Commentary

Ayn Rand began her writing career as an anti-socialist, and, perhaps to some, a seemingly anti-social, original thinker who taught that achievement is the aim of life, and that men are responsible for the ideas that they choose to accept. Like H. L. Mencken, she had no fear of smashing venerated, established ideas. Her audacity in portraying uncompromising characters with a reverence for creative freedom and a ayn rand celebritieswrecking ball's approach to obstacles inspired many young innovators to achieve great careers through path-breaking work. The chairman of the Federal Reserve is the one student of Ayn Rand 's influence in the public sector who comes to mind; appropriately, there are an infinite number in the private sector. With twenty million of her books in circulation, there will be more.

Dec 20, 2004

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It is Ayn Rand 's awareness of rightful justice and liberty that goes to the core of things. I disagree with her psychology, her analysis of the corporation, and her assessment of the etiology and nature of ethical judgment. I disagree with her conclusion that the ethics of the family and of smaller, intimate circles should be the same as the ethics of the extended order—I suspect that Hayek was correct, in the end, that much of human tragedy lies in the dissonance between our evolutionary hard-wiring for intimate life and the essential, life-enhancing rules of an impersonal world of voluntary markets.

Dec 1, 2004

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A few years ago, I was sitting at a sushi bar in downtown Washington, D.C., reading a battered paperback copy of Atlas Shrugged while I munched on a California roll. The man next to me saw the cover and said, "Ah yes, Ayn Rand. Something everyone reads when they're young." He was infinitely condescending. "And sometimes even when they're older," I replied, but left it there. And yet he was right. My sister got me to read The Fountainhead when I was barely a teenager. I have a clear memory of reading Atlas Shrugged for the first time while sitting beside a stream near Boulder, Colorado, which dates it to the summer between my sophomore and junior years in high school. You hear it again and again: People read Ayn Rand in high school, and it changed their lives.

Dec 1, 2004

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On September 12, 2004, the New York Times quoted sentencing-law expert Frank O. Bowman of Indiana University as saying: "There has not been a single case in the history of American criminal law with the immediate impact of this one." Benjamin Wittes, court commentator for the Washington Post, called the case "the single most irresponsible decision in the modern history of the Supreme Court." The case they were writing about is Blakely v. Washington, decided last June. The Supreme Court's decision in Blakely held that portions of Washington state's laws on sentencing were unconstitutional. Why are these commentators, and much of the criminal justice community, up in arms about a decision that invalidates portions of one state's sentencing laws? The answer is: This decision and some of its predecessors gut the entire sentencing-reform movement in the United States. What is still more worrisome, these decisions changed through judicial fiat, without legislation or a constitutional amendment, the rules under which people are sentenced to prison. Worst of all, the Supreme Court has undermined the rule of law by handing down the Blakely decision only a few years after upholding the very same sentencing structure. In fact, it was the subversion of the rule of law by one of the decisions in this line of cases that convinced me to retire from the practice of law after 28 years as a lawyer, with 21 as a prosecutor. In effect, I have gone on strike from the legal system—like the characters in Ayn Rand 's Atlas Shrugged.

Oct 1, 2004

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William Perry

Ten years ago the media were full of alarming stories about the number of Americans who did not have health care insurance. That "crisis" was used to whip up support for the Clinton administration's comprehensive health care plan, which would have essentially nationalized the $1 trillion health-care industry. The plan was defeated in Congress. A decade later, however, it seems that nothing was learned. The federal government, along with the states, has continued to expand the regulations and subsidies that created the problems in the first place. And once again the number of people without insurance is on the public agenda. On November 19, the National Academy of Sciences released a report claiming: "The American health care system is confronting a crisis. The cost of private health insurance is increasing at an annual rate of 12 percent. Individuals are paying more out of pocket and receiving fewer benefits. One in seven Americans is uninsured, and the number of uninsured is on the rise." Many newspapers followed up with stories of individuals losing benefits. The health insurance "crisis," like other problems of the health care industry, is the product of government interventions in the market. Tax policies still push most people into employer-based health plans, so that losing a job means losing coverage—a matter of renewed anxiety with the economic downturn. Price controls on insurers—and doctors, hospitals, and drug companies—are lowering the quality of service available to consumers. The cost of malpractice insurance, driven up by courts that have allowed outlandish awards to plaintiffs, are driving doctors out of business. States continue to increase the number of conditions that insurers must cover, driving up the cost of insurance. Over the last half century, layer upon layer of government interventions have so distorted the health-care industry that it can hardly be called a marketplace any longer.

Nov 1, 2002

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David Kelley, Ph.D.

Following each massacre in Israel, whether of soldiers, pregnant women, or children on their way to school, Arab leaders and their spokespersons appear in the media and insist that the way to end the violence is to end the occupation. Moreover, they argue, the occupation is the cause of the war in the Middle East and of world terrorism—Arab terrorists blow themselves up and murder others because they are frustrated victims of occupation. In their public relations campaign, however, the questions that the Arab leaders skillfully deflect are the following: If occupation leads to so many horrific consequences—war, suicide murders, and the condemnation of the world—why does Israel occupy the land? If the answer to all the problems in the Middle East is indeed the occupation, why does Israel not leave the contested territories, or, better yet, why did Israel go into the territories in the first place?

Jun 11, 2002

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Tal Ben-Shahar

The April 26th shooting death of sixteen people at an overseas high school occurred in a country known for its strict gun-control laws. The tragedy is another reminder of the paralyzing uselessness of such controls and the mindset that seeds them. Fighting the darkest amongst us by infringing on the liberties of the brightest is an ignorant, and frankly scary, response to violence. Germany’s gun laws might be a model for admiration by control advocates, were it not for the fact that the laws hinder only honest gun users. A gun license application in Germany requires more than a background check. An applicant must prove his need for, and trustworthiness with, the piece—in addition to enduring a waiting period. The process places the honest, responsible citizen under a criminal lamplight, which still fails to detect some criminal intentions (including Friday’s attack). While the screening frustrates many sportsmen and would-be self-defenders into reconsidering their plans, criminals easily bypass the process via the hassle-free black market.

Apr 30, 2002

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The April 26th shooting death of sixteen people at an overseas high school occurred in a country known for its strict gun-control laws. The tragedy is another reminder of the paralyzing uselessness of such controls and the mindset that seeds them. Fighting the darkest amongst us by infringing on the liberties of the brightest is an ignorant, and frankly scary, response to violence. Germany’s gun laws might be a model for admiration by control advocates, were it not for the fact that the laws hinder only honest gun users. A gun license application in Germany requires more than a background check. An applicant must prove his need for, and trustworthiness with, the piece—in addition to enduring a waiting period. The process places the honest, responsible citizen under a criminal lamplight, which still fails to detect some criminal intentions (including Friday’s attack). While the screening frustrates many sportsmen and would-be self-defenders into reconsidering their plans, criminals easily bypass the process via the hassle-free black market.

Apr 30, 2002

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May 2001 -- Last September, then-candidate George W. Bush promised "an orderly and timely withdrawal" of American ground forces from the Balkans. By contrast, defenders of the Clinton Balkan policy maintain that the United States must keep forces on the ground to demonstrate leadership. The administration's choice thus takes on a more-than-ordinary significance because the decision will constitute either an implicit criticism or an implicit endorsement of the way the Clinton administration conducted foreign policy. On both strategic and symbolic grounds, President Bush should bring the troops home. Strategically, their presence is not warranted. Symbolically, the Bush administration needs to signal a dramatic change in America's way of doing business in the world: a return to principled action in foreign policy and to the national interest as the overriding principle.

May 1, 2001

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James S. Robbins

February 2001 -- "There is no right to do wrong." So said Alan Keyes used to say during his presidential campaign. Apparently, he either did not grasp or did not care that freedom implies the right to do wrong, inasmuch as a person permitted no option but to walk the straight and narrow does not walk this path freely. Of course, libertarians know well the truth of that observation, but today it demands a rider: Freedom exists only when the right to do wrong is more than nominal. With public funds, administrative regulations, and liability law seeping into every corner of our lives, true freedom exists only if the right to do wrong is not abrogated by the oblique controls these tools allow.

Feb 5, 2001

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June 2000 -- DAVID N. MAYER is Professor of Law and History at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio, where he teaches courses in American constitutional history, English and American legal history, and intellectual property (copyright and unfair trade practices law), as well as a seminar in Libertarianism and the Law. Before teaching at Capital, Professor Mayer taught at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law in Chicago, Illinois; held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute for Humane Studies, George Mason University, in Fairfax, Virginia; and was an attorney with the firm of Pierson Semmes and Finley in Washington, D.C. He has received degrees from the University of Virginia (Ph.D. in History, 1988, and M.A. in History, 1982) and the University of Michigan (J.D. in 1980 and A.B. in 1977). He has written The Constitutional Thought of Thomas Jefferson (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1994, paperback 1995), Liberty of Contract: Rediscovering a Lost Constitutional Right (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 2011), and several articles in law reviews, history and political science journals.

Jun 5, 2000

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September 1998 -- Robert A. Levy, a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute, received his Ph.D. in finance and investments from the American University in 1966. For the next twenty-five years, he ran CDA Investment Technologies, Inc., a major provider of financial information and software. During that time, Levy wrote a book on the application of quantitative techniques to the stock market, as well as several dozen articles on investment. In 1991, Levy left his position as chief executive officer of CDA and returned to school, earning a J.D. in 1994 from George Mason University Law School, where he was chief articles editor of the law review. He went on to clerk for two years, first for Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., and then for Judge Douglas Ginsburg of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Along the way, Levy wrote several law review articles, such as "Calculating Tort Damages for Lost Future Earnings," "The Prudent Investor Rule," and "An Equal Protection Analysis of the Davis-Bacon Act." Since joining the Cato Institute in 1996, Levy's principal research interests have been tort law, antitrust, financial markets, and constitutional issues. In 1997, he wrote the monograph "Tobacco Medicaid Litigation: Snuffing out the Rule of Law" (Policy Analysis no. 275) and in 1998 he wrote a second monograph, "Microsoft and the Browser Wars: Fit To be Tied" (Policy Analysis no. 296, available on-line ). He has also published numerous articles and op-eds in such magazines and newspapers as National Review, The Weekly Standard, The Washington Post, and USA Today. In addition to his position at Cato, Levy is an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center and a director at the Institute for Justice.

Sep 2, 1998

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Description: In this interview, David N. Mayer expands upon a talk he gave at the IOS/Cato-sponsored conference, “Atlas and the World.” The main point of that address was: “Atlas Shrugged is significant because, through the novel, Rand shows us what we must do to complete the American Revolution, to complete the unfinished work of 1776, and the hope that it represents to the world.” David N. Mayer, a professor of law and history at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio, is the author of The Constitutional Thought of Thomas Jefferson (The University Press of Virginia, 1994) and several articles on American constitutional history. In 1997, he spoke at the IOS [now known as the Atlas Society] summer seminar on “The Declaration of Independence as a Literary and Philosophical Work”; at the 1998 IOS Summer Seminar, he spoke on “The Welfare State vs. the Constitution.”

Apr 1, 1998

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Many of my friends and patients consider Jack Kevorkian a hero for helping sick people escape from their suffering. And many of my own patients—not only those facing cancer and other terminal illnesses, but also those in despair over disability, immobility, and pain arising from arthritis, diabetes, and strokes—have asked me to give them something to end their life. Thus far, I have not felt it legal or appropriate to do so. There is, in the first place, the difficulty of knowing whether they are speaking in rueful jest. Beyond that, whatever sympathy and temptation one might feel in such a situation, emotional and ethical discomfort—as well as fear of liability or sanctions—is always present, especially for physicians.

Mar 21, 1998

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February 1, 1998 -- This god, this one word: ''I'' With the sentence quoted above, Ayn Rand's novella Anthem projected the rediscovery of self amid a totally collectivist world. On February 3, an ABC News special, "Greed With John Stossel," offered Objectivists the inspiring sight of a brilliant counteroffensive against the anti-individualist attitudes that have been leading us toward such a collectivist hell for the last several centuries. Providing the philosophical basis for the counterattack was IOS's executive director, David Kelley. In the next issue of Navigator, we will look at reaction to the show. But for this issue, Navigator asked Kelley to recall how the program came about and how the show that he saw on television appeared from his perspective. Read an excerpt from the show

Feb 1, 1998

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David Kelley, Ph.D.

Rarely do advocates of freedom have the pleasure of hearing freedom criticized. Typically, they must listen to debates in which one side serves up a badly mixed hash of assertions that is labeled "freedom"—while the other side denounces the hash for features having nothing to do with human liberty. For this reason, libertarians had good cause to welcome the appearance early in 1997 of several books setting forth relatively pure versions of the classical liberal credo. Not only were the works instructive in themselves, but they called forth instructive responses from the media. The books in question were: What It Means to Be a Libertarian by Charles Murray, best known as the author of Losing Ground and as co-author (with the late Richard Herrnstein) of The Bell Curve; Libertarianism: A Primer by David Boaz, executive vice president of the Cato Institute and The Libertarian Reader, a collection of essays edited by Boaz. (Boaz's Primer was reviewed by Robert Bidinotto in the April 1997 issue of the IOS Journal.)

Oct 1, 1997

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I thank Bob Bidinotto for his many generous remarks about Libertarianism: A Primer , and I congratulate Bidinotto and the Institute for Objectivist Studies for their continuing commitment to a constructive dialogue between Objectivists and those libertarians who are not Objectivists. David BoazI might begin by noting that the very notion of a conflict “between libertarians and Objectivists” is flawed, as it seems to me that all Objectivists are necessarily libertarians, though not all libertarians are Objectivists. That is, anyone who believes in individual rights, free enterprise, and strictly limited government—and I assume that includes all Objectivists—is a libertarian. An Objectivist libertarian might well not belong to any particular party and might part company with some other libertarians on a wide range of philosophical and other issues, but at the level of political philosophy Objectivists are libertarians. And that gets us the crux of our disagreement. Should all libertarians be Objectivists? Or, put another way, must libertarianism rest on the Objectivist philosophical system? I believe that libertarianism, as a political movement and a political philosophy, is a sort of coalition. Libertarianism is compatible with a wide variety of philosophical, ethical, and religious beliefs. It is clearly compatible with Objectivism. It is also compatible with most religious faiths, as many libertarian Jews, Catholics, evangelical Protestants, and Muslims can attest. And certainly there are libertarians who feel a primary moral commitment to the value of individual freedom itself.

Aug 2, 1997

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Description: Religions posit a supernatural realm involving either an impersonal force or a personal god, with many combinations. The earliest forms of primitive religion involved ten common institutions. What is religion? How does it arise? Since no supernatural world exists, why is the phenomenon of religion so universal among men? Most atheists have probably asked themselves these questions at one time or another. This essay attempts to answer them. The Nature of Religion A religion is a system of beliefs and practices resting on two fundamental assumptions: (1) that events in the world are subject to supernatural power, and (2) that human needs can be satisfied by man's entering into relationships with such supernatural power. The fundamental belief in all religions, therefore, is the belief that a supernatural power exists capable of controlling natural events, and the fundamental practice in all religions is the attempt to influence this power. The power in question is called supernatural because it can, allegedly, be known and influenced by means other than those deriving from sense experience and reason.

Jun 1, 1997

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George Walsh

In this third of three articles written in 1993-94, Roger Donway discusses specific means of pursuing the basic goals of foreign policy: intelligence, free trade, and security. Part One: Rethinking Foreign Policy Part Two: Rethinking Foreign Policy In my last article, I mentioned three broad areas of foreign policy and spoke of the general goals that ought to dominate them. Those areas were: intelligence, trade, and national secu­rity. I said that intelligence should seek to inform policy-makers thoroughly about the foreign states with which they have to deal, not only the political-military characteristics of those states but also the socioeconomic and cultural characteristics. I suggested that trade policy ought to aim at a Free World commercial alliance. And I recommended that national security policy ought to aim at a Free World security alliance. In this article, I would like to discuss some of the principles that I believe would serve as appropriate guides to those ends.

Mar 1, 1994

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In this second of three articles written in 1993-94, Roger Donway discusses the fundamental goals of a proper foreign policy: promotion of free trade, and alliances among free countries as a bulwark of security. Part One: Rethinking Foreign Policy Part Three: "Rethinking Foreign Policy" A foreign policy comprises the principles that a government adopts towards other states and their citizens. Libertarians and Objectivists often assume that a free state’s foreign policy is merely a global analogue of its domestic criminal code or public law (prohibiting murder, theft, and so forth). In my last article, I argued that this was mistaken. At the least, I said, a foreign policy must also have a counterpart to the domestic civil code or private law (dealing with contract, negligence, and so forth). But more basically, I argued, the circumstances surrounding a state’s foreign affairs are completely different from the circumstances surrounding its domestic activities- so different that the analogy between domestic law and foreign policy can never be more than limited. The reason, I pointed out, is that a state operating within its own territory has a de jure monopoly on the use of force and a de facto monopoly on the use of large scale force. Internationally, the situation of one state vis-à-vis another is more like anarchy. To discover the principles appropriate to such a situation, I concluded, we must look back to the national motives for government, and see how they apply in this situation.

Jan 1, 1994

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