Yaron Brook gives a passionate talk on applying the morality of Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism to the concept of war and how war should be fought. While no philosophy can properly specify tactics, the specific means and methods used in fighting a way, it can provide the basis for deciding from what pool of possibilities these tactics can be drawn from.

In the early part of the talk Yaron discusses “just war theory,” the theory that in part says a country should not go to war if it is attacked or threatened but should when its neighbor is attacked. At first I thought that this was patently foolish and could not understand how people could believe such an idea. Then I realized how much I, and likely many others, do the same thing in our personal lives. I remembered how many times I have had thoughts along the lines of, “You can insult me all you want, but don’t you dare insult my wife!” This is exactly the principle that underlies the idea that a country should not go to war in its own defense but only to defend neighbors or allies. Until individuals realize that they can and should defend themselves it is unlikely that we will see the new ethics in war that Yaron describes in his talk.