Newspaper Commentary from the Ayn Rand Institute 1996-2000

In defense of Capitalism: Newspaper Commentary from the Ayn Rand Institute 1996-2000

Ayn Rand Institute

Why is America Pursuing a Foreign Policy of “Speak Softly and Carry a Big Carrot”? America’s foreign policy, Mr. Schwartz argues, is driven by the view that the pursuit of self-interest is morally tainted—that is, that if we wish to do what is right, we must sacrifice our interests for the sake of other nations. This is why we are so appeasingly apologetic when it comes to asserting our tight to live free from the threat of force. It is why we are so hesitant in implementing our moral obligation to eliminate all such threats by military means. It is why we are failing in our war against terrorism. In this uncompromising manifesto, the author calls for a radically different foreign policy—one based entirely on self-interest. Repudiating any dichotomy between the moral and the practical, he advocates a policy under which a nation’s interests are measured by only one standard: the individual liberty of its citizens. The architects of such a foreign policy would reject any duty to sacrifice the wealth and the lives of Americans to the needs of other countries. They would disclaim any obligation to seek international approval before deciding to use force to safeguard America. Instead they would intransigently uphold our self-interest—not as a matter of amoral expediency, as advocated by the impractical pragmatists and their school of realpolitik, but rather as a moral principle, a principle that is in keeping with America’s founding values.

The Foreign Policy of Self-Interest: A Moral Ideal for America

Politics & Social Sciences

Schwartz, Peter

Politics & Government

Ayn Rand's Marginalia: Her Critical Comments on the Writings of Over 20 Authors

Biographies & Memoirs

RAND, AYN

Arts & Literature

Dr. Peikoff makes a compelling case for a rational system of education by contrasting three schools of philosophy and the different educational alternatives they propose to replace our present system. He translates the usual abstract discussions in this field into material easily comprehensible to the reader. In the process, he defines a proper methodology and curriculum that will produce thinking high school graduates confident of their ability to achieve their goals. Leonard Peikoff is the preeminent Rand scholar writing today. He worked closely with Ayn Rand in New York City for thirty years and was designated by her as heir to her estate. He has taught philosophy at several places, including Hunter College and New York University. Dr. Peikoff is the author of The DIM Hypothesis: Why the Lights of the West Are Going Out, The Ominous Parallels, and Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. He grew up in Western Canada and now lives in Southern California.

Teaching Johnny to Think: A Philosophy of Education Based on the Principles of Ayn Rand's Objectivism

Education & Teaching

Peikoff, Leonard

Schools & Teaching

Today we are at a crossroads. America’s entitlement state is threatening to bankrupt us, and new schemes such as ObamaCare are hastening the collapse. What should we do? In this provocative look at America before and after Social Security, Don Watkins argues that the answer is as simple as it is controversial: Abolish the entitlement state, starting with the retirement program that created it. This is not another book for policy wonks about the financial trouble the entitlement state is in. This is the story of the role that Social Security has played in eroding the eagerness, energy and optimism that once defined America. And it is a guide for fighting back.

Rooseveltcare: How Social Security is Sabotaging the Land of Self-Reliance

Watkins, Don

Freedom of speech is indispensable to a free and civilized society, yet this precious right is increasingly under attack today. • Islamic totalitarians repeatedly threaten and kill those deemed blasphemers, while our political leaders stand idly by, and many intellectuals blame the victims. • College students seek “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces” from controversial ideas and fly into fits of rage at the slightest offense. • The government harasses tea party groups, preventing them from speaking out during an election, and it investigates oil companies and advocacy groups for the “crime” of dissenting from climate change orthodoxy. Why is this happening? What can be done? This hard-hitting collection provides answers. Applying Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism to the most pressing free speech issues of the day, the essays in this book reveal the attacks on free speech to be the product of destructive ideas—ideas that are eroding Western culture at its foundation. They expose those ideas and the individuals who hold them, and, importantly, they identify the only ideas on which Western civilization can be sustained: reason, egoism, and individual rights.

Defending Free Speech

SIMPSON, Steve

Constitutional Law

Based on a series of lectures by Leonard Peikoff and edited by Marlene Trollope, Discovering Great Plays provides the ability to understand, judge and savor the values offered by great drama. Plays discussed include: Antigone by Sophocles; Othello by Shakespeare; Le Cid by Corneille; Don Carlos by Schiller; An Enemy of the People by Ibsen; Saint Joan by Shaw; Monna Vanna by Maeterlinck, and Cyrano de Bergerac by Rostand. A list of recommended editions and translations is provided by the author. Readers will discover plot-theme as the key to a play; Antigone as a great heroine; Iago as the blackest villain in literature; the Cornelian hero; Schiller’s Grand Inquisitor scene as the most dramatic and philosophic in all theater; Ibsen and Ayn Rand’s Howard Roark; Shaw’s genius in presenting the genius against society; and Cyrano de Bergerac by Rostand.

Discovering Great Plays: As Literature and as Philosophy

Literature & Fiction

Dramas & Plays

The military strength of the United States is unmatched in all of world history. Yet fifteen years after September 11, Islamic totalitarianism is undefeated, emboldened, and on the march: from Paris and San Bernardino to Brussels and Orlando. Why? The fundamental problem lies in the irrational philosophic ideas that permeate—and subvert—American foreign policy. The United States is a military superpower, but it lacks the self-confidence and moral certainty needed to defend itself and its ideals. And our political and intellectual leaders evade the nature of Islamic totalitarianism. After 9/11, the Ayn Rand Institute predicted that the prevailing ideas about morality would undercut our foreign policy and cripple us in action. Those predictions have proved correct. Can we end the Islamist menace and secure our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness on earth? Yes—easily—if we adopt the right philosophic ideas to guide our foreign policy.

Failing to Confront Islamic Totalitarianism: From George W. Bush to Barack Obama and Beyond

Journo, Elan

Ghate, Onkar

In this new book, In Pursuit of Wealth: The Moral Case for Finance, Yaron Brook and Don Watkins dispel the prevailing negative myths about finance and clearly lay out the industry's virtues within a moral framework. This ambitious book shows readers how we can reframe societal mores and end the vilification of financiers.

In Pursuit of Wealth: The Moral Case for Finance

Business & Money

Brook, Yaron

Finance

Based on a lecture course given by Leonard Peikoff in 1972, this book provides essential knowledge for everyone whose life pursuits are threatened by our culture's widespread irrationality. "To fight for your values in a world such as ours, you must regard yourself as a psychotherapist of an entire culture," states Dr. Peikoff in his opening lecture. "Its present state at any given time cannot be understood except as an outgrowth from its past. The errors of today are built on the errors of the last century, and they in turn on the previous, and so on back to the childhood of the Western world, which is ancient Greece."For example, he says, the phenomenon of progressive education can be explained only by reference to John Dewey: "But Dewey simply applied to education the principles of William James, and James made an obvious deduction from Hegel, and Hegel is a minor variant on Kant, and Kant was trying to answer Hume, who was the last consistent consequence of the trend inaugurated by Descartes and Locke, who were simply reformulating, in a somewhat more secular way, the principles of Augustine, who was reformulating in a somewhat more religious way the principles of Plato, who was trying to answer the dilemma posed by Heraclitus and Parmenides, who took off from four sentences of Thales with whom we are beginning tonight."

Founders of Western Philosophy: Thales to Hume

Philosophy

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