From the Editor, Winter 2007–2008

The three articles in this issue of TOS have, for me, been highly educational. How health insurance and medicine in America came to be as obscenely regulated as they are today—how tort law in America came to be the vicious circus that it is today—and how America identified and eradicated the fundamental cause of Japanese aggression in World War II, thereby eliminating the threat posed by it—all of this is now clear.

In “Moral Health Care vs. ‘Universal Health Care’,” Lin Zinser and Paul Hsieh survey the history of government interference in health insurance and medicine in America, specifying the rights violations and economic problems caused thereby; they enumerate the failed attempts to solve those economic problems by means of further government interference; and they show that the only viable solution to the debacle at hand is to gradually and systematically transition to a rights-respecting, fully free market in these industries.

In “Instrumentalism and the Disintegration of American Tort Law,” David Littel illustrates the utter insanity of today’s liability law, recounts the roots and original purpose of the law of torts, surveys the missing links and corrupt ideas that led to its destruction, and sheds light on the path to identifying a sound body of principles that will ground this field in the ultimate purpose of objective law: the protection of individual rights.

In “‘Gifts from Heaven’: The Meaning of the American Victory over Japan, 1945,” John David Lewis identifies the ideology of sacrifice behind the Japanese aggression that culminated in World War II; documents America’s recognition of this ideology as the fundamental cause of the Japanese assault on the West; explains how America targeted, dismantled, and discredited this ideology, replacing it with the ideas, values, and institutions necessary for the establishment of a free society; and defends America’s use of the atom bomb as a profoundly moral way to end the war.

I think you will find these articles as engaging as they are informative.

Enjoy the essays—and the holidays—and have a wonderful 2008!

—Craig Biddle
Editor and Publisher

About Craig Biddle

Craig is cofounder and editor of The Objective Standard, cofounder and director of education at Objective Standard Institute, and executive director of Prometheus Foundation. He is the author of Loving Life: The Morality of Self-Interest and the Facts that Support It; Rational Egoism: The Morality for Human Flourishing; and the forthcoming Moral Truths Your Parents, Preachers, and Teachers Don’t Want You to Know. He is currently working on his fourth book, “Thinking in Principles.”

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