The assassination of Benazir Bhutto has, we’re told, upended Washington’s foreign policy. “Our foreign policy has relied on her presence as a stabilizing force. . . . Without her, we will have to regroup,” explained Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) in the Washington Post. “It complicates life for the American government.”

But in fact U.S. policy was in disarray long before the assassination.

U.S. diplomats have been scrambling for months to do something about the growing power of Islamists in the nuclear-armed nation which Washington hails as a “major non-NATO ally.” Having supported President Musharraf’s authoritarian regime, Washington helped broker the deal to allow Bhutto back into Pakistan, hoping she might create a pro-U.S. regime, but then decided to push Musharraf to share power with Bhutto, then insisted that he’s “indispensable,” but also flirted with the idea of backing Bhutto.

All this against the backdrop of the creeping Talibanization of Pakistan. Islamist fighters once “restricted to untamed mountain villages along the [Pakistani-Afghan] border,” now “operate relatively freely in cities like Karachi,” according to Newsweek. The Taliban “now pretty much come and go as they please inside Pakistan.” They are easily slipping in and out of neighboring Afghanistan to arm and train their fighters, and foster attacks on the West.

Why has Washington proven so incapable of dealing with this danger to U.S. security? The answer lies in how we embraced Pakistan as an ally.

Pakistan was an improbable ally. In the 1990s its Inter-Services Intelligence agency had helped bring the Taliban to power; Gen. Musharraf’s regime, which began in 1999, formally endorsed the Taliban regime; and many in Pakistan support the cause of jihad (taking to the streets to celebrate 9/11). But after 9/11 the Bush administration asserted that we needed Pakistan as an ally, and that the alternatives to Gen. Musharraf’s military dictatorship were far worse.

If the administration was right about that (which is doubtful), we could have had an alliance with Pakistan under only one condition–treating this supposedly lesser of two evils as, indeed, evil.

It would have required acknowledging the immorality of Pakistan’s past and demanding that it vigorously combat the Islamic totalitarians as proof of repudiating them. Alert to the merest hint of Pakistan’s disloyalty, we’d have had to keep the dictatorial regime at arm’s length. This would have meant openly declaring that both the regime and the pro-jihadists among Pakistan’s people are immoral, that our alliance is delimited to one goal, and that we would welcome and support new, pro-American leaders in Pakistan who actually embrace freedom.

But instead, Washington evaded Pakistan’s pro-Islamist past and pretended that this corrupt regime was good. We offered leniency on Pakistan’s billion-dollar debts, opened up a fire-hose of financial aid, lifted economic sanctions, and blessed the regime simply because it agreed to call itself our ally and pay lip-service to enacting “reforms.” After Musharraf pledged his “full support” and “unstinting cooperation,” we treated the dictator as if he were some freedom-loving statesman, and effectively whitewashed the regime.

Since we did not demand any fundamental change in Pakistan’s behavior as the price of our alliance, we should not have expected any.

Pakistan’s “unstinting cooperation” included help with the token arrests of a handful of terrorists–even as the country became a haven for Islamists. Since 2001, Islamists have established a stronghold in the Pakistani-Afghan tribal borderlands (where bin Laden may be hiding). But our “ally” neither eradicated them nor allowed U.S. forces to do so. Instead in 2006 Musharraf reached a truce with them: in return for the Islamists’ “promise” not to attack Pakistani soldiers, not to establish their own Taliban-like rule, and not to support foreign jihadists–Pakistan backed off and released 165 captured jihadists.

Far from protesting, President Bush endorsed this appeasing deal, saying: “When [Musharraf] looks me in the eye and says” this deal will stop “the Talibanization of the people, and that there won’t be a Taliban and won’t be al Qaeda, I believe him.”

We have gone on paying Pakistan for its “cooperation,” to the tune of $10 billion in aid. The Islamists, who predictably reneged on the truce, now have a new staging area in Pakistan from which to plot attacks on us (perhaps, one day, with Pakistani nukes).

Why did our leaders evade Pakistan’s true nature? Faced with the need to do something against the totalitarian threat, it was far easier to pretend that Musharraf was a great ally who would help rid us of our problems if we would only uncritically embrace him. To declare Musharraf’s regime evil, albeit the lesser of two evils, would have required a deep moral confidence in the righteousness of our cause. The Bush administration didn’t display this confidence in our own fight against the Taliban, allowing the enablers of bin Laden to flee rather than ruthlessly destroying them. Why would it display such confidence in dealing with Pakistan?

But no matter how much one pretends that facts are not facts, eventually they will rear their heads.

This is why we are so unable to deal with the threat of Pakistan. Our blindness is self-induced.

About The Author

Elan Journo

Senior Fellow and Vice President, Content and Advanced Training, Ayn Rand Institute

Ever since President Bush’s you’re-either-with-us-or-with-the-terrorists speech in 2001, his administration has been regarded as shaping its defense policy according to black-and-white moral judgments. If you haven’t already been convinced that that speech was empty rhetoric, last week offered another depressing piece of evidence.

Washington refused to oppose, or even protest, Libya’s election to a seat on the U.N. Security Council.

A genuine commitment to the principle of justice would entail recognizing that Libya’s character — like that of an individual — is the sum of its words and conduct across years, and that it cannot be transformed overnight.

No one would believe a career thief who claims that he’s renounced his vile behavior and transformed his character instantly. It is the thief’s responsibility to go out of his way to acknowledge and condemn his past actions, to make restitution where possible, and to demonstrate a commitment to the law across years. The burden, in other words, is on him to prove he has reshaped his moral character and is no longer a threat.

Likewise, no one should believe that a vicious regime such as Libya has (as it claims) suddenly transformed itself into a civilized, peace-loving country. Remember, among other heinous attacks, Libya is responsible for the bombing of a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed over 200 passengers.

Before Libya will even deserve a hearing, it must bend over backwards to prove its commitment to peaceful co-existence with other nations, across many years. For example, Libya must reject dictatorship, dethrone Gaddafi and prosecute him. It must exhaustively confess and document the regime’s crimes. In the name of restitution, it must declare that all Islamic terrorists are its enemies, and not simply name a few names, but actively combat other terrorist regimes such as Iran. Such steps would constitute only the very early beginnings of what Libya would have to do to make credible its disavowal of aggression. Before we can regard Libya as a non-hostile nation, it must prove unequivocally, in word and deed, that it has undergone a fundamental transformation.

But when in 2003 Libya promised to end its terrorism and to dismantle its nuclear weapons program, Washington took Gaddafi’s word as golden and decided that, suddenly, Libya was our ally against terrorism. So Washington agreed to restore diplomatic relations and lift economic sanctions.

Has Libya truly renounced terrorism? About a year after its overture to Washington, the regime was discovered to be fomenting a terrorist plot in Saudi Arabia. And although the U.S. State Department had re-affirmed Libya as a sponsor of terrorism as recently as March 2006, only two months later Washington removed Libya from the list of terrorist states. Has Libya diligently tried to make restitution to victims of its terrorism? Hardly. It grudgingly agreed to compensate the families of its victims, and then unrepentantly dragged its feet in making payments.

Libya has not even come close to changing its character — yet the Bush administration warmly opened its arms to the dictatorial regime.

Why? It wants to send Iran the signal that it could similarly resolve the conflict over its nuclear quest and its longstanding terror war against the United States. Explaining the rationale, Secretary of State Rice said: “Libya is an important model as nations around the world press for changes in the behavior by the Iranian and North Korean regimes.” This is America trying to project itself as a morally confident nation that will not tolerate evil regimes . . . by hastily forgiving the evil Libyan regime. It is a pathetic joke, and will do nothing to deter Teheran from its nuclear ambition.

The Bush administration has mocked justice — and thus shown our enemies that they have nothing to fear from us.

If we are to form true alliances and protect ourselves from hostile regimes, America must steer its foreign policy according to the objective requirements of justice.

About The Author

Elan Journo

Senior Fellow and Vice President, Content and Advanced Training, Ayn Rand Institute

The Law of the Sea Treaty, which awaits a ratification vote in the U.S. Senate, declares most of the earth’s vast ocean floor to be “the common heritage of mankind” and places it under United Nations ownership “for the benefit of mankind as a whole.”

This treaty has been bobbing in the legislative ocean for the past 25 years. After President Ronald Reagan refused to sign it in 1982, repeated attempts at ratification have failed. Last month, however, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 17 – 4 to send it to the full Senate, where a two-thirds majority is required to ratify.

What’s at stake are trillions of tons of vital minerals such as manganese, nickel, copper, zinc, gold and silver — enough to supply current needs for thousands of years — spread over vast seabeds constituting 41 percent of the planet’s area. Senate ratification would signify U.S. agreement that the International Seabed Authority, a U.N. agency based in Jamaica, should own these resources in perpetuity.

Why should we agree to this?

Like any other hard-to-reach resources, these undersea minerals are completely valueless where they now rest. What is it that makes such resources actually valuable? It is the thinking and action of inventors, engineers, explorers and entrepreneurs who devote their mental energy to the task of finding and retrieving them. These undersea pioneers don’t just find wealth, they create wealth — by bringing a portion of nature’s bounty under human control.

Despite the treaty’s allusion to seabeds as the “common heritage of mankind,” mankind as a whole has done exactly nothing to create value in the deep ocean, which is a remote wilderness, virtually unexploited. Under the proposed treaty, however, the ocean mining companies — whose science, exploration, technology, and entrepreneurship are being counted on to gather otherwise inaccessible riches — are treated as mere servants of a world collective.

In practice, under the treaty’s explicitly socialist approach, mining companies operate as mere licensees who must render hefty application fees as well as continuing payments (read: taxes) and obtain prior approval at every stage of work, under regulations that emerge sluggishly from multinational committees.

Licensees must also enrich a U.N.-operated competitor called, spookily enough, “The Enterprise.” For every square mile of ocean bottom a licensee explores, half must be relinquished to The Enterprise, free of charge — and The Enterprise gets to pick the better half.

Licensees must also make available, on so-called reasonable commercial terms, their technology and know-how, and even train this giant competitor’s personnel. At the end of the day, profits from The Enterprise, along with taxes from licensees, are distributed to U.N. member-nations such as Cuba, Uganda and Venezuela, who contribute nothing to the productive process.

The treaty simply assumes as a self-evident truth that wealth sharing is the moral duty of the haves toward the have-nots, and that the world’s needy nations have a moral claim on the wealth created by undersea miners. But we should pause to challenge both that moral assumption and its legal implications.

Morally, undersea mining operations are entitled to own outright those portions of the ocean floor they exploit, by virtue of the productive effort they expend. Producers in general are morally entitled to live and work for their own sake, keeping the wealth they create without any moral debt to those who didn’t create it. Because nature requires us to be productive in order to live, the businessman’s pursuit of profit is properly regarded as a virtue, not a vice indebting him to a hungry planet.

Legally, this viewpoint is embodied in the American ideals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, secured by private property rights. A historical example of the proper principle in action is the Homestead Act of 1862. Farmers acquired property rights, i.e., private deeds, to 270 million acres of fertile Midwest prairie land by the productive act of farming it, parcel by parcel.

Suppose, instead, that the U.S. government had issued only licenses, not deeds, for the acreage those farmers carved out of wild prairie land. Then suppose the government had transferred half that hard-won acreage to “The Farm,” a giant government-owned competitor whose field hands the farmers would be expected to equip and train. Of course, such a travesty would have been unthinkable in the relatively capitalistic 19th century.

Governments today have legitimate options regarding how to deal with undersea explorers’ need to establish property rights in the deep ocean. But it would be totally improper for America to declare eternal hostility to private property in the ocean floor by ratifying a treaty dedicated on principle to denying such rights.

About The Author

Tom Bowden

Analyst and Outreach Liaison, Ayn Rand Institute

This month marks the tenth anniversary of Oregon’s pathbreaking assisted suicide law. But despite legislative proposals in California and elsewhere, Oregon remains the only state to have provided clear procedures by which doctors can help end their dying patients’ pain and suffering while protecting themselves from criminal prosecution.

For a decade now, Oregon doctors have been permitted to prescribe a lethal dose of drugs to a mentally competent, terminally ill patient who makes written and oral requests, consults two physicians, and endures a mandatory waiting period. The patient’s free choice is paramount throughout this process. Neither relatives nor doctors can apply on the patient’s behalf, and the patient himself administers the lethal dose.

Elsewhere in America, however, the political influence of religious conservatism has thwarted passage of similar legislation, leaving terminal patients with nothing but a macabre menu of frightening, painful, and often violent end-of-life techniques universally regarded as too inhumane for use on sick dogs or mass murderers.

Consider Percy Bridgman, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who, at 79, was entering the final stages of terminal cancer. Wracked with pain and bereft of hope, he got a gun and somehow found courage to pull the trigger, knowing he was condemning others to the agony of discovering his bloody remains. His final note said simply: “It is not decent for society to make a man do this to himself. Probably this is the last day I will be able to do it myself.”

What lawmakers must grasp is that there is no rational basis upon which the government can properly prevent any individual from choosing to end his own life. When religious conservatives enact laws to enforce the idea that their God abhors suicide, they threaten the central principle on which America was founded.

The Declaration of Independence proclaimed, for the first time in the history of nations, that each person exists as an end in himself. This basic truth — which finds political expression in the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — means, in practical terms, that you need no one’s permission to live, and that no one may forcibly obstruct your efforts to achieve your own personal happiness.

But what if happiness becomes impossible to attain? What if a dread disease, or some other calamity, drains all joy from life, leaving only misery and suffering? The right to life includes and implies the right to commit suicide. To hold otherwise — to declare that society must give you permission to kill yourself — is to contradict the right to life at its root. If you have a duty to go on living, despite your better judgment, then your life does not belong to you, and you exist by permission, not by right.

For these reasons, each individual has the right to decide the hour of his death and to implement that solemn decision as best he can. The choice is his because the life is his. And if a doctor is willing (not forced) to assist in the suicide, based on an objective assessment of his patient’s mental and physical state, the law should not stand in his way.

Religious conservatives’ opposition to the Oregon approach stems from the belief that human life is a gift from the Lord, who puts us here on earth to carry out His will. Thus, the very idea of suicide is anathema, because one who “plays God” by causing his own death, or assisting in the death of another, insults his Maker and invites eternal damnation, not to mention divine retribution against the decadent society that permits such sinful behavior.

If a religious conservative contracts a terminal disease, he has a legal right to regard his own God’s will as paramount, and to instruct his doctor to stand by and let him suffer, just as long as his body and mind can endure the agony, until the last bitter paroxysm carries him to the grave. But conservatives have no right to force such mindless, medieval misery upon doctors and patients who refuse to regard their precious lives as playthings of a cruel God.

Rational state legislators should regard the Oregon law’s anniversary as a stinging reminder that 49 of the 50 states have failed to take meaningful steps toward recognizing and protecting an individual’s unconditional right to commit suicide.

About The Author

Tom Bowden

Analyst and Outreach Liaison, Ayn Rand Institute

As part of his universal health care proposal, John Edwards would make doctor visits and other forms of preventive care mandatory. In a similar proposal in England, a Tory panel suggested that Britons should be forced to adopt a government-prescribed “healthy lifestyle.” Britons who “cooperate” by quitting smoking or losing weight would receive Health Miles that could be used to purchase vegetables or gym memberships; those who don’t would be denied certain medical treatments.

These paternalistic proposals are offered as solutions to the spiraling costs that plague our respective health care systems. It is unrealistic, states the Tory report, for British citizens “to expect that the state will underwrite the health implications of any lifestyle decision they choose to make.”

But any proposal that expands the government’s power to control our lives — to dictate to us when to go to the doctor or how many helpings of veggies we must eat — cannot be a solution to anything. Instead of debating what coercive measures we should be taking to lower “social costs,” we should be questioning the health care systems that make our lifestyles other people’s business in the first place.

Both the American and British systems, despite their differences, are fundamentally collectivist: they exist on the premise that the individual’s health is not his own responsibility, but “society’s.” Both Britain’s outright socialized medicine and America’s semi-socialized blend of Medicare, Medicaid, and government-controlled, employer-sponsored health plans aim to relieve the individual of the burden of paying for his own health care by coercively imposing those costs on his neighbors.

When the government introduces force into the health care system to relieve the individual of responsibility for his own health, it is inevitably led to progressively expand its control over that system and every citizen’s life.

For example, in a system in which medical care is “free” or artificially inexpensive, with someone else paying for one’s health care, medical costs spiral out of control because individuals are encouraged to demand medical services without having to consider their real costs. When “society” foots the bill for one’s health, it also encourages the unhealthy lifestyles of the short-range mentalities who don’t care to think beyond the next plate of French fries. The astronomical tab that results from all of this causes collectivist politicians to condemn various easy targets (e.g., doctors, insurance companies, smokers, the obese) for taking too much of the “people’s money,” and then to enact a host of coercive measures to control expenses: price controls on medical services, cuts to medical benefits — or, as with the current proposals, attempts to reduce demand for medical services by forcing a “healthy lifestyle” on individuals.

Properly, your health care decisions and expenditures are not anyone’s business but your own — any more than how much you spend on food, cars, or movies is. But under collectivized health care, every Twinkie you eat, doctor’s visit you cancel, or lab test you wish to have run, becomes other people’s right to question, regulate, and prohibit — because they are paying for it. When “society” collectively bears the costs of health care, the government will inevitably seek to dictate every detail of medical care and, ultimately, every detail of how you live your life.

To protect our health and our freedom, we must reject collectivized health care, and put an end to a system that forces us to pay for other people’s medical care. We must remove government from the system and demand a free market in medicine — one in which the government’s only role is to protect the individual rights of doctors, patients, hospitals, and insurance companies to deal with one another voluntarily, and where each person is responsible for his own health care.

Let’s not allow the land of the free and the home of the brave to become a nation of dependents looking to the nanny state to take care of us and following passively its dictates as to how we should live our lives.

About The Authors

Yaron Brook

Chairman of the Board, Ayn Rand Institute

Don Watkins

Former Fellow (2006-2017), Ayn Rand Institute

It isn’t news that environmentalism has gone mainstream in a big way — with organic food in every grocery store, hybrid cars on every freeway, and every mass-market magazine declaring green the “new black.” More than ever before, consumers are buying into environmentalist ideology — and buying products that purport to impact nature less, in order to impact nature less.

One would think that serious environmentalists would be thrilled about this trend — thrilled that the public seems willing to take ecological marching orders and do its duty to the planet. But they aren’t: A backlash against “buying green” has arisen in environmentalist circles, with critics disparaging the new eco-consumers as “light greens,” and condemning the “Cosmo-izing of the green movement.”

Surprising? Not really. Not if one grasps the deeper meaning of environmentalism.

Most people have a mistaken view of environmentalism. They see it as a movement whose goal is to protect the environment so that we, and future generations, may continue to enjoy it. Environmentalists might call for certain sacrifices — like stern priests calling upon us to do penance for our sins — but people take their word for it that those sacrifices will turn out to be for the good of “society.” People feel virtuous in paying more for those organic blueberries and spending time washing out tin cans and nasty cloth diapers, because they see it as a sacrifice for the “greater good.” And although “going green” may demand some cost and effort, it need not — on this view — be too burdensome nor demand personal hardships that are too great.

But in fact, the goal of environmentalism is not any alleged benefit to mankind; its goal is to preserve nature untouched — to prevent nature from being altered for human purposes. Observe that whenever there is a conflict between the goals of “preserving nature” and pursuing some actual human value, environmentalists always side with nature against man. If tapping Arctic oil reserves to supply our energy needs might affect the caribou, environmentalists demand that we leave vast tracts of Arctic tundra completely untouched. If a new freeway bypass will ease traffic congestion but might disturb the dwarf wedge mussel, environmentalists side with the mollusk against man. If a “wetland” is a breeding ground for disease-carrying insects, environmentalists fight to prevent it being drained no matter the toll of human suffering.

It is simply not true that environmentalism values human well being. It demands sacrifices, not for the sake of any human good, but for the sake of leaving nature untouched. It calls for sacrifice as an end in itself.

Though environmentalists will often claim to be opposed to merely “indiscriminate” or “excessive” consumption of natural resources, their ideology actually drives them to oppose any act of altering nature for human purposes. The environmentalist goal of “preserving nature” unavoidably conflicts with the requirements of human life: Man’s basic means of survival is to reshape nature to serve his ends, to take the raw materials of his environment and use them to produce values. But this requires “touching” nature, not leaving it untouched. Even organic crops require land and water and energy; even hybrid cars are built of metal and plastic and glass, and use up fuel. All human activity, on whatever scale, violates the environmentalist injunction to “leave nature alone.”

This is why it is no surprise that environmentalist leaders would condemn “buying green” as a consumer trend. Says Michael Ableman, an organic farmer and environmental author: “The assumption that by buying anything, whether green or not, we’re solving the problem is a misperception. Consuming is a significant part of the problem to begin with.” In other words, the very act of consuming — i.e., pursuing material values in support of our lives — is a “problem.”

Environmentalists are criticizing “buying green,” because at root they are against buying anything.

Anyone who thinks that it’s easy being “green” — that “eco-chic” is consistent with the principles of environmentalism — had better think harder about the true nature of the ideology they are helping bring into power. Environmentalists’ call for minor sacrifices for the sake of some undefined “greater good” is the first stage in their call for sacrifice as such, for no human benefit whatsoever.

If environmentalists are now confident enough to start attacking “buying green” as superficial and hypocritical, we had better take them at their word and stop buying anything they have to sell, especially their poisonous ideology.

About The Author

Keith Lockitch

Vice President of Education and Senior Fellow, Ayn Rand Institute

On the 50th anniversary of its publication, Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand’s epic about a group of businessmen who rebel against a society that shackles and condemns them, is everywhere. Hardly a day goes by without a mention of the novel in the media or by some prominent celebrity or businessman as the most significant book he’s read. Meanwhile, Ayn Rand’s novels, including Atlas Shrugged, are being taught in tens of thousands of high schools. And last year sales of the novel in bookstores topped an astonishing 130,000 copies — more than when it was first published.

As executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, I see the impact of Atlas Shrugged on a daily basis. I’m continually amazed by how many people, from every walk of life and every part of the planet, from high school students to political activists in countries from Hong Kong to Belarus to Ghana, eagerly tell me: “Atlas Shrugged changed my life.”

Scores of business leaders, from CEOs of Fortune 500 companies to young entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, say they have derived great spiritual fuel from Atlas Shrugged. Many tell me that the novel has motivated them to make the most of their lives, inspiring them to be more ambitious, more productive, and more successful in their work. And many of America’s politicians and intellectuals who claim to fight for economic freedom name Atlas Shrugged as the book that has most inspired them. I have no doubt that the novel has played a considerable role in discrediting socialism as an ideal and in making discussion of capitalism intellectually legitimate.

If you have read Atlas Shrugged and entered the universe of Dagny Taggart, Hank Rearden, and John Galt, you can understand why the novel has inspired so many in this way. Atlas Shrugged portrays great businessmen as heroic, productive thinkers, and it venerates capitalism as the only social system that leaves such minds free to create and produce the material values on which all of our lives depend. It gives philosophic and esthetic expression to the uniquely American spirit of individualism, of self-reliance, of entrepreneurship, of free markets.

But while many people appreciate these elements of Atlas Shrugged on a personal, emotional level, they are often uncomfortable on a moral level with the novel’s arguments in support of business and capitalism.

Ayn Rand’s ethical philosophy of rational selfishness — on which her admiration for successful businessmen and her impassioned defense of capitalism rest — constitutes a radical challenge to the dominant beliefs of our culture. Rejecting the prevailing ideas that morality comes from a supernatural being or from a societal decree, Rand holds that morality is a science that can be proved by reason. Rejecting the altruistic idea that morality consists of selflessly serving something “higher” — whether the Judeo-Christian God or a collectivist society — she maintains that the height of moral virtue is to rationally pursue your own selfish ends.

Socialism as a political ideal is dead. But the morality that spawned it — from each according to his ability, to each according to his need — still haunts us. So long as need and the “public interest” are regarded as moral claim checks on the ability of the productive, the continued growth of the government’s control over the economy and our lives is inevitable.

Those who have read Atlas Shrugged are often struck by the similarity of the events in the novel to the disastrous events reported in the daily news — from the government’s attempt to take over medicine to decaying infrastructure and collapsing bridges to the shackles on businessmen inflicted by Sarbanes-Oxley. The similarity is no accident: the justification for these government programs is the needs of the uninsured, the so-called public interest, and the necessity to curb the selfishness of businessmen. Without a moral revolution, we cannot win true economic or political freedom.

So while Atlas Shrugged has provided millions with inspiration and with some level of appreciation for the virtues of capitalism and the evils of statism, it has not had nearly the influence it could have had, had its underlying ideas gained wider understanding. Though it has changed individual lives, it has not changed the world. But I believe it could — and should.

Imagine a future America guided by the principles found in Atlas Shrugged — a culture of reason, where science is cherished and respected, not banished from biology classrooms and stem-cell research labs — a culture of individualism, in which government is the protector of individual rights, not its primary violator — a culture in which markets are not just regarded as the most effective option of an imperfect lot, but in which laissez-faire capitalism is recognized and venerated as the only moral social system — a culture in which business innovators understand that ambition, productive effort, and wealth creation are not just practical necessities, but moral virtues — a culture in which such innovators, proudly asserting their right to their work, are fully liberated and their productive genius fully applied to the generation of unimaginable economic progress.

This is the world that Atlas Shrugged challenges us to strive for. But in order to get there, the novel’s full philosophic meaning must be grasped. This is precisely why the Ayn Rand Institute exists: to convey Rand’s profound message. And her message is getting out, all the way to professional intellectuals, on campuses and elsewhere across America, who are taking up Ayn Rand’s ideas with a seriousness that they never have shown before.

With more and more thinkers giving it the attention it merits, I am confident that the real influence of Atlas Shrugged has yet to be felt.

About The Author

Yaron Brook

Chairman of the Board, Ayn Rand Institute

Six years after 9/11, the Bush administration’s disastrous foreign policy has led many Americans to call for a supposedly “practical” alternative. To confront the threats from nuclear-weapons-chasing Iran and other aggressors, they say, we need a policy of diplomatic engagement and negotiation with hostile regimes. But what were the results when essentially the same policy was followed in the decades prior to 9/11?

Was America’s resolution of the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis really a triumph of diplomacy? When Ayatollah Khomeini issued a death decree against author Salman Rushdie, for daring to offend Muslims, was our response one that we should emulate? Is it true that responding to aggression with “flexibility” and diplomatic talks will soften the aggressor and bring lasting peace, whereas retaliation only aggravates conflict?

What kind of foreign policy will protect the lives and freedom of Americans?

Tragically, Americans have continually been offered a false alternative in foreign policy: self-sacrificing, “idealistic” policies (such as Bush’s crusade) or unprincipled “practical” policies (such as appeasing Iran) — a choice between two fundamentally selfless, and thus self-destructive, approaches. What America needs instead is a practical, principled approach to foreign policy, one informed by Ayn Rand’s revolutionary morality of rational egoism. (Recorded September 10, 2007.)

About The Author

Elan Journo

Senior Fellow and Vice President, Content and Advanced Training, Ayn Rand Institute

Americans rightly admire our troops for their bravery, dedication and integrity. The Marines, for instance, are renowned for abiding by an honorable code — as warriors and as individuals in civilian life. They epitomize the rectitude of America’s soldiers. But a recently disclosed Pentagon study — little noted in the media — has seemingly cast a shadow over our troops.

The study of U.S. combat troops in Iraq finds that less than half of the soldiers and Marines surveyed would report a team member for breaches of the military’s ethics rules. Military and civilian observers have concluded from the study that more and stricter training in combat ethics is urgently needed.

But instead of reinforcing the military’s ethics, we must challenge them. The Pentagon study provides evidence for a searing indictment not of our soldiers but of Washington’s rules of engagement.

Consider the waking nightmare of being a U.S. combat troop in Iraq: imagine that you are thrust into a battlefield — but purposely hamstrung by absurd restrictions. Iraqis throw Molotov cocktails (i.e., gasoline-filled bottles) at your vehicle — but you are prohibited from responding with force. Iraqis, to quote the study, “drop large chunks of concrete blocks from second story buildings or overpasses” as you drive by — but you are not allowed to respond. “Every group of Soldiers and Marines interviewed,” the Pentagon study summarizes, “reported that they felt the existing ROE [rules of engagement] tied their hands, preventing them from doing what needed to be done to win the war.”

And the soldiers are right. In Iraq, Washington’s rules have systematically prevented our brave and capable troops from using all necessary force to win, to crush the insurgency — and even to protect themselves. As noted in news articles since the start of the war, American forces are ordered not to bomb key targets, such as power plants, and to avoid firing into mosques (where insurgents hide) lest they offend Muslim sensibilities.

Having to follow such self-effacing rules of engagement while confronting sniper fire and ambushes and bombs from every direction, day in and day out, must be utterly demoralizing and unbearable. No one should be surprised at the newly reported willingness of combat troops to defy military ethics, because such defiance is understandable as the natural reaction of warriors made to follow suicidal rules.

When being “ethical” on Washington’s terms means martyring yourself and your comrades for the sake of murderous Iraqis, it is understandable that troops are disinclined to report “unethical” behavior. It is understandable that troops should feel anger and anxiety (as many do), because it is horrifically unjust for America to send its personnel into combat, deliberately prevent them from achieving victory — and expect them to die for the sake of the enemy. It would be natural for an individual thrust into the line of fire as a sacrificial offering to rebel with indignation at such a fate.

How can we do this to our soldiers?

The death and misery caused by Washington’s self-crippling rules of engagement — rules endorsed by liberals and conservatives alike — are part of the inevitable destruction flowing from a broader evil: the philosophy of “compassionate” war.

This perverse view of war holds that fighting selfishly to defend your own freedom by defeating enemies is wrong; but fighting to selflessly serve the needs of others is virtuous. It was on this premise that U.S. troops were sent to Iraq: Washington’s goal was not to defend America against whatever threat Hussein’s hostile regime posed to us, as a first step toward defeating our enemies in the region — principally Iran, the arch sponsor of Islamic totalitarianism. Instead the troops were sent (as Bush explained) to “sacrifice for the liberty of strangers” — spilling American blood and spending endless resources on the “compassionate” goal of lifting the hostile and primitive Iraqi people out of poverty, feeding their hungry, unclogging their sewers. The result of this “compassionate” war is thousands of unnecessary American deaths, and the preservation and emboldening of the enemies we most need to defeat: Iran and Saudi Arabia.

We must put an end to the barbarous sacrifice of American troops, now. It is past time to abandon Washington’s self-sacrificial rules of engagement, and its broader policy of “compassionate,” self-sacrificial warfare. Instead of subjecting troops to more intensive “ethics” training, we should unleash them from the suicidal military ethics of self-sacrifice.

About The Author

Elan Journo

Senior Fellow and Vice President, Content and Advanced Training, Ayn Rand Institute

Bush’s disastrous foreign policy — especially the Iraq fiasco — has led many to conclude that diplomatic “engagement” is our best hope for stopping Iran’s nuclear program. But while Bush’s policy is a failure, engagement is not the solution.

Bush’s “moralistic” approach, we’re told, entails denouncing nations as evil, refusing negotiations, and isolating and punishing hostile regimes. That, many believe, is how we landed in the catastrophe of Iraq.

And now Bush’s moral denunciations of Teheran have supposedly escalated the nuclear standoff, while his policy of pressuring and isolating Iran by limiting its use of foreign banks has made Iran more defiant. That is why, diplomatists claim, Iran responded to the latest American-backed U.N. sanctions by ramping up production of nuclear material. Military conflict, they warn, and an Iraq-like debacle, loom.

But engagement can supposedly end the Iranian threat bloodlessly, because it discards inflexible moral dogmas. Just as Iran has shown it will meet “confrontation with confrontation,” proponents write in the New York Times, so Iran will “respond to what it perceives as flexibility with pragmatism.” Iran’s recent release of 15 British hostages, we are told, was achieved precisely because Britain engaged in nonjudgmental, patient diplomacy. Putting aside our moral qualms about talking with monsters would free us to negotiate a deal whereby Iran stops its nuclear program in exchange for Western carrots.

This scheme presumes that Iran, like us, seeks peace and prosperity and that no one — not even the mullahs — would put their moral ideals before a steady flow of loot. But in the three decades since its Islamic revolution, Iran has dedicated itself to spreading its moral ideal — Islamic totalitarianism — by force of arms. Teheran spends millions every year, not to pursue prosperity for its tyrannized citizens, but to finance terrorism and to build a nuclear arsenal to wield against enemies of Allah. It is Iran’s commitment to the goal of subjugating infidels, not a quest for peace, that motivated its backing of the Hezbollah-Hamas war against Israel and its support for insurgents who slaughter American troops in Iraq.

Would diplomatic “incentives” encourage Iran to mitigate its ideology? No, they would only intensify its hostility. Negotiations buy Iran time; a settlement would provide loot to fund its nuclear program. Above all, diplomacy grants Iran moral legitimacy as a civilized regime: its hostile goals — “death to America” — and its murder of our citizens are made to seem reasonable differences of opinion. Such appeasement confirms the perverse notion that Allah’s warriors, materially weaker but morally self-righteous, can succeed in bringing down the mighty infidel West. The real lesson of the recent hostage incident is how readily Western nations will grovel to appease Iran’s blatant aggression.

The amoral policy of engagement fails for the same reason that Bush’s policy fails: both reject the need of morality in foreign policy. Iran is intransigent — but precisely because Bush’s policy merely pays lip service to rational moral principles.

What has been the administration’s response to Iran’s nuclear quest, to its funding of terrorists and Iraqi insurgents, to its hostilities stretching back to the 1979 invasion of our embassy? Did it morally judge Iran as an enemy regime waging war on America and fight to defend U.S. lives by militarily crushing Iran?

No. After 9/11, Washington cordially invited Iran into an anti-terrorism coalition; later, Bush denounced Iran as part of an “axis of evil”; now, he embraces diplomatic talks. To the extent that his administration does momentarily recognize Iran’s evil, its response has been ludicrous: to thwart Iran’s nuclear program, U.S. diplomats scrounged for votes at the U.N. to pass toothless sanctions, and tried to put financial “pressure” on Iran (e.g., by preventing it from trading oil in dollars), an absurdly futile scheme (Iran now trades in euros).

Moreover, when Bush has gone to war, it was not to crush an evil enemy, but to bring it “democracy.” Bush’s messianic crusade in the Middle East is a selfless war of sacrifice to needy Afghanis and Iraqis — not a war to uphold the moral goal of safeguarding the lives of Americans.

Bush’s self-effacing, immoral foreign policy — like the appeasing gambit of engagement — licenses Iran to pursue its hostile goals with impunity.

The rational alternative to both of these self-destructive approaches is a policy committed to American self-defense, on principle. It is a policy that morally judges Iran — and that ruthlessly renders Iran non-threatening by military force. That does not mean a selfless, Iraq-like crusade to bring Iranians the vote. It means upholding the moral right of Americans to live in freedom by destroying Teheran’s Islamic totalitarian regime. Nothing less will do.

About The Author

Elan Journo

Senior Fellow and Vice President, Content and Advanced Training, Ayn Rand Institute