Isaac Asimov once observed that there are periods in history when two countries—one martial, one commercial—enter a contest for some critica
Individualism as a moral doctrine includes the idea that individuals have a right to live for themselves to pursue their own happiness...
September 1998 -- Robert A. Levy, a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute, received his Ph.D. in finance and investments from the American University in 1966. For the next twenty-five years, he ran CDA Investment Technologies, Inc., a major provider of financial information and software. During that time, Levy wrote a book on the application of quantitative techniques to the stock market, as well as several dozen articles on investment. In 1991, Levy left his position as chief executive officer of CDA and returned to school, earning a J.D. in 1994 from George Mason University Law School, where he was chief articles editor of the law review. He went on to clerk for two years, first for Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., and then for Judge Douglas Ginsburg of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Along the way, Levy wrote several law review articles, such as "Calculating Tort Damages for Lost Future Earnings," "The Prudent Investor Rule," and "An Equal Protection Analysis of the Davis-Bacon Act." Since joining the Cato Institute in 1996, Levy's principal research interests have been tort law, antitrust, financial markets, and constitutional issues. In 1997, he wrote the monograph "Tobacco Medicaid Litigation: Snuffing out the Rule of Law" (Policy Analysis no. 275) and in 1998 he wrote a second monograph, "Microsoft and the Browser Wars: Fit To be Tied" (Policy Analysis no. 296, available on-line ). He has also published numerous articles and op-eds in such magazines and newspapers as National Review, The Weekly Standard, The Washington Post, and USA Today. In addition to his position at Cato, Levy is an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center and a director at the Institute for Justice.
In 1968, English majors were 7.59 percent of those graduating with bachelor's degrees, but by 1995 that figure was down to 4.47 percent....
An exchange between professors Susan Dawn Wake and Alan Kors. Reprinted from Navigator, Volume 1, Number 8, 1998. In an interview for the
Postmodernism became the leading intellectual movement in the late twentieth century. It has replaced modernism, the philosophy of the
Unlike other species, man has the ability to re-organize his perceptual world in such a way as to discover new relationships. The essence
Description: In this interview, David N. Mayer expands upon a talk he gave at the IOS/Cato-sponsored conference, “Atlas and the World.” The main point of that address was: “Atlas Shrugged is significant because, through the novel, Rand shows us what we must do to complete the American Revolution, to complete the unfinished work of 1776, and the hope that it represents to the world.” David N. Mayer, a professor of law and history at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio, is the author of The Constitutional Thought of Thomas Jefferson (The University Press of Virginia, 1994) and several articles on American constitutional history. In 1997, he spoke at the IOS [now known as the Atlas Society] summer seminar on “The Declaration of Independence as a Literary and Philosophical Work”; at the 1998 IOS Summer Seminar, he spoke on “The Welfare State vs. the Constitution.”
Many of my friends and patients consider Jack Kevorkian a hero for helping sick people escape from their suffering. And many of my own patients—not only those facing cancer and other terminal illnesses, but also those in despair over disability, immobility, and pain arising from arthritis, diabetes, and strokes—have asked me to give them something to end their life. Thus far, I have not felt it legal or appropriate to do so. There is, in the first place, the difficulty of knowing whether they are speaking in rueful jest. Beyond that, whatever sympathy and temptation one might feel in such a situation, emotional and ethical discomfort—as well as fear of liability or sanctions—is always present, especially for physicians.
I've reread Thorton Wilder's The Ides of March many times, always with the equivalent of a slight mental frown: Why do I like this book so
February 1, 1998 -- This god, this one word: ''I'' With the sentence quoted above, Ayn Rand's novella Anthem projected the rediscovery of self amid a totally collectivist world. On February 3, an ABC News special, "Greed With John Stossel," offered Objectivists the inspiring sight of a brilliant counteroffensive against the anti-individualist attitudes that have been leading us toward such a collectivist hell for the last several centuries. Providing the philosophical basis for the counterattack was IOS's executive director, David Kelley. In the next issue of Navigator, we will look at reaction to the show. But for this issue, Navigator asked Kelley to recall how the program came about and how the show that he saw on television appeared from his perspective. Read an excerpt from the show
Ayn Rand said that her first novel, We the Living, was the closest she would ever come to writing an autobiography. Telling the story of...
Description: In the following interview, Scott G. Bullock recapitulates and expands upon the main points of a talk he gave at an IOS [now
Al Dunlap's restructuring of Scott Paper Company has been widely viewed as one of the most dramatic and deepest in corporate America. At the
Battles for the hearts and minds of libertarians, which date from at least the 1971 birth of the Libertarian Party, are waged principally
Rarely do advocates of freedom have the pleasure of hearing freedom criticized. Typically, they must listen to debates in which one side serves up a badly mixed hash of assertions that is labeled "freedom"—while the other side denounces the hash for features having nothing to do with human liberty. For this reason, libertarians had good cause to welcome the appearance early in 1997 of several books setting forth relatively pure versions of the classical liberal credo. Not only were the works instructive in themselves, but they called forth instructive responses from the media. The books in question were: What It Means to Be a Libertarian by Charles Murray, best known as the author of Losing Ground and as co-author (with the late Richard Herrnstein) of The Bell Curve; Libertarianism: A Primer by David Boaz, executive vice president of the Cato Institute and The Libertarian Reader, a collection of essays edited by Boaz. (Boaz's Primer was reviewed by Robert Bidinotto in the April 1997 issue of the IOS Journal.)
In this excerpt from a talk, professor of philosophy, Susan Dawn Wake, discusses the options for disseminating Objectivism in academia....
I would say the main line is this. The reintroduction of Aristotelianism in the West gradually led to the demise of the medieval outlook..
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
Isaac Asimov once observed that there are periods in history when two countries—one martial, one commercial—enter a contest for some critica
Individualism as a moral doctrine includes the idea that individuals have a right to live for themselves to pursue their own happiness...
September 1998 -- Robert A. Levy, a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute, received his Ph.D. in finance and investments from the American University in 1966. For the next twenty-five years, he ran CDA Investment Technologies, Inc., a major provider of financial information and software. During that time, Levy wrote a book on the application of quantitative techniques to the stock market, as well as several dozen articles on investment. In 1991, Levy left his position as chief executive officer of CDA and returned to school, earning a J.D. in 1994 from George Mason University Law School, where he was chief articles editor of the law review. He went on to clerk for two years, first for Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., and then for Judge Douglas Ginsburg of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Along the way, Levy wrote several law review articles, such as "Calculating Tort Damages for Lost Future Earnings," "The Prudent Investor Rule," and "An Equal Protection Analysis of the Davis-Bacon Act." Since joining the Cato Institute in 1996, Levy's principal research interests have been tort law, antitrust, financial markets, and constitutional issues. In 1997, he wrote the monograph "Tobacco Medicaid Litigation: Snuffing out the Rule of Law" (Policy Analysis no. 275) and in 1998 he wrote a second monograph, "Microsoft and the Browser Wars: Fit To be Tied" (Policy Analysis no. 296, available on-line ). He has also published numerous articles and op-eds in such magazines and newspapers as National Review, The Weekly Standard, The Washington Post, and USA Today. In addition to his position at Cato, Levy is an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center and a director at the Institute for Justice.
In 1968, English majors were 7.59 percent of those graduating with bachelor's degrees, but by 1995 that figure was down to 4.47 percent....
An exchange between professors Susan Dawn Wake and Alan Kors. Reprinted from Navigator, Volume 1, Number 8, 1998. In an interview for the
Postmodernism became the leading intellectual movement in the late twentieth century. It has replaced modernism, the philosophy of the
Unlike other species, man has the ability to re-organize his perceptual world in such a way as to discover new relationships. The essence
Description: In this interview, David N. Mayer expands upon a talk he gave at the IOS/Cato-sponsored conference, “Atlas and the World.” The main point of that address was: “Atlas Shrugged is significant because, through the novel, Rand shows us what we must do to complete the American Revolution, to complete the unfinished work of 1776, and the hope that it represents to the world.” David N. Mayer, a professor of law and history at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio, is the author of The Constitutional Thought of Thomas Jefferson (The University Press of Virginia, 1994) and several articles on American constitutional history. In 1997, he spoke at the IOS [now known as the Atlas Society] summer seminar on “The Declaration of Independence as a Literary and Philosophical Work”; at the 1998 IOS Summer Seminar, he spoke on “The Welfare State vs. the Constitution.”
Many of my friends and patients consider Jack Kevorkian a hero for helping sick people escape from their suffering. And many of my own patients—not only those facing cancer and other terminal illnesses, but also those in despair over disability, immobility, and pain arising from arthritis, diabetes, and strokes—have asked me to give them something to end their life. Thus far, I have not felt it legal or appropriate to do so. There is, in the first place, the difficulty of knowing whether they are speaking in rueful jest. Beyond that, whatever sympathy and temptation one might feel in such a situation, emotional and ethical discomfort—as well as fear of liability or sanctions—is always present, especially for physicians.
I've reread Thorton Wilder's The Ides of March many times, always with the equivalent of a slight mental frown: Why do I like this book so
February 1, 1998 -- This god, this one word: ''I'' With the sentence quoted above, Ayn Rand's novella Anthem projected the rediscovery of self amid a totally collectivist world. On February 3, an ABC News special, "Greed With John Stossel," offered Objectivists the inspiring sight of a brilliant counteroffensive against the anti-individualist attitudes that have been leading us toward such a collectivist hell for the last several centuries. Providing the philosophical basis for the counterattack was IOS's executive director, David Kelley. In the next issue of Navigator, we will look at reaction to the show. But for this issue, Navigator asked Kelley to recall how the program came about and how the show that he saw on television appeared from his perspective. Read an excerpt from the show
Ayn Rand said that her first novel, We the Living, was the closest she would ever come to writing an autobiography. Telling the story of...
Description: In the following interview, Scott G. Bullock recapitulates and expands upon the main points of a talk he gave at an IOS [now
Al Dunlap's restructuring of Scott Paper Company has been widely viewed as one of the most dramatic and deepest in corporate America. At the
Battles for the hearts and minds of libertarians, which date from at least the 1971 birth of the Libertarian Party, are waged principally
Rarely do advocates of freedom have the pleasure of hearing freedom criticized. Typically, they must listen to debates in which one side serves up a badly mixed hash of assertions that is labeled "freedom"—while the other side denounces the hash for features having nothing to do with human liberty. For this reason, libertarians had good cause to welcome the appearance early in 1997 of several books setting forth relatively pure versions of the classical liberal credo. Not only were the works instructive in themselves, but they called forth instructive responses from the media. The books in question were: What It Means to Be a Libertarian by Charles Murray, best known as the author of Losing Ground and as co-author (with the late Richard Herrnstein) of The Bell Curve; Libertarianism: A Primer by David Boaz, executive vice president of the Cato Institute and The Libertarian Reader, a collection of essays edited by Boaz. (Boaz's Primer was reviewed by Robert Bidinotto in the April 1997 issue of the IOS Journal.)
In this excerpt from a talk, professor of philosophy, Susan Dawn Wake, discusses the options for disseminating Objectivism in academia....
I would say the main line is this. The reintroduction of Aristotelianism in the West gradually led to the demise of the medieval outlook..
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