Articles

Joseph Kellard interviews Donna Hassler about the works of Daniel Chester French, the great American artist perhaps best known for his sculpture of Abraham Lincoln housed at the Lincoln Memorial. Ms. Hassler is executive director of Chesterwood, which was French's summer home and studio in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and which is now a historic site of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

In May, at a conference cosponsored by FEE and the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism, Max Borders and Craig Biddle debated the question, "Moral diversity: asset or liability for the liberty movement?"—and the discussion was, by all accounts, profoundly interesting. We present in this issue of TOS the transcript of that debate.

Regarding “Getting Lincoln Right” To the Editor: I would like to congratulate Alexander Marriott on his well-written and illuminating article “Getting Lincoln Right” [TOS Summer 2014]. Mr. Marriott eloquently addresses the most common moral and historical fallacies that are used to smear the legacy of a man who, in my…

Welcome to the Fall 2014 issue of The Objective Standard. As the pro-liberty movement across America (and the world) continues to expand—especially among college students and young adults—and as more and more intellectuals, pundits, and politicians grapple with the ideas associated with the movement, the importance of identifying and upholding…

After the shocking news of Robin Williams’s apparent suicide hit the media, people throughout America and the world mourned his passing and celebrated his life and work. But not everyone did so. Consistent Muslims took the opportunity to spew Islamic venom at Williams and wish him eternal torture in flames.

John David Lewis’s article “‘Gifts from Heaven’: The Meaning of the American Victory over Japan, 1945” has profound implications regarding both the principles of a proper U.S. foreign policy and the clear and present threats to America today. Americans must learn its lessons if we are to defend ourselves against the Islamic barbarians who seek to kill us.

True, new technologies make some jobs obsolete. But new technologies also make possible new careers. Moreover, because producers who employ new technologies manufacture more and better products at lower costs, their customers have money left to spend in expanded or entirely new industries.

The cause of this problem for the EU is not the shale gas revolution in the United States; rather, the cause of the problem is the lack of such a revolution in Europe—and the cause of that problem is European policies that stifle energy production.

Theocrat Rick Santorum is the CEO of the Christian film production company EchoLight, as the Heritage Institute reports. Unsurprisingly, judging from its trailer, one of the company’s forthcoming films, “One Generation Away: The Erosion of Religious Liberty,” substantially distorts the meaning and significance of the First Amendment’s language about religion.

Although environmentalists sometimes couch their policies in terms of improving the world for human benefit, fundamentally the environmentalist movement regards humankind as a blight on the earth whose productive activities are inherently immoral. Most recently, the Guardian reports a “plan to engineer a shorter, smaller human race to cope with climate change.”

Who is morally responsible for the deaths of innocents in Gaza, such as Gazan children, who are killed by Israeli bombs? Hamas is. And this fact is clear to anyone who chooses to think beyond the frame of a television.

The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) claims the motto of freedom, opportunity, and enterprise. But, by “freedom,” apparently, some at AEI now mean that government should be free to forcibly take your wealth and give it to others, at least within certain (undefined and undefinable) limits.

Unfortunately, this week’s response by House Republicans—to sue Obama—demonstrates that they are more interested in poking the President than in defunding and ultimately repealing the rights-violating laws that are throttling the ability of doctors, insurers, and patients to act according to their reasoned judgment.

Paul Ryan hopes to make federal welfare more efficient by consolidating federal agencies, sending more federal welfare money to state governments as grants, and more. If Ryan’s plan reduces welfare dependency and gives taxpayers better results for their dollars, it might represent a marginal improvement over current policy. But it is still riddled with political and moral problems.

Actor Kristen Bell recently portrayed a left-wing activist version of Mary Poppins in a Funny or Die video calling for a higher federal minimum wage. But a minimum wage violates the rights of employers to operate their businesses as they see fit, including their rights to offer terms of employment that they judge best for their businesses.