Articles

A ban on drones is a patent violation of Americans’ rights to liberty and property. Farmers have a moral right to employ the latest technologies. . . . There’s no reason to suspect that flying drones at low altitudes over uninhabited, private crop lands would subject anyone to any substantial risk, much less that doing so would violate anyone’s rights.

In “Terrorism, Altruism, and Moral Certainty,” the Afterward to my book Loving Life, I explain that “Islamic terrorists are religious altruists: They selflessly commit human sacrifices for the sake of a supernatural ‘other’—an alleged God.” A Muslim professor at the Islamic University in Gaza recently acknowledged this too.

Needless to say, a rights-respecting (or even partially-civilized) government does not arrest people for dancing, cheering for a sports team, or not wearing a headscarf. This is just another indication of the barbarism entailed in taking Islam seriously and establishing governments on the basis of religion.

Unfortunately, when some economists think of values as “subjective,” they assume that there is no objective standard for determining moral value; they assume that value is only a matter of personal opinion.

Americans have been awash in a tsunami of anti-rights philosophy for more than 100 years, and the tsunami has taken its toll. Americans no longer have the conviction that we have rights and thus no longer have the conviction that the government must protect our rights. . . . Fortunately, we have a solution to this problem. . . .

A commission established to investigate “false” campaign statements—as evaluated by a group’s political enemies and by politicians and bureaucrats—is inherently biased, and its very existence violates people’s rights to free speech. With virtually every campaign message, one side claims it is the truth whereas the other side claims it is not.

Prior to the passage of ObamaCare, leftists selected Colorado, a bellwether state (among other places), to begin promoting their health “reforms” nationally, and many of their proposals eventually became part of ObamaCare. Apparently the left is now trying the same strategy to place retirement accounts substantially under government control.

Dave Brat—who recently upset Eric Cantor in a Virginia congressional primary—says he is heavily influenced by free-market thinkers, including Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, F. A. Hayek, and (to a lesser degree) Ayn Rand. More encouraging, a paper that Brat wrote in 2011 indicates that he endorses the separation of church and state.

BP launched a thirteen pound drone earlier this month in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. BP turned to a drone (i.e., an unmanned aerial vehicle)—specifically, the Puma AE from AeroVironment—to improve monitoring of operations in the enormous and hazardous arctic environment of northern Alaska.

Nureyev’s defection inspired other famous Russian dancers, including Natalia Makarova and Mikhail Baryshnikov, also to defect to the West, where they could flourish in their lives and careers. For example, now free, they could dance to the music of Prokofiev and the choreography of Balanchine, both of which were illegal in the Soviet Union.

Although Galperina rejects the idea that a pet can be objectively valuable to a person, in fact it can be. As a cat owner myself, I can attest that cats are playful and cuddly, they often do amusing things, and they provide companionship. My owning my cat objectively—that is, factually—contributes to my life and happiness.

The fact that the Bible advocates the murder of homosexuals (as well as the murder of “witches,” of those who worship other gods, and of blasphemers—among others) indicates that the Bible, far from being a guidebook for morality, is largely an absurd book of mindless and evil prohibitions and commandments rooted in nothing more than ancient superstitions.

The most important issue was not the influence of Rand on Brat—that was widely reported and thus abundantly obvious—but the differences between the views of Rand and Brat. That was the point that was not obvious to many people, and that is the issue that is crucially important for advocates of Rand’s ideas to clarify.

Although it is senseless to campaign against so-called “white privilege," one sort of pervasive privilege is real, it is evil, and it should be not only checked but ultimately abolished. It is the privilege government grants to some people to violate the rights of others. Call it “statist privilege.”

Although Brat largely supports free markets, he does not consistently support them, as Rand did; he disagrees with Rand on important philosophic issues; and he himself recognizes that his views are not Rand’s. As examples, Brat parts ways with Rand dramatically when it comes to immigration and the source of individual rights.