I thank Bob Bidinotto for his many generous remarks about Libertarianism: A Primer , and I congratulate Bidinotto and the Institute for Objectivist Studies for their continuing commitment to a constructive dialogue between Objectivists and those libertarians who are not Objectivists. David BoazI might begin by noting that the very notion of a conflict “between libertarians and Objectivists” is flawed, as it seems to me that all Objectivists are necessarily libertarians, though not all libertarians are Objectivists. That is, anyone who believes in individual rights, free enterprise, and strictly limited government—and I assume that includes all Objectivists—is a libertarian. An Objectivist libertarian might well not belong to any particular party and might part company with some other libertarians on a wide range of philosophical and other issues, but at the level of political philosophy Objectivists are libertarians. And that gets us the crux of our disagreement. Should all libertarians be Objectivists? Or, put another way, must libertarianism rest on the Objectivist philosophical system? I believe that libertarianism, as a political movement and a political philosophy, is a sort of coalition. Libertarianism is compatible with a wide variety of philosophical, ethical, and religious beliefs. It is clearly compatible with Objectivism. It is also compatible with most religious faiths, as many libertarian Jews, Catholics, evangelical Protestants, and Muslims can attest. And certainly there are libertarians who feel a primary moral commitment to the value of individual freedom itself.
When, in 1966, Ayn Rand brought together a small collection of Objectivist articles on politics and economics, she called the book Capitalis
Description: Religions posit a supernatural realm involving either an impersonal force or a personal god, with many combinations. The earliest forms of primitive religion involved ten common institutions. What is religion? How does it arise? Since no supernatural world exists, why is the phenomenon of religion so universal among men? Most atheists have probably asked themselves these questions at one time or another. This essay attempts to answer them. The Nature of Religion A religion is a system of beliefs and practices resting on two fundamental assumptions: (1) that events in the world are subject to supernatural power, and (2) that human needs can be satisfied by man's entering into relationships with such supernatural power. The fundamental belief in all religions, therefore, is the belief that a supernatural power exists capable of controlling natural events, and the fundamental practice in all religions is the attempt to influence this power. The power in question is called supernatural because it can, allegedly, be known and influenced by means other than those deriving from sense experience and reason.
libertarianism: a primer by David Boaz - an objectivist review"There are sundry 'libertarians'," Ayn Rand wrote during the early 1970s...
Dr. Nathaniel Branden was a psychologist in private practice, author and speaker on psychology, and a pioneer of self-esteem psychology.
Description: Pessimism is a self-fulfilling and self-defeating attitude, in one’s own life and in cultural activism. In this excerpt from a
I have to take out the trash...change the oil in my car...pay my Visa bill...I have to give a presentation at the sales meeting...
When I was growing up in Worcester, Massachusetts, in the 1950s, I was surrounded by neighbors and relatives who were "Norton men": employee
Ayn Rand's characters are complex projections of human psychology that require of the reader great depth of understanding. Unfortunately...
The Letters of Ayn Rand. Edited by Michael S. Berliner, Introduction by Leonard Peikoff. New York: Dutton, 1995. 681 pp. including index.
Five years after the fall of communism, the people of Eastern Europe enjoy more freedom than they have known for decades. In most countries
Summary: Public concern about a moral decline in our society is rooted in two issues: irresponsible behavior and a perceived loss of meaning
Nathaniel Branden began writing and talking about self-esteem long before it became au courant to do so in educational, therapeutic, and....
In this third of three articles written in 1993-94, Roger Donway discusses specific means of pursuing the basic goals of foreign policy: intelligence, free trade, and security. Part One: Rethinking Foreign Policy Part Two: Rethinking Foreign Policy In my last article, I mentioned three broad areas of foreign policy and spoke of the general goals that ought to dominate them. Those areas were: intelligence, trade, and national security. I said that intelligence should seek to inform policy-makers thoroughly about the foreign states with which they have to deal, not only the political-military characteristics of those states but also the socioeconomic and cultural characteristics. I suggested that trade policy ought to aim at a Free World commercial alliance. And I recommended that national security policy ought to aim at a Free World security alliance. In this article, I would like to discuss some of the principles that I believe would serve as appropriate guides to those ends.
In this second of three articles written in 1993-94, Roger Donway discusses the fundamental goals of a proper foreign policy: promotion of free trade, and alliances among free countries as a bulwark of security. Part One: Rethinking Foreign Policy Part Three: "Rethinking Foreign Policy" A foreign policy comprises the principles that a government adopts towards other states and their citizens. Libertarians and Objectivists often assume that a free state’s foreign policy is merely a global analogue of its domestic criminal code or public law (prohibiting murder, theft, and so forth). In my last article, I argued that this was mistaken. At the least, I said, a foreign policy must also have a counterpart to the domestic civil code or private law (dealing with contract, negligence, and so forth). But more basically, I argued, the circumstances surrounding a state’s foreign affairs are completely different from the circumstances surrounding its domestic activities- so different that the analogy between domestic law and foreign policy can never be more than limited. The reason, I pointed out, is that a state operating within its own territory has a de jure monopoly on the use of force and a de facto monopoly on the use of large scale force. Internationally, the situation of one state vis-à-vis another is more like anarchy. To discover the principles appropriate to such a situation, I concluded, we must look back to the national motives for government, and see how they apply in this situation.
While the challenges of foreign policy change over time, the principles do not. In this first of three articles written in 1993-94, Roger Donway highlights the difference between government’s role in domestic and international affairs. Part 2 of "Rethinking Foreign Policy Part 3 of "Rethinking Foreign Policy During the almost 50 years of the cold war, most Americans grasped that Moscow was the sworn enemy of the United States and had to be opposed. By focusing on that single truth, U.S. foreign policy maintained a rough coherence—although it was riddled with pragmatism, altruism, and compromise. With the collapse of the Soviet empire, this organizing truth of U.S. foreign policy has vanished. The elements of national self-interest that inhered in America's anti-Soviet posture, and thereby leavened all of the country's foreign policy, have diminished greatly, and the formerly diluting elements of pragmatism, altruism, and compromise have become the policy's main theme. The results can be seen around the world, in the actions and inactions of the post-cold war Bush and Clinton administrations.
Robert James Bidinotto, who writes about crime, environmentalism, and other topics for Reader's Digest and other publications, addressed the
A cardinal principle of the Objectivist ethics is that, in Ayn Rand’s words, “productive work is the central purpose of a rational man’s
When a beautiful woman tells me she can't stop pulling out her hair—and that has happened—and a man with emphysema insists he can't stop
Description: Matthew Josephson’s 1934 best-seller, The Robber Barons, with its damning portraits of great industrialists and Marxist analysi
I thank Bob Bidinotto for his many generous remarks about Libertarianism: A Primer , and I congratulate Bidinotto and the Institute for Objectivist Studies for their continuing commitment to a constructive dialogue between Objectivists and those libertarians who are not Objectivists. David BoazI might begin by noting that the very notion of a conflict “between libertarians and Objectivists” is flawed, as it seems to me that all Objectivists are necessarily libertarians, though not all libertarians are Objectivists. That is, anyone who believes in individual rights, free enterprise, and strictly limited government—and I assume that includes all Objectivists—is a libertarian. An Objectivist libertarian might well not belong to any particular party and might part company with some other libertarians on a wide range of philosophical and other issues, but at the level of political philosophy Objectivists are libertarians. And that gets us the crux of our disagreement. Should all libertarians be Objectivists? Or, put another way, must libertarianism rest on the Objectivist philosophical system? I believe that libertarianism, as a political movement and a political philosophy, is a sort of coalition. Libertarianism is compatible with a wide variety of philosophical, ethical, and religious beliefs. It is clearly compatible with Objectivism. It is also compatible with most religious faiths, as many libertarian Jews, Catholics, evangelical Protestants, and Muslims can attest. And certainly there are libertarians who feel a primary moral commitment to the value of individual freedom itself.
When, in 1966, Ayn Rand brought together a small collection of Objectivist articles on politics and economics, she called the book Capitalis
Description: Religions posit a supernatural realm involving either an impersonal force or a personal god, with many combinations. The earliest forms of primitive religion involved ten common institutions. What is religion? How does it arise? Since no supernatural world exists, why is the phenomenon of religion so universal among men? Most atheists have probably asked themselves these questions at one time or another. This essay attempts to answer them. The Nature of Religion A religion is a system of beliefs and practices resting on two fundamental assumptions: (1) that events in the world are subject to supernatural power, and (2) that human needs can be satisfied by man's entering into relationships with such supernatural power. The fundamental belief in all religions, therefore, is the belief that a supernatural power exists capable of controlling natural events, and the fundamental practice in all religions is the attempt to influence this power. The power in question is called supernatural because it can, allegedly, be known and influenced by means other than those deriving from sense experience and reason.
libertarianism: a primer by David Boaz - an objectivist review"There are sundry 'libertarians'," Ayn Rand wrote during the early 1970s...
Dr. Nathaniel Branden was a psychologist in private practice, author and speaker on psychology, and a pioneer of self-esteem psychology.
Description: Pessimism is a self-fulfilling and self-defeating attitude, in one’s own life and in cultural activism. In this excerpt from a
I have to take out the trash...change the oil in my car...pay my Visa bill...I have to give a presentation at the sales meeting...
When I was growing up in Worcester, Massachusetts, in the 1950s, I was surrounded by neighbors and relatives who were "Norton men": employee
Ayn Rand's characters are complex projections of human psychology that require of the reader great depth of understanding. Unfortunately...
The Letters of Ayn Rand. Edited by Michael S. Berliner, Introduction by Leonard Peikoff. New York: Dutton, 1995. 681 pp. including index.
Five years after the fall of communism, the people of Eastern Europe enjoy more freedom than they have known for decades. In most countries
Summary: Public concern about a moral decline in our society is rooted in two issues: irresponsible behavior and a perceived loss of meaning
Nathaniel Branden began writing and talking about self-esteem long before it became au courant to do so in educational, therapeutic, and....
In this third of three articles written in 1993-94, Roger Donway discusses specific means of pursuing the basic goals of foreign policy: intelligence, free trade, and security. Part One: Rethinking Foreign Policy Part Two: Rethinking Foreign Policy In my last article, I mentioned three broad areas of foreign policy and spoke of the general goals that ought to dominate them. Those areas were: intelligence, trade, and national security. I said that intelligence should seek to inform policy-makers thoroughly about the foreign states with which they have to deal, not only the political-military characteristics of those states but also the socioeconomic and cultural characteristics. I suggested that trade policy ought to aim at a Free World commercial alliance. And I recommended that national security policy ought to aim at a Free World security alliance. In this article, I would like to discuss some of the principles that I believe would serve as appropriate guides to those ends.
In this second of three articles written in 1993-94, Roger Donway discusses the fundamental goals of a proper foreign policy: promotion of free trade, and alliances among free countries as a bulwark of security. Part One: Rethinking Foreign Policy Part Three: "Rethinking Foreign Policy" A foreign policy comprises the principles that a government adopts towards other states and their citizens. Libertarians and Objectivists often assume that a free state’s foreign policy is merely a global analogue of its domestic criminal code or public law (prohibiting murder, theft, and so forth). In my last article, I argued that this was mistaken. At the least, I said, a foreign policy must also have a counterpart to the domestic civil code or private law (dealing with contract, negligence, and so forth). But more basically, I argued, the circumstances surrounding a state’s foreign affairs are completely different from the circumstances surrounding its domestic activities- so different that the analogy between domestic law and foreign policy can never be more than limited. The reason, I pointed out, is that a state operating within its own territory has a de jure monopoly on the use of force and a de facto monopoly on the use of large scale force. Internationally, the situation of one state vis-à-vis another is more like anarchy. To discover the principles appropriate to such a situation, I concluded, we must look back to the national motives for government, and see how they apply in this situation.
While the challenges of foreign policy change over time, the principles do not. In this first of three articles written in 1993-94, Roger Donway highlights the difference between government’s role in domestic and international affairs. Part 2 of "Rethinking Foreign Policy Part 3 of "Rethinking Foreign Policy During the almost 50 years of the cold war, most Americans grasped that Moscow was the sworn enemy of the United States and had to be opposed. By focusing on that single truth, U.S. foreign policy maintained a rough coherence—although it was riddled with pragmatism, altruism, and compromise. With the collapse of the Soviet empire, this organizing truth of U.S. foreign policy has vanished. The elements of national self-interest that inhered in America's anti-Soviet posture, and thereby leavened all of the country's foreign policy, have diminished greatly, and the formerly diluting elements of pragmatism, altruism, and compromise have become the policy's main theme. The results can be seen around the world, in the actions and inactions of the post-cold war Bush and Clinton administrations.
Robert James Bidinotto, who writes about crime, environmentalism, and other topics for Reader's Digest and other publications, addressed the
A cardinal principle of the Objectivist ethics is that, in Ayn Rand’s words, “productive work is the central purpose of a rational man’s
When a beautiful woman tells me she can't stop pulling out her hair—and that has happened—and a man with emphysema insists he can't stop
Description: Matthew Josephson’s 1934 best-seller, The Robber Barons, with its damning portraits of great industrialists and Marxist analysi