The Green Leap Forward

Commentary by , May 17, 2019

Five Things You Need to Read Today 1. The People Does Not Know What It Wills I’ve been loosely following the odd failure of Brexit–Britain’s exit from the European Union. Here’s the best political cartoon summing this up, which anyone who has ever owned a cat will understand. I am in favor of Europe having […]

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Salon of the Refused, Episode 14

Announcement by , May 15, 2019

Episode 14 of my video and podcast series, Salon of the Refused, is now available. I talk with Steven Pinker, author of Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, about the legacy of the Enlightenment. The conversation includes: exactly how good the state of the world is, “thick” versus “thin” philosophy, the […]

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Viva la Revolución

Commentary by , May 13, 2019

A few weeks ago, the simmering conflict in Venezuela reached a crisis point when Interim President Juan Guaido called for the Venezuelan military to join him in overthrowing socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro. The prospect of an immediate uprising fizzled, so the conflict has settled in for the long haul. It’s not over, and just this […]

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Today in Platonism

Feature Article by , May 9, 2019

Do ideas refer to facts in reality, or do they have an existence and meaning independent of reality? This is an old question that goes back to the birth of philosophy in Ancient Greece, and if it seems like an arcane intellectual issue for the eggheads to argue about, think again. It’s an issue you […]

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Who Resists the Resistance?

Commentary by , May 1, 2019

Five Things You Need to Read Today 1. Viva la Revolución “Democratic socialism” has finally achieved its usual end-state in Venezuela: mass shootings of innocent civilians by government goons. I’ll warn you that the reporting on this has been pretty awful, and in the link I just gave, even Jake Tapper—who ought to know better—refers […]

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Dear Democrats: I Have Seen Your Bernie Bro Future

Feature Article by , May 1, 2019

I’ve been seeing a lot of chatter recently about Democrats being uncomfortable with Bernie Sanders now that he is emerging as the front runner early in the primaries. In the New York Times, Thomas Edsall quotes one center-left economist declaring that Sanders’ “economists don’t understand basic economics. They are not just dangerous, they are clueless.” […]

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Salon of the Refused, Episode 13

Announcement by , April 25, 2019

Episode 13 of my video and podcast series, Salon of the Refused, is now available. I offer a brief overview of how Ayn Rand offered a rational, secular basis for morality, in contrast both to the religious arguments of the conservatives and to the subjectivism of secular intellectuals. Topics covered include: how to explain Ayn […]

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An Objectivist LARP

Feature Article by , April 23, 2019

Spoiler Alert: You do not need a reader’s guide to Atlas Shrugged—at least not for your first reading. Ayn Rand’s novel is clear, compelling, eminently readable, and perfectly comprehensible on its own terms. Yet Atlas is also a rich and complex novel, with an intricate plot in which dozens of moving parts mesh together and […]

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“I Never Had a Lawyer Who Took Notes”

Commentary by , April 20, 2019

What We’ve Learned About Trump from the Mueller Report Among the political media and Twitter obsessives—but I repeat myself—Thursday was dubbed “Mueller Day,” because it was the day when the mostly unredacted report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller was due to be released to the public. I was not among the obsessives, having been skeptical […]

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The Search for Sanity, Part 1

Feature Article by , April 17, 2019

A Partial Guide to the 2020 Democratic Presidential Candidates Yes, I know the 2020 presidential election is a long way away. But it is probably less than a year before the Democratic Party will choose its nominee, and since Democrats have to winnow that down from a current total of 18 or more candidates—the New […]

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