The Objectivism Online Meta-Blog

"Hate Crime" Laws Criminalize Ideas

By Don Watkins from The Ayn Rand Institute Media Releases,cross-posted by MetaBlog

“Hate Crime” Laws Criminalize Ideas

WASHINGTON, October 19, 2009--The House recently voted to expand federal “hate crimes” to include those committed because of the victim’s sexual orientation.

“Despite the denials of ‘hate crime’ law supporters, this criminalizes certain ideas,” writes Don Watkins, an analyst with the Ayn Rand Center. “If the government can punish a criminal more harshly based on the ‘message of intolerance and discrimination’ he sends through his crime, then the inevitable conclusion is that sending a ‘message of intolerance and discrimination’ is a crime.

“It is irrelevant whether the ideas currently deemed ‘hateful’ are repugnant, which in the case of racism or anti-gay vitriol they certainly are. Every attack on free speech starts by targeting ideas people find repugnant; that’s how censorship gains purchase. But once the principle is established that the government can punish people for holding unpopular ideas, then any dissenter is at risk.

“The men who wrote the First Amendment sought to safeguard intellectual freedom by barring the state from taking cognizance of men’s ideas. The government, they said, has no role in deciding what ideas are true or false, right or wrong, hateful or loving. Its job is to proscribe actions that violate individual rights, so that each of us can make those determinations for ourselves.”

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Don Watkins is available for interviews. To interview him or book him for your show, email: media@aynrandcenter.org.  

 

What Went Wrong in Afghanistan?

By Elan Journo from The Ayn Rand Institute Media Releases,cross-posted by MetaBlog

What Went Wrong in Afghanistan?

WASHINGTON, October 20, 2009--In a recent blog for publisher Rowman and Littlefield, Elan Journo, a fellow with the Ayn Rand Center, wrote about the failed war in Afghanistan and his new book: “Winning the Unwinnable War: America’s Self-Crippled Response to Islamic Totalitarianism.”

“After eight years of U.S. military intervention, the fighters of the Islamist movement are not only unbowed, but on the march,” writes Journo. “The Islamists (often misidentified by one of their favored tactics: terrorism) seek to impose the totalitarian rule of Allah’s law worldwide--an ideal that entails smiting down infidels and subjugating others under sharia. And they’re making headway.”

Why, Mr. Journo asks, have we failed to defeat this enemy?

“Our post-9/11 policy--in Afghanistan and across the board--was subverted by a factor that few have thought to examine: the basic moral ideas that animate our foreign policy. In essence, the kind of war that our leaders believed was morally proper to wage entailed placing ‘compassion’ ahead of the proper task of self-defense.

“A point we make in ‘Winning the Unwinnable War’ is that the way out of the Afghanistan morass requires Americans to recognize how certain (allegedly) moral ideas have informed, and crippled, our policy--and to challenge those ideas.”

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The Hopelessness of Negotiating with Iran

By Elan Journo from The Ayn Rand Institute Media Releases,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The Hopelessness of Negotiating with Iran

WASHINGTON, October 21, 2009--Iran and the United States have been holding direct talks this week over Tehran’s nuclear program. What will these diplomatic negotiations accomplish?

“In the three decades since its Islamic revolution, Iran has dedicated itself to spreading its moral ideal--Islamic totalitarianism--by force of arms,” writes Elan Journo, fellow with the Ayn Rand Center and editor of the new book "Winning the Unwinnable War: America’s Self-Crippled Response to Islamic Totalitarianism.” “Teheran spends millions every year, not to pursue prosperity for its tyrannized citizens, but to finance terrorism and to build a nuclear arsenal to wield against enemies of Allah.

“Would diplomatic negotiations encourage Iran to mitigate its ideology? No, they would only intensify its hostility. Negotiations buy Iran time. Above all, diplomacy grants Iran moral legitimacy as a civilized regime: its hostile goals--‘death to America’--and its murder of our citizens are made to seem reasonable differences of opinion. Such appeasement confirms the perverse notion that Allah’s warriors, materially weaker but morally self-righteous, can succeed in bringing down the mighty infidel West.

“To protect American lives, we must learn the life-or-death importance of passing objective moral judgment. We must recognize the character of Iran and act accordingly.”

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How Do We Deal with Iran?

By Elan Journo from The Ayn Rand Institute Media Releases,cross-posted by MetaBlog

How Do We Deal with Iran?

WASHINGTON, September 28, 2009--Iran announced on Sunday that it has test fired several short-range missiles, just days after proclaiming that it has been building a second uranium enrichment plant. In response to this show of force, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates implied that the United States has no military solution to the problem, and added “I think there’s still time for diplomacy.” 

In his new book, “Winning the Unwinnable War: America’s Self-Crippled Response to Islamic Totalitarianism,” Ayn Rand Center fellow Elan Journo traces Iran’s role as the ideological leader of the Islamic totalitarian movement, catalogs its history of violence against America, and argues that today’s commitment to “diplomacy” with Iran can only fuel its belligerence. Instead, he argues for an unconventional solution: “The only practical way forward requires that we recognize Iran’s role as the ideological motor of the Islamist movement--and then proceed to crush it.

“This is a twofold job. Fundamentally, that begins with declaring--publicly and proudly--our moral condemnation of Iran and of the Islamist movement that it leads. In doing so, we project a righteous dedication to our values of individual rights and political freedom and affirm that we will tolerate no threat to the lives and freedom of Americans. The second element, which presupposes the first, is to live up to that dedication in practice by unleashing all necessary military force to put an end to the Iranian regime and demoralize the Islamist movement.

“It must be made to realize that, if Iran ever dares to threaten or take up arms against us, we will again meet that aggression with a crushing military onslaught.”

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"Atlas Shrugged" Essay Contest Doubles in Size!

By from The Ayn Rand Institute Media Releases,cross-posted by MetaBlog

“Atlas Shrugged” Essay Contest Doubles in Size!

IRVINE, Calif., September 30, 2009--The Ayn Rand Institute announced a new record in submissions for its annual “Atlas Shrugged” essay contest. ARI received more than 4,000 entries this year, more than twice as many as last year’s record.

ARI credits the surge in essay contest submissions to the recent boom in “Atlas Shrugged” sales, along with the continued growth of ARI’s free books to teachers program. The ARI essay contest is part of a larger educational program that encourages high school and college educators to use the book in their classrooms.  ARI has given teachers more than a hundred thousand copies of “Atlas Shrugged” in the last two years.

Open to 12th graders and both graduate- and undergraduate-level college students, the “Atlas Shrugged” essay contest requires contestants to write on one of several topics dealing with characters and themes in the novel. The contest is designed to promote critical thinking and writing skills. Essays are judged on both style and content. The top prize awarded to the contest winner is $10,000, with multiple semifinalist and finalist awards ranging from $50 to $2,000. 

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For interviews, please contact: media@aynrand.org or call 202-609-7470.

For more information on Objectivism’s unique point of view, go to ARI’s Web site. The Ayn Rand Institute promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.”

 

 

"Just War Theory" Is Unjust to Americans

By Yaron Brook from The Ayn Rand Institute Media Releases,cross-posted by MetaBlog

"Just War Theory" Is Unjust to Americans

WASHINGTON, October 5, 2009--As U.S. military leaders continue to argue over troop deployments and tactics in Afghanistan, American soldiers continue to die and victory remains elusive. Why?
 
“The reason is that, despite their claims that they will do whatever is necessary to defend America, our leaders believe that it would be wrong--morally wrong--to do so,” write ARC’s Yaron Brook and Alex Epstein in a new book, “Winning the Unwinnable War: America’s Self-Crippled Response to Islamic Totalitarianism.” “They believe this because they consistently accept a certain moral theory of war--one that has come to be universally taught in our universities and war colleges. The theory is called “Just War Theory.”

“Broadly speaking, Just War Theory holds that a nation can go to war only in response to the impetus of a ‘just cause,’ with force as a ‘last resort.’ And it holds that a nation must wage war only by means that are ‘proportional’ to the ends it seeks, and while practicing ‘discrimination’ between combatants and non-combatants.”

 This means that “it is wrong for a nation to be exclusively concerned with its own well-being in deciding whether to go to war; it must demonstrate concern for the well-being of the world as a whole--including the well-being of the nation it is attacking." Such a policy, the authors argue, cannot lead to victory.

“To escape from the destructiveness of Just War Theory, we must embrace a moral approach to war that rejects altruism and fully upholds self-defense, thus providing the moral foundation for free, innocent nations to secure the lives and liberty of their citizens in the face of aggression.”

 

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A Book Every Military Strategist and Politician Should Read

By Elan Journo from The Ayn Rand Institute Media Releases,cross-posted by MetaBlog

A Book Every Military Strategist and Politician Should Read

WASHINGTON, October 6, 2009--Eight years after 9/11 and in the shadow of two protracted U.S. military campaigns in the Middle East, the enemy is not only undefeated but emboldened and resurgent. What went wrong--and what should we do going forward?  This is the subject of a new book by Elan Journo, analyst with the Ayn Rand Center.

“Winning the Unwinnable War: America’s Self-Crippled Response to Islamic Totalitarianism” shows how our own policy ideas led to 9/11 and then crippled our response in the Middle East. Journo makes the case for an unsettling conclusion: By subordinating military victory to perverse, allegedly moral constraints, Washington’s policy has undermined our national security.

We need a new moral foundation for our Middle East policy. That new starting point for U.S. policy is the moral ideal championed by the philosopher Ayn Rand: rational self-interest. Implementing this approach entails objectively defining our national interest as protecting the lives and freedoms of Americans--and then taking principled action to safeguard them. The book lays out the necessary steps for achieving victory and for securing America’s long-range interests in the volatile Middle East.

To learn more about the book, or read an excerpt, visit: http://winningtheunwinnablewar.com/

 
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Let's Take Back Columbus Day

By Thomas Bowden from The Ayn Rand Institute Media Releases,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Let’s Take Back Columbus Day

October 8, 2009

by Thomas A. Bowden

More than a century ago, America celebrated the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s voyage of discovery by hosting an enormous world’s fair on the shores of Lake Michigan. This “World’s Columbian Exposition” featured statues of the great explorer, replicas of his three ships, and commemorative stamps and coins. Because Columbus Day was a patriotic holiday--it marked the opening chapter in American history--the newly written Pledge of Allegiance was first recited in schools on October 12, 1892.

Nowadays, however, an embarrassed, guilty silence descends on the nation each Columbus Day. We’ve been taught that Columbus opened the way for rapacious European settlers to unleash a stream of horrors on a virgin continent: slavery, racism, warfare, epidemic, and the cruel oppression of Indians.

This modern view of Columbus represents an unjust attack upon both our country and the civilization that made it possible. Western civilization did not originate slavery, racism, warfare, or disease--but with America as its exemplar, that civilization created the antidotes. How? By means of a set of core ideas that set Western civilization apart from all others: reason and individualism.

Throughout history, prior to the birth of Western civilization in ancient Greece, the world seemed impervious to human understanding. People believed that animistic spirits or capricious deities had supernatural powers to cure diseases, grow crops, and guide the hunter’s arrow toward his prey. To get the attention of these inscrutable spirits, people resorted to prayer, ritual, taboo, and human sacrifice, relying always on the mystic insights of shamans and priests.

This pervasive mysticism had practical consequences: festering disease, perpetual poverty, and a desperate quest for survival that made offensive warfare against human beings seem as natural as hunting animals. Such was the plight of America’s Indians before 1492--and such was Europe’s own plight, once the civilizations of Greece and Rome had given way to the mysticism of Christianity and the barbarian tribes.

It was Western philosophers, scientists, statesmen, and businessmen who liberated mankind from mysticism’s grip. Once scientists revealed a world of natural laws open to human understanding, medical research soon penetrated the mysteries of disease and epidemic, allowing us to look back with pity upon American Indians and other historical victims of diseases now preventable and curable.

On a much wider scale, the Industrial Revolution employed science, technology, and engineering to create material goods in profusion, so that even people of average ability could become affluent by historical standards. By demonstrating how wealth can be created in abundance rather than stolen by armed force, America and the West supplied a moral alternative to the bloody tribal warfare of past eras.

Western civilization’s stress on the value of reason led inexorably to its distinctive individualism. Western thinkers were first to declare that every individual, no matter what his skin color or ancestry, is fully human, possessed of reason and free will--a being of self-made character who deserves to be judged accordingly, not as a member of a racial or tribal collective. And thanks to John Locke and the Founding Fathers, individuals were recognized as possessing individual rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness--rights that made slavery indefensible and led to its eradication, at the cost of a civil war. 

These are the facts we are no longer taught--and the measure of that educational failure is the disdain with which Columbus’s holiday is regarded in the country that owes its existence to his courage. It is time to take back Columbus Day, as an occasion to publicly rejoice, not in the bloodshed that occurred before Columbus’s arrival and after, but in our commitment to the life-serving values of Western civilization: reason and individualism. We do so by honoring the great explorer who opened the way for that civilization to flourish in the New World.

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Just Say "No" to Another "Stimulus"

By Yaron Brook from The Ayn Rand Institute Media Releases,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Just Say “No” to Another “Stimulus”

WASHINGTON, October 9, 2009--On the heels of a failed $700 billion “stimulus” package, Congress is mulling over yet another round of “stimulus” spending. 

“We don’t need the government to ‘stimulate’ the economy with some new intervention; we need it to liberate us from all its destructive economic intervention that put us in this situation,” said Yaron Brook, president of the Ayn Rand Center.

“We need liberation from environmentalist restrictions on oil drilling and energy production. We need liberation from Sarbanes-Oxley, which treats businessmen as guilty until proven innocent and increases the cost of doing business for every publicly traded corporation. We need liberation from the government’s pervasive regulation and semi-socialization of the health care market, which have artificially driven up the costs of health care. We need liberation from the intervention of the Federal Reserve, which is destroying our savings by inflating the currency. And we need liberation from countless other forms of government spending; if spending does not decrease, then any ‘stimulus’ tax cuts are simply tax increases for the future.

“When the government violates our right to produce and trade freely, it is an economic cancer that needs to be removed from the economy.”

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War Policy vs. Our Troops

By Elan Journo from The Ayn Rand Institute Media Releases,cross-posted by MetaBlog

War Policy vs. Our Troops

WASHINGTON, October 13, 2009--“Under current policy in Afghanistan, our forces are required to endear themselves to the local population by providing so-called humanitarian aid,” writes Elan Journo, a fellow with the Ayn Rand Center.  “This is combined with the long-standing battlefield rules that require soldiers to go out of their way to avoid injuring civilians.”  Such policies are incompatible with American self-defense, argues Mr. Journo in his controversial new book, Winning the Unwinnable War: America’s Self-Crippled Response to Islamic Totalitarianism.

“We have no moral duty to embroil ourselves in selfless nation-building. In a war of retaliation against a present threat, we are morally entitled to crush an enemy regime because we are innocent victims defending our unconditional right to be free.  Our government’s obligation is to protect the lives of Americans, not the welfare of people in the Middle East.

“If Islamic totalitarians and their many followers know without a doubt that the consequence of threatening us is their own demise, the world will be a peaceful place for Americans.  And that, ultimately, is the end for which our government and its policies are the means: to defend our freedom so that we can live and prosper.”

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Greenspan Shows His Anti-Capitalist Colors . . . Again

By Alex Epstein from The Ayn Rand Institute Media Releases,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Greenspan Shows His Anti-Capitalist Colors . . . Again

WASHINGTON, October 16, 2009--Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan is in the news again, calling on the government to use its coercive powers to break up banks that are “too big to fail.”  “I don’t think merely raising the fees or capital on large institutions or taxing them is enough,” Greenspan said.  “If they’re too big to fail, they’re too big.” 

“Is Greenspan campaigning for the position of ‘Size Czar’ now?” asked Alex Epstein, a fellow with the Ayn Rand Center.

“The problem with ‘too big to fail’ is not that there is actually some magic size that is ‘too big’--it is the bailout promises that go along with being big, which create perverse incentives. The solution is to phase out ‘too big to fail’ and all other bailout programs, and replace them with a free market in banking, which would reward sound long-term lending and borrowing practices and punish irresponsible ones. Without bailout policies, financial institutions would be truly responsible for their actions, and would need to choose their structure, leverage, policies, and size to ensure long-term success.

“The last thing we need is more czar-like powers for the Alan Greenspans of the world. As Greenspan demonstrated by inflating the housing bubble during his tenure as Fed Chairman, government power to manipulate markets is a financial weapon of mass destruction.”

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Gut the SEC, Stop the Next Madoff

By Alex Epstein from The Ayn Rand Institute Media Releases,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Gut the SEC, Stop the Next Madoff

WASHINGTON, October 19, 2009--Two of the victims of Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme are suing the Securities and Exchange Commission for “negligence.”

“While it’s not clear whether their case will go anywhere, it’s undeniable that the SEC failed miserably in the Madoff case,” writes Alex Epstein, a fellow with the Ayn Rand Center. 

“The SEC’s mission is effectively unlimited; the SEC’s job is to use the coercive power of the government to do whatever the heck it feels will improve financial markets. Such a mission both shows a profound ignorance of and disregard for the unique ability of individuals on a truly free market to allocate capital efficiently. It also completely diverts the government from prosecuting criminals. Who has the time and energy to follow real evidence of securities fraud when you view your mission as, essentially, to manage the world’s largest financial market? Obviously not the SEC.

“Want to stop the next Madoff? Gut the SEC, and limit the government’s role to prosecuting real criminals.”

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