If you’re toiling over your tax returns as the filing deadline approaches, why not pause to read Yaron Brook’s take on why you would be justified in feeling resentful of the tax code’s many manipulations.
Today, college students’ attitude toward free speech ranges from ambivalence to outright hostility. They cry “microaggression” at the slightest offense. They demand “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces” to protect themselves from controversial ideas. They attempt to ban speakers at public universities and support other bans on speech.
This video moment from the Ayn Rand Institute highlights novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand’s escape from Soviet Russia and why she chose to build a new life in America.
Was President Trump right or wrong in deciding to bomb a Syrian airfield in retaliation for the government’s use of chemical weapons against citizens? When a similar question arose in 2013 on President Obama’s watch, Ayn Rand Institute executive chairman Yaron Brook recorded this prescient video, questioning whether the use of chemical weapons threatens American interests.
This week at the Ayn Rand Institute, employees got a sneak peek at a new Atlas Shrugged banner, created in celebration of the novel’s 60th anniversary. The banner features various Atlas Shrugged book covers from around the world. “These are graphically interesting covers from Japan to Russia,” according to Ayn Rand Archives curator Jeff Britting.
The life of a creature without free will is determined by factors outside its control, so it is not responsible for what it does or what becomes of it. But because human beings have free will, the shape our lives take is up to us. True, we are born into circumstances that are not of our own making, and there are facts of nature that we cannot change, but there are countless lives possible to each of us, and by recognizing what you cannot control and taking responsibility for what you can, you can create a life of which you can be proud and in which you will be happy.
Over a period of six days last month, Yaron Brook, ARI’s executive chairman, spoke to more than 700 students at seven of the most prestigious schools in Great Britain. This speaking tour comes on the heels of the announcement in February that the 2017 UK curriculum for A-Level Politics taught in secondary and pre-university schools includes Ayn Rand as a key thinker. In the schools that adopt the new curriculum, students will study Rand and her ideas for the first time.
