Winter 2009 • Vol. 4, No. 4
Features
Politics & Rights, Science & Technology
What the “Affordable Health Care for America Act,” HR 3962, Actually Says
Asks ten crucial questions regarding the proposed law; examines what the proposed legislation actually says with respect to these questions; and evaluates the bill accordingly, showing that, if passed, it would massively expand government power over the health-care industry, virtually eliminate the remnants of freedom left in this market, and thus increase the U.S. government’s violations of individual rights by orders of magnitude.
Science & Technology
Pharmacide: The Pharmaceutical Industry’s Self-Destructive Effort to Loot America
Provides an illuminating view of the pharmaceutical industry, showing that industry executives have advocated and continue to advocate rights-violating legislation through which the companies gain revenue taken coercively by the government from American taxpayers—and further showing that the pharmaceutical industry’s advocacy of such legislation is killing . . . the industry itself.
Economics, Politics & Rights
Antitrust with a Vengeance: The Obama Administration’s Anti-Business Cudgel
Zeros in on the arbitrary, rights-violating nature of antitrust law; surveys the Obama administration’s efforts to bolster antitrust enforcement; considers the unprincipled arguments put forth by today’s most vocal opponents of antitrust; and calls for Americans to take a principled, rights-based stand—not only against the administration’s reinvigorated antitrust assault, but against antitrust law as such.
Politics & Rights
The California Coastal Commission: A Case Study in Governmental Assault on Property Rights
Surveys the history and nature of the Coastal Commission; examines three recent cases showing how the Commission violates property rights; points to similar agencies that are violating rights in similar ways in other states; and indicates what Americans must do if they want to put an end to this assault on their property rights.
Politics & Rights
The Barbary Wars and Their Lesson for Combating Piracy Today
Examines the key events surrounding the Barbary Wars (two wars the United States fought in the early 19th century to end North African piracy), zeros in on the reasons why the First Barbary War failed to end the pirate attacks but the second succeeded, and draws from this remarkable and clarifying history a vital lesson for the United States today.
Philosophy
Objective Moral Values
Zeros in on the nature of objective, life-serving values; demonstrates that man’s most fundamental value is his faculty of reason; and shows that both physical survival and spiritual health require keeping one’s thinking tied to reality (via reason) so that one’s ideas, values, actions, and emotions correspond to reality, too.
Book Reviews
Ayn Rand & Objectivism, Reviews
Review: Goddess of the Market, by Jennifer Burns
Robert Mayhew reviews Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right, by Jennifer Burns.
Reviews, Science & Technology
Review: Heaven and Earth, by Ian Plimer
Gus Van Horn reviews Heaven and Earth: Global Warming, the Missing Science, by Ian Plimer.
Reviews, Science & Technology
Review: Red Hot Lies, by Christopher C. Horner
Daniel Wahl reviews Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed, by Christopher C. Horner.
Philosophy, Reviews
Review: Islamic Imperialism: A History, by Efraim Karsh
Andrew Lewis reviews Islamic Imperialism: A History, by Efraim Karsh.
History, Reviews
Review: The Israel Test, by George Gilder
Daniel Wahl reviews The Israel Test, by George Gilder.
Departments
Philosophy
Letters and Replies, Winter 2009–2010
Craig Biddle answers a letter regarding “the status of the choice to live.”