Archive for the ‘Objectivism’ Category
How could we missed this?
We just found about this, funny enough via Israeli blog, and are very sorry to miss it. We already marked the calendar for next year.
Tags: Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand NYC
Yahrzeit
It is remarkable how quietly we are marking today 25 years since Ayn Rand died. Not many people achieve eternity, but Ayn Rand if definitely one of them. The influence of her writing and her teaching giving her a place of honor in the western thinking pantheon.
Tags: Ayn Rand Objectivism
Escaping the calamity
Not surprisingly those people who Chavez counted on to fuel his version of socialism - those who are capable to create the wealth which he than will redistribute - aren’t planning to be enslaved and they are fleeing away:
CARACAS, Venezuela — The line forms every day after dawn at the Spanish Consulate, hundreds of people seeking papers permitting them to abandon Venezuela for new lives in Spain. They say they are filled with despair at President Hugo Chávez’s growing power, and they appear not to be alone. At other consulates in this capital, long lines form daily.
Doug, from The Liberty Papers, titled this phenomena accurately. It is sad to see how a country commit suicide. When they will have no one to squeeze from, when the people they hate, those who create the wealth, will either left or have nothing to give - what will they do than? who will they blame for their misfortune than?
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Awakening
Finally the Academia start to swing back from it state of madness. It is obvious that an attempt to re-establish classical studies, the core of western civilization, is being fought by the current establishment. It is very interesting to note that those who protect multiculturalism and political correctness are:
As worthy as such projects sound, setting up an quasi-independent institute devoted to the study of Western civilization can easily run afoul of university rules and regulations, not to mention university ideology. In late 1999, about the same time that Mr. George was setting up the Madison Program, political philosophy professor Hadley Arkes was working on a similar project at Amherst College and finding it much more difficult. Eventually, he established Amherst’s Committee on the American Founding, but so far its staff consists primarily of Mr. Arkes himself. He says the university has stymied fund raising by demanding control of most of the money he has drummed up for the program.
"A week doesn’t go by without someone in the administration trying to put restraints on the program or undercut the program," he says of both Mr. George’s project and his own. Other scholars, at the moment wishing to remain incognito, are trying to start Madison-like programs on their own campuses, but they are meeting resistance from the faculty and administration, some of whom worry about the supposed conservative political agenda of such programs.
In November, Hamilton College decided to refuse a $3.6 million grant from alumnus Carl Menges to establish the Alexander Hamilton Center for the Study of Western Civilization. A swirl of outrage from the faculty culminated in a 77 to 17 vote "expressing concern" about the project. Perhaps this was less than surprising from a school that made headlines for its invitations to Ward Churchill, who compared the people killed on 9/11 at the World Trade Center as "little Eichmanns," and Susan Rosenberg, formerly of the Weather Underground.
Although the task to bring classical education, and western civilization studies, seems like Herculean it will succeed - and the demand for such studies among students are a good indicator. It will take time but the new dawn of hope, that the academia will become again center of the western civilization - instead of a tool to destroy it, is raising.
Technorati Tags: Western Civilization - Academia - Multiculturalism - Political Correctness
Mike Wallace interview with Ayn Rand
The Liberty papers prove itself, again, to be a great source for rare materials. Today it links to a 1959 TV interview with Ayn Rand:
Technorati Tags: Ayn Rand - Mike Wallace - Objectivism - YouTube
Foresight
I want to make something clear, I am not a conservative. I think that today’s conservatives are worse than today’s liberals. I think that they are, if anyone destroys this country, it will be the conservatives because they do not know how to preach capitalism, to explain it to the people…because they do nothing except apologize and because they are all altruists. They are all based on religious altruism and on that combination of ideas, you cannot save this country.
Ayn Rand, 1979
It is somewhat sad to see that even before Reagan and before the Republican become the majority in the house, with the promise to reverse the "New Deal" devastating effect on the individual liberties, they were predetermined to what they become. And as in many other cases Ayn Rand had the intellectual courage to face this reality and expose it, for what it was.
(Via The Liberty Papers)
Technorati Tags: GOP - Ayn Rand - Objectivism - Social conservatism - Capitalism
The pious abusers
When ever someone uses that phrase "the general good" I’m start checking how they intend to abuse my rights. This term is so often uses as an excuse to limits one freedoms and rights so someone else, usually the demagog using the "general good" meme will benefit from the plundering.
Therefore, and although I was glad about the progress we made in the last election - limiting the property robbery by the government in the name of the public good, we still need to be extra careful from:
Donald J. Borut, the executive director of the National League of Cities, acknowledged that condemnation powers are sometimes abused. But he said that property-rights groups have played to public fears in a way that discourages thoughtful discussion about how individual rights should be balanced against projects that benefit the community as a whole. He described anti-Kelo sentiment as “a huge emotional tsunami that’s been rushing through the country.”
Whenever someone preach about Eminent Domain you simply need to remember the Halpers.
Technorati Tags: Eminent Domain - Property rights - Private Property - Libertarianism
Just another horrible story
One of the most used cover for immoral abuse of one’s rights is the use of the term the "The General Good". Any serious debate about this, and I definitely inviting a debate here, will demonstrate that when one invokes the "Public Interest" it is a only a cover for injustice.
But this is not only a theoretical debate, about the the individual and society, or about the roll of government.It is not about those rich people we all love to hate, It is not a the greedy CEO; it is about the Halpers :
On Monday, July 10, 2006 at 3 pm armed agents of the government of Piscataway, New Jersey will arrive on the property of Clara & Larry Halper. The police will remove the Halpers and their four children from their home and farm. This land has been in the Halper family for over 80 years. The city is using eminent domain to take it in order to provide "open spaces". Don’t be surprised if a few years later we see shopping malls or condos built on the Halper’s property. There is nothing to prevent the Piscataway government from changing their use of the land after they grab it.
When someone invoke one’s rights for the "Greater Good", think about the Halpers; The roll of government is to protect human rights - It didn’t protect the halpers, will it protect yours?
Victory?
I run across a post today name “Victory for Academic Freedom ” on a blog with the obliging name “Atlas Shrugs ”. After describing the control of the extreme left on American campuses and the unbalanced number of left wing professors in the academia the author announced the good news:
Today, I’m pleased to report that Congress went on record to support legislation containing the Academic Bill of Rights, which will help level the ideological playing field and take the personal politics of liberal professors out of the classroom.
And later she concludes:
Majority Leader Boehner wrote a must-read editorial on the importance of the Academic Bill of Rights which gives the history of the legislation and lays out a strong case for why we need it NOW.
Another very good thing. Very good undeedy.
Now I’m very confuse, how is government legislation limiting someone’s ability to talk is a good thing? Where did you find in Atlas Shrugs that government doing anything beyond securing human rights is a “Victory”?
Well objectivism it definitely isn’t