Blog posts
Altruism, the Gaza War and the Law of Causality
When someone is killed because, say, a hurricane made his roof cave in, journalists understand the need to explain that occurrence. They don’t simply report that Mr. Jones died when a heavy beam fell on his skull. Rather, they report that a hurricane blew in the roof, thereby making the beam fall. Perhaps they
My Book Has a Publisher!
I am extraordinarily happy to announce that I’ve gotten a publisher, Palgrave Macmillan, for my book. This is a major publisher—the same one, by the way, that published Free Market Revolution: How Ayn Rand’s Ideas Can End Big Government by Yaron Brook and Don Watkins. After considerable wrangling, we agreed on the following title: IN DEFENSE OF
My Interview on the Doctrine of Altruism
Well before In Defense of Selfishness was published—when its working title was The Tyranny of Need—I was interviewed by Don Watkins of the Ayn Rand Institute. Here is an edited excerpt (and you can click below it for the audio version of the full interview): Q. If you asked most people what morality is, I think they
A Follow-up on Snowden
In light of some comments I received about my previous post, “Snowden and the NSA,” here is an elaboration on my evaluation of Snowden: If Edward Snowden truly valued individual freedom, here is how he would have proceeded. He would recognize that America, when compared with the rest of the world, is a haven of
Snowden and the NSA
What the National Security Agency (NSA) has done in spying on Americans is reprehensible—and what Edward Snowden has done is worse. The government is entitled to act against someone only when there is a valid reason to believe that he poses a physical threat to others. Once such evidence exists, of course, the government must
In Defense of Selfishness—a Summary
(This is a brief summary of my new book, followed by the Table of Contents.) What if the central idea we’re all taught about morality is wrong? Virtually everyone regards self-sacrifice as a moral virtue. From childhood on, we are told that serving the needs of others, rather than our own, is the essence of