Tag Archives: ayn rand

Captain America agent of Hydra
Image (c) Marvel Comics

What makes a superhero a hero? Moral judgment

Taken from http://www.hypable.com/captain-america-steve-rogers-hydra-agent-reactions/

Taken from http://www.hypable.com/captain-america-steve-rogers-hydra-agent-reactions/

I have been thinking about heroes, superheroes actually, quite a bit lately. The new Captain America movie is out, I’ve seen it twice, and has so far made more than a billion dollars. In the midst of that success, Marvel’s comic book division releases a new title, Captain America: Steve Rogers, which reveals that Cap is and always has been an agent of Hydra, the organization he has fought his entire read more

global warming

Podcast Roundup April 24 – Ayn Rand, Hope and more

podcastThis week’s podcast round up includes great shows from Yaron Brook, Steve Simpson and Amy Peikoff covering a host of topics including Trump and the DIM Hypothesis, Ayn Rand, the climate change inquisition, hope and more.

Peikoff.com Podcast Episode 406 w/Yaron Brook

It was Yaron’s turn on Leonard Peikoff’s podcast this week and he answered the following great questions:

  • What were your objective criteria that led you move to the United States and settle in California? This was an interesting answer as it applied the contextual nature of value judgments based on your hierarchy of values. For example, while Singapore has more economic freedom than the United States, he wouldn’t move there because he doesn’t want to live in a small city-state.
  • Since Objectivists vote on a candidate’s basic political principles but not necessarily on the candidate’s whole philosophy, do you think Senator Ted Cruz is closer to the former and worthy of my vote? The answer to this question gave a good, if necessarily brief, look at Cruz as a candidate with reasons why Yaron isn’t enthusiastic about Cruz.
  • Where does Donald Trump fit in on Leonard Peikoff’s DIM Hypothesis? (If you haven’t read this book, you certainly should.) An interesting point in the answer to this question is Yaron’s statement that what is scary about Trump is not the man himself, but that people love him.
  • Given today’s philosophical culture, is it advisable to get behind the science of genetic alteration? If we can’t get freedom right, should I be worried about what the intellectual community is doing to my food and medicine? We need to be pro-science. Yaron views science, as Eric Daniels pointed out in an OCON 2015 talk, as vitally important because it teaches us to think.

Yaron’s AM560 Rewind: Who is Ayn Rand?

Ayn RandEach week Yaron does a one hour radio program on AM560 in Chicago, also now broadcast in Miami. This week’s show took a look at someone he read more

teen drug addiction

Drug Addiction – Quote of the Day

Up in my part of the country, northern Vermont, drug addiction has been getting a lot of attention of late. In 2014 Governor Shumlin dedicated his state-of-the-state address largely to heroin addition. More recently, Governor Hassan of New Hampshire testified before the legislature in support of a bill to provide more resources to fight the “heroin and opioid crisis.”

By and large the measures advocated for do not address the fundamental issue: why do people begin taking read more

Egalitarianism Wrecks Production -Quote of the Day

Ayn Rand - Egalitarianism destroys productionAs I wrote in a previous post, the Ayn Rand Institute has made available for download almost all of the talks that Ayn Rand presented at the Ford Hall Forum. I have been listening to them in chronological order and trying to make notes of when I come across interesting quotes to share. There have been plenty of quotes, but I am rarely able to follow-up later as I listen to them in my car during my daily commute.

Recently I was able to both make a mental note of the location of this quote (about read more

What Can We Do? Speak! – Quote of the Day

Speak, speak and speak. Anywhere, to anyone, in any form we can.From 1961 through 1981, Ayn Rand spoke many times at the Ford Hall Forum, the “nation’s oldest continuously operating free public lecture series.” Earlier this year the Ayn Rand Institute made almost all of these talks available for download, free of charge. I had listened to many of these already (many have been available to stream from Soundcloud), but some were completely new to me.

I set myself the project of listening to them all in chronological order, with the goal of read more

Another Day, Another Smear

any rand on sexSalon.com is at it again. They recently posted an article by Amanda Marcotte, “Sad, Sexless, lonely: This is the real Paul Ryan/Ayn Rand vision for your life,” in which the author attempts to smear Ayn Rand by arbitrarily claiming, with just two mentions of her name, that Ayn Rand and Paul Ryan share the same world view and then proceeding to read more

[Video] Onkar Ghate on Selfishness

Onkar Ghate on selfishnessI recently came across a video posted by the Federalist Society of a talk given by ARI’s Onkar Ghate on selfishness. If you have read Ayn Rand or listened to other talks by Dr. Ghate or Yaron Brook, much of the information covered in this talk will be familiar, but I find it is often (always?) helpful to revisit ideas you are familiar with in order to achieve a better understanding of them.

In this case, this deeper understanding came when Onkar answered the first question in the Q&A read more

First Amendment – A Liberal’s View on Free Speech

Justice William O. Douglas understood the true meaning of free speech.

Source: Wikipedia

Over the weekend I listened to Ayn Rand’s lecture Censorship: Local and Express (you can find this talk embedded below) and later read the text version of it which is included in her book Philosophy: Who Needs It. What first caught my attention was a quote that helped me get a handle on a post I am working on about Senator Bernie Sanders. Today, in light of the attack on the Draw Mohammad event in Garland, Texas on Sunday, I selected one dealing with the First Amendment and free speech.

The read more

Life Imitates Atlas Shrugged, Baltimore Edition

Atlas ShruggedThe other day I came across an article by Allen B. West titled “The dirty little secret no one wants to admit about Baltimore.” The article discusses the protests and violence in Baltimore sparked by the death of Freddie Gray while in police custody. Mr. West makes a good case that it is progressive policies that have caused the bulk of the problems facing read more