A Reader’s Guide to Atlas Shrugged, Part 2 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 [...]
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Flame Spotting
How to Achieve a Benevolent Sense of Life Part two of a four-part series. In the first installment of this series, I challenged the notion that a malevolent sense of life is a reaction to the uniquely bad circumstances of “today’s world,” both because sense of life is not about your momentary circumstances and because [...]
The Prophet of the Oppression
An Atheist Reads the Bible, Part 4 The religion of the Old Testament is not the religion of Abraham. It is the religion of Moses. In the previous installments, we looked at the sections of the Bible that relate to Abraham and which convey to us the key religious assumptions that he brought to his [...]
The Universal Message
Three Paradoxes of American Politics, Part 3 Just after November’s election, I posed three paradoxes of American politics, asking why certain demographic groups make up reliable voting blocs for the left, even though the pro-free-market ideas of the right have so much to offer them. I have been addressing these paradoxes one by one. In [...]
Rubio-Cruz in 2013!
As it looks to revive its electoral fortunes on the national level, what the Republican Party desperately needs is a Rubio-Cruz ticket—not for 2016, or not just for 2016, but now, in 2013. As conservative Republicans continue to defect from Marco Rubio’s “Gang of Eight” immigration deal, he and Ted Cruz are emerging as the [...]
The Last of the Indomitable Britons
So far, the best summary of the legacy of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is a line from Mark Steyn: she was the “anti-declinist.” Mrs. Thatcher’s predecessor as prime minister, the amiable but forgotten Sunny Jim Callaghan, once confided to a friend of mine that he thought Britain’s decline was irreversible and that the [...]
The End of an Illusion
Many years ago, I remember thinking that it would take many years to refute the panicked claims about global warming. Unlike most political movements, which content themselves with making promises about, say, what the unemployment rate will be in two years if we pass a giant stimulus bill—claims that are proven wrong (and how!) relatively [...]
How to Achieve a Benevolent Sense of Life
Part 1: “How to Maintain a Benevolent Sense of Life in Today’s World” Many things have been written about the appeal of Ayn Rand’s novels, but one of the central reasons for her enduring popularity and influence is her concept of a “benevolent sense of life.” Her novels are not just about striving and struggle, [...]
What Are the Others Here For?
Deep down, I knew how this story was going to end. Back in November, the national news picked up a viral video of a New York City police officer buying a pair of boots for a homeless man in Times Square who was shoeless on a cold night. Everyone else thought this was a heartwarming [...]
The University Utopia
Three Paradoxes of American Politics, Part 2 Just after November’s election, I posed three paradoxes of American politics, asking why certain demographic groups make up reliable voting blocs for the left, even though the pro-free-market ideas of the right have so much to offer them. I have begun to revisit these paradoxes. In part one [...]
