I was talking to a prominent local businessman about how hectic our respective schedules are. Toward the end of the conversation he said, with an air of frustrated exhaustion, “And on top of my daily business doings, there’s also all of the groups calling for charitable contributions.” He added: “You have to help them, of course.” In no way was he being resentful; he was just stating what was, to him, a truism. I took his comment to mean: “Yes, I’m selfish during the day making my own living—so therefore I must also give time, effort, and money to those who help others.”