In this talk, Onkar Ghate, Senior Fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute, argues that the assassination of the journalists at Charlie Hebdo is an ominous event. It revealed the price of the West’s ongoing appeasement of religion. This appeasement takes many forms, but all serve to embolden religionists and encourage further demands and attacks. Onkar argues that we need to talk with our fellow Americans about the right to deliberately ridicule religion, and offers some advice on how to do that in the face of religious attacks.
In this interview, ARI’s Elan Journo assesses America’s deal with Iran. Among other things, he discusses the futility of trying to contain Iran’s nuclear program without addressing the broader threat of the Iranian regime, the need to recognize the ideological goals of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the Obama administration’s false alternative between diplomacy and war.
After the slaughter at Charlie Hebdo in Paris and the lethal shootings at a free speech event in Copenhagen, some Western intellectuals are now raising the question whether we, in the West, are guilty of abusing our free speech.
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?
Steve Simpson interviews Elan Journo on the Hamas-Israel War. Points covered, among others: the cause of the war, the cycle-of-violence myth, the nature of Israel’s enemies, the goals of Hamas, how to judge a country, and the conflict between the “laws of war” and self-defense.
