Peter Schwartz, distinguished fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute, reflects in this 2014 Washington Post op-ed, on why platitudes like “give back” or “remember the needy,” don’t represent his perspective on the Christmas season.
“When, at the age of twelve, at the time of the Russian revolution, I first heard the Communist principle that Man must exist for the sake of the State, I perceived that this was the essential issue, that this principle was evil, and that it could lead to nothing but evil, regardless of any methods, details, decrees, policies, promises and pious platitudes.“
“Oh, hi there,” says Carl Benjamin in a recent video, looking up at the camera from his well-bookmarked copy of The Ominous Parallels by Leonard Peikoff. “I’ve been doing some reading, and I’ve discovered something I think you should know. The Nazis were bad. Let me explain to you why.”
Within a couple of generations, the former British colony of Hong Kong became one of the richest places in the world. Yet, despite its stratospheric rise in prosperity, Hong Kong is reversing course. Why?
What can we learn from the wealth gap between South Korea and North Korea? Why is religion appealing? Is Ryancare/Trumpcare merely another step toward socialized medicine? And what’s the real cause of Venezuela’s collapse? These are some of the questions touched on in the latest episode of The Yaron Brook Show.
Ayn Rand’s Los Angeles Times column “Our Alleged Competitor” is republished in the April issue of The Conservative. The Conservative is a new quarterly journal founded and edited by Daniel Hannan, Member of European Parliament. In this 1962 column, Rand discusses the rationalizations used to excuse Soviet Russia’s failures.
Aaron Smith, a philosopher at ARI, recently published “Ayn Rand: A New Concept of Egoism,” an essay introducing Rand's unique approach to self-interest, in De Filosoof (“The Philosopher”), the quarterly magazine of the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.
On June 1 and 2, 2016, Yaron Brook, Steve Simpson and Tara Smith will give presentations at the 2016 Foundations of a Free Society Conference, hosted by the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism (CISC). CISC describes the conference as the largest of its kind in the Southeast, with its attendees reaching and influencing tens of thousands of students and members of the general public each year through teaching and research. Taking part in conferences like this one is an important part of how ARI works to promote Ayn Rand’s revolutionary philosophy.
On The Yaron Brook Show this past weekend, Don Watkins and I discussed freedom of speech and the many campus protests and controversies that have broken out over the past few weeks. It’s a really good discussion (if I do say so myself) of a lot of issues that bear on the campus protests, including racism, inequality and even helicopter parenting. During the show, Don and I mentioned a number of essays by Ayn Rand that bear on the campus protests that are worth elaborating on a bit more.
On June 10, 2015, ARI’s Distinguished Fellow Peter Schwartz gave a talk in New York City at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center. In his talk, Peter discussed the ideas in his new book, In Defense of Selfishness: Why the Code of Self-Sacrifice Is Unjust and Destructive. Peter’s talk, which was delivered as a part of ARI’s Road to a Free Society tour, was recorded by C-SPAN and is now available online.