A nation’s culture is the sum of the intellectual achievements of individual men, which their fellow-citizens have accepted in whole or in part, and which have influenced the nation’s way of life. Since a culture is a complex battleground of different ideas and influences, to speak of a ‘culture’ is to speak only of the dominant ideas, always allowing for the existence of dissenters and exceptions. — AYN RAND
An MBA student of mine who had just read my book commented: “Those principles you write about make a lot of sense, but at the same time, business is ruthless, and most people do not follow such moral principles. How can you act on principle when others don’t?” My...
The American city that comes to mind at the mention of Ayn Rand is probably not Chicago, a metropolis one might associate with other bestselling writers and authors, such as Studs Terkel, Carl Sandburg or even the current U.S. president, Barack Obama , whose...
At the heart of the left’s vision of the world is the implicit assumption that high-minded third parties like themselves can make better decisions for other people than those people can make for themselves. That arbitrary and unsubstantiated assumption underlies...
The fundamental problem of the political left seems to be that the real world does not fit their preconceptions. Therefore they see the real world as what is wrong, and what needs to be changed, since apparently their preconceptions cannot be wrong. A never-ending...
The political left has long claimed the role of protector of “the poor.” It is one of their central moral claims to political power. But how valid is this claim? Leaders of the left in many countries have promoted policies that enable the poor to be more...
When teenage thugs are called “troubled youth” by people on the political left, that tells us more about the mindset of the left than about these young hoodlums. Seldom is there a speck of evidence that the thugs are troubled, and often there is ample...
In a legal proceeding, most would probably have lied in such a circumstance. Paula Deen elected to tell the truth.
In Thinking Tactics, I teach a set of thinking procedures that each take under 10 minutes. They can be used to clarify most confusion, resolve most conflicts, and figure out the next step on most projects. But not everything. Sometimes you face a bigger...
If you want to better understand the concept of cognitive therapy, tune in to an unlikely source: Chef Robert Irvine’s Food Network series, Restaurant Impossible. Food Network’s website describes the show as follows: “Turning around a failing restaurant is a daunting...
The best way for human beings to survive and flourish is not to be givers or takers but traders.
When the nationwide campus disruptions and violence of the 1960s gave way to quieter times in the 1970s, many academics congratulated themselves on having restored peace. But it was the peace of surrender.
Brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who are accused of setting the bombs that exploded at the Boston Marathon, attended the University of Massachusetts. Maybe they hated our nation before college, but if you want lessons on hating America, college attendance...
If there is ever a contest for words that substitute for thought, “diversity” should be recognized as the undisputed world champion. You don’t need a speck of evidence, or a single step of logic, when you rhapsodize about the supposed benefits of...
Northwest Rankin High School in Flowood, Mississippi is under fire for allegedly forcing its students to attend and listen to Christian lectures during three assemblies held in April alone. Worse yet, students were barred from leaving and teachers blocked the exits to...
Education is not merely neglected in many of our schools today, but is replaced to a great extent by ideological indoctrination.
A rough rule of thumb to discover modern-day racism is to search a college’s website to see whether it has vice presidents or deans of diversity and diversity programs. If so, keep your money.
It’s not what I signed up for, but I recently got a three hour Marxist lecture while taking a boat ride on the intracoastal waterways of Fort Lauderdale.
Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., says it is time for the U.S. to stop being politically correct and focus its search on radical Islamists in Muslim communities. King tells Politico.com that while most Muslims are not terrorists, the international base for terrorism against...
Throughout the ages, cultures have held different positions on the core purpose of education. Some have seen education as a means to preparing children for war (Sparta), or preparing them for a monastic life (middle ages), or getting them ready for factory work (late...
The violence keeps coming, and it doesn’t become any less tragic. The Boston bombing is the latest example.
Whole generations of black young people can continue to go down the drain because their fate carries less weight than fashionable racial rhetoric.
My book, How to Be Profitable and Moral: A Rational Egoist Approach to Business, has been translated into Finnish and was recently published in Finland. At the book launch in Helsinki, an appreciative reader (of the English-language original) and a business owner...
Michael Moore, Jim Carey, Bad Thinking, and Why “The Balance of Power is the Scale of Peace”
Soft-minded and sloppy-thinking academics, lawyers and judges harbor the silly notion that but for the fact of discrimination, we’d be proportionately distributed by race across incomes, education, occupations and other outcomes.
Today, Dr. Benjamin Carson is a renowned neurosurgeon at a renowned institution, Johns Hopkins University. But what got him there was wholly different from what is being offered to many ghetto youths today, much of which is not merely futile but counterproductive.
How Ayn Rand’s Ideas Can End Big Government by Yaron Brook and Don Watkins
On the low academic preparation of many teachers.
The only way to improve our schools is to get government out of education.
Both sides ignore that ObamaCare is integral to an unmistakable progression in American health care; the law takes us from partial to total government-controlled medicine.
One of the most important and far reaching questions in moral philosophy is: Who is the proper beneficiary of an individual’s actions? There are only two possible answers to the question: The individual taking the action, or others. “Others” may mean the community,...
Upon hearing an argument for capitalism, many respond, “That is good in theory, but it would never work in real life.” Such a statement is wrong in both theory and in practice. (And it is actually an example of a fundamental philosophical error–the mind/body...
Expanding the underperforming K–12 system “down” a year earlier to include publicly funded preschool naturally benefits the education unions. But what about the kids?
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