I belatedly listened to Bari Weiss’ November 17th talk to the Federalist Society. Others on HBL have found fault with it, but those flaws are of no consequence compared to the two extraordinary virtues of the talk. But there is a prefatory virtue: she gives us a benchmark for the decline of Western civilization. After
Many people find it hard to comprehend the widespread approval being showered upon Hamas. How, they wonder, can the perpetrators of unspeakable atrocities, captured on video for all to see, elicit the sympathy of tens or hundreds of thousands in the civilized West? Isn’t the evil of Hamas—and all its Palestinian supporters—indisputable? Certainly, a growing
In ITOE and elsewhere, AR makes a point whose significance is massive, but is not easily available: Man is neither infallible nor omniscient; if he were, a discipline such as epistemology–the theory of knowledge–would not be necessary nor possible: his knowledge would be automatic, unquestionable and total. It’s easy to see why fallibility—the possibility of error—gives rise
“Miami Is Booming But Population Falls” is the (ungrammatical) headline in a front-page story of the August 1st Wall St. Journal. It opens thus: Miami, a global hot spot with ambitions to be a business and financial hub, is driving away more residents than it is attracting. Why? The reporters proceed to tell you: Surging housing
Here’s the updated slides for my OCON ’23 presentation on the philosophy of mathematics: Saving Math from Plato
Re: a member’s post of 6/8/23 The principle of government acting pre-emptively to prevent fraud, where there is no “probable cause,” is behind the regulatory state. Compare: – since some people might accept fraudulent coins, the government has to regulate coinage – since some people crossing the border will perform criminal acts, the government has to
I agree with [one HBLer’s] basic thesis: rights are contextual, and the context must be judged by reference to both the facts of the case and the purpose of the principle. An example is: rights do not apply on overloaded lifeboat. Another way of putting this is that all moral principles, including rights, are objective
A member states: with friends and acquaintances who barely have a clue who Ayn Rand is, who are decent and/or good people, but mistaken, I often pronounce in my mind: all he needs is an hour with John Galt. You are, alas, mistaken. Atlas Shrugged gives readers many hours with Ayn Rand, yet not one in a
I’m pleased to announce that I will be teaching two courses at Ayn Rand University for the next two quarters (16 weeks total): Logical Thinking and ITOE, starting April 17. Each class will meet twice a week for 1 hour 15 minutes (that’s the amount of time I’ve found, empirically, to be right for my
I have just read a FEE article on monopoly vs. free markets and it has me riled up. It’s got a couple of good points but it misses everything important. So let me set it out. 1. If you are calling for an end to something you call monopolies and monopoly pricing, you can go
