Examines Harris’s claims to have grounded his brand of utilitarianism in reality, and finds them wanting.

Robert McNamara, who addressed a Students for Liberty conference in Denver on November 10, spoke to TOS about a court case he’s litigating to protect the rights of cab companies to enter the market. McNamara, an attorney with the Institute for Justice (IJ), represents Mile High Cab in a Colorado…

Many advocates of free markets and constitutional government are understandably upset about the reelection of Barack Obama, given the president’s enthusiasm for “stimulus” spending, corporate welfare, business regulations, taxes on “the rich,” and the like. However, a vote on a ballot measure in Virginia shows that many Americans care deeply…

Although I am disappointed by Barack Obama’s reelection, I am not surprised by it. Despite the ailing economy and the deeply troubled foreign policy that epitomize Obama’s presidency, Mitt Romney always faced an uphill battle—largely because he and his party alienate many women, Hispanics, gays, and others. Consider a report…

In an absurd act of injustice, the left routinely castigates those who criticize government redistribution programs while accepting some benefits of those programs. For instance, writing for the Huffington Post, Michael Ford blasts those on the right who allegedly hold the attitude, “venerated in public, disdained in private”; he describes…

Another day, another dishonest hit piece on Ayn Rand. This time, though, Sanjay Sanghoee’s smear, penned for Huffington Post, despicably uses the tragedies surrounding the deadly Hurricane Sandy to misrepresent Rand’s views in order to smear her. Sanghoee begins his “argument” with the fantasy that Glenn Beck is somehow a…

In an editorial yesterday, the Times blasted Mitt Romney for daring to suggest that some activities of the Federal Emergency Management Agency might better be shifted to the states or “back to the private sector.” Eugene Robinson wrote essentially the same article for his syndicated Washington Post column. In fact,…

Barack Obama claims to have read Ayn Rand, which is hard to believe given how completely he misrepresents her views. Of course, Obama’s distortions of Rand’s ideas feed his political agenda of forcing wealth transfers and shackling producers, policies Rand certainly would have rejected as immoral and destructive. In a…

Although last night’s presidential debate focused on foreign policy, only Mitt Romney came close to mentioning the driving motivation of those in the Middle East (and beyond) who engage in religious terrorism; who murdered American citizens at the embassy in Libya, the World Trade Center, and elsewhere; who seek to…

Why do so many on today’s left so forcefully advocate censorship when it comes to campaign spending? Hasn’t the left traditionally stood up for free speech, at least in the political realm? The left has always suffered from a basic contradiction: It seeks to protect “civil liberties”—traditionally including the right…

In last night’s pathetic debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, three sentences from Obama stood out to me: I believe that the free enterprise system is the greatest engine of prosperity the world's ever known. I believe in self-reliance and individual initiative and risk takers being rewarded. But I…

Our right of free speech as recognized and protected by the First Amendment is a cornerstone of liberty and of America’s republican form of government. That right is under assault, and our freedom of speech is at risk of serious erosion. In the wake of the Citizens United Supreme Court…

Laughing Joe Biden, during the vice presidential debate, made clear his commitment to egalitarianism: [I]nstead of signing pledges to Grover Norquist not to ask the wealthiest among us to contribute to bring back the middle class, they [Republican candidates] should be signing a pledge saying to the middle class we're…

U.S. policies of appeasing and even subsidizing Islamists, and promoting democratic processes to empower the same, have predictably produced a resurgence of Islamist assaults on “infidels.” Consider a few recent news stories: In Pakistan, members of the Taliban boarded a school bus and shot a 14-year-old girl in the head…

In a striking indication that an economy hovering barely above recession is becoming the “new normal,” the president and much of the media heralded the September unemployment figure of 7.8 percent as great news. In fact, as the Wall Street Journal puts it, “the real news . . . is…