“I’m often asked why someone with a penchant for philosophy and an academic life joins the Marine Corps. Why, some ask, does a scribe lower the pen to pick up the sword?” So begins this stirring and thought-provoking Independence Day address by Lt. Col. Scott McDonald, USMC, to attendees at Objectivist Summer Conference 2015 in Charlotte, North Carolina.
In this talk, Elan Journo explores how today’s widespread acceptance of determinism leaves many people unable to grasp what a truly self-interested foreign policy in the Middle East would consist of.
Was President Trump right or wrong in deciding to bomb a Syrian airfield in retaliation for the government’s use of chemical weapons against citizens? When a similar question arose in 2013 on President Obama’s watch, Ayn Rand Institute executive chairman Yaron Brook recorded this prescient video, questioning whether the use of chemical weapons threatens American interests.
“I’m often asked why someone with a penchant for philosophy and an academic life joins the Marine Corps. Why, some ask, does a scribe lower the pen to pick up the sword?” So begins this stirring and thought-provoking Independence Day address by Lt. Col. Scott McDonald, USMC, to attendees at Objectivist Summer Conference 2015 in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Steve Simpson interviews Elan Journo on some of the lessons we can draw from what we have witnessed in the Middle East, during the thirteen years since 9/11. How should we judge the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Who is the enemy? How should we think of ISIS?
