The horrific suicide bombing in December of a U.S. mess tent near Mosul and the assassination on Jan. 10 of the deputy chief of Baghdad police — the second Iraqi official murdered in five days — are further indications that the war in Iraq is worsening. Things are going badly not because, as some claim, the United States is arrogant and lacking in humility — but because it is self-effacing and compassionate.

The Bush Administration’s war in Iraq embraces compassion instead of the rational goal of victory. Such an immoral approach to war wantonly sacrifices the lives of soldiers and emboldens our enemies throughout the Middle East to mount further attacks against us.

Regardless of whether the Iraqi dictatorship should have been our initial target in the war against totalitarian Islam, when in the nation’s defense a President sends troops to war, morally he must resolve to soundly defeat the enemy while safeguarding our forces and citizens. But America’s attention has been diverted to rebuilding Iraqi hospitals, schools, roads and sewers, and on currying favor with the locals (some U.S. soldiers were even ordered to grow moustaches in token of their respect for Iraqi culture, others are now given cultural sensitivity courses before arriving in Iraq). Since the war began, Islamic militants and Saddam loyalists have carried out random abductions, devastating ambushes, and catastrophic bombings throughout the country. That attacks on U.S. forces (including those engaged in reconstruction efforts) have gone unpunished has emboldened the enemy.

Early and stark evidence of the enemy’s growing audacity came in March 2004 with the grisly murder and mutilation of four American contractors. Following the attack, U.S. forces entered the city of Fallujah vowing to capture the murderers and punish the town that supports them. But such resolve was supplanted by compassion.

In the midst of the fighting the United States called a unilateral ceasefire to allow humanitarian aid in and to enable the other side to collect and bury its dead. The so-called truce benefited only the enemy. The Iraqis, as one soldier told the Associated Press, were “absolutely taking advantage” of the situation, regrouping and mounting sporadic attacks: as another soldier aptly noted, “It is hard to have a cease-fire when they maneuver against us, they fire at us.” As the siege wore on, the goal of capturing the murderers quietly faded — and the enemy’s confidence swelled.

Neither the later offensive on Fallujah in November nor any of the subsequent incursions have quelled the insurgents: witness the unending string of car bombings and (road-side) ambushes. Why?

Because in Fallujah and throughout this war the military (under orders from Washington) has been purposely treading lightly. Soldiers have strict orders to avoid the risk of killing civilians — many of whom aid or are themselves militants — even at the cost of imperiling their own lives. Mosques, which have served as hideouts for terrorists, are kept off the list of allowed targets. Military operations have been timed to avoid alienating Muslim pilgrims on holy days.

There is no shortage of aggressors lusting for American blood, and they grow bolder with each display of American compassion.

Consider the shameful tenderness shown toward the Islamic cleric Moktadr al-Sadr, who aspires to be the dictator of an Iranian-style theocracy in Iraq. An admirer of the 9/11 hijackers, Sadr has amassed an armed militia of 10,000 men (right under the noses of our military), and demanded that Coalition forces leave Iraq. On the run for the murder of another cleric, he took refuge with his militia in the holy city of Najaf, which has been surrounded by U.S. troops. Rather than attacking, however, the United States agreed to negotiate. It is as absurd to negotiate with and trust the word of a villain such as Sadr as it would have been to negotiate with Nazis bent on wiping out Allied forces in World War II. It is shockingly dangerous that the United States allowed a mediator from Iran — part of the “Axis of Evil” and Sadr’s ideological ally — to assist in the negotiations.

In the end Sadr was allowed to walk away along with his armed militia; his agreement to disarm them has — predictably — gone unfulfilled.

For the enemies of America, Iraq is like a laboratory where they are testing our mettle, with mounting ferocity. The negotiations with Sadr; the half-hearted raids on Fallujah; our timid response to daily insurrections throughout Iraq; America’s outrageously deferential treatment of its enemies — all of these instances of moral weakness reinforce the view of bin Laden and his ilk that America will appease those who seek its destruction.

If we continue to confess doubts about our moral right to defend ourselves, it will only be a matter of time before Islamic militants bring suicide-bombings and mass murder (again) to the streets of the United States.

Though Washington may be blinded by the longing to buy the love of Iraqis, our servicemen know all too well that (as one put it): “When you go to fight, it’s time to shoot — not to make friends with people.” In its might and courage our military is unequaled; it is the moral responsibility of Washington to issue battle plans that will properly “shock and awe” the enemy. Eschewing self-interest in the name of compassion is immoral. The result is self-destruction.

About The Authors

Elan Journo

Senior Fellow and Vice President of Content Products, Ayn Rand Institute

Yaron Brook

Chairman of the Board, Ayn Rand Institute

What made Yasir Arafat’s final days appalling was not the farcical prevarications about whether he were dead or alive, nor the soap-opera quarrel between his wife and his political cronies; it was that so evil a man commanded so much respect.

Since his airlift to a Paris hospital, as the welcomed guest of the French government and with throngs of journalists on the scene, Arafat’s death has been presented as the heartbreaking end of a noble man. Reacting to a premature report of Arafat’s death, President Bush wished that “God bless his soul.” Upon Arafat’s death, Jacques Chirac lauded him as “a man of courage and conviction.” The French gave him a military salute as Arafat’s coffin was sent to his funeral in Egypt, which many heads of state are expected to attend.

Why do the West’s politicians hold in such high esteem a man who unleashed a ferocious campaign of international terrorism that, across a span of forty years, has claimed the lives of thousands of Israeli, Lebanese, Jordanian, Palestinian, and American civilians?

Arafat specialized in high-profile attacks targeting civilians, in order to inflict the severest psychological devastation. The slaughter of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics; the assassination of American diplomats in Sudan; the massacre of school children in Maalot, Israel (a model for the recent mass murder at a high school in Beslan, Russia); the hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro, in which wheelchair-bound American Leon Klinghoffer was tossed overboard — Arafat was responsible for these and hundreds of other kidnappings, car-bombings, hijackings, and brutal murders. Also, during the 1970s he fomented bloody civil wars in Jordan and Lebanon.

But did he not renounce his terrorist ways later in life (as though this would be enough to earn forgiveness)?

Certainly in the 1990s European and American politicians embraced Arafat as a peacemaker, granting him recognition as a statesman. President Clinton met with him more often than with any other international leader (24 times in eight years). And in 1994 Arafat co-won the Nobel Peace Prize. But his willingness to make peace with Israel was a transparent lie. Though he publicly renounced terrorism in words addressed to Western audiences, he never did so in action (nor even in words, when speaking to the Arab world).

From the outset Arafat flouted practically every provision of a 1993 peace accord — most notably the provision to quell terrorism against Israel. The vast armed “police force” he created actually conspired with and often actively supported terrorists. And, calling for “martyrs by the millions,” Arafat fostered the deployment of suicide bombers. In 2001 he told the family of one bomber: “The heroic martyrdom operation [of the man] who turned his body into a bomb [is] the model of manhood and sacrifice for the sake of Allah and the homeland.”

None of this dissuaded Western leaders (including President Bush, who sought to marginalize Arafat somewhat) from supporting the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state in areas governed by Arafat’s provisional Palestinian Authority. And this was so even though the evidence was abundant that such a state would become a sponsor of terrorism. In 2002, for example, Arafat’s forces were caught trying to smuggle into the Gaza Strip 50 tons of weapons and ammunitions, including one ton of C-4 explosives, and more than 60 Katyusha rockets, capable of hitting most cities in Israel.

Politicians eager to regard Arafat as a heroic “liberator” of Palestinians were also undaunted by his dictatorial rule over the Palestinian Authority. That governing body systematically violates the rights of its citizens. Arafat’s “police” force — eight or so competing gangs of thugs — arbitrarily arrests citizens, confiscates property, and murders his political opponents. (The victims were denounced under the catch-all charge of “collaborating” with Israel.) The PA’s chaotic judiciary made a mockery of the rule of law; its judges served not justice, but Arafat.

But far from condemning Arafat’s vicious rule, the European Union and America supported it with hundreds of millions of dollars in aid.

This extravagant tolerance of Arafat, given his blood-soaked record, is not due to ignorance on the part of our politicians. It comes from the precept that moral judgment is an obstacle to action. This is the view that moral principles are an impediment to achieving practical aims, such as peace. One should, on this view, remain morally neutral — even though one side may be clearly in the right — and try to engage both sides in gentlemanly negotiation — even though one side may be a murderous thug.

Because moral neutrality is such an obviously immoral policy, its perpetrators must blacken the good while whitewashing the evil. Hence, world leaders condemn Israel, the innocent victim who refuses to submit, and lionize Arafat, the ruthless killer.

Arafat’s elevation to the dignity of a peace-seeking statesman is due to our politicians’ moral corruption. Were he judged properly, Arafat would long ago have been dealt the punishment he deserved. By sustaining him and perpetuating the delusion that Arafat was really a well-meaning statesman, politicians committed treason to his innocent victims.

About The Author

Elan Journo

Senior Fellow and Vice President of Content Products, Ayn Rand Institute

On October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus discovered the New World, opening a sea route to vast uncharted territories that awaited the spread of Western civilization. Centuries later, the ensuing cultural migration culminated in the birth and explosive growth of the greatest nation in history: the United States of America.

On September 11, 2001, that nation came under attack by Islamic totalitarians who hate the distinctive values of Western civilization that America so proudly embraces — reason, science, individual rights, and capitalism — and who targeted the World Trade Center and the Pentagon as symbols of those values.

These attacks could not be dismissed as aberrant acts by a lone band of zealots, not after it became clear how widely that same festering hatred of Western values is felt in the Muslim world, where Osama bin Laden is embraced as a folk hero, terrorists continue to receive help from sympathetic governments, and the United States is perpetually damned as the Great Satan.

America has responded since Sept. 11 with various military and political maneuvers. Notably missing, however, has been any clear principled statement of what we are defending, and why we deserve to win.

Without moral certainty, America cannot prevail.

We cannot win a war in which Islamic totalitarians loudly proclaim that their way of life is superior — while liberals trot out the cliches of multiculturalism, claiming that there is no objective standard by which to judge a society good or evil, and conservatives downplay the religious motives driving Islamic terrorism, clinging to the notion that religion promotes peace despite blood-soaked centuries of evidence to the contrary.

This moral uncertainty is dividing Americans into two equally ineffectual camps. Liberals, mortified by world opposition, want to demilitarize the conflict in favor of a criminal-justice approach, granting every Muslim killer his day in court. Conservatives, although seemingly willing to address the conflict militarily, wring their hands if a stray bullet chips gold leaf off the dome of a mosque.

Americans can escape this quagmire of moral vacillation only by becoming fully, rationally convinced that our values are objectively worthwhile — that they are worth pursuing, worth upholding, and worth defending, by force if necessary. One way to attain such moral certainty is to understand, with full clarity, why we celebrate Columbus Day.

On one level, Columbus Day honors the explorer himself, for his many virtues. Columbus was a man of independent mind, who steadfastly pursued his bold plan for a westward voyage to the Indies despite powerful opposition — a man of courage, who set sail upon a trackless ocean with no assurance that he would ever reach land — a man of pride, who sought recognition and reward for his achievements.

We need not evade or excuse Columbus’s flaws — his religious zealotry, his enslavement and oppression of natives — to recognize that he made history by finding new territory for a civilization that would soon show mankind how to overcome forever the age-old scourges of slavery, war, and forced religious conversion.

On a deeper level, therefore, Columbus Day celebrates the rational core of Western civilization, which flourished in the New World like a potbound plant liberated from its confining shell, demonstrating to the world what greatness is possible to man at his best.

On Columbus Day, we celebrate the civilization whose philosophers and mathematicians, men such as Aristotle, Archimedes, and Euclid, displaced otherworldly mysticism by discovering the laws of logic and mathematical relationships, demonstrating to mankind that the universe is knowable and predictable.

On Columbus Day, we celebrate the civilization whose scientists, men such as Galileo, Newton, Darwin, and Einstein, banished primitive superstitions by discovering natural laws through the scientific method, expanding the reach of man’s scrutiny to the farthest galaxy and the tiniest atom.

On Columbus Day, we celebrate the civilization whose political geniuses, men such as John Locke and the Founding Fathers, showed how bloody tribal warfare and religious strife can be supplanted by constitutional republics devoted to protecting life, liberty, property, and the selfish pursuit of individual happiness.

On Columbus Day, we celebrate the civilization whose entrepreneurs, men such as Rockefeller, Ford, and Gates, transformed an inhospitable wilderness populated by frightened savages into a wealthy nation of self-confident producers served by highways, power plants, computers, and thousands of other life-enhancing products.

On Columbus Day, in sum, we celebrate Western civilization with the utter certainty that it is good according to an objective standard: man’s life. America therefore deserves to prevail against the religious totalitarians who would destroy industrial civilization and return mankind to the Stone Age.

About The Author

Tom Bowden

Analyst and Outreach Liaison, Ayn Rand Institute

Back to school nowadays means back to classrooms, lessons and textbooks permeated by multiculturalism and its championing of “diversity.” Many parents and teachers regard multiculturalism as an indispensable educational supplement, a salutary influence that “enriches” the curriculum. But is it?

With the world’s continents bridged by the Internet and global commerce, multiculturalism claims to offer a real value: a cosmopolitan, rather than provincial, understanding of the world beyond the student’s immediate surroundings. But it is a peculiar kind of “broadening.” Multiculturalists would rather have students admire the primitive patterns of Navajo blankets, say, than learn why Islam’s medieval golden age of scientific progress was replaced by fervent piety and centuries of stagnation.

Leaf through a school textbook and you’ll find that there is a definite pattern behind multiculturalism’s reshaping of the curriculum. What multiculturalists seek is not the goal they advertise, but something else entirely. Consider, for instance, the teaching of history.

One text acclaims the inhabitants of West Africa in pre-Columbian times for having prosperous economies and for establishing a university in Timbuktu; but it ignores their brutal trade in slaves and the proliferation of far more consequential institutions of learning in Paris, Oxford and elsewhere in Europe. Some books routinely lionize the architecture of the Aztecs, but purposely overlook or underplay the fact that they practiced human sacrifices. A few textbooks seek to portray Islam as peaceful in part by distorting the concept of “jihad” (“sacred war”) to mean an internal struggle to surmount temptation and evil. Islam’s wars of religious conquest are played down.

What these textbooks reveal is a concerted effort to portray the most backward, impoverished and murderous cultures as advanced, prosperous and life-enhancing. Multiculturalism’s goal is not to teach about other cultures, but to promote — by means of distortions and half-truths — the notion that non-Western cultures are as good as, if not better than, Western culture. Far from “broadening” the curriculum, what multiculturalism seeks is to diminish the value of Western culture in the minds of students. But, given all the facts, the objective superiority of Western culture is apparent, so multiculturalists artificially elevate other cultures and depreciate the West.

If students were to learn the truth of the hardscrabble life of primitive farming in, say, India, they would recognize that subsistence living is far inferior to life on any mechanized farm in Kansas, which demands so little manpower, yet yields so much. An informed, rational student would not swallow the “politically correct” conclusions he is fed by multiculturalism. If he were given the actual facts, he could recognize that where men are politically free as in the West, they can prosper economically; that science and technology are superior to superstition; that man’s life is far longer, happier and safer in the West today than in any other culture in history.

The ideals, achievements and history of Western culture in general — and of America in particular — are purposely given short-shrift by multiculturalism. That the Industrial Revolution and the Information Age were born and flourished in Western nations; that the preponderance of Nobel prizes in science have been awarded to people in the West — such facts, if they are noted, are passed over with little elaboration.

The “history” that students do learn is rewritten to fit multiculturalism’s agenda. Consider the birth of the United States. Some texts would have children believe the baseless claim that America’s Founders modeled the Constitution on a confederation of Indian tribes. This is part of a wider drive to portray the United States as a product of the “convergence” of three traditions — native Indian, African and European. But the American republic, with an elected government limited by individual rights, was born not of stone-age peoples, but primarily of the European Enlightenment. It is a product of the ideas of thinkers like John Locke, a British philosopher, and his intellectual heirs in colonial America, such as Thomas Jefferson. 

It is a gross misconception to view multiculturalism as an effort to enrich education. By reshaping the curriculum, the purveyors of “diversity” in the classroom calculatedly seek to prevent students from grasping the objective value to human life of Western culture — a culture whose magnificent achievements have brought man from mud huts to moon landings. 

Multiculturalism is no boon to education, but an agent of anti-Western ideology.

About The Author

Elan Journo

Senior Fellow and Vice President of Content Products, Ayn Rand Institute

A free society requires and rewards individuals who are active-minded, forward-looking, keen to better themselves. A society moving towards state control of the economy requires and rewards individuals who want tranquility, passivity, lethargy. In the debate about the legitimacy of “outsourcing” white-collar jobs to foreign countries, you must decide on which side you stand.

The opponents of “outsourcing” white-collar jobs eagerly present it as an unprecedented, catastrophic phenomenon. The facts belie this. Economists estimate that roughly 100,000 white-collar jobs “move” offshore annually. This figure excludes new jobs created in the United States because of the increased economic efficiency and is in the context of a U.S. economy of some 140 million jobs, in which 15 million unneeded jobs are eliminated annually, with even more created. Moreover, for decades U.S. companies (and the U.S. economy) have thrived by hiring manufacturing and agricultural workers abroad. We are witnessing but a normal evolution of specialization and trade, cornerstones of American prosperity. 

Why then the heated opposition?

Observe that whatever the particular forces that lead American businesses to hire foreign workers — be it a Coca Cola expanding into new markets in Asia, an HP manufacturing products more cheaply in Singapore, or an Intel hiring superior engineers in India — the fundamental reason they do so is to grow. They seek to increase sales and profits. 

This is the nature of a free society: economically, it does not stand still, it advances. It demands the same of its citizens.

When Henry Ford introduced mass production of the automobile in the early 1900s, he changed transportation. This inevitably caused disruptions. The days of the horse and buggy were numbered. But those in the dying industry who chose to face the reality of Ford’s advance, whether a business owner who learned to produce gasoline instead of buggies or a worker who learned to repair automobile engines, prospered. 

Later, when men like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Michael Dell ushered in the personal computer revolution, almost no industry was unaffected. The businesses and employees that embraced the new invention, a retailer that computerized its inventory or a worker who learned to program a computer, prospered.

Today, as businesses hire white-collar workers abroad, similar opportunities will abound for those ready to change and grow. As in earlier eras, the capital accumulation made possible by the increased efficiency and specialization at American companies will fuel demand for employees with new skills, such as managers able to integrate a company’s activities across countries and cultures. 

It should not be surprising, for instance, that from 1991 to 2001, 2,500 U.S. multinational corporations added 2.8 million foreign jobs and 5.5 million new U.S. jobs (the latter above the average U.S. employee growth rate for the period), or that 25 percent of Americans now work at jobs not even listed in the 1967 Census Bureau codes.

Those who prosper in a free society are individuals who choose, no matter how severe the change, to adapt, to expand their skills, to increase their knowledge, to grow. For this type of individual, trade and specialization — across one’s city, state, country or globe — are acknowledged as beneficial; the progress of a global economy, including “outsourcing,” is not feared but welcomed. 

There are, however, those who resent the growth that a free society demands. Typically, they pursue one of two courses of action. Either they simply cling to the old way of doing things, like a manufacturer who claims that if horse buggies were good enough for our forefathers, they should be good enough for us. Or they cry for governmental protection — and demand that the government restrict the cotton gin, steam engine, automobile, locomotive, Japanese imports, factory automation, etc.

This last is the opponent of “outsourcing.” He does not advance even a semi-cogent economic argument, as economists have pointed out repeatedly. But he does resent the fact that his life has been or may be disrupted by the freedom of other people advancing their interests — that others’ progress may require him to grow or be left behind. So in an attempt to freeze reality, the opponent of “outsourcing” demands that the government forcibly restrain the success of his fellow citizens — by restricting them from dealing abroad.

Unscrupulous politicians then pander to this backward mentality. Thirty-five state legislatures have introduced “anti-outsourcing” legislation. John Kerry denounces management as “Benedict Arnold CEOs” — even though the CEOs are being quintessentially American in pursuing their (and their shareholder’s) happiness.

The demands of the “anti-outsourcers” must be rejected; there is no right to stagnation. But there remains nevertheless one thing to ask of our government.

Some companies are moving offshore because they find greater economic freedom there. Don’t demand that they be prevented from relocating or hiring foreign workers; that would just further restrict freedom in America. Demand instead that the government rescind the plethora of regulations — from workers’ compensation to Social Security to governmental education to governmental healthcare — that is strangling us.

We need the American solution: to once again fully embrace freedom and the growth it both creates and requires.

About The Author

Onkar Ghate

Chief Philosophy Officer and Senior Fellow, Ayn Rand Institute

Why Is America Pursuing a Foreign Policy of “Speak Softly and Carry a Big Carrot”?

America’s foreign policy, Mr. Schwartz argues, is driven by the view that the pursuit of self-interest is morally tainted — that is, that if we wish to do what is right, we must sacrifice our interests for the sake of other nations. This is why we are so appeasingly apologetic when it comes to asserting our right to live free from the threat of force. It is why we are so hesitant in implementing our moral obligation to eliminate all such threats by military means. It is why we are failing in our war against terrorism.

In this uncompromising manifesto, the author calls for a radically different foreign policy — one based entirely on self-interest. Repudiating any dichotomy between the moral and the practical, he advocates a policy under which a nation’s interests are measured by only one standard: the individual liberty of its citizens. The architects of such a foreign policy would reject any duty to sacrifice the wealth and the lives of Americans to the needs of other countries. They would disclaim any obligation to seek international approval before deciding to use force to safeguard America. Instead they would intransigently uphold our self-interest — not as a matter of amoral expediency, as advocated by the impractical pragmatists and their school of realpolitik, but rather as a moral principle, a principle that is in keeping with America’s founding values.

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About The Author

Peter Schwartz

Distinguished Fellow, Ayn Rand Institute

Few voices offering moral guidance in the rapidly advancing field of biotechnology are as influential as the President’s Council on Bioethics. Professing to uphold man’s well-being, the council on April 1 called for regulating the techniques and research leading to test-tube babies, including a prohibition on attempts to conceive a child by any means other than the “union of egg and sperm.” But its professed goal is belied by the council’s moral viewpoint.

In October 2003 the council outlined some of its views — a groundwork for policy recommendations — in a little noted but ominous report, Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness. The report considers the moral propriety of using biotech not simply to cure diseases, but to enhance the lives of the healthy, to perfect man’s body and prolong his life. Purportedly embracing the power of biotechnology, the report’s constant demurrals and misgivings evince a frightening contempt for the value of man’s life.

Unlike paternalistic bureaucrats, who believe we will harm ourselves if left free, the concern of the council is not that that we will abuse biotech, but that it will make our bodies fitter, our memories sharper, our lives longer. Their report portends draconian regulations of biotechnology in the name of protecting us not from biotech’s alleged dangers, but from its potential benefits.

No rational arguments could justify such an absurd viewpoint; the report offers none.

Consider the report’s contrived misgivings over using biotech to prolong the lives of the healthy. Amid the wealth of obvious benefits to man of a longer life, the report conjures up some (supposedly) grave costs. Longer life, it warns, may diminish the richness of our experience, diluting our aspirations and the urgency to act. If we each faced virtually unlimited tomorrows, it asks, would we be moved to pursue our goals today? Among the things we allegedly may put off are marriage and childrearing. But longer life is not immortality (a being guaranteed to live would have no reason to pursue goals). So, as life expectancy has doubled to about 70 years during the last century, people are, if anything, more active in all areas of life.

If you are unwilling to accept the bizarre notion that longer life would be harmful to you, the report wants you to consider the impact on society. One would think that a future in which more able people are alive and healthy for longer, applying themselves to sustaining and improving life, is a future to be embraced. Imagine if a Thomas Edison lived to an age of 180 with undiminished vigor. But in the report’s jaundiced view, though individuals may live longer, society may disintegrate. The old might “think less of preparing their replacements, and the young could see before them only layers of their elders blocking their path, and no great reason to hurry in building families or careers.” What we have to dread, apparently, is that the “succession of generations could be obstructed by a glut of the able.”

If one recognizes that man’s mind — through production and trade — is his means of sustaining life — a “glut of the able” is as much to be feared as a “glut” of health.

That is precisely what the report’s authors evidently do fear. The report decries the possibility that biotech may inflate — and satisfy — our desires for physical and mental improvements. But it is thanks in part to his continually growing desire for improving his lot in life that man has risen so far today — from caves to houses; from hunting to scientific farming; from living at the mercy of uncontrollable pestilence to conquering diseases through medicine. The latest, perhaps most potent, tool in this ascent is biotechnology.

The report grasps at straws to have us believe that man’s attainment of knowledge and mastery over nature will bring him to a hubristic fall. It solemnly cautions that longer life, “far from bringing contentment, . . . might make us increasingly anxious over our health or dominated by the fear of death.”

Implicit in the report is an abhorrence for man’s life on earth and his happiness. Such a moral viewpoint was once held by self-flagellating medieval monks as an article of faith; for the President’s Council — consisting of legal scholars, scientists and ethicists — it is little more than that. Expect the council, therefore, to call for more regulations not only on conceiving test-tube babies, but on advances in biotech that would enable man to extend his lifespan and overcome his physical limitations.

Man urgently needs moral guidance — in biotech as in every aspect of his life. But he needs a rational morality that, in the words of the philosopher Ayn Rand, teaches man “not to suffer and die, but to enjoy [himself] and live.”

About The Author

Elan Journo

Senior Fellow and Vice President of Content Products, Ayn Rand Institute

The 900-page congressional report criticizing the operations of the FBI and CIA in the months prior to the September 11 attacks misses the fundamental point. Whatever incompetence on the intelligence agencies’ part, what made September 11 possible was a failure, not by our intelligence agencies — but by the accommodating, range-of-the-moment, unprincipled foreign policy that has shaped our government’s decisions for decades.

September 11 was not the first time America was attacked by Islamic fundamentalists engaged in “holy war” against us. In 1979 theocratic Iran — which has spearheaded the “Islamic Revolution” — stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and held 54 Americans hostage for over a year. In 1983 the Syrian- and Iranian-backed group Hezbollah bombed a U.S. marine barracks in Lebanon, killing 241 servicemen while they slept; the explosives came from Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement. In 1998 al-Qaeda blew up the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224 individuals. In 2000 al-Qaeda bombed the USS Cole in Yemen, killing 17 sailors.

So we already knew that al-Qaeda was actively engaged in attacking Americans. We even had evidence that agents connected to al-Qaeda had been responsible for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. And we knew in 1996 that bin Laden had made an overt declaration of war against the “Satan” America.

But how did America react? Did our government adopt a principled approach and identify the fact that we were faced with a deadly threat from an ideological foe? Did we launch systematic counterattacks to wipe out such enemy organizations as al-Qaeda, Hezbollah and Fatah? Did we seek to eliminate enemy states like Iran? No — our responses were short-sighted and self-contradictory.

For instance, we initially expelled Iranian diplomats — but later sought an appeasing rapprochement with that ayatollah-led government. We intermittently cut off trade with Iran — but secretly negotiated weapons-for-hostages deals. When Israel had the courage to enter Lebanon in 1982 to destroy the PLO, we refused to uncompromisingly support our ally and instead brokered the killers’ release. And with respect to al-Qaeda, we dropped a perfunctory bomb or two on one of its suspected camps, while our compliant diplomats waited for al-Qaeda’s terrorist attacks to fade from the headlines.

At home, we treated our attackers as if they were isolated criminals rather than soldiers engaged in battle against us. In 1941 we did not attempt to indict the Japanese pilots who bombed Pearl Harbor — we declared war on the source. Yet we spent millions trying to indict specific terrorists — while we ignored their masters.

Despite emphatic pronouncements from Islamic leaders about a “jihad” against America, our political leaders failed to grasp the ideology that seeks our destruction. This left them unable to target that enemy’s armed combatants — in Palestine, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia — and the governments that assist them. Is it any wonder then that, although our intelligence agencies prevented many planned attacks, they could not prevent them all?

Unfortunately, little has changed since September 11. Our politicians’ actions remain hopelessly unprincipled. Despite the Bush administration’s rhetoric about ending states that sponsor terrorism, President Bush has left the most dangerous of these — Iran — untouched. The attack on Iraq, though justifiable, was hardly a priority in our war against militant Islam and the countries (principally, Saudi Arabia and Iran) that promote it. Moreover, when Bush does strike at militant Islam, he does so only haltingly. Morally unsure of his right to protect American lives by wiping out the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, Bush feared in Afghanistan world disapproval over civilian casualties. Consequently, he reined in the military forces (as he also did in Iraq) and allowed numerous Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters to escape. And Bush continues to allow their comrades-in-arms in the Middle East to go unharmed. He pretends that the Palestinians and Islamic militants attacking Israel — and who have attacked Americans in the past and will try again in the future — are, somehow, different from the killers in Afghanistan and deserving of a “peace” plan.

Instead of taking consistent, principled action to destroy our terrorist adversaries, politicians from both parties continue to focus on details like reshuffling government bureaucracies and haggling over how much criticism of Saudi Arabia the 900-page congressional report can contain. Thus, too unprincipled to identify the enemy and wage all-out war, but not yet completely blind to their own ineffectualness, our leaders resignedly admit that we’re in for a “long war” and that there will be more terrorists attacks on U.S. soil.

There is only one way to prevent a future September 11: by rooting out the amoral, pragmatic expediency that now dominates our government’s foreign policy.

About The Author

Onkar Ghate

Chief Philosophy Officer and Senior Fellow, Ayn Rand Institute

The squabbling and finger-pointing surrounding the 9/11 commission only serve to obscure the fundamental lesson of that horrific day. Whatever errors or incompetence on the part of a particular individual or intelligence agency, what made September 11 possible was a failure of policy. Our government, whether controlled by Democrat or Republican, had for decades conducted an accommodating, range-of-the-moment, unprincipled foreign policy.

September 11 was not the first time America was attacked by Islamic fundamentalists engaged in “holy war” against us. In 1979 theocratic Iran — which has spearheaded the “Islamic Revolution” — stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and held 54 Americans hostage for over a year. In 1983 the Syrian- and Iranian-backed group Hezbollah bombed a U.S. marine barracks in Lebanon, killing 241 servicemen while they slept; the explosives came from Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement. In 1998 al-Qaeda blew up the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224 individuals. In 2000 al-Qaeda bombed the USS Cole in Yemen, killing 17 sailors.

So we already knew that al-Qaeda was actively engaged in attacking Americans. We even had evidence that agents connected to al-Qaeda had been responsible for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. And we knew in 1996 that bin Laden had made an overt declaration of war against the “Satan” America.

But how did America react? Did our government adopt a principled approach and identify the fact that we were faced with a deadly threat from an ideological foe? Did we launch systematic counterattacks to wipe out such enemy organizations as al-Qaeda, Hezbollah and Fatah? Did we seek to eliminate enemy states like Iran? No — our responses were shortsighted and self-contradictory.

To cite only a few of depressingly many examples: we initially expelled Iranian diplomats — but later sought an appeasing rapprochement with that ayatollah-led government. We intermittently cut off trade with Iran — but secretly negotiated weapons-for-hostages deals. When Israel had the courage to enter Lebanon in 1982 to destroy the PLO, we refused to uncompromisingly support our ally and instead brokered the killers’ release. And with respect to al-Qaeda, we dropped a perfunctory bomb or two on one of its suspected camps, while our compliant diplomats waited for al-Qaeda’s terrorist attacks to fade from the headlines.

At home we treated our attackers as if they were isolated criminals rather than soldiers engaged in battle against us. In 1941 we did not attempt to indict the Japanese pilots who bombed Pearl Harbor — we declared war on the source. Yet we spent millions trying to indict specific terrorists — while we ignored their masters.

Despite emphatic pronouncements from Islamic leaders about a “jihad” against America, our political leaders failed to grasp the ideology that seeks our destruction. This left them unable to target that enemy’s armed combatants — in Palestine, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia — and the governments that assist them.

Is it any wonder then that, although our intelligence agencies prevented many planned attacks, they could not prevent them all?

Tragically, little has changed since September 11. Our government’s actions remain hopelessly unprincipled. Despite the Bush administration’s rhetoric about ending states that sponsor terrorism, President Bush has left the most dangerous of these — Iran — untouched, while his officials periodically seek “rapprochement” and work with Iranian officials to foster “religious values” at U.N. conferences. The attack on Iraq, though capable of justification, was hardly a priority in our war against militant Islam. And because the war was waged with no view to the long term, Iraq is in danger of slipping into the hands of Shiite clerics and other militant Islamic leaders — and thus of becoming even more of a threat than it was.

Moreover, when Bush does strike at a militant Islamic regime, he does so only haltingly. He stresses that the conflict is not ideological and, morally unsure of his right to protect American lives by force, cowers before any sign of world disapproval over civilian casualties. The result was that he reined in the military forces in Afghanistan and allowed numerous Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters to escape.

Elsewhere in the Middle East, Bush continues to play by a double standard. His administration scolds Israel for killing its own bin Laden, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, while Bush pretends that the Palestinians and Islamic militants attacking Israel — and who have attacked Americans in the past and will no doubt try again in the future — are, somehow, different from al-Qaeda and deserving of a “peace” plan.

And now, both Republicans and Democrats wage a domestic war, senselessly and desperately trying to find a fall guy for September 11. Thus, too unprincipled to identify the enemy and wage all-out war, but not yet completely blind to their own ineffectualness, leaders from both parties resignedly admit that we’re in for a “long war” and that there will be more terrorists attacks on U.S. soil.

The lesson to learn from September 11 is this. We must root out the amoral, pragmatic expediency that dominates our government’s foreign policy and replace it with the principles of self-interest.

About The Author

Onkar Ghate

Chief Philosophy Officer and Senior Fellow, Ayn Rand Institute

As The Passion of the Christ plays to near-record crowds, numerous critics and moviegoers report the film to be a transforming experience. Although many find themselves forced to turn away from the violence on screen, they say the blood-soaked depiction of Jesus’ crucifixion has an important purpose. We must be reminded of the enormous sacrifice that Christ has made for all of us.

In responding this way to the film, the audience is getting the message those responsible for the film intended. Jim Caviezel, the actor who plays Jesus, explains: “We’re all culpable in the death of Christ. My sins put him up there. Yours did. That’s what this story is about.” When Diane Sawyer asked the film’s director and cowriter, Mel Gibson, who killed Jesus, he replied, “The big answer is, we all did. I’ll be the first in the culpability stakes here.” And as if to leave no doubt that this is his considered view, Gibson’s only on-screen appearance in the film is in the form of the hands that drive the nails into Jesus’ body.

It is frightening that so evil a message could receive so welcome a reception.

When charges of anti-Semitism, denied by the producers, surrounded the film before its opening, there was outrage from many circles. But when the principals behind the film tell us openly that its message is that not only Jews but all men are implicated in the death of Jesus, the voices of moral outrage fall silent. (In what follows I leave aside the question of how successfully the film conveys its intended message.)

So, let us ask some questions no one is asking. Why is it immoral to ascribe guilt to all Jews, but not immoral to ascribe guilt to all mankind? How can anyone know, without first considering our specific choices and actions, that you or I are guilty? How can you or I be responsible for the death of a man killed some two thousand years ago? To make any sense of the accusation, one must recognize that one is here dealing with, albeit in a more sophisticated form, the same collectivist mentality as the racist’s. For the anti-Semite, to be Jewish is to be evil. For the devout Christian, to be human is to be evil.

The denunciation of man as a creature befouled by, in the words of St. Augustine, a “radical canker in the mind and will,” infuses the Christian tradition. Every essential attribute and virtue of man is attacked.

To possess an inquisitive mind, a mind eager to explore the world and gain knowledge, is to commit the first sin. Remember the story of Eve? To painstakingly study nature and unlock her laws, thereby paving the way for man’s mastery of his world, is to court imprisonment and torture. Ask Galileo or a scientist studying human cloning. To concern oneself with producing the wealth and material goods life requires, is to invite condemnations of “greed” and “materialism.” Read Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount.” To cherish the pleasures that the earth and one’s own body afford, including one’s sexual capacity, is to be denounced as “selfish” and even depraved. Consult the Puritans or the 1968 papal encyclical Humanae Vitae. To take pride in one’s curiosity, in one’s growing knowledge of the world, in one’s successful actions in it, in the resulting joy and pleasure these bring — this is branded by all as the height of sin.

On this anti-man approach, to remain alive is to sin. To fully purge oneself, one must die. Only such an account of man can begin to explain the charge of collective guilt for the death of Christ, whose undeserved suffering at man’s vicious hands is, somehow, supposed to help alleviate our innately “sinful” nature.

If the anti-Semitic view of the Jewish race as inherently corrupt is irrational and evil, how much more irrational and evil is this view of the human race?

Will The Passion itself play a major role in spreading this conception of man’s nature? Of course not. But the audiences and acclaim the film is enjoying speak to just how prevalent this conception has already become. If there is an idea behind the film worth opposing, it is this, its intended message. Teach man to regard himself as a loathsome, despicable being, and he becomes ripe for any mystical dictator, who will wield the whip that is supposed to make man atone for his “transgressions.” Deprive man of self-esteem, teach him to spit in his face, and one paves the way for another Dark Ages.

But to oppose this conception of human nature, one must first come to understand that man — man at his best, man the rational, productive, selfish achiever — is a noble being.

About The Author

Onkar Ghate

Chief Philosophy Officer and Senior Fellow, Ayn Rand Institute