Philosophy

Roger Scruton challenges Ayn Rand’s concept of selfishness—by committing the very fallacy Rand identified as the cause of confusion on this issue.

There is a good article in Forbes today, titled “Atlas Shrugs Again,” by Marc Babej and Tim Pollack, focusing on the recent swell of interest in Ayn Rand’s ideas and on what it takes to “market something as amorphous as a [philosophical] movement.” After citing some of the recent items…

In case the relativist “principle” guiding Lee Bollinger’s choice to invite Ahmadinejad to speak at Columbia was not clear enough in his earlier statement, here is a brief video of him making it even clearer. The “principle” is that anyone willing to “debate”—regardless of his complicity in the torture and…

That the Bush administration is permitting Ahmadinejad to enter America for any reason other than to kill him on sight is a moral travesty. But, then, given that Bush and company’s philosophy counsels us to “resist not evil” and “turn the other cheek” and “judge not that ye be not…

In an article titled “Freedom Fetishists: The Cultural Contradictions of Libertarianism”— which has been published in both Commentary and the Wall Street Journal—Kay S. Hymowitz has labeled Ayn Rand a “libertarian.” This would be unworthy of comment were it not for the fact that, as Rand herself put it, “the…

Dear Craig, Thank you for this article on your blog, which I very much enjoyed, especially your "Mafia hitmen" analogy. In your article, you state "The way to accomplish [Iran's defeat] is by waging a massive bombing campaign from high altitude and long distance—and by sustaining this campaign until the…

The Bush administration’s plan to declare Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization is worse than a waste of time: It is an outright evasion of the Iranian assault on America. There is a good reason why the New York City Police Department does not make official pronouncements to the…

After the avowedly mediocre philosopher Steve Gimbel launched an envious attack on human excellence in general and Ayn Rand in particular—in which he pricelessly attempts to intimidate those who revere excellence into revering mediocrity instead—he and some mediocre followers found themselves engaged with a few Objectivists whereupon they further demonstrated…

Jack Shafer of Slate has written a superb article on the notion of “loophole” titled “Shut Your Loophole.”(Thanks to Brad Malestein for bringing this piece to my attention.) Here’s an excerpt: Upon entering the English language in the late 16th century, the word loophole defined the narrow opening in a…

"Cut off the head of Salman Rushdie!" chanted a crowd of Islamists in Pakistan yesterday as calls to murder the “blasphemer” were renewed following his knighthood in Britain. Such barbarism is to be expected from religionists—not just from Muslims, but from any religionists who are neither restrained by a rights-respecting…