“Give me liberty or give me death.” This inspiring slogan from the American revolutionary period is all the more impressive when we remember that the revolutionaries were not trying to flee a totalitarian dictatorship but were rebelling against one of the freest, most prosperous nations of their age. There is an important insight here — American revolutionaries demanded, in full, the political freedom expressed in the Declaration of Independence as a matter of principle. What was the principle these revolutionaries held so dear and why don’t Americans see it the same way today?
“I'm often asked why someone with a penchant for philosophy and an academic life joins the Marine Corps. Why, some ask, does a scribe lower the pen to pick up the sword?” So begins this stirring and thought-provoking address by Lt. Col. Scott McDonald, USMC, to attendees at Objectivist Summer Conference 2015 in Charlotte, North Carolina.
In this episode of The Yaron Brook Show, Brook discusses the assault on speech at Middlebury College. Why were students silencing Charles Murray? The answer lies in the religious notion of “intersectionality.”
In this wide-ranging interview, Yaron Brook discusses Ayn Rand’s achievements as a novelist-philosopher; the role of philosophy in history; Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow; why “the poor” only need freedom to rise; environmentalism; and more.
A new article by Tara Smith, professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin and BB&T Chair for the Study of Objectivism, highlights her recent interest in the subject of religious exemptions in the law. “Religious Liberty or Religious License? Legal Schizophrenia and the Case against Exemptions,” published in the Journal of Law & Politics, “seeks to demonstrate that religious exemptions are unjustified in theory and corrosive, in practice,” according to the article’s abstract.
In this episode of The Yaron Brook Show, Brook discusses Dennis Prager’s claim that if there’s no God, murder isn’t wrong. Also, he explains why a God-based morality is not only inessential to our civilization, but also detrimental.
A new article on the value of religious freedom has been published in the Arkansas Law Review by Tara Smith, professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin and BB&T Chair for the Study of Objectivism. “What Good Is Religious Freedom? Locke, Rand, and the Non-Religious Case for Respecting It” is aimed at accounting for the source, nature and value of religious freedom.
