I didn’t hear the President’s immigration speech, but I must comment on one paragraph I’ve read: “We’re a nation of laws, and we must enforce our laws. We’re also a nation of immigrants, and we must uphold that tradition,...
Harry Binswanger
Dr. Binswanger, a longtime associate of Ayn Rand, is an professor of philosophy at the Objectivist Academic Center of the Ayn Rand Institute. He is the author of How We Know: Epistemology on an Objectivist Foundation and is the creator of The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z.
Dr. Binswanger blogs at HBLetter.com (HBL)--an email list for Objectivists for discussing philosophic and cultural issues. A free trial is available at: HBLetter.com.
Gas Prices and Bush’s “Appeasenomics”
At even $3.50 a gallon, gas is no more expensive now than in the 1950s, when it was in the range of 20 to 30 cents a gallon. Not if you use the Binswanger deflator of 15-fold to 20-fold. Nonetheless, we would expect gas to be considerably cheaper, like almost every...
Immigration Quotas vs. Individual Rights: The Moral and Practical Case for Open Immigration
This is a defense of phasing-in open immigration into the United States. Entry into the U.S. should ultimately be free for any foreigner, with the exception of criminals, would-be terrorists, and those carrying infectious diseases. (And note: I am defending freedom of...
Court Victory Against “Intelligent Design”
There was a significant defeat for the whole Intelligent Disguise–excuse me, Intelligent Design (ID)–movement today, when a Harrisburg, PA judge ruled against its being taught in the schools of a local school district. CNN reports: HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania...
Supreme Court Made The Wrong Decision in the California Medical Marijuana Case
The bad news is that the Supreme Court made the wrong decision on the constitutionality of California’s law allowing people with certain illnesses to use marijuana for medical purposes. By a 6 to 3 vote, the Court declared the California law unconstitutional,...
Bush and Russia
President Bush is in Russia to participate (wrongly) in Monday’s Red Square celebration of the 60th anniversary of the defeat of the Nazis. The good news is that Bush just made an anti-Soviet speech in Latvia. As the NY Times reported on Sunday, Bush “had...
Bush’s Speech on Freedom
This past Tuesday, President Bush gave an important, and generally excellent, speech on our foreign policy re the middle east. He reiterated, and further explained, his Forward Strategy of Freedom. The highlight of the speech was this remarkable passage, strategically...
President Bush’s Inaugural Address: A Betrayal of the Concept of Freedom
This may be old news by now, but the President’s inaugural address was essentially a betrayal of the concept of freedom. The speech re-confirmed Ayn Rand’s analysis of conservatives–that they are bankrupt and fated to lose, because they base their...
“Transition Costs” of Partially Privatizing Social Security
There’s a lot of discussion in the media about the “transition costs” of partially privatizing Social Security. These “transition costs” are estimated to be $1 trillion to $2 trillion. The specter of this amount of expenditure...
Vote for President Bush
At this late date, after the three debates, the nature of this campaign is set, and the meaning of this election has come into focus for me. The meaning is: independence vs. dependence. The Bush policies favor America retaining its sovereignty–cooperating with...
The Ten Commandments vs. America
Can a nation of freedom, individualism and the pursuit of happiness be based on the Ten Commandments?
A Foreign Policy Bible for America: A Review of Peter Schwartz’s “The Foreign Policy of Self-Interest: A Moral Ideal for America”
I have just finished reading, with great pleasure, Peter Schwartz’s new booklet, The Foreign Policy of Self-Interest: A Moral Ideal for America (published by ARI Press). In just 60 clear, hard-hitting pages, Mr. Schwartz lays out the essentials of a proper...
The Wreckage of the Consensus Revisited: New York Times Company Admits to Spreading Lies to Undermine America’s War Effort
As you may have heard, the Boston Globe published, as real, fake pictures purporting to show American soldiers in Iraq gang-raping Iraqi women. The pictures were actually from a porn website and were staged (not to make any political point, needless to add). The...
Donald Trump and The Apprentice: Concretization of “The American Dream.”
I can now admit it. I was hooked on The Apprentice since the first time I watched, which was on the 5th week of the show (the episode concerning the flea market). I think everyone knows the show’s premise: Donald Trump holds a competition at business tasks among...
The Big Lie: Intelligence Failure in Iraq
If you repeat a line over and over again, eventually people will start to accept it. In this case, the line is that we had a big intelligence failure in Iraq. Even Bush has caved in: he is appoint a “commission” to look into the problems with our...
Soft-Line Ideologues Revisited: Foreign-Policy Soft-Liners are Pragmatists
Last week, there was a very interesting opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal by two influential neoconservatives: David Frum and Richard Perle. The title was “Beware the Soft-Line Ideologues,” and it has a good theme, but it gets completely twisted up...
Immoral to Ban Human Cloning: Irrational Fears Must Not Block Scientific Advances
Once we put aside the emotionalism, it becomes apparent that there is no rational or moral basis for banning human cloning.
Rush Limbaugh’s “Offended” Critics are Wrong
You probably have heard about Rush Limbaugh having to resign from ESPN for having made an allegedly racist remark on the air. Limbaugh’s remark was about black quarterback Donovan McNabb. Here is what is up on the CNN website: “Before McNabb led the...
Howard Dean’s Proposal for Economic Regress
Last month, the WSJ had an opinion piece written by Howard Dean, the Democrat presidential contender. One paragraph exhibited the fundamental fallacy of bad economics: the belief that consumption, not production, is the key to wealth. “As president, my economic...
Jimmy Carter and North Korea
This disgraceful moral treason by Carter is, among other things, the Marxist notion that ideology and politics is determined by “the mode of production.”
Treason, by Ann Coulter
Treason , by Ann Coulter, is a book of great value and great danger. For Objectivists, who are immune to its horrendous philosophical claims, its integration of the political events of the last 50 years will be of great value. But the excellence of those very points...
What Will They Think?
The discussion of how we set up a new government in Iraq has been dominated, as has so much during this war, with the question: what will THEY think? “We can’t let it look like the new government is our puppet,” say the commentators. Why not? It...
Grasping the Essence of the Republican Victory: A Philosopher Analyzes the 2002 Elections
The election results were good. The outcome was, in all modesty, what I had expected for a year: Republican control of the Congress. I expected this because of 9/11, and that is in fact the explanation of the outcome. I agree with those commentators who say that the...
Greenspan on “Infectious Greed”
[Previously], I wrote: “Those on the moral code of altruism have to view all businessmen as guilty, guilty by nature, since their life’s work is to seek selfish gain. The current legislative frenzy is just the latest manifestation of the altruist premise:...
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