The Islamic State, the jihadist force rampaging in Iraq and Syria, has succeeded in recruiting fighters because — wait for it — there’s no peace between Israel and the Palestinians. So claims the U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry.
ARI’s executive director Yaron Brook recently traveled through China to promote the publication of the Chinese translation of Free Market Revolution: How Ayn Rand’s Ideas Can End Big Government. Co-authored by Brook and Don Watkins in 2012, Free Market Revolution illustrates why Ayn Rand’s ideas are key to solving the economic and political ills of our time.
Think about the barbarians of the Islamic State, and ask yourself if your views line up with an “interventionist” or “non-interventionist” policy. Weigh the two alternatives; which tack is right?
In a way that Ben Affleck surely never intended, his appearance on Bill Maher’s show, Real Time, was luminously revealing. If you haven’t yet seen the segment, go to YouTube now and turn up the volume.
When Yaron Brook and I started working on our book Free Market Revolution, which offers Ayn Rand’s moral defense of capitalism, the idea that capitalism needed a moral defense was virtually unheard of. Today, it’s so common that I was able to participate in a contest for who could make the best moral case for free markets. (I suspect that most of the credit for popularizing this idea goes, not to us, but to AEI’s Arthur Brooks.)
A few weeks back I asked for you to vote for my entry in the Think Freely Media’s 2014 Great Communicators Tournament, which asked entrants to make a moral argument for freedom.
In the PJTV video I talked about yesterday, Bill Whittle and Andrew Klavan also criticize Rand for confusing selflessness and altruism. Selflessness doesn’t exist, Klavan says, because "everyone is acting for personal gain, even if that personal gain is joy" from helping others. Altruism then is simply doing good for others in order to gain joy, which Klavan stresses is a good thing.
By one reckoning, the cease-fire deal between Hamas and Israel might seem like an even stalemate. But in fact it’s lopsided in Hamas’s favor. Leaving aside the Israeli concession of easing the import of aid and materials for reconstruction, the fact that Hamas continues to exist as an organization ruling Gaza is an undeserved win.
In Free Market Fairness, Brown University political science professor John Tomasi seeks to defend free markets on a Rawlsian “social justice” foundation. In laying the groundwork for his argument, Tomasi thinks it is notable that even most free-market thinkers appeal to “social justice” concerns, i.e., that they almost all — from Adam Smith to Herbert Spencer to Milton Friedman — stress that free markets are good for “the poor.”
What kind of foreign policy should Republican presidential hopefuls advocate? Angelo Codevilla’s shrewd answer: something other than the prevailing establishment view, practiced during the 20th century. While I differ from some points in his analysis, the thrust of his article illustrates some important weaknesses of Republican administrations.
