During his March 9, 2015 radio show, Yaron Brook recommended a book by the late John David Lewis, Nothing Less than Victory. This book provides a historical look at how “aggressive, strategic military offenses can win wars and establish lasting peace, while defensive maneuvers have often led
Podcasts and More for March 5
I am trying out a bit of a change in my posting schedule and moving my podcast round-up to the end of the week to hopefully free up the early part of the week for posts I want to spend more time writing on over my weekend. It also gives me time to catch up on the podcasts I am not able to listen to live using the Player FM app for my Android devices.
Podcasts
King v. Burwell – What is it about?
The American Spectator recently published a great article by David Catron titled “King v. Burwell Is Much Bigger than Obamacare” in which he lays out what is really at stake here. This case is not about “killing health care,” states’ rights or even killing Obamacare, although a ruling in favor of King et al would certainly have effects in all those areas. Rather
From the “Are You Kidding Me” Department
On the WCAX news tonight they reported about “a pilot Driver Restoration Day” to be held in March where people who have had their driver’s license suspended for failure to pay traffic tickets can get their license back by paying some small fraction of the fine. According to the press release from Governor Shumlin’s office, about 22,000 Vermonters have had their license suspended for “failure to pay overdue traffic fees and fines.”
Given that, in a rural
Podcasts and More for February 23
This week’s podcasts cover a wide range of topics from should people be forced to govern, the true nature of Christmas, ISIS, vaccinations and much more.
Podcasts
Don’t Let it Go … Unheard: Comparing the Language of Creators and Destroyers – As Amy Peikoff described it at the start, the integrating idea for this week’s show is the choice of language
Social Principle of Ethics – Quotation of the Day
I just finished up this week’s “homework” for Yaron Brook’s podcast, reading, or rather re-reading in my case, the first chapter of Ayn Rand’s The Virtue of Selfishness. (The podcast is presented live on Mondays at 11:00am EST. You can find it here.) The first chapter is titled The Objectivist Ethics and presents “the barest essentials” of Ayn Rand’s system of ethics.
I had read this essay, indeed the entire book, a couple of years ago, so I was a
[Video] Introduction to Objectivism by Leonard Peikoff
In this short video, approximately 45 minutes of introductory lecture and 30 minutes of Q&A, Leonard Peikoff provides a great, if brief, introduction to the fundamentals of Objectivism. He discusses the 5 branches of philosophy – metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics and esthetics – and how they form an integrated whole.
Dr. Peikoff presents a more complete discussion of Objectivism in a 32 hour lecture series, which can be found on the
Podcasts and More for February 17
This week’s podcasts covered topics from egoism vs altruism to fossil fuels to whether spouses should always share activities, and more!
Don’t Let it Go…Unheard – This week hosts Amy Peikoff interviews Center for Industrial Progress’ founder Alex Epstein about his new, excellent I might add, book The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels. They discussed:
- Alex being threatened if he were to appear at a Divestment Day event
- The story about temperature records being “adjusted”. Alex had an interesting take on this issue, seeing it as non-essential. The essential fact is that fossil fuels are moral in that they enhance the human environment.
- Keystone pipeline
- Fracking and earthquakes
After the 30 minute interview with Alex, Bosch Fawstin joined Amy and they discussed a plethora of stories, including:
- Chapel Hill shootings
- France can know block suspected terrorism websites without a court order – so much for the free speech everyone was marching for after the Charlie Hebdo attack.
- The government announces that they have been wrong on their cholesterol recommendations for 40 years. I should note that the man, Ancel Keys, who first proposed the hypothesis about cholesterol was correlated with heart disease knew that dietary cholesterol had little or no effect on blood cholesterol.
- And a lot more.
Altruism – Quotation of the Day
On his new weekly podcast, Yaron Brook has started giving listeners “homework” to help build a foundation for the issues he we be discussing on the show. For this week’s show he asked that everyone read the introduction to Ayn Rand‘s The Virtue of Selfishness. I had read this a couple of years ago, but a previously un-highlighted paragraph jumped out at me.
The Evil of Altruism
The context of this quotation is a discussion of the difference between egoism and altruism. The most essential
[Videos] Inequality – A Debate Between Yaron Brook and Paul Vaaler
I’ve gathered here the four videos that have been posted from the debate on Inequality between Yaron Brook and Paul Vaaler, hosted by the Snider Center for Enterprise and Markets at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business on February 7, 2015. This was an interesting debate that covers a fair number of topics within the general idea of inequality. I think I have the videos linked in proper order, though I am not sure it makes too much difference if they are