One of my favorite discoveries since I began studying objectivism is historian Dr. Eric Daniels. I first encountered him via lectures on various aspects of American history. (Links to them below the video.)
This video is a presentation he did in 2010 on the morality of the free market at TEDxGreenvile.
Lectures by Dr. Eric Daniels:
Great presentation from Yaron Brook at this year’s Objectivist Summer Conference. I hope that at some point I will be able to attend one of these conferences.
http://www.youtube.com/v/nobSkuX72k8?autoplay=0This video is of a talk Yaron Brook gave just recently in Israel. I get a lot out of all of Yaron’s talks but I especially enjoyed this one as he spends a fair amount of time going over the basics of Ayn Rand’s philosophy in ways I had not heard him use before.
He starts with the fact that reality is what it is and not what we “wish” it would be (metaphysics) then moves on to the fact that reason is our way to understand the world and to survive in it (epistemology) which
Here are this week’s episodes from the Objectivism related podcasts I try to listen to. They are all great sources of information and insight on applying objectivist principles to everyday life.
Philosophy in Action with Dr. Diana Hsieh – A Rapid Fire Q&A Extravaganza
Dr. Leonard Peikoff’s Podcast – Episode 291
I have also been listening to recorded lectures available from the Ayn Rand estore. This week I have been listening to:
Video is at the bottom of the post.
Last night my brother and I had the good fortune to attend the debate on money and power between Yaron Brook and Hederick Smith at the Modern Theater of Suffolk University in Boston, MA.
When we first arrived, over an hour before the event was scheduled to start, the line was already forming. Judging from the literature being handed out to those in line opposing the Citizens United decision, I felt we were going to be somewhat outnumbered and, as my brother
While reading the last essay, “Requiem for Man,” in Ayn Rand’s Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal I came across the following quote that I thought was particularly apt given that Obamacare has “gone live,” more or less, across the country.
This particular essay was Ayn Rand’s response to an encyclical from Pope Paul VI in 1967, which she summarizes as being “the manifesto of an impassioned hatred for capitalism.”
But, you say, the encyclical’s ideal
In my posts on property rights(here, here, and here) I illustrated that such rights have been eroded over time, especially since the 1930s. Today it is often the case that you can own, technically, a piece of property but be unable to make use of it as you determine is in your best interest. Ayn Rand discusses this on her essay “The New Fascism: Rule by Consensus.”
Ownership without control is a contradiction in terms: it means “property,” without the right to use it or
It is amazing how many great quotes I find when I read Ayn Rand’s essays. Here is yet another one from her essay titled “The New Fascism: Rule by Consensus.”
In this quote she is referring to the fact that most liberals who advocate the redistribution of wealth do not bother to differentiate between the earned and unearned, or to concern themselves with the origin of the wealth. And especially they have no concern what kind of person is ruined under such a system and what
In reading Ayn Rand’s essay “The New Fascism: Rule by Consensus,” she has what I found to be a perfect and succinct description of the current state of our government and economy.
A mixed economy is rule by pressure groups. It is an amoral, institutionalized civil war of special interests and lobbies, all fighting to seize a momentary control of the legislative machinery, to extort some special privilege at one another’s expense by an act of government–i.e.
Swapping back to Ayn Rand’s “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal” for a bit, and came across this quote on upholding freedom.