Category Archives: Ayn Rand

Live Theatre Workshop launches the weekend with a new production of DRY POWDER, a brisk and damming commentary on the world of high finance and leveraged buyouts. It's a crash course, if you will, on the savage underbelly of predatory capitalism.

Playwright Sarah Burgess writes an urgent corporate drama propelled by a high-octane dialogue, at once pedantic and crude. Don't expect much in the way of catharsis, given Ms. Burgess's disposition to thrash out a bleak American economy that sees little hope for the future of the average American worker.

It's not all doom and gloom. There's ample humor to go around -- that snarky and cutting sort apropos of the fierce wheeling and dealing on Wall Street.

In DRY POWDER (uninvested capital), Ms. Burgess acknowledges income inequality from the vantage point of elite power brokers, the oft-maligned "one percenters" driving the nation's economic bus to a cliff's edge. As stagnant wages and unemployment take front and center in our political discourse, the playwright amplifies the reality by exposing the sinister forces behind the flailing American manufacturing industry and a crumbling labor market.

The play opens with Rick, the CEO of a New York private equity firm (KMM Capital Management), reeling from a vicious public-relations fallout caused by his lavish engagement party (with elephants, no less) while protesters take to the streets to decry his recent acquisition of a grocery chain that forced hundreds of employees out of work. The New York Times is on top of every development, and his firm's investors are growing uneasy. To say the least, his image has taken a huge hit.

Enter Seth and Jenny, two high-powered assistants with opposing views on practically every business prospect. The former suggests a PR makeover with a proposal to buy out Landmark Luggage, an iconic all-American company with money woes. Seth is well-acquainted with Jeff, Landmark's CEO, and has secured his verbal commitment to sell the company for a bargain price of $491 million. Very attractive, Rick admits; keep the manufacturing jobs in Sacramento and help the company regain its profitability and voila -- Rick's reputation is restored and KMM is a bigger star than ever.

Jenny, on the other hand, sees little value in maudlin attempts at public relations and favors a more disciplined approach that leads to real and measurable profit: Buy Landmark Luggage, outsource production offshore, and target China's growing middle class. She's unconcerned about internal job losses as she aims for the singular goal of making the highest profit possible, ethics be damned. She thinks feelings are unreliable and assures Rick the opprobrium he's worried about is bound to wash over, as public opinion tends to do. Jenny abhors altruism and would do Ayn Rand proud.

Seth and Jenny drive much of the play's trajectory as they compete for Rick's decision and, ultimately, for the company's long-term success. The last piece of this high-strung ensemble is Jeff, the only one (or so it seems) to show a modicum of goodwill as he tries desperately to ensure a contractual clause to keep luggage production in California, keeping his employees on the job. But there lies the rub; Rick is torn between Seth's advice to keep the optics respectable and Jenny's mathematical alternative to slim down and force workers to deal with an honest reality.

With due respect, the rest of the narrative shall remain undisclosed as it needs to be seen to be appreciated. Suffice it to say that Ms. Burgess ought to be glad to have her play well represented by LTW's solid cast. These are fine actors who get the stakes -- that is, life in the top tier is survival of the most ruthless. Actors must find just enough space to dabble in humanity, perfunctory it may be, then set it aside long enough to serve and fulfill one's selfish ambition. It's true even for Jeff, who faces the eventual choice between personal solvency and keeping his workers employed.

Cliff Madison's Rick is feisty and given to fits of rage. He is actually quite lovable when showing a small sign of regard for public good, even though we know better. He claims to be a philanthropist by erecting a school in Bali; in the end, it's a superficial case of noblesse oblige and a desire to be validated in spite of his worst tendencies. Stephen Frankenfeld is an empathetic Seth, Mr. Nice Guy gone slick and savvy. He does elicit our empathy as he struggles to do the right thing for his friend Jeff, but again -- too much money is at stake and he can't afford to disobey his superior. And when he comes around to acknowledge his guilt, he's a little too late. Jeff is played with genuine sensitivity by Tyler Gastelum. We root for him to get what he wants and can't blame him in the end when he fails to meet our expectations. Jeff is Ms. Burgess's liberal foil in a world dominated by allegedly conservative oligarchs.

Lori Hunt's Jenny takes the cake. In a somewhat Brechtian twist, the perceived villain is a victor, as it were, and breaks the fourth wall to address the audience. Jenny appears to have no weakness, which makes for bad drama, and yet Lori Hunt treats her with searing honesty that we just might take her side in spite of our better instincts.

LTW's main stage, usually treated as an arena space, adapts to a more fitting geometrical scenic design with a translucent grid upstage, allowing for a thrust perspective that works rather well. Minimal, movable set pieces are employed effectively to suggest scene changes. Perhaps a simple adherence to the playwright's prescription, but director Sam Rush ought to be commended just the same. His direction paints a nuanced texture that allows actors to drive the pace and shape their appropriate arc. These characters are the last people I'd want to hang out with, but they're a rich source for psychological inquiry, not to mention entertaining as hell to watch.

Photo Credit: Ryan Fagan

DRY POWDER continues its run Friday through Saturday at 7:30 PM and Sunday at 3 PM through November 20, 2021. For tickets, call Live Theatre Workshop at 520-327-4242 or visit: https://www.livetheatreworkshop.org/.

The rest is here:

BWW Review: Wall Street Takes Center Stage at Live Theatre Workshop - Broadway World

Letters to the editor, Oct. 23, 2021

Producers lose while processors gain

I am not sure if our urban readers under or are aware of what has been transpiring in the agricultural industry in recent decades.Specifically the beef industry, where up to 85% of our cattle are processed and controlled by only 4 beef processing companies. This affects everyone, not just the rural communities and businesses that depend on local agriculture.

Look at the mergers and acquisitions that are occurring in other industries such as your local feed/grain coops, implement dealers, banks, health insurance companies, utility companies, gas/petroleum companies, cell phone companies, car dealerships, grocery stores, insurance companies, etc.

How important is it to have healthy competition in these industries. What if only one gas company, grocery store or cell phone company was supplying all the service to your area? No more price checking or negotiating power.

Whether you realize it or not this affects everyone. Look at the beef prices in the grocery store and the record profits the 4 beef processors are making while at the same time, the take home pay continues to decline for our independent cattle ranchers and feeders. Especially when you factor in inflation. Most are operating at or below break even margins.

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Eric Iversen, White River

Clean energy helps veterans

One of the biggest hurdles for veterans is returning to civilian life after serving our country. The legacy of protecting national security is ingrained into the very hearts and minds of former service members. While it may not seem obvious, Americas clean energy industry offers the opportunity for veterans to reintegrate into civilian life while still supporting the mission of national security through energy independence.

Every single day, clean energy brings our nation closer to energy independence, whether it is through the production of wind, solar or hydro-produced renewable energy, or via energy efficiency upgrades that reduce waste, by reducing our need for foreign energy supplies. Moreover, an increased domestic supply of clean energy supports our veterans at home.

Nationally, clean energy hires veterans at a rate over 60% higher than the national average of all industries, providing high-paying, long-lasting careers for those who have proudly served our country.

By reducing greenhouse gas and strengthening Americas energy independence, clean energy is building a brighter, more sustainable future for our country and this carries down to the veterans who help carry out its mission.

Atlas Shrugged had it wrong

In the book Atlas Shrugged a fictitious economy is brought to its knees when rich capitalists running huge businesses go on strike. Their withdrawal from society into a hideaway meant that the brains of how to run an economy were gone, and things started immediately going to hell. When the economy got frazzled enough that the politicians declared complete surrender to the corporate titans, they returned and all was well again.

Ayn Rand had it completely backwards. The pandemic has exposed this clearly. Today we see that in the real world it is the truck drivers, nurses, trade workers, and laborers who are essential to a working capitalist economy. When these workers withold their talents, the gears of capitalism shudder and slow. Meanwhile in this real world, the rich titans of industry spend their time racing for glory and bragging rights in their space rockets, or scheming how to hide their wealth from the tax man. The Pandemic Papers show what the capitalist titans are really doing with their money to hide their profits. The rich corporate bosses racing to the stratosphere in their toy rockets shows that narcissism is a larger impetus for them than any thought of societal

Jeff Jacobsen, Rapid City

Headed toward communism

America passing through socialism on way to communism. Americans are at a critical point of choosing between communism and the freedoms of a representative federal democracy that has made us the most prosperous, generous, strongest, freest and fairest nation on earth. For years many in academia, media and politics have worked to indoctrinate our young people with the idea that socialism is compassionate and makes everyone's outcome in life equal through legislation. People are continually stripped of their rights until all that remains is a tyrannical regime with total control over the people. Just look at moron Joe Biden's mandates on vaccinations and wearing of masks after being vaccinated. His stupidity has brought us sky rocketing fuel, food, timber and steel prices. The moron pays people not to work and then wonders why there is empty store shelves and products not being moved. I didn't vote for President Trump because I liked him. I voted for him because he was the only person i can think of that would stand in the way of a movement designed to tear down and destroy our nation. May God bless President Trump and the United States of America.

Babies and snail darters

T-shirts with 1973 on them, demonstrators shouting things like my body, my choice, mind your own uterus, a sign about bullet shooting vaginas and other such nonsensical slogans etc. was seen and heard as the Womens March headed for the Supreme Court Building just weeks ago.

The abortion issue started when overpopulation alarmists decades ago argued the need for artificial contraception claiming that the population would be so dense that by now each person would barely have one square foot of space to stand on. Birth control didnt go far enough, so the hideousness of the abortionist was elevated in stature, given a nice gown, fine instruments and a sanitized space to work in, which for no rational reason I can think of, that by moving it into in the clinic made it less horrible, acceptable, desirable, and protected by law!

So here we are many years later. On a march defending the same ugly, shameful, sickening practice that was once considered back alley butchery.

Today the birth rate isnt keeping up with the death rate. We will soon be dying out, or to be more specific, committing self inflicted extinction. The Supreme Courts decision that created the legal abortion challenge has been kicked back and forth over the years between the lower courts, and State Legislatures ever since. But there might be a way to unburden the Court and the country of this scourge. Justice Roberts would know how to do it. He was able to find a way to save the Affordable Care Act from death by making health care a tax! In 1973, the same year killing babies became legal, the Snail Darter and field mice had more standing than did human life. Maybe the only way to save babies from death at this moment is for the Court in similar fashion to make them endangered and grant them protection from abortion under the Endangered Species Act of...1973.

Matthew Schmidt, Rapid City

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Letters to the editor, Oct. 23, 2021 | Opinion | rapidcityjournal.com - Rapid City Journal

Congressman Steve Scalise, the #2 Republican in the House of Representatives and the guy who ran for office from Louisiana as "David Duke without the baggage," has announced he's whipping Republican votes to block a criminal contempt referral to the DOJ from the Jan 6 Select Committee against Steve Bannon.

My father's Republican Party is now the modern-day Confederacy, and Republicans' defense of Steve Bannon defying subpoenas this week pretty much proves it. If it keeps moving in the same direction, our American republic may soon be fully transformed into a racist, strongman oligarchy.

The racist and big-money poisons began to take over the Republican Party in the 1950s and 1960s after the Supreme Court ordered an end to school segregation with Brown v Board, and LBJ and the Democrats embraced the Civil Rights, Voting Rights and Medicare Acts.

In aggregate, Johnson's Great Society offended both the nation's billionaire oligarchs, who saw Medicare and other programs as "socialism," and the white racists who were horrified that they'd now have to share schools, hospitals and polling places with African Americans and other minorities.

Those white racists, particularly in the South where the majority of America's Black people lived, fled the Democratic Party and flocked instead to the GOP. Richard Nixon saw this as the key to his presidential victory in 1968, openly inviting racists in with his "Southern Strategy."

Thus began the transformation of the party founded by Abraham Lincoln.

At the same time, the Libertarian and Objectivist movements found common cause with the anti-communist movement led by the John Birch Society that saw every effort to help working class or poor Americas as a step towards full-blown Soviet-style socialism. They all marched into the GOP.

"The mob," as Ayn Rand used to call us American voters, couldn't be trusted any longer to determine who held power in America, these early leaders of the GOP determined, so they worked out ways to get around a multiracial and politically active populace.

The leading conservative light of the era, William F. Buckley, wrote for his National Review magazine an article titled Why The South Must Prevail:

His article was grounded in a discussion of the jury system, but he couldn't help veering off-course (or on-course):

It's exactly the philosophy that today animates the new voting laws put into place over the past six months in Florida, Georgia, Texas and multiple other states.

Racists and big money seized the GOP, and the GOP then drained 40 years of wealth from the Middle Class.

The merger of racism and big money reached its first peak in 1980 with the election of Ronald Reagan, who openly ran on "states' rights" and the argument that government was the cause, not the solution, to the nation's problems. Just leave everything to the morbidly rich and their magical "free market" and America, Saint Ronnie promised us, would become a paradise. At least for white people.

But it didn't work out that way for white people or anybody else; instead, the top 1 percent of Americans succeeded in grabbing well over $10 trillion from the middle class over the next forty years and have now largely ringfenced their wealth with bought-off Republicans declaring they'll never, ever vote to raise taxes on the morbidly rich.

And the billionaires and racists who seized the GOP are now turning it into something not seen in a major American political party since the Civil War. It's become an anti-American insurgency, along the lines of the Confederacy.

Many of the same wealthy individuals and corporations that brought Reagan to power continue to pour billions into the GOP, an effort that in 2016 brought authoritarian Donald Trump to the White House and threatens to do so again in 3 years.

But this isn't even the GOP of Reagan's time: today's GOP has now transformed itself into a full-blown anti-democratic neofascist party.

It's no longer the business-loving white-middle-class GOP of the 20th century: it's now the party of Nazis and the Klan, although they've turned in their cartoonish swastikas and white robes for red caps and camo.

Which is presenting the "funder class" in the GOP with a stark decision.

Are their tax cuts and deregulation of pollution so important to them that they'll continue to fund a neofascist party in order to keep them?

Early signs are not good.

Billionaire-owned rightwing radio and TV are rewriting the history of January 6th and continue spreading Trump's Big Lie about the 2020 election. Rightwing think tanks and billionaire-founded and -funded Astroturf activist groups continue their mischaracterizations and outright lies about President Biden's agenda.

Social media sites continue to use algorithms that drive increasingly extremist views and have become organizing platforms for lies, racism and "political" actions like intimidating school boards and election officials.

They've been so successful that the majority of Republican voters no longer trust our electoral system and are willing to have Republican-controlled legislatures decide how elections came out rather than voters.

While a small but vocal and credible group of former Republicans from politicians like Jeff Flake and George W. Bush, to GOP operatives like Steve Schmidt and Rick Wilson, to media figures like Jennifer Rubin and Joe Scarborough are speaking out and doing so in terms often far more blunt than even Democratic politicians, the oligarchs who own the Party aren't listening.

The Republican base, meanwhile, is completely in thrall to Trump and he's showing every sign of running and possibly taking over the country using the 12th Amendment trick I was warning of more than a year ago, this time running John Eastman's scheme in 2024.

And if not Trump, there's no shortage of ambitious fascist-leaning Republican politicians in the mold of Rick Scott, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott who are more than willing to stand-in for him with the same strategy.

The stage is thus set now for the final, irrevocable transformation of Eisenhower's Party and American democracy. The turning point will be the 2022 election if Republicans can retake the House and Senate.

Nineteen states have already changed thirty-three voting laws to accommodate Trump's and John Eastman's 6-point-plan to ignore the popular vote and throw the electoral college vote into the House of Representatives to put a Republican loser of the 2024 election into the White House.

This will work if Justice Sam Alito and his rightwing extremist friends on the Supreme Court give the scheme their stamp of approval; Trump lawyer Sydney Powell said this week Alito was prepared to do just that.

It's decision time.

Numerous corporations said that they'd stop funding the so-called "treason caucus" of 140+ Republicans who voted to decertify the 2020 election after the January 6th attempted assassination of the Vice President and the Speaker of the House.

Almost all of those corporations, as Judd Legum and David Sirota regularly document at popular.info and DailyPoster.com, have gone back on that pledge.

Eisenhower's GOP no longer exists: it's been replaced by an authoritarian shell that's home to open racists and billionaire oligarchs who don't want their businesses regulated or taxed. They're willing to end democracy in America to get what they want.

German industrialist Fritz Thyssen famously backed Hitler and lived to regret it, penning an awkward but portentous autobiography titled I Paid Hitler.

Will today's rightwing billionaires and the CEOs of our largest corporations one day be writing similar books?

Or, if Trump prevails, will American democracy be so totally wiped out that no future publisher would dare sell such a book?

Read more from the original source:

Billionaires who killed the GOP are now turning it into an anti-American insurgency -- along the lines of the Confederacy - Raw Story

More than 20 months into the Covid pandemic and with a tough winter looming, the public could be excused for having a distinct sense of deja vu.

Infection rates are rising sharply, scientists and senior NHS figures are sounding the alarm but the business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, was touring the broadcast studios on Wednesday morning ruling out a lockdown in England and telling people absolutely to book their Christmas parties.

Sajid Javids tone in his Downing Street press conference hours later was considerably more sombre but the substance of his message was the same: for now, it is business as usual.

Unlike last autumn, when Sage scientists were unsuccessfully pressuring Boris Johnson to order a circuit-breaker lockdown, the government has at least set out a clear plan B.

Last months autumn and winter plan included returning to compulsory mask wearing, introducing vaccine passports for mass events and venues such as nightclubs, and reimposing guidance to work from home.

But having a plan does not mean No 10 is any keener to act. Boris Johnsons ingrained reluctance to curtail the publics freedoms even by compelling them to wear a mask is well known.

His former adviser Dominic Cummings attested in hearings before the health committee earlier this year that Johnson was even unconvinced the first lockdown, in March last year, had worked.

Johnson is also temperamentally opposed to working from home he used his party conference speech to say that we will and must see people back in the office.

And as at earlier stages of the virus, the prime ministers personal reluctance is bolstered by the political stance of many of his backbenchers.

The Covid Recovery Group (CRG), chaired by the former Tory chief whip Mark Harper, are vehemently opposed to vaccine passports in the form proposed by the government with only full vaccination, not test results, accepted.

Javid confirmed earlier this week that MPs would be given a vote on the proposal before it is enacted but the CRG believe that without Labour support it would be unlikely to pass.

So implementing the governments plan B, even in the face of rising death rates, could be hampered both by political squeamishness at the top of government and a rebellion on the backbenches.

And there is also a sense in government that being bold about reopening worked something they will be reluctant to reverse.

Johnson and Javid took a conscious gamble in the summer to press ahead with a big bang lifting of restrictions for England in July, which was condemned at the time by the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, as reckless.

Despite the UKs position as the outlier among western European countries in terms of infections, ministers believe hindsight has shown that to be the right decision, allowing the public to get back to some semblance of normal life. Johnsons spokesperson frequently boasts that the UK has one of the most open economies.

Javid, too, has very different instincts from his predecessor Matt Hancock, who tended to advocate a precautionary approach. A fan of the libertarian author Ayn Rand, Javid said in July that he would not wear a mask in a quiet train carriage, even if asked to.

All these factors political and personal help explain why for the time being, the focus is on ramping up the governments plan A. That means tackling the shortcomings of the vaccine booster programme; increasing the number of 12- to 15-year-olds getting the jab by allowing their parents to book appointments directly; and reminding the public not to tear the pants out of it, as Englands deputy chief medical officer, Jonathan Van-Tam, has repeatedly put it.

The winter plan document included advice to the public to meet outdoors if possible, keep windows open and wear masks in crowded spaces. Javid reiterated that advice on Wednesday in the hope of influencing public behaviour though Tory MPs were packed maskless on the green benches of the House of Commons just hours earlier for prime ministers questions.

There are also hopes in government that next weeks half-term break for schools will act as a mini firebreak, helping to stabilise infections, as social interaction between unvaccinated pupils is reduced.

If a dip in the growth rate of the pandemic fails to materialise, however, the government may yet find itself as so many times during this long pandemic mugged by reality.

The governments chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance, was notably absent from the press conference but it was hard not to recall his advice from a month ago about how to tackle a sharp rise in cases go hard, and go early.

Read more:

Why is it business as usual in England while Covid infections rise? - The Guardian

IN 2014, just before the independence referendum, Nick Clegg, David Cameron and Ed Davey all came to Peterhead and announced 100 million for a carbon capture and storage facility to tackle climate change. This was sold as one of the benefits of the Union. 1 billion and a job bonanza were promised. Once Scotland voted to stay in the UK the Westminster government promptly cancelled the contract.

In 2021 the St Fergus gas terminal was in line to set up a similar scheme. It would have been able to help reduce carbon emissions and been part of the process of decarbonising the Scottish economy. It would have brought 21,000 jobs to north-east Scotland. The Tories again have pulled the plug, preferring to funnel the money down south. It is an indisputable fact that both of these schemes would have gone ahead had Scotland been a normal independent country. Instead Scotland is shackled to a deluded rampant English nationalist Tory clown cartel. They are virulently anti-Scottish and seek to harm Scotland to prevent any example of Scotland having better governance than Westminster.

READ MORE:Boris Johnson 'hinted' at cash for Acorn Project just 14 days before snubbing it

They have a Scottish branch manager, Douglas Ross. He is a soulless minion of Unionism. An empty vessel trained to endlessly repeat bare-faced lies in defence of the income streams of Tory donors.

The shortages within the labour force of the Scottish economy are all because of the Tory Unionist philosophy of Ayn Rand that greed is the only thing that matters. The basic infrastructure of Scotland has been run down by the Tory oligarchy. Their only interest is debt and speculation-fuelled enlargement of their personal fortunes. Tory Unionism has no desire to have even minimal basic services and infrastructure. Things such as an adequately paid and trained workforce are an anathema to them.

The Tories, the free market and the Union have all self-evidently failed Scotland. There needs to be a visible campaign for an independence referendum early next year.

Alan HinnrichsDundee

IT was a level of incredulity that I heard on television a Westminster COP26 public relations announcement about their net-zero spend plans. This included 140m for carbon capture the same day that I read in The National that they are not funding such a proposal in the north-east of Scotland. All words for the media only that and tax increases are all we get from this useless government. They are the most incompetent bunch of Cabinet ministers in my lifetime.

Robert AndersonDunning

THE announcement that the UK Government will not support a carbon capture and storage (CCS) facility in Scotland seems to have ruffled feathers in the SNP. Why? SNP politicians should just shrug the shoulders and carry on. Our future independent nation does not need CCS, because we do not need natural gas. Spending hundreds of millions on a CCS plant would be a total waste, only exceeded by the sums being squandered on nuclear energy and HS2.

READ MORE:Ian Blackford blasts Boris Johnson over carbon capture decision

If the SNP as the governing party in Scotland truly wants to build a sustainable future for Scotland, then renewable energy and all the ancillaries thereof are the way to go. All the elements of a green energy revolution are available, from generation to storage and delivery. Grasping this opportunity firmly now will be a major foundation stone of a Scotland that has re-grasped the reality of independence.

Carbon fuels and nuclear energy are the past, renewables are the future. The UK is the past, we all surely know what is our future.

Jon SoutheringtonDeerness, Orkney

I HAVE been reading that the UK Government are to offer a grant of 5,000 to England and Wales residents to convert gas fired boiler to heat pumps. On the face of it, this seems a great move.

On further analysis, the current housing stock leaks about 25% of energy consumption back into the environment, as wasted energy.

This wasted energy has to be generated in the first place by coal, oil, gas, nuclear, wind, solar or tidal. Some methods generate CO2 in the process, others leave behind more toxic presents for our childrens childrens children, and then some.

READ MORE:UK Government's heat pump strategy 'meagre and unambitious', say campaigners

Reducing this energy leakage is the first job. It is unfortunate that heat loss is invisible to us all, perhaps if it was akin to water we would have fixed the leaks many years ago. Can you imagine, a steady trickle of water dripping from each window, door, wall and roof of your home? It would be very visible to target areas of your house to stop the leaks.

Several years ago I recall the water industry in the UK being told to stop the water leaks in the ageing water pipe network, as the levels of reservoirs were dropping due to increased demand, and there was a demand to increase reservoir capacity, which was seen as unreasonable.

If we reduce the need to heat each home by insulating, this reduces the demand for energy generation by the home gas boiler and any future heat systems. Demand reduction follows through to the other major generation systems. Reducing consumption is therefore the key.

Alistair BallantyneBirkhill, Angus

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The Tories, the free market and the Union have all failed Scotland - The National

Indeed, ideological polarization has swept the nationbut how did this happen, and what can we do to get along better with one another? Fortunately, the nine excellent books below all offer unique and enlightening answers to these timely questions.

Download the Next Big Idea Appfor Book Bite summaries of hundreds of new nonfiction books like these.

When we are baffled by the insanity of the other sidein our politics, at work, or at homeits because we arent seeing how the conflict itself has taken over. In this timely read, an award-winning journalist investigates how good people get captured by high conflictand how they break free. Listen to our Book Bite summary, read by author Amanda Ripley, in the Next Big Idea App

A philosopher of science offers tools and techniques for communicating the truth and values of science, emphasizing that the most important way to reach science deniers is to talk to them calmly and respectfullyto put ourselves out there, and meet them face to face. Listen to our Book Bite summary, read by author Lee McIntyre, in the Next Big Idea App

Providing data-driven recommendations for strengthening our social media connections, Breaking the Social Media Prism shows how to combat online polarization without deleting our accounts. Listen to our Book Bite summary, read by author Chris Bail, in the Next Big Idea App

The author of the widely praised Wordslut analyzes the social science of cult influence: how cultish groups from Jonestown and Scientology to SoulCycle and social media gurus use language as the ultimate form of power. Listen to our Book Bite summary, read by author Amanda Montell, in the Next Big Idea App

Using the analytic tools of psychology and moral philosophy, two rising star philosophers explain what drives us to grandstand online, and what we stand to lose by taking it too far. Most importantly, they show how we can re-build a public square worth participating in. Listen to our Book Bite summary, read by authors Justin Tosi and Brandon Warmke, in the Next Big Idea App

More than just a campus battlefield guide,Lets Be Reasonable recovers what is truly liberal about liberal educationthe ability to reason for oneself and with othersand shows why the liberally educated person considers reason to be more than just a tool for scoring political points. Listen to our Book Bite summary, read by author Jonathan Marks, in the Next Big Idea App

Drawing on work by political scientists, legal theorists, and activists in the streets, Mistrust offers a lens for understanding civic engagement that focuses on efficacy, the power of seeing the change you make in the world. Listen to our Book Bite summary, read by author Ethan Zuckerman, in the Next Big Idea App

Exploring Nazism, #MeToo, the work of Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, constitutional amendments, pandemics, and the influence of Ayn Rand, a renowned Harvard professor reveals how norms change, and ultimately determine the shape of society and government around the world. Listen to our Book Bite summary, read by author Cass Sunstein, in the Next Big Idea App

Using the latest advances in psychology, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology, an acclaimed psychologist shows how we can optimize our tendency to categorize, and fine-tune our minds to avoid the pitfalls of too little, and too much, complexity. Listen to our Book Bite summary, read by author Kevin Dutton, in the Next Big Idea App.

Next Big Idea Club, asubscription book club curated by Malcolm Gladwell, Susan Cain, Daniel Pink, and Adam Grant. The Next Big Idea Club delivers key insights from all the best new books via the Next Big Idea App, website, and podcast. To hear the audio version of this post, narrated by the author, and to enjoy more Book Bites, download the Next Big Idea App.

Excerpt from:

Books to help with what to say in disagreements - Fast Company

Aaron Smith discusses the value of studying many different philosophers on The Don Watkins Show.

In this episode of The Don Watkins Show, I talk about why its important to study philosophy, including the works of philosophers you think are wrong in fundamental ways. We give special attention to the philosophic training provided by the faculty of Ayn Rand Institutes Objectivist Academic Center.

Among the topics covered:

Mentioned in the discussion is Ayn Rands lecture Philosophy: Who Needs It. Also relevant is my article Why Read Thinkers You Disagree With. If youre interested in learning more about the Objectivist Academic Center, you can find out more here.

This podcast was recorded on May 13, 2021. Listen to the discussion below. Or listen from your mobile device onApple Podcasts,Google Podcasts,SpotifyorYouTube.

If you value the ideas presented here, please become an ARI Member today.

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Aaron Smith on the Value of Reading Widely in Philosophy - New Ideal

Artist and writer Justin Beal explores the way in which a literary and cinematic archetype has influenced the cultural role of the modern architect.

In a 1905 article, The Architect in Recent Fiction, editor of The Architectural Record Herbert Croly argues that modern fiction has recast the character as leading man. The old image of the architect, Croly writes, like the unctuous insincere Seth Pecksniff in Charles Dickens Martin Chuzzlewit or the joyless megalomaniac Halvard Solness in Henrik Ibsens Master Builder, has given way to an emerging class of character that demands a new accounting as a social and professional figure. The following excerpt from Justin Beals book Sandfuture explores the way in which this literary and cinematic archetype has influenced the cultural role of the modern architect.

The younger of the two men said, you dont look like an artist.

For the next few weeks this comment rattled around in my head. What did an artist look like? What did I look like? The more I thought about it, the more I came to understand how I had always avoided identifying as an artist by hiding behind the figure of the architect, a complicated two-sided image I had constructed from experience and fiction from professors and friends and characters in novels and films. I did not want to be an architect, but I felt comfortable in the archetype. It was an image that had currency in the art world at the time when I entered it, and I had used that to my advantage.

It was also an easy mask for me to put on, because it is one that is still, to an astonishing degree, almost uniformly white and male and inflected by one sort of privilege or another, which is to say, it was easy for people to look at me and see an architect. If this arrangement included a degree of artifice, it was not insincere.

I had studied architecture. I had worked briefly as an architect. I spoke the language. I was fascinated by what an architect was and was not, and part of the satisfaction of assuming this identity was the knowledge that it was only a mask. A real architect is stuck working in the realm of representation. She does not make buildings; she makes drawings and models and renderings and diagrams of buildings. She relinquishes control at the precise moment that idea becomes form, and I, at least until now, had been steadfast in my commitment to make objects.

There were architects I knew my mothers high school boyfriend who gave me a summer job building basswood models, and the kind, lumbering friend of my father who abandoned a career as a lawyer to design houses. There were also the more famous architects, but just like the not-so-famous ones, their personalities seemed predetermined by what everyone else expected of them, by a cultural preconception of their role and by a feedback loop of fact and fiction.

Ayn Rand imagined the uncompromising ethical egoist at the center of The Fountainhead as an architect and based Howard Roark on an autobiography Frank Lloyd Wright mostly made up. What better profession for an objectivist than the creative genius who must rely on capitalism for his own self-realization and what better metaphor for that self-realization than a building? A house can have integrity just like a man, Roark tells a client, And just as seldom.

E. L. Doctorow, knowing a compelling character when he saw one, wrote the real Stanford White charming, talented, ambitious, entitled into his historical novel Ragtime. Whites very public affair with the teenage showgirl Evelyn Nesbit and his murder at the hand of her jealous husband on the roof of a building of his own design helps anchor the tragic archetype in historical fact.

On the surface they are intelligent, ambitious, attractive, guided by conviction and purpose, but inside they are tortured, full of conflict and shame.

There is Anthony Royal, the vindictive mastermind of J. G. Ballards eponymous High-Rise and Querry, the disillusioned architect, from Graham Greenes A Burnt-Out Case. Shades of Querry haunt Simon, the beleaguered protagonist of Donald Barthelmes penultimate novel, Paradise, though instead of a leper colony, Simon finds himself in a sort of postmodern purgatory, passing his days in the company of three lingerie models, bemused, cooking elaborate meals and reflecting on his mediocre architectural achievements with a mixture of nostalgia and regret.

Together the stories tangle together into a knot. Architects are creative, but measured; passionate, but ethical; they project a righteous confidence and entitlement inflected with privilege. They are all adulterers. On the surface they are intelligent, ambitious, attractive, guided by conviction and purpose, but inside they are tortured, full of conflict and shame, their good intentions distorted into something monstrous.

Cinema reinforces the architect archetype with a specificity remarkable even in a medium enamored with stock characters Henry Fonda in Twelve Angry Men; Albert Finney in Two for the Road; Sam Waterston in Hannah and Her Sisters; Donald Sutherland in Dont Look Now; Paul Newman in Towering Inferno; Gabriele Ferzetti in LAvventura. The only black architect in a major Hollywood film Wesley Snipes character Flipper Purify in Spike Lees Jungle Fever is, as the name suggests, a caricature of assimilation given a profession that signals whiteness (as in, nothing could be more white than being an architect).

Like Ibsens master builder, these mythological architects are doomed to a tragic arc over which they have no agency. In Hiroshima Mon Amour, Eiji Okada plays an architect who has been conscripted into the Japanese army after the bombing of Hiroshima. In The Fountainhead, Howard Roark blows up the Cortland Homes to prevent the subversion of his vision. In Peter Greenaways film The Belly of an Architect, Stourley Kracklite throws himself off the top of the Altare della Patria ending his life as Halvard Solness did, by falling from a building.

As with White, the truth often helps to reinforce fiction. Gaud was run down by a streetcar as he looked up at a facade in Barcelona, Carlo Scarpa fell down a flight of stairs in Sendai, Japan, and Louis Kahn died alone in a mens bathroom in Penn Station, New York.

In chapter seven of Light Years, James Salter reduces the character of the architect to its tragic essence with eviscerating precision. Salters architect, Viri, believed in greatness. He believed in it as if it were a virtue. As if it could be his own. He is insatiable and unfulfilled, but his righteous confidence is never enough to overcome the inevitable disappointment of his unbuilt work there always, until the last, like a great ship rotting in the ways. As the novel draws to close, Viri, breaks down during a production of the Master Builder. It was like an accusation. Suddenly his life, an architects life as in the play, seemed exposed. He was ashamed at his smallness, his grayness, his resignation.

Justin Beal is an artist and a writer based in New York. This article is adapted from his book Sandfuture.

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The Architect as Tragic Hero - The MIT Press Reader

In Part 1, we saw that the Lochner saga began in 1895, when the state of New York enacted a law setting maximum hours for bakers. Joseph Lochner appealed his conviction under that law all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. New York argued that its law was a proper exercise of the police power aimed at promoting worker health. But in a 1905 decision, the Supreme Court struck down the law as violating the right of contract between the employer and employees. In Part 2, well examine Justice Holmess dissenting opinion in detail.

Uninterested in whether or not the Bakeshop Act was a health law, Holmes devoted only a single line of his dissent to the issue: A reasonable man might think it a proper measure on the score of health.1 As one commentator noted, he entirely ignored his colleagues and refused to engage in their debate about how to apply existing legal tests for distinguishing health and safety laws from special interest legislation.2 Holmes, who has been called the finest philosophical mind in the history of judging, had more profound issues on his mind.3

Peckhams majority opinion had been based on the premise that the Constitution protects individual liberty, including liberty of contract. Holmes attacked that premise outright. How could liberty of contract possibly be a principle capable of yielding a decision in Lochners case, Holmes asked, when violations of such liberty are routinely permitted by law? The liberty of the citizen to do as he likes so long as he does not interfere with the liberty of others to do the same, Holmes observed, is interfered with by school laws, by the Post Office, by every state or municipal institution which takes his money for purposes thought desirable, whether he likes it or not. For good measure, he cited several cases in which the Court had recently approved laws prohibiting lotteries, doing business on Sunday, engaging in usury, selling stock on margin, and employing underground miners more than eight hours a dayeach law a clear interference with contractual liberty. General propositions do not decide concrete cases, Holmes nonchalantly concludedand what judge could have shown otherwise, given the state of American jurisprudence at the time?

With liberty of contract in tatters, Holmes could casually dismiss it as a mere shibboleth, a subjective opinion harbored by five justices that has no proper role in constitutional adjudication.4 To drive home his contempt for the majoritys approach, Holmes included in his Lochner dissent a snide, sarcastic gem that has become the most quoted sentence in this much-quoted opinion: The Fourteenth Amendment does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencers Social Statics.5 For a modern reader to grasp the meaning of this reference, some factual background is required. The English author Herbert Spencer (18201903) was a prominent intellectual whose most important book, Social Statics,was originally published in 1853 and reissued continually thereafter. In the three decades after the Civil War, one historian has written, it was impossible to be active in any field of intellectual work without mastering Spencer.6 Central to Spencers thinking was a belief that our emotions dictate our moral values, which include an instinct of personal rights.7 That instinct Spencer defined as a feeling that leads him to claim as great a share of natural privilege as is claimed by othersa feeling that leads him to repel anything like an encroachment upon what he thinks his sphere of original freedom.8 This led Spencer to conclude: Every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man.9 Holmes, by coyly denying that Spencers law of equal liberty had the solemn status of a constitutional principle, masterfully conveyed two points: that any principle of individual liberty must emanate from a source outside the Constitution, not within it and that the Peckham majoritys liberty of contract had the same intellectual status as Spencers emotionalist rubbish. All my life I have sneered at the natural rights of man, Holmes confided to a friend some years later.10 But in a lifetime of sneering, Holmes never uttered a more damaging slur than this offhand reference to Herbert Spencers Social Statics.

READ ALSO: Ayn Rand on Applying the Principle of Objective Law

To be sure, the Constitutions basic principle was undercut by important omissions and contradictions, the most serious being its toleration of slavery at the state level. But the Civil War tragically and unmistakably exposed the evil of a legal system that allows state governments to violate individual rights.12 Immediately after that wars end, three constitutional amendments re-defined and strengthened the federal system, elevating the federal government to full sovereignty over the states and extending federal protection to individuals whose rights might be violated by state legislation. Two of these amendments were quite specific: The Thirteenth banned slavery, and the Fifteenth required that blacks be allowed to vote. But the Fourteenth Amendments reach was much broader. Not only did it endow individuals with federal citizenship, it also specified that no state government shall abridge the privileges or immunities13 of any citizen or deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.

In light of this context, no honest jurist in 1905 could deny that the Constitution embodies certain views on the proper relationship between the individual and his government. Reasonable disagreements might concern how that basic framework should guide interpretation of the documents express language, but no such disagreement could obscure the fact that the Constitution was chock-full of substantive content. Yet it was precisely this fact that Holmes now urged the Court to evade. The same compromises and exceptions that rendered liberty of contract an easy target in Holmess attack on the Lochner majority also lent plausibility to his wider assault on the notion that Americas Constitution embodies any principles at all. A constitution, he wrote, is not intended to embody a particular economic theory, whether of paternalism and the organic relation of the citizen to the State or of laissez faire. As is evident from the two illustrations he chose, Holmes was using economic theory to mean a principle defining the individuals relationship to the state. His first example, paternalism and the organic relation of the citizen to the state, refers to the Hegelian view that a nation, in one philosophers description, is not an association of autonomous individuals [but] is itself an individual, a mystic person that swallows up the citizens and transcends them, an independent, self-sustaining organism, made of human beings, with a will and purpose of its own.14 Thus, as Hegel wrote, If the state claims life, the individual must surrender it.15 Holmess second example, laissez faire, refers to unregulated capitalism, a social system in which a nation is an association of autonomous individuals, who appoint government as their agent for defending individual rights (including private property rights) against force and fraud.

In Holmess view, a constitution cannot and should not attempt to embody either of these theories, or indeed any particular view on the individuals relation to the state. Rather, a constitution is made for people of fundamentally differing views, any one of which may rightfully gain ascendancy if its adherents compose a sufficiently influential fraction of the electorate. As Holmes put it: Every opinion tends to become a law, and the reshaping of law is the natural outcome of a dominant opinion.16 In other words, a nation made up of capitalists, socialists, communists, anarchists, Quakers, Muslims, atheists, and a hundred other persuasions cannot reasonably expect its constitution to elevate one political view above all the others. Because opinions vary so widely, a nation that deems one superior to all others risks being torn apart by internal dissensions unable to find outlets in the political process. On this view, a proper constitution averts disaster by providing an orderly mechanism for embodying in law the constantly shifting, subjective opinions of political majorities. As one commentator explained, Holmes believed that the law of the English-speaking peoples was an experiment in peaceful evolution in which a fair hearing in court substituted for the violent combat of more primitive societies.17 It did not trouble Holmes that under such a constitution, society might adopt tyrannical laws. As he once wrote to a friend, If my fellow citizens want to go to Hell I will help them. Its my job.18 And so Holmes was able to conclude, in his Lochner dissent, that the word liberty in the Fourteenth Amendment is perverted when it is held to prevent the natural outcome of a dominant opinion.

So there you have it. In just 617 carefully chosen words, the framework of liberty erected by the Founding Fathers and buttressed by the Civil War amendments had been interpreted out of existence.

READ ALSO: What Questions Would You Ask a Supreme Court Nominee?

In short, Holmes believed that theSupreme Court presides over an empty Constitution empty of purpose, of moral content, of enduring meaning bereft of any embedded principles defining the relationship between man and the state. This distinctively Holmesian view, novel in 1905, is todays orthodoxy. It dominates constitutional interpretation, defines public debate, and furnishes a litmus test for evaluating nominees to the Supreme Court. Although judges sometimes close their eyes to its logical implications when their pet causes are endangered, Holmess basic argument remains unrefuted by the legal establishment. In his bleak universe, there exists no principled limit on government power, no permanent institutional barrier between ourselves and tyranny and the government can dispose of the individual as it pleases, as long as procedural niceties are observed. This pernicious Holmesian influence is reflected in the declining stature of Americas judiciary.

MR. JUSTICE HOLMES dissenting.

I regret sincerely that I am unable to agree with the judgment in this case, and that I think it my duty to express my dissent.

This case is decided upon an economic theory which a large part of the country does not entertain. If it were a question whether I agreed with that theory, I should desire to study it further and long before making up my mind. But I do not conceive that to be my duty, because I strongly believe that my agreement or disagreement has nothing to do with the right of a majority to embody their opinions in law. It is settled by various decisions of this court that state constitutions and state laws may regulate life in many ways which we as legislators might think as injudicious or if you like as tyrannical as this, and which equally with this interfere with the liberty to contract. Sunday laws and usury laws are ancient examples. A more modern one is the prohibition of lotteries. The liberty of the citizen to do as he likes so long as he does not interfere with the liberty of others to do the same, which has been a shibboleth for some well-known writers, is interfered with by school laws, by the Post Office, by every state or municipal institution which takes his money for purposes thought desirable, whether he likes it or not. The Fourteenth Amendment does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencers Social Statics. The other day we sustained the Massachusetts vaccination law. Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11. United States and state statutes and decisions cutting down the liberty to contract by way of combination are familiar to this court. Northern Securities Co. v. United States, 193 U.S. 197. Two years ago we upheld the prohibition of sales of stock on margins or for future delivery in the constitution of California. Otis v. Parker, 187 U.S. 606. The decision sustaining an eight hour law for miners is still recent. Holden v. Hardy, 169 U.S. 366. Some of these laws embody convictions or prejudices which judges are likely to share. Some may not. But a constitution is not intended to embody a particular economic theory, whether of paternalism and the organic relation of the citizen to the State or of laissez faire. It is made for people of fundamentally differing views, and the accident of our finding certain opinions natural and familiar or novel and even shocking ought not to conclude our judgment upon the question whether statutes embodying them conflict with the Constitution of the United States.

General propositions do not decide concrete cases. The decision will depend on a judgment or intuition more subtle than any articulate major premise. But I think that the proposition just stated, if it is accepted, will carry us far toward the end. Every opinion tends to become a law. I think that the word liberty in the Fourteenth Amendment is perverted when it is held to prevent the natural outcome of a dominant opinion, unless it can be said that a rational and fair man necessarily would admit that the statute proposed would infringe fundamental principles as they have been understood by the traditions of our people and our law. It does not need research to show that no such sweeping condemnation can be passed upon the statute before us. A reasonable man might think it a proper measure on the score of health. Men whom I certainly could not pronounce unreasonable would uphold it as a first instalment of a general regulation of the hours of work. Whether in the latter aspect it would be open to the charge of inequality I think it unnecessary to discuss.

To be concluded.

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Footnotes

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Justice Holmes and the Empty Constitution (Part 2) - New Ideal

WASHINGTON -- "Poor is the nation that has no heroes," Cicero said. But poorer still is a nation with the kind of heroes celebrated on Fox News.

The nation's leading purveyor of lethal medical advice during a pandemic (trademark pending) has recently elevated the resisters against coronavirus vaccines -- an airline pilot here, a nurse there -- as models of citizenship. These abstainers are risking their livelihoods in the cause of . . . what? Well, that depends on your view of the vaccines themselves.

For generations we've had vaccine mandates, particularly for childhood diseases, in every state plus Washington D.C. Few thought to call this tyranny because communities have a duty to maintain public health, and individuals have a duty to reasonably accommodate the common good -- even if this means allowing your child to be injected with a substance carrying a minuscule risk of harm.

So there can be no objection rooted in principle to vaccine mandates, unless you want to question them all the way down to measles, mumps and rubella. The problem must be covid-19 in particular.

If the coronavirus vaccines are risky, experimental concoctions with frequent side effects, then government and business mandates are social coercion run amok. We might as well mandate vaping.

But if these vaccines are carefully tested and encourage greater immunity to a deadly disease, with minimal risk of side effects, then the "heroism" of vaccine resisters takes on a different connotation: It means resisters are less courageous and more selfish than your average 6-year-old getting a second MMR dose. Perhaps vaccine mandates should be modified to include lollipops for whingeing malcontents.

So which view is correct? If only there were empirical means, some scientific method, to test the matter. If only there had been three phases of clinical trials, involving tens of thousands of volunteers, demonstrating the drugs to be safe and effective. If only the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration were constantly monitoring safety concerns about the vaccines. If only we could estimate the number of covid deaths that might have been prevented if vaccine uptake were higher.

To break the suspense -- we do live in such a world. "From June through September 2021," concluded a recent Peterson-KFF report, "approximately 90,000 covid-19 deaths among adults likely would have been prevented with vaccination." So the matter is simple: Who is making vaccination more likely to take place, and who is not?

In this light, it's hard to blame the small group of workers who have been misled into believing that liberty is the right to infect your neighbors with a deadly pathogen. The main fault lies with the media outlets that spotlight and elevate such people, and with political figures who seek their political dreams by encouraging lethal ignorance.

In the latter category, the Republican governors Ron DeSantis of Florida and Greg Abbott of Texas are the repellent standouts. If the coronavirus could vote, these men would be governors for life. Most recently, Abbott issued an executive order saying "no entity" could impose vaccine mandates in his state. So far, many Texas business entities have treated his order with contempt, preferring to comply with President Biden's vaccinate-or-test mandate.

In my political youth, conservatives praised state governments as "laboratories of innovation." Now they're graveyards of sanity and public spirit. And the actual graveyards provide evidence.

The effectiveness of vaccine mandates is demonstrated by current practice. The United States has generally high rates of coverage for childhood vaccinations. But in states that make it easy to gain an exemption -- for religious or sometimes "philosophical" reasons -- the rates of coverage decline. And we've seen outbreaks of preventable diseases such as measles as a result.

For my part, I'm not even sure what a "religious" exemption means in the case of covid. I understand that a few religious traditions object to receiving medical care entirely. But I don't think this is the main excuse for evangelicals seeking exemptions from covid vaccinations. What type or tradition of religion asserts the right to avoid minor risks and inconveniences in service to our neighbors? The Church of Perpetual Selfishness? The coven of Ayn Rand? Do Christians really want to be identified as people who permit breast augmentation but frown on vaccination? Getting vaccinated is not only good public health; it is also a small but important act of generosity.

Abbott and his ilk are seeking a morally desolate world in which people demand their autonomy even if it kills their neighbor. But there is a better world in which institutions have duties to the health and safety of citizens, and citizens have obligations to the health and happiness of one another. That is not only a better place to live -- it is a place where more of us would remain alive.

-- Michael Gerson is a columnist for The Washington Post.

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Vaccine resisters sacrificing their jobs are not heroes - Bennington Banner