Quote of the Week: Ayn Rand

 In the absence of - intellectual - polarization, we are witnessing the growth of the ugliest kind of divisiveness or - existential - polarization, if you will; pressure-group warfare. The country is splitting into dozens of blind, deaf, but screaming camps, each drawn together not by loyalty to an idea, but by the accident of race, age, sex, religious creed, or the frantic whim of a given moment -- not by values held in common, but by a common hatred of some other group -- not by choice but by terror. 

Ayn Rand 1971

EPISODE 5 of The Secular Foxhole Podcast

The Secular Foxhole #5

 Our interview with Ayn Rand Institute Fellow, Ben Bayer:

Quote of the Week: Ayn Rand

 What objectivity and the study of philosophy require is not an "open mind" but an active mind - a mind able and eagerly willing to examine ideas, but to examine them critically. An active mind does not grant equal status to truth and falsehood; it does not remain floating forever in a stagnant vacuum of neutrality and uncertainty; by assuming the responsibility of judgement, it reaches firm convictions and holds to them. Since it is able to prove its convictions, an active mind achieves an unassailable certainty in confrontations with assailants - a certainty untainted by spots of blind faith, approximation, evasion and fear. 

From her essay, Philosophical Detection, in her book Philosophy: Who Needs It

Take Back Columbus Day

 Reposting this from the Ayn Rand Institute:

Take Back Columbus Day

Nowadays, however, an embarrassed, guilty silence descends on the nation each Columbus Day. We’ve been taught that Columbus opened the way for rapacious European settlers to unleash a stream of horrors on a virgin continent: slavery, racism, warfare, epidemic, and the cruel oppression of Indians.

This modern view of Columbus represents an unjust attack upon both our country and the civilization that made it possible. Western civilization did not originate slavery, racism, warfare, or disease — but with America as its exemplar, that civilization created the antidotes. How? By means of a set of core ideas that set Western civilization apart from all others: reason and individualism.

Quote of the Week: Leonard Peikoff

There is no future for the world except through a rebirth of the Aristotelian approach to philosophy. This would require an Aristotelian affirmation of the reality of existence, of the sovereignty of reason, of life on earth - and of the splendor of man.

Aristotle and Objectivism agree on fundamentals and, as a result, on this last point, also. Both hold that man can deal with reality, can achieve values, can live non-tragically.  Neither believes in man the worm or man the monster; each upholds man the thinker and therefore man the hero. Aristotle calls him "the great-souled man." Ayn Rand calls him Howard Roark or John Galt.

Leonard Peikoff

The Ominous Parallels

New Feature: Ayn Rand Quote of the Week

I thought of this driving into work today. It'll be a weekly quote from Ayn Rand or one of her associates. Sometimes I'll have where the quote is taken from and sometimes not.

Here's the first one:

Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values.

Episode #4 of The Secular Foxhole Podcast is now online!

The Secular Foxhole 4 

Martin and I did a bit of 'housecleaning' in this short episode. Still, we talk about shows to come and ideas we will talk about. Click the link above to listen. Any feedback or comments are welcome.

Minority View: Confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court

 UPDATED: 10/5/2020

 There are much more serious and freedom affirming issues behind the pathetic circus that's about to descend on us October 12th when the hearings begin to confirm Justice Barrett to the Supreme Court.

I've recently been studying the horrifying apparatus known as the Administrative State. Plaguing us here in America. It has grown with unchecked power over all of us, for decades. Since it is populated with 99% leftist/progressive - and unelected - "goose-steppers," that answer only to Democratic operatives, is it any wonder there is any freedom's left for individual Americans?

I subscribe to the New Civil Liberties Alliance newsletter and in its latest issue, they produce a White Paper outlining her work defending the individual against the state. Of course, by no means is she perfect. Who is?

Speaking for myself, ANY rollback of state power over the individual is a step for genuine progress. I tentatively endorse her nomination.