Why are seemingly sensible people cheering the Iran deal, given the regime’s notorious brutality and belligerence? The answer lies in a wonkish affliction that you could call the split-personality fallacy.

Glance at the regime we’re talking about. Iran is a horrific theocracy that methodically violates individual rights. Iran’s worldwide backing of jihadists last year (according to our own government) was “undiminished.” Across the Middle East, Iran vigorously seeks dominion: in Beirut, Damascus, Sanaa, Baghdad, and Gaza, it already exerts significant influence, and it has begun outreach to the Taliban.

Post-deal, might the mass chants in Iran of “death to America” end? Might the regime’s hostility toward us (“the Great Satan”) abate? Whoever cherishes such hopes had them slapped down by Iran’s “supreme leader” Ayatollah Khamenei: Our policy toward the “arrogant” U.S. government, he announced after the deal, “won’t change at all.”

Yet in a major speech last week at American University, President Obama noted the deal’s many backers: “The United Nations Security Council has unanimously supported it. The majority of arms control and non-proliferation experts support it. Over 100 former ambassadors — who served under Republican and Democratic Presidents — support it.”

To that tally, add two scholars from the self-described libertarian Cato Institute, who also praised it. They argued the “agreement must be viewed as a clear success.”

The Split Personality Fallacy

How could anyone think that it’s a good idea to negotiate with an openly hostile regime that fuels jihadists and seeks our destruction? Enter the split-personality fallacy. The crux of this fallacy is to treat the actions of Iran (or another tyranny we want to engage diplomatically) in isolation, as if carried out by distinct, firewalled personalities that happen to coexist in the same physical regime.

Iran’s drive for nuclear capability (officially: for civilian purposes!) reflects one personality. Iran’s pervasive violation of individual rights domestically? That’s another. How about its ongoing backing of jihadist groups? Still another. What about Iran’s quest for regional domination? Yet another, dissociated personality.

The logic of this fractured perspective means that we must handle each personality separately, divorced from any wider context. Thus, many boosters of the Iran deal bless it on the minutely narrow grounds that it might delay Iran’s nuclear program. Everything else — domestic repression, the drive for regional conquest, backing jihadists, hostility toward us — is beyond the deal’s scope, and therefore not something we should consider in judging the deal and consequences.

Projecting Our Disorder Onto Iran

Segmenting Iran’s nuclear program for piecemeal attention is touted as reflecting a nuanced, hard-headed concern with practicality. But what actually underlies the fractured, ultra-narrow approach toward Iran is a desire to evade the regime’s animating ideological character. Observe how we have no concern about nuclear weapons in the hands of the United Kingdom or France; but precisely the same weapon in Iran’s hands is a grave concern, because of its militant character. Push that out of mind, though, and you can dream up a dealable-with persona, one which (like the UK or France) might actually comply with a pact.

But ignoring Iran’s character is policy malpractice. To assess the situation rationally and formulate sound policy, it is crucial that we have a clear understanding of the regime’s character. Is it a good idea to negotiate with Iran? Is the nuclear deal signed in Vienna a “clear success”? When you look at the contours of Iran’s nature, you see the answers are: no, and no.

The Iranian regime embodies the idea of Islamic totalitarianism. Its founder and first “supreme leader,” Ayatollah Khomeini, brought into reality a theory of clerical rule. Tehran demands from its citizens submission to religious law. Ergo the “morality police” that patrol the streets and harass women for wearing the wrong kind of veil.

Stop Ignoring Iran’s Totalitarian Nature

At the core is the totalitarian ambition to subjugate people. Witness the fate of six Iranian twenty-somethings who videoed themselves singing along to Pharrell’s “Happy.” Their video went viral. Then they were arrested, tried, and found guilty of “participation in the making of a vulgar clip” and “illegitimate relations between members of the group.”

They may yet escape being flogged or doing jail time (their sentence), but the fact that they were swept up for something so benign perfectly illustrates Tehran’s rule by intimidation. Insulting the theocratic government and “blasphemy” are crimes. Hashem Shaabani, a poet, was accused of criticizing the regime. An executioner’s noose wrung the life out of him. To the Iranian regime, human life is cheap.

This same totalitarian lust for domestic subjugation animates Tehran’s aggression beyond its borders. Iran’s founding constitution states that its army and the Revolutionary Guards Corps

will be responsible not only for guarding and preserving the frontiers of the country, but also for fulfilling the ideological mission of jihad in God’s way; that is, extending the sovereignty of God’s law throughout the world (this is in accordance with the Koranic verse ‘Prepare against them whatever force you are able to muster, and strings of horses, striking fear into the enemy of God and your enemy, and others besides them’ [8:60]).

Iran has made good on that mission by helping build and train jihadist groups. Its main proxy force is Hezbollah (“the army of God”). It has carried out attacks from Beirut to Buenos Aries, and it has slaughtered American soldiers and diplomats in Lebanon and in Iraq. Despite being subjected to years of supposedly biting economic sanctions, Iran funneled billions of dollars to support the Assad regime in Syria and to provision Hamas, in the Gaza strip, with weapons and rockets.

Iran Doesn’t Have Split Personality Disorder

But suppose we took the facts of Iran’s character seriously. We would be able to formulate a rational approach toward that regime. Here are two key takeaways that ought to shape it.

First, Iran’s domestic repression and its imperialist march and its nuclear aspiration are inseparable. They stem from the same causal factor, the regime’s declared ideological mission. If Allah’s word is the truth (and Iran’s leaders definitely think so), then all mankind must be brought under its purview. How can there be any limits to where the truth must reign? (Tehran certainly sees no such limits.) How can any means to advance that grandiose vision be precluded? (For Iran, none should be.) Going nuclear would provide Iran with a new means to advance the goal of expanding Allah’s dominion.

Second, diplomatic engagement with Iran over the nuclear issue is a disaster in the making. Quite apart from the material “carrots” Iran might pocket and use to fund its jihadist proxies, simply allowing it to pull up a seat at the negotiating table is to confer on the regime an undeserved legitimacy. It implies that Iran, despite all the blood on its hands, is somehow a peace-seeking state; that despite its manifest belligerence, Iran is somehow committed to persuasion. Recall that Iran has engaged in deception at every step. Here we’re providing that tyranny with moral cover. Far from putting distance between Iran and the bomb, all this appeasing deal can do is encourage the regime in its malignant campaign.

The split-personality fallacy sabotages policy thinking. Fracturing Iran’s character into dissociated shards will not make Iran’s character something other than what it clearly is. Blinding ourselves to it just puts great distance between us and the crucial facts needed to resolve the situation.

And the nuclear deal promises to land us in graver problems down the road. It strengthens Iran, bringing the regime ever closer to going nuclear. By allowing that to happen, we will multiply the difficulty of using military force to defend ourselves from the Iranian menace. The reality we face is unpleasant and deeply distressing, but ignoring the truth can only subvert our security.

About The Author

Elan Journo

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

Fifty years ago, on July 30, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed into law Medicare and Medicaid, marking America’s first major steps towards the socialization of medicine. Medicare and Medicaid, which today pay the medical bills of one in three Americans, were passed on the premise that medical care is a right which individuals are entitled to regardless of whether they can pay for it; if an individual can’t afford the medical care he needs, it’s considered the responsibility of others to shoulder the costs.

On that unchallenged premise, the government has continued to expand medical care as an entitlement. Medicare and Medicaid now cover more medical services and more segments of the population, and new entitlement programs have been passed. Government controls in health care have burgeoned, dictating, for example, how much hospitals and medical professionals can charge for their efforts. Continuing that destructive pattern, President Obama’s Affordable Care Act greatly multiplies the control over health care.

Image: ittipon via Shutterstock.com

At ARI, we recognize the immense value of medicine to human life and advocate for liberating the field from government intervention. Life-saving vaccines, drugs, MRIs, ICUs and the myriad advances in medicine don’t grow on trees. They are discovered, invented, perfected, manufactured. Conspicuously downplayed in discussions of health care policy are the doctors, nurses, scientists, and other professionals whose thought, dedication, and work we rely on. The entrenched premise of Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare is that someone’s need for medical care entitles him to the unearned: the effort and wealth of others — not only taxpayers, but notably the medical professionals who make health care possible.

We reject that premise as immoral. We view that premise as enabling the continual expansion of government’s role in medicine — and as disarming advocates of freedom who concede it. To reverse course, what’s needed is a willingness to challenge that premise and advocate for freedom on the moral principle of individual rights.

The following articles, blog posts and videos spell out ARI’s position.

• Health Care Is Not a Right by Leonard Peikoff
• How Not to Fight Against Socialized Medicine by Ayn Rand
• Medicine: The Death of a Profession by Leonard Peikoff
• How Ayn Rand’s Ideas Can Save Health Care by Yaron Brook
• End the Debt Draft by Don Watkins
• Fifty Years Later: The Impossible Math of Medicare by Rituparna Basu
• Are Medicare Benefits Earned? by Rituparna Basu
• Why Is Medicare “Untouchable”? by Rituparna Basu
• It’s Time to Unplug Medicare’s Third Rail by Rituparna Basu
• The Broken State of American Health Insurance Prior to the Affordable Care Act: A Market Rife with Government Distortion by Rituparna Basu
• Obamacare Is Really, Really Bad For You, Especially If You’re Young by Rituparna Basu
• Obamacare: A Law We Can Be Proud Of? by Rituparna Basu
• Is Obamacare Here to Stay? by Don Watkins
• I’ll Buy My Own Contraception, Thanks by Rituparna Basu
• John Mackey Was Right — Obamacare Is Fascist by Rituparna Basu
• What Jonathan Gruber Teaches Us About Obamacare by Rituparna Basu

About The Author

Rituparna Basu

Rituparna Basu was a researcher and analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute between 2011 and 2016.

The diplomatic talks over Iran’s nuclear program have culminated in a deal. The particular terms—at least those that have been disclosed—are predictably ominous. Despite stringent-sounding limitations and inspections, the deal effectively clears the path for the Islamic Republic of Iran to cheat and game its way toward nuclear capability. For more than a decade, deception has been the hallmark of Iran’s quest for nuclear technology; why expect that to change now? Clearly, this is a bad deal, but the debate over what a “better” deal should look like ignores the underlying problem: to engage Iran in diplomacy is to disregard and downplay that regime’s vicious character and goals.

For decades Iran has been at war with us, but our intellectual and political leaders pretend otherwise. Tehran is a leader of the Islamist movement, the cause animating al Qaeda, the Taliban, the Muslim Brotherhood and kindred groups. It’s a regime that tramples on the rights of its own citizens, and it seeks to kill and subjugate beyond its borders. Through subcontractors like Hezbollah, Iran has committed many acts of aggression against the United States and other Western interests, going back three decades. Iran was behind the 1983 bombings of the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon and later bombed the barracks of U.S. Marines, killing 241. In Iraq, Iran supported insurgents who murdered American troops. It is aiding the Taliban in Afghanistan, and it has supplied weapons and rockets to Hamas in Gaza. Simply inviting it to the negotiating table is to confer on Iran an undeserved legitimacy.

Understanding Iran’s character is a necessary condition for defining a sound policy response. Since the 1980s, we at the Ayn Rand Institute have been calling attention to Iran’s actual character. The articles, talks, blog posts, and books listed below help explain how Iran is central to the Islamist totalitarian movement; what a proper, retaliatory response looks like; and how America’s irrational policies have crippled our ability to eliminate that menace.

• Religious Terrorism vs. Free Speech by Leonard Peikoff
• “End States Who Sponsor Terrorism” by Leonard Peikoff
• The Road to 9/11: How America’s Selfless Policies Unleashed The Jihadists by Elan Journo
• Winning the Unwinnable War: America’s Self-Crippled Response to Islamic Totalitarianism by Elan Journo
• The Foreign Policy of Self-Interest: A Moral Ideal for America by Peter Schwartz
• An Unwinnable War? By Elan Journo
• How Iran Gamed the Nuclear Talks by Elan Journo
• With or Without Nukes, Iran Is a Mortal Threat by Elan Journo
• Washington’s Make-Believe Policy on Iran by Elan Journo
• Obama’s Mirages in the Middle East by Elan Journo
• Elan Journo Reviews Dancing with the Devil in Middle East Quarterly by Carl Svanberg
• After 9/11, Lessons Unlearned by Elan Journo
• Diplomacy Only Encourages North Korea’s Belligerence by Elan Journo

About The Author

Elan Journo

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

In 1961 Ayn Rand was invited to speak at the Ford Hall Forum in Boston, America’s oldest continuously operating free public lecture series. This marked the beginning of Rand’s relationship with the Forum.

Over the years, Rand gave several talks in which she applied her philosophy of Objectivism on a wide range of topics such as art, censorship, capitalism, antitrust, abortion, the moon landing, the military draft, egalitarianism, inflation, Ronald Reagan and the religious right.

Now you can now relive Rand’s twenty years at the Ford Hall Forum.

The Intellectual Bankruptcy of Our Age (1961) | Download March 26, 1961

America’s Persecuted Minority: Big Business (1961) | Download December 17, 1961

The Fascist New Frontier (1962) | Download December 16, 1962

Is Atlas Shrugging? (1964) | Download April 19, 1964

The New Fascism: Rule by Consensus (1965) | Download April 18, 1965

Our Cultural Value-Deprivation (1966) | Download April 10, 1966

The Wreckage of the Consensus (1967) | Download April 16, 1967

What Is Capitalism? (1967) | Download November 19, 1967

Of Living Death (1968) | Download December 08, 1968

Apollo and Dionysus (1969) | Download November 09, 1969

The Anti-Industrial Revolution (1970) November 1, 1970

The Moratorium on Brains (1971) | Download November 14, 1971

A Nation’s Unity (1972) | Download October 22, 1972

Censorship: Local and Express (1973) | Download October 21, 1973

Egalitarianism and Inflation (1974) | Download October 20, 1974

The Moral Factor (1976) | Download April 11, 1976

Global Balkanization (1977) | Download April 10, 1977

Cultural Update (1978) | Download April 16, 1978

Age of Mediocrity (1981) | Download April 26, 1981

Image: Charlie Hebdo

When foreign governments, religious leaders and their faithful followers threaten and murder individuals for daring to speak, anyone who values his own life and freedom must stand with, and speak for, the victims.

We call on everyone to post and publicize the content that these totalitarians do not want us to see, as we are doing here.

It does not matter whether you agree or disagree with the particular book, cartoon or movie that they seek to silence. We must defend our unconditional right to freedom of thought and freedom of speech.

The totalitarians are counting on self-censorship: that their threats and attacks will leave most of us too scared to speak out and criticize their doctrines. They then have a chance of killing the few individuals brave enough to defy them.

We must end any hope that this strategy will prove effective.

In the wake of the attacks on Sony, many people rightly observed that if The Interview were put up on the Internet and made widely available, the attackers’ goal of silencing the filmmaker would be unachieved. The same goes for criticism and satire of Islamic doctrine.

If we now all defiantly make the content and images the jihadists wish to ban widely and permanently available across the web, the attackers will have failed. They may have taken the lives of the editor and cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo, for which we grieve, but they will not have taken their freedom.

The alternative is to cower and stick our heads in the sand in hope that the issue goes away. But this will not end the threat. It will only make our freedom disappear.

More:

• Freedom of Speech, “Islamophobia,” and the Cartoons Crisis, Elan Journo interviews Flemming Rose, 2014

• In the Sony Affair, Who Is the Real Coward? by Steve Simpson, 2014

• The Fear to Speak Comes to America’s Shores by Onkar Ghate, 2006

• The Twilight of Freedom of Speech by Onkar Ghate, 2006

• The Cartoon Jihad: Free Speech in the Balance by Christian Beenfeldt and Onkar Ghate, 2006

• Free Speech And The Danish Cartoons, A Panel Discussion with Yaron Brook, 2006

• Draw Mohammad Risk Your Life? by Elan Journo, 2010

• Surrender in Book on Mohammad Cartoons by Elan Journo, 2009

• Religious Terrorism vs. Free Speech by Leonard Peikoff, 1989

About The Author

Onkar Ghate

Chief Philosophy Officer and Senior Fellow, Ayn Rand Institute

Thirteen years have passed since jihadists rammed jetliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania. Doubtless the images of the Twin Towers collapsing are indelible, and the toll in human life was achingly massive. In time, though, memory fades. By themselves, our impressions of the past are insufficient to guide our thinking and action. We need consciously to identify lessons from our experience.

What should we learn? Here are three crucial lessons, still unlearned.

Lesson #1: America’s selfless foreign policy encouraged Islamist aggression.

Writing days after the attacks, Leonard Peikoff explained that: “Fifty years of increasing American appeasement in the Mideast have led to fifty years of increasing contempt in the Muslim world for the U.S. The climax was September 11, 2001.” My talk, “The Road to 9/11,” looks at several episodes of pre-9/11 Islamist aggression and the self-effacing responses of the Carter, George H.W. Bush, and Clinton Administrations. Standing apart from conventional thinking, ARI advocates for a foreign policy guided by the moral ideal of rational egoism, a policy that resolutely protects the lives and freedom of Americans.

What does that look like? Peter Schwartz’s monograph, The Foreign Policy of Self-Interest: A Moral Ideal for America lays out what an egoist approach looks like in theory and practice (purchase Kindle ebook or paperback). My book, Winning the Unwinnable War: America’s Self-Crippled Response to Islamic Totalitarianism, analyses the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and applies Ayn Rand’s ethics to foreign policy, defining a path to victory against the enemy. (Read the introduction.)

Lesson #2. The enemy is not just Bin Laden, or Al Qaeda, but the Islamist movement.

“Know your enemy” is a necessary condition for figuring out how to defeat the threat. Tragically, neither before nor after 9/11 did American policymakers understand the enemy. It is hopelessly superficial to think of the enemy as “terrorists” (many groups use that tactic) or “haters” or “hijackers of a great religion,” or Al Qaeda, etc. Bin Laden has been dead three-plus years, and Al Qaeda has been damaged — but clearly the threat persists.

The enemy is the Islamic totalitarian movement. It is a cause that encompasses many factions, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbollah, Hamas, the theocratic regime in Iran, the Islamic State, along with numerous al Qaeda offshoots. What unites them is the common goal of imposing Allah’s laws through conquest and subjugation. Recruits to the movement — from the Middle East, Europe, even the U.S. — embrace it as an ideological cause. Yet American policymakers evasively dance around the task of properly identifying the enemy. Many still see only disconnected dots, rather than the big picture: that we face an ideological movement.

For more on this issue, see the following:

“Disconnected Dots” by Elan Journo

“Jihad on America” by Elan Journo

Lesson #3. America’s post-9/11 military response was self-crippled.

In its power, sophistication, efficacy, and courage, the U.S. military is unequalled. So why did Afghanistan, where we faced Islamists armed with Kalashnikovs and beat-up SUVs, become America’s longest war, ever?

Fundamentally, the problem was not military, but political: the philosophic ideas shaping our war policy undercut the military campaign. In my book, I argue that by subordinating military victory to perverse, allegedly moral constraints, Washington’s policy undermined our national security. Instead of seeking to eliminate real threats — notably from the Tehran regime — the overarching policy goal was a crusade for democracy and nation-building in the Mideast. In the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, our military was hamstrung by self-effacing policies that prevented our troops from defeating whatever threats they faced. In its strategic objective and tactical conduct, our war policy was warped by conventional (wrong) ideas about morality.

The following items explain and illustrate the role of philosophic ideas in shaping U.S. policy:

“An Unwinnable War?” by Elan Journo

“Destination Nonvictory” by Elan Journo

“The Real Disgrace: Washington’s Battlefield ‘Ethics’” by Elan Journo

“The Forward Strategy for Failure” by Yaron Brook and Elan Journo

“Neoconservative Foreign Policy: An Autopsy” by Yaron Brook and Alex Epstein

“What Real War Looks Like” by Elan Journo

“America Is Not Winning the War” by Onkar Ghate

“Looking Back at the Post–9/11 Decade” by Elan Journo

“Obama Whitewashes Iran” by Elan Journo

In a video interview with my colleague Steve Simpson, I expand on a number these points and touch on recent developments in the Middle East.

About The Author

Elan Journo

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

Joshua Muravchik, Making David into Goliath: How the World Turned Against Israel (New York: Encounter Books, 2014), 296 pp. $25.99.

When Israel launched Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014, the international reaction was predictably vociferous. In London, Paris, and other capitals, thousands of people marched in rallies to decry Israel’s retaliation against Hamas-controlled Gaza. In editorials and op-eds, in the proclamations of academics, and in UN statements, Israel was accused of “war crimes” — a term given prominence after the Nuremberg trials. What distinguished this chorus of denunciation was its shopworn familiarity.

Rewind to 1967, when Israel faced off against neighboring Arab states. In London, Paris, and other capitals people took to the streets to endorse Israel. Editorials in The Times of London, The Guardian, The Economist, and Time magazine aligned with Israel. So did notable intellectuals and academics; one group even took out an ad spelling out its rationale in the Washington Post.

What happened since then to bring about this sea change? In Making David Into Goliath, scholar Joshua Muravchik presents a finely textured history that tells how international opinion turned so sharply against Israel.

The book’s account lays stress on two key developments, one political, the other intellectual.

The political shift unfolded after Israel’s humiliating defeat of the Arabs in the Six-Day War of 1967. Unable to win on the battlefield, the militant, autocratic Arab regimes moved to foster a Palestinian movement, which portrayed itself as part of the “progressive” camp. Superficially at least, Israel was recast as the powerful Goliath, whereas the Arab side, fronted by Palestinians, became the quintessential David.

Underpinning this reversal, the other pivotal development was moral-ideological: the rise of a “new paradigm of progressive thought.” Born of the New Left, in this outlook the central drama of world history was no longer the Marxist model of proletarians versus bourgeoisie, but rather “the third world against the West, or of people of color against the white man.” The Palestinians, in this theory, stand on the side of virtue; Israel, on the side of villainy.

At times working in league, at times fighting each other, the Arab regimes and the Palestinians took the fight against Israel beyond the battlefield. Palestinians gained worldwide notoriety for hijacking jetliners with breathtaking audacity. During one particularly energetic week in September 1970, Palestinian terrorists hijacked four planes simultaneously — and then, to extort the release of one of their crew who had just been captured, they took a fifth jet. Members of Palestinian terrorist groups bombed jetliners, murdered Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, and massacred schoolchildren in a grisly campaign of expanding scope and barbarity.

Perhaps what had an even greater impact on world opinion of Israel, however, was the shift that took place at the United Nations. Over the decade of the 1970s, the Arabs and the growing Third World bloc (sometimes allied with the Communists) took over the organization. As a result, Muravchik explains, the UN became “the principal instrument to legitimize and solemnize the advantages that the Arabs had gained since 1967 by bringing Palestinian national claims to the fore and by intimidating others through terrorism and the oil embargo.” A legacy of that diplomatic coup is the long-standing UN practice of overlooking pervasive violations of rights in Muslim regimes and across the world, but endlessly rebuking Israel on trumped-up charges.

Making David into Goliath retraces the fascinating history of how the Palestinian cause usurped the moral high ground from Israel. Initially that battle was fought in the halls of academia. In Muravchik’s telling, the chief enabler was a professor at Columbia University, Edward Said. In his major work Orientalism and a later tract The Question of Palestine, Said supplied the intellectual means for reinterpreting the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Muravchik notes that Said’s dodgy, arguably dishonest, scholarship led to the unwarranted equation of Arabs and Muslims with blacks living under apartheid. Hence the common trope that Israel is an “apartheid” state. Revered in academia, Said’s work jelled into an orthodoxy that embraced the Palestinians as righteous victims, despite the rampant terrorism perpetrated in their cause and by their number. Adding to that reframing of the conflict was a group of Israeli revisionist “new historians,” whose writings alleged that the founding of Israel was rife with “ethnic cleansing” and colonial-imperialist ambition.

Muravchik’s analysis details how a new narrative thereby took hold: that of Israel as the predator; the Palestinians as the supposedly powerless victims. All of this spilled out of scholarly books and seminars, and onto the agenda of international institutions, mainstream NGOs, the Israeli press, and the international media. You can see it on the streets as well, in the banners and chanted slogans at rallies in European capitals reviling Israel’s self-defense against Hamas.

The greatest strength of Making David into Goliath lies in Muravchik’s adroit telling of a riveting story that urgently needs to be told. Muravchik’s aim is not primarily to lambaste the intellectuals, political leaders, and activists who contrived to reshape the international view of Israel, but the historical account of their malice and duplicity amply convicts them.

In Muravchik’s causal explanation for the shift on Israel, the intellectual reframing of the conflict appears to have been the more potent factor. The other causal thread he emphasizes — the power and influence of Arab-Muslim regimes — clearly mattered too, but less than the New Left/progressive paradigm. There is one issue the book could have spent more time examining, namely how the apostles of that paradigm and their backers were able to succeed in defiance of the actual facts about Israel. We are left to wonder what impact the better scholars and political leaders had in resisting the anti-Israel trend, and what role wider intellectual currents, particularly moral-philosophical forces, played in the turnabout of world opinion.

Notwithstanding, Muravchik deserves praise for illuminating how Israel’s antagonists contrived to recast that beleaguered state as an international pariah. And how they succeeded in doing so, leaving Israel much the worse for wear.

About The Author

Elan Journo

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

Upon signing the Social Security Act of 1935, FDR declared that it was “a cornerstone in a structure which is being built but . . . is by no means complete.” It would not be finished, he held, until the government guaranteed Americans a “right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health.”

Franklin Roosevelt was unable to complete the structure — he lacked the political support for government to seize control over health care. Barack Obama was determined to finish what his progenitor had started.

In pushing for Obamacare, President Obama followed FDR’s playbook to the letter. Social Security had been sold on the premise that people must be forced to save for retirement; Obamacare was sold on the premise that people must be forced to buy health insurance. FDR had smeared opponents of Social Security as cold-hearted enemies of the old; Obama would smear opponents of Obamacare as cold-hearted enemies of the sick. FDR found it necessary to hide the true costs of Social Security from the public; Obama had the audacity to sell Obamacare as a means of lowering health care costs.

More perplexing, Obamacare’s opponents have followed the playbook of their predecessors — those who lost the debate over Social Security during the 1930s.

Want to predict Obamacare’s future? Look at Social Security’s past.

When FDR began pushing for Social Security, his proposal was seen as radical, which it was: He wanted to create an American welfare state. Yet the central argument he offered for Social Security was hardly novel: Elderly Americans were among the country’s most vulnerable citizens, and it was America’s moral duty to guarantee them a secure retirement. To oppose Social Security was to oppose helping old people.

How did the opponents of Social Security respond?

Some Republicans shouted that Social Security was socialism, which the New Dealers easily brushed off as fear-mongering (never mind that Bismarck, who created the modern welfare state, admitted that his program was partial socialism).

Others, including Roosevelt’s 1936 presidential challenger, Kansas Gov. Alf Landon, conceded that a welfare program for the elderly was a moral imperative to achieve “social justice,” assured the country that the president was acting out of benevolent impulses, and only quibbled over the details of FDR’s law, particularly its enormous cost. Whereas Roosevelt’s program would give handouts to a huge proportion of elderly Americans, the Republicans countered with a less ambitious plan targeted only at the elderly poor. Roosevelt won.

Once the Social Security Administration started dispensing handouts in 1940, opposition to the program virtually evaporated. Almost no Republicans were willing to advocate taking handouts away from Americans who were putatively in need. By the time Eisenhower assumed the presidency, Republicans as often as not were the ones proposing to expand Social Security.

So what can we expect from Obamacare? A pessimist might say that it too is now set in stone and Republicans will be working to expand it come next election cycle. We aren’t quite there yet. But any challenge will need to drop the focus on the program’s cost and its poor implementation, and expose it as immoral.

How? First, by defending the free market against those who would blame it for problems, such as the high cost of health care, that are in fact created by government intervention.

Second, opponents will have to make a clear distinction between an individual’s voluntary decision to support people and causes he cares about, and the moral premise underlying the welfare state: that a person’s need entitles him to support by others. In a free society, we can help others when we value them, but government cannot force us to sacrifice for others. But the welfare state forces our hopes and dreams to take a backseat whenever anyone presents us with an unfulfilled need. If an ambitious young adult is saving up to buy his first car, and Obamacare dumps an inflated health insurance bill in his lap to subsidize the elderly, that is not charity: That is immoral.

Finally, opponents of Obamacare have to offer an inspiring moral alternative: a fully free market, in which individuals are free to take care of their own health care needs, in which they are free to contract with health care providers in whatever way they judge best, and in which those who want to help others are free to do so voluntarily.

Until and unless we embrace such a crusade, Obamacare is here to stay.

About The Author

Don Watkins

Former Fellow (2006-2017), Ayn Rand Institute

This spring, Vermont passed a law requiring any food that includes genetically engineered ingredients — otherwise known as “GMOs” for “genetically modified organisms” — to carry a label. Vermont is the first state to pass such a law, but it likely won’t be the last. Oregon voters will decide on a similar measure in November and about 25 other states have proposed mandatory labeling legislation so far this year.

Proponents of the laws claim that the labels will lead to “informed consumers” making “better choices” about the foods they are eating. That sounds laudable. So what information will consumers actually find on the labels?

Will the labels inform you that approximately 80 percent of foods on grocery store shelves contain genetically engineered varieties of corn, soybeans and other fruits and vegetables? Despite the scariness of the term “GMO,” chances are you ate one for breakfast. People have eaten trillions of meals containing GMOs since farmers first pushed the first biotech seeds into the ground back in the mid-1990s. These foods haven’t caused a single ill health effect.

Will the labels point out that humans have been “genetically modifying” foods for centuries? Even something as familiar as sweet corn began as a wild grass-like plant that produced a few, tiny cob-like fruits. More than 5,000 years ago, Mesoamerican people began selecting and planting the seeds of the plants they preferred, discarding the rest. Our ancestors, without knowing anything about DNA or genes, were influencing changes in the genetic make-up of their food, making it tastier, more nutritious and easier to grow.

Today, scientists are using their understanding of genetics to make small and targeted improvements to the foods we eat. If you imagine that the genome of a plant is like a book, modern genetic engineering amounts to editing a few sentences to make it read better.

Will the labels tell you that farmers have rapidly adopted these engineered varieties because they are easier to grow and keep healthy in the field? Varieties of corn and cotton resistant to insects can be protected with fewer pesticides. Papayas and squash inoculated against nasty plant viruses don’t get sick and rot on the branch.

No, the labels won’t include any of these facts about GMOs. In fact, the labels won’t convey any actual information at all — just an intimidating warning that the product contains GMOs. So what’s their real purpose?

In an episode of Penn & Teller’s aptly named TV show “Bullsh*t!,” a woman gets a bunch of people to sign a petition to ban “dihydrogen monoxide.” Dihydrogen monoxide, of course, is just the scientific name for “water,” but for people who aren’t scientifically versed, the name isn’t informative. It just sounds scary.

The term “genetically modified organism” is as unfamiliar as “dihydrogen monoxide” and anti-GMO activists know that. The goal is not to inform consumers, but to frighten them away from buying something that is in reality as innocuous as water.

The activists’ long-term strategy is to achieve an outright ban on GMOs. As one prominent anti-GMO leader, Dr. Joseph Mercola, said: “Personally, I believe GM foods must be banned entirely, but labeling is the most efficient way to achieve this. Since 85 percent of the public will refuse to buy foods they know to be genetically modified, this will effectively eliminate them from the market just the way it was done in Europe.”

The anti-GMO fear-mongering is not based on science, but on the dogma that man should not “play God” by trying to improve nature — and that if he does, his hubris will lead ultimately to disaster. But there’s no evidence of this pending disaster, so activists have resorted to fear tactics and the strong arm of the government to drive people to reject a successful technology and the foods improved with it.

What really needs a warning label is the anti-GMO activists’ toxic, anti-technology stance. They pose an actual threat to people’s health.

About The Author

Amanda Maxham

Former junior fellow and later a research associate (2012-2018), Ayn Rand Institute

The latest fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza has raged now for almost three weeks. World opinion seems opposed to Israel’s actions, with anti-Israel demonstrations breaking out throughout Europe, although some groups have sided with Israel in the U.S. and Britain. The U.N. and the American State Department have called on both sides to negotiate a cease fire. Who is right and who is wrong in this conflict and how should we think about it?

In ARI’s view the first step is to recognize that this is not a war between moral equals. Israel is the only essentially free country in the Middle East. Hamas, which rules Gaza and is fighting in the name of Islamic totalitarianism, is a terrorist group whose purpose is to destroy Israel. It has launched thousands of rockets against innocent Israelis for nearly a decade. Israel is retaliating against Hamas in self-defense.

That context is crucial to understanding the current conflict and the wider war Israel has been fighting for decades. That context means, in our view, that Israel has morality on its side, and that America and the West should stand with Israel, instead of condemning her for alleged “war crimes” and urging “restraint.”

To understand more about this conflict, we recommend the following resources:

“Israel Has a Moral Right to Its Life” by Yaron Brook and Peter Schwartz

The Hamas-Israel War — Interview with Elan Journo

Understanding the Arab-Israeli Conflict — A lecture series by Elan Journo

The Arab-Israeli Conflict and the Palestinian Refugees — Interview with Dr. Efraim Karsh, professor of Middle East and Mediterranean Studies at King’s College London

Twenty Years After Oslo: Where Next for U.S. Policy? — Panel discussion with Elan Journo

America and Israel:

“Washington’s Pro-Hamas Foreign Policy” by Elan Journo

“The Perversity of U.S. Backing for the Gaza Retreat” by Elan Journo

“The Indispensable Condition of Peace” by Onkar Ghate

“The Price of Bush’s Commitment to Palestinian Statehood” by Elan Journo

Israel and the laws of war:

“How the International Laws of War Abet Hamas, Undercut Israel” by Elan Journo

“World Upside Down” by Elan Journo

About The Author

Elan Journo

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