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February 2002 -- The virtue of selfishness has become a tough sell. Before September 11, one could score points for egoism by elaborating

Sep 7, 2010

12 Mins

Succeeding by the Cowboy Code

July/August 2008 -- Every now and then, Larry Barnes rides his big brown horse, Duke, around town and at nearby tourist destinations...

Spring 2009 -- If you’ve ever been queried by a skeptic who doubts the very existence of reality, you know how aggravating...

Among the repercussions of last September's terrorist attacks is a heightened awareness among Objectivists of a phenomenon we, as lovers of

Sep 7, 2010

Richard Speer

Reply to a Misanthrope

July/August 2008 -- I maintain an online blog (http://bidinotto.journalspace.com) that allows me to comment (and sometimes to rant) about

Sep 7, 2010

Robert James Bidinotto

5 Mins

All in Favor Say "I"

Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants: money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded

Sep 7, 2010

5 Mins

Entrepreneurship: Is Life Like That?

Summer 2009 -- In 1897, during the twilight of the Aesthetic Movement, the Reverend Emory Lyon wrote The Art of Living. At the beginning of

Sep 7, 2010

10 Mins

The Decline of the East

March 2002 -- BOOK REVIEW: The Decline of the East What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response. By Bernard Lewis.

Sep 7, 2010

Joan Kennedy Taylor Remembered

Joan Kennedy Taylor, a long-time associate of Ayn Rand and key participant in the beginnings of the Objectivist movement....

Sep 7, 2010

3 Mins

What Shall We Do With a Bumptious Sailor?

Venter is the biochemist (and daredevil yachtsman) who directed a small corporate rival of the official U.S.-U.K. genome-sequencing team and

Sep 7, 2010

10 Mins

The Servile Citizen

A large billboard in a local Metro station cautions passersby to “Cover your cough” and “Wash your hands frequently” when you have a cold...

As I don’t equate a movie’s budget with its worth, please don’t take it as a sobriquet that young director Evan Coyne Maloney’s recent..

For quite a number of years, I’ve been conducting guided walking tours of New York City. These include “Revolutionary Manhattan,” a tour of

Sep 7, 2010

Fred Cookinham

4 Mins

Obama DOJ to Biz: Drop First Amendment Claims or Else

The Department of Justice typically sets down certain terms of behavior for an individual seeking to settle a suit without going to trial. Usually, the requirements will include: Don’t step over that line again. And: Don’t associate with bad people. More severely, the government might say: Don’t engage in that profession again. But in a case settled this week, the DOJ required, as its price of settlement, that an individual drop a lawsuit seeking to vindicate free speech. Consider that again. The U.S. government said to someone: Of course, we can’t prosecute you for claiming you have a right to free speech—but unless you drop your legal claim to free speech, we are going to prosecute you for something else. And the civil libertarians said nothing. Because the individual was a company.

Sep 5, 2010

Skilling Denied Bail

Jeffrey Skilling has been denied bail during the appeal he won from the Supreme Court. It was a one-sentence ruling, not much to go on, except to note the comparison with Conrad Black, who got bail.

Sep 4, 2010

The Lightweight: Meghan McCain

Just as you thought American pop-politics could go no lower, a woman with real curb appeal appears on the political scene. Meghan McCain

Sep 3, 2010

Ilana Mercer

4 Mins

Environmental Extremism in Bullet Form

Talk about dodging a bullet. When armed, explosives-laden eco-terrorist James J. Lee took hostages at the Discovery Channel headquarters ...

September 2, 2010 -- Legal scholars distinguish between behavior that is malum in se (wrong in itself, such as murder, rape, and theft) and behavior that is malum prohibitum (wrong merely because it is against a society’s structural rules, such as driving on the left side of the street in America or the right in Britain). I sometimes wonder if we do not need a third category: malum insanum, behavior that is wrong merely because someone in authority has set down a completely arbitrary edict that declares it to be wrong. That, at least, is the reflection prompted by yesterday’s SEC settlement of insider-trading accusation against two friends, one of whom boasted about his work on a possible corporate acquisition and one of whom traded on the information—for his own benefit, not for their joint benefit.

Sep 2, 2010

Green Cathedrals: Environmentalism's Mythological Appeal

September 2007 -- Every culture and its institutions are the living embodiments of certain fundamental ideas about man and his place in the

Sep 2, 2010

Robert James Bidinotto

10 Mins

Reducing Humans to Carbon Ash

The latest morally monstrous proposal out of the environmentalist cult comes from Lord Smith of Finsbury. He suggests that each British...

Sep 2, 2010

Edward Hudgins

4 Mins