Category Archives: Ayn Rand

Paul Walter Hauser (center) as Richard Jewell. Photo: Claire Folger/Warner Bros.

On July 7, 1996, while Atlanta was hosting the Summer Olympic Games, a security guard named Richard Jewell spotted an unattended backpack beneath a bench during a concert at the citys Centennial Park. Jewell quickly notified authorities and was in the process of pushing the crowd back when a pipe bomb filled with nails (intended to cause maximum casualties) went off. One woman died of her injuries, a man suffered a fatal heart attack, and scores of people were severely wounded. Despite the casualties, theres little doubt that Jewells vigilance saved many lives. The story might have ended there for Jewell with honors, TV interviews, and the good kind of celebrity had FBI agents, with few suspects, not gotten hung up on the idea that the socially awkward, overweight male who lived with his mother and had botched several attempts to become a full-fledged police officer had planted the bomb himself so that he could discover it and become a hero. A version of that scenario had in fact gone down two years earlier in Los Angeles, and Jewell fit the FBI bomber profile (something to remember while watching the heroes of the TV series Mindhunter develop their so-called science). After the FBI leaked their suspicions to an Atlanta Journal Constitution reporter, Jewell (along with his mother) spent three months under siege by the media, his guilt widely presumed despite the FBIs lack of evidence to charge him. The FBI didnt make too big a deal when he was cleared. Most people would remember the accusations, not the outcome.

This enraging episode is the basis for the new Clint Eastwood drama, Richard Jewell, which puts a distinctive spin on the story. The actual bomber, Eric Rudolph, a right-wing, anti-abortion homophobe whose killing spree would continue, is named only once, in passing, and his likely ties to Christian militias and white supremacists go unmentioned. (Rudolph, in prison for life, remains a hero in those circles.) That omission could be justified on the grounds that Rudolphs story is largely unrelated to Jewells although most filmmakers would assume their audiences desire to know who had committed the act of terrorism theyd just witnessed, not to mention the reasons. Not Eastwood. He has been drawn to narratives in which ordinary people make heroic, split-second decisions, and even more to stories in which ordinary people make heroic, split-second decisions and come under threat from zealous government agencies and the press. In Sully, Eastwood turned the worlds least controversial outfit the National Transit Safety Board, tasked with determining the cause of terrible accidents in hopes of preventing further ones into parasites intent on ruining the pilot who had saved every soul on his plane. Eastwoods mind is marinated in the paranoia and grandiosity of Ayn Rand, for whom extraordinary individuals were reliably under fire by unimaginative government regulators in collusion with the press. He takes this stuff real seriously. During a successful run for mayor of Carmel, California, in the 80s, Eastwood compared enforcement of zoning laws to Hitler pounding on innocent peoples doors. He got the zoning laws changed before the pogroms could commence.

To tell Jewells story his way, Eastwood needs a new enemy of the people, and this turns out to be a Journal Constitution reporter named Kathy Scruggs, played by Olivia Wilde. By all accounts, Scruggs (who can no longer sue for libel, being deceased) was a flamboyant, sharp-elbowed investigative journalist who loved the job and the lifestyle. The script by Bill Ray shows her going the extra mile, pressing herself in a bar against Tom Shaw (Jon Hamm), one of the lead FBI agents, and putting her hand on his crotch. Give me a name, she says, and you can have me. It would be easy to attack the actress, who plays Scruggs as borderline insane, sashaying around with her tongue half out of her mouth, but thats not my inclination: Wilde landed a juicy role under a director whose actors win Oscars and she went for it perhaps trusting Eastwood would pull her back if the portrait of Scruggs became too degrading. Vain hope. In reality, the FBI had no problem leaking Jewells name and confirming it to the media, likely out of desperation and sheer incompetence. It wasnt the result of an unscrupulous woman reporter stroking a drunken agents cock, both people fancying themselves destined for greater things and eager to advance by any means necessary. In the media scrum, Scruggs takes the persecution to the next level, asking, If hes innocent then why is the FBI here?

To those who object to my dwelling on the movies politics, I can only say that its Eastwood who has twisted the story to suit his ends. The sad thing is that he didnt need to he has plenty of good material, and his direction is fluid and unfussy. He and his screenwriter wisely suggest that the idea of Jewell (played by Paul Walter Hauser) planting the bomb was not entirely absurd. Jewell has a touch of authoritarianism, a tendency to be extra attentive to the smallest infractions: He doesnt pick his battles to prevent unnecessary scenes. (I dont mean to impugn Jewell a hero but there is a connection between his mindset as portrayed here and people like Michael Drejka, who drove around parking lots checking cars in handicapped spots and wound up convicted for manslaughter after provoking an altercation.) Hauser gives an extraordinary, non-actorish performance, underscoring that Jewell wasnt an actor that his affect was flat and a bit know-it-all and didnt play well on TV. Kathy Bates, who can chew scenery with the best of em, expertly tunes her performance to Hausers: low-key, bitter, resentful that the world has not recognized their worth.

Ray has crafted wonderful scenes between Hauser and Sam Rockwell as his scrappy attorney, Watson Bryant, who blows his top whenever Jewell insists on showing off his knowledge of criminals and their motives to FBI agents strengthening their belief that they have the right guy. Rockwells edginess is a great comic foil for Hausers mulishness and vice versa and Nina Arianda as Bryants Russian secretary adds a touch of giddiness that keeps the film from being bogged down.

Say this about Eastwood: He evidently feels no obligation to reconcile disparate points of view a weakness in some of his movies, a source of true drama in others. In Richard Jewell, Confederate flags show up in FBI headquarters, and, depending on the viewer, they could be a reminder of either an unjust system of laws or a national governments willingness to trample states and individuals rights. Jewells arsenal of weapons (pistols to assault rifles) can be taken as a sign of his nuttiness or his loyalty to the Second Amendment, seen as aberrant only by liberal elites who also regard him as a Bubba.

Im inclined, though, to think that Eastwoods intended audience will respond enthusiastically to the jabs at the government and the elites, who are seen casually lumping the NRA in with fringe groups. It cant be an accident that Richard Jewell shows the enemies of truth and justice to be the FBI and the press, both of which have been targeted by the current administration, its Republican lackeys, and the sorts of people who rail at empty chairs. It cant be an accident that the true villain of this story the man who planted bombs to kill his political enemies and whose type is now ascendant is deemed irrelevant, a distraction. It cant be an accident that a postscript notes Jewells death in his early 40s, with the implication that he never fully recovered from this trauma, but doesnt mention Kathy Scruggs, who left her job, fell into a depression, and died of a drug overdose long before Jewells diabetes helped do him in. You could argue that she was as much a victim of the FBIs disgraceful behavior as he was, but I wouldnt at least not in certain parts of this country. I think Eastwoods audience is going to eat this movie up, and maybe even turn it into a rallying cry. The legacy of the bombing of Olympic Centennial Park might end up suiting the bomber just fine.

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Clint Eastwoods Richard Jewell Is Full of Rage and Spin - Vulture

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It's jargon for the American dream and all the consumerism and commoditization which comes with it, suggesting bright hope, dazzling greed, and rampant capitalism at once. Given its ubiquity, the dollar sign's roots remain far from simple, with competing theories regarding Bohemian coins, Hercules ' Pillars, and harried merchants.

If you had to find lurking letters in their shape, you could spy a'S ' overlay with a squeezed, bendless ' U ' that provides its vertical strokes. In fact, this is one of the most popular misconceptions about the origins of the sign: it is for the United States. But it's not.

That's what Ayn Rand, the famous libertarian writer and philosopher, believed. One character tells another about what the dollar sign stands for in a chapter in her novel of 1957, Atlas Shrugged. Rand seems to have been mistaken, not least because the US was known as the United Colonies of America before 1776 and there are reports that the dollar sign was in use before the birth of the United States.

The dollar's history is much shorter. In 1520, the Kingdom of Bohemia began to mint coins using silver from a Joachimsthal mine-which translates roughly as Joachim's valley from German to English. Logically, if unimaginatively, the Joachimsthaler was called the coin, which was then shortened to Thaler, the term that spread around the world.

It was the Dutch version, the Daler, which in the pockets and on the tongues of early immigrants made its way across the Atlantic, and the American-English pronunciation of the term dollar retains its echoes today.

Despite the relative youthfulness of the currency, however, there is no clear answer to the question of where the symbol of the dollar originated from. No one seems to have sat down to model it and its form often fluctuates-it sometimes has two lines through it, more and more just the one. Not that there are not enough theories to contend with. For example, by going back to the idea that in its form there is a U and an S hidden, it has been proposed that they stand for Silver Units.

One of the most esoteric stories of origin connects it back to the Bohemian Thaler featuring a serpent on a Christian cross. That itself was an allusion to Moses ' story winding around a pole a bronze snake to heal people who had been bitten. As it has been said, the dollar originated from that mark.

The interpretation is based on the Hercules Pillars, a term coined by the ancient Greeks to identify the promontories flanked by the entrance to the Gibraltar Strait. The columns are in the national coat of arms of Spain and appeared on the Spanish dollar in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Yet another version centres on the Pillars of Hercules, a phrase conjured up by the Ancient Greeks to describe the promontories that flank the entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar. The pillars feature in Spain's national coat of arms and, during the 18th and 19th Centuries, appeared on the Spanish dollar or "The Piece of Eight called the Peso. The columns have S-shaped banners twined around them, and it doesn't take a lot of squinting to see a dollar sign's similarity.

In fact, Spanish coinage is the most widely accepted theory. As historians tell us, it has often been shortened to the initial' P' with a 'S' hovering in superscript next to it. Gradually, due to the scrawl of time-pressed merchants and scribes,' P' fused with the 'S' and lost its curl, leaving the vertical line down the center of the 'S' like a pin.

A Spanish dollar was worth more or less a US dollar, so it's easy to see how the sign could have been modified from there.

RELATED: 3 Pieces of Financial Advice that Will Save You Thousands of Dollars to Learn

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Trivia: The Real History of How the Dollar Symbol Came to Being - University Herald

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Op-ed views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author.

Heroes dont always fight wars for America and battle terrorists. Sometimes they walk among us daily. Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, knew this when she would look out at an audience of powerful faces and say: You are the true heroes!

Ayn Rand frequently made a spellbinding point in her lectures to business leaders. Rand was a unique philosopher, ranked by many academics as the thinker who had the greatest impact on 20th century America. She would plant her feet and pose the question: Which groups in society contribute most to making the world a better place?

Following quickly, Rand would throw her business audience the next question: What human occupation is the most useful socially?

She would explain: mans basic tool of survival is his mind, and the most crucially important occupation the discovery of knowledge, which is the occupation of scientists. But scientists essentially are loners, and not usually concerned with society or social issues. They pursue knowledge for the sake of knowledge. And before the 20th century, many scientific and technological facts that could have affected human existence lived and died with the scientists who, for most of the last 2,000 years, had no real connection with the rest of mankind.

Now, Rand asked, suppose that a group of men and women decided to make it their job to bring the results of the achievements of science within the reach of mankind, to apply scientific knowledge to the improvements of life on earth. Wouldnt such men be the greatest social benefactors? Shouldnt the humanitarians (she would ask), those do-gooders who hold social usefulness as their highest value, regard such men as heroes?

Rand might then scowl at the audience and say: Would you believe me if I say that, no, such men and women are not regarded as heroes today- they are the most hated, blamed, denounced men in the humanitarians society? She would say that something is wrong terribly wrong in such a society.

The society about which Rand speaks is not fiction. It exists in the USA today. And the group of achieving men and women walk among us each day.

The heroes of today are the individuals who have devoted themselves to the world of business. Left to pursue their own ends, they automatically make the world a better place, even when they profit personally. Sometimes, they make the world a better place even as they may lose their own fortunes in the doing.

It is the businessperson- not government, not the clergy, not the humanitarians and not the professors who has elevated mankind by bringing the medicines that conquer disease, the higher-yielding crops that combat starvation, the electricity that powers our tools and medical equipment, the refrigeration that keeps food from spoiling, the air-conditioning that lengthens lifespans and saves lives.

After the scientists discovered quantum mechanics, it was business people who brought mankind the fruits of that discovery, in the form of computer chips, lasers, and fiber-optics. Its the business person who creates the jobs that bring security to the worker and the workers family to sustain existence and enjoy life, while the business person risks his/her own capital even as he provides the benefits.

Yet, the voices of the left say business is the predator. The voices say the capitalist demons create wealth on the backs of the poor. The left makes business pay dearly for the benefits business leaders bring to the world, both in the form of confiscatory taxation and smothering regulations, and in the form of contemptible condemnation that they spew as a poison throughout the land. An example of poisonous spin and disregard for truth is what the left has done to drug companies: these companies brought the AIDS drugs to market, yet are criticized for people dying. Thats truth turned inside out in a world turned upside down.

Go to a local city council meeting and watch how the lowly developer or builder is treated by the sanctimonious politicians, who regard him as a necessary evil whose only value is to pay the lions share of taxes. In truth, it is the builder who provides the second most basic need of humankind shelter. Why should he have to slink into the council chambers, head bowed, and beg for the right to provide shelter to citizens? Why should he have to pay exorbitant fees and jump through 50 kinds of hoops for the privilege of jeopardizing his own capital? Politicians forget that business people drive the engine that makes this country go. Nothing happens until something gets built or some service is provided.

Business owners are the true heroes, essential players in creating Americas greatness.

John R. Smith is chairman of BIZPAC, the Business Political Action Committee of Palm Beach County, and owner of a financial services company. He is a frequent columnist for BizPac Review.

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America's true heroes walk among all of us - BizPac Review

Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his girlfriend Carrie Symonds arrive in Downing Street after the Conservative Party was returned to power in the General Election with an increased majority. Photo: Yui Mok/PA Wire/PA Images

Last evening Jeremy Corbyn emailed his supporters: "I've been campaigning all day and the response has been amazing. This election will be close, but it's incredible to see how our people-powered strategy is paying off."

Three hours later, the national exit poll indicated that Labour's people-powered strategy was about to see it reduced to fewer MPs than at any time since 1935 by any measure, a catastrophic result. It may not be much comfort to him to recall that only a few days earlier, Boris Johnson's right-hand man, Dominic Cummings, was also predicting a close result, raising the possibility of a hung Parliament. Even the Daily Telegraph was taking the prospect of Mr Corbyn in 10 Downing Street seriously.

Obviously they we, all of us had been relying far too much on the opinion polls which did not even begin to detect signs of the political earthquake that was about to occur. They were telling us that the gap between the parties was narrowing, to the point where the overall result was becoming impossible to predict. How on earth did they miss a decisive national swing, from left to right, of ten per cent?

But Mr Johnson's victory was not just a traditional Tory win, as achieved three times by Margaret Thatcher and once by John Major. Their battleground was the floating voter, the undecided open-minded man or women who could be persuaded either way as an election campaign unfolded. What makes the 2019 election unique is the wholesale abandonment of their long-standing Labour sympathies by hundreds of thousands of working-class voters in run down post-industrial areas. Floating voters they never were. This is a new phenomenon in British politics, which has busted the pollsters' carefully tuned algorithms to smithereens.

It is a major shift from a class-based political division to one based on identity and personality, in other words, on gut feeling. In the case of identity, the Tory slogan "get Brexit done" crystallised a sense that the Westminster political elite had been trying to impose something on the nation, something to do with a vaguely defined European identity, that the nation had not asked for.

Even many of those who did not vote to leave the EU felt the resentment of those who did, that the 2016 referendum result wasn't being honoured as they had been promised it would be. So the seeds of Labour's "Friday the 13th" general election disaster were sown in the 2017 Labour manifesto's solemn promise to comply with the referendum result. All the Labour machinations against Theresa May's deal, argued on the grounds that it wasn't perfect, began to look like nothing other than bad faith with ulterior partisan purposes.

Jeremy Corbyn's attempt to square the circle was to propose an unlikely compromise, a renegotiated Brexit withdrawal agreement which would then be put to a further referendum in which he would remain neutral. It made him look both weak and shifty. It contributed to a growing feeling among voters, including Labour voters, that Mr Corbyn was not a fit person to lead the nation in the role of Prime Minister. It was a judgement of character, a gut instinct based on cultural stereotypes of the trendy left-wing political activist who had substituted ideological obstinacy in place of intelligence.

Mr Corbyn's manifest inability to understand the searing row inside Labour about anti-Semitism, let alone take effective steps to stamp it out, simply advertised that here was a second-class brain with no self-awareness. He suffers from a conviction of his own rectitude, a well-known personality flaw of left-wing ideologues.

Labour canvassers reported over and over again that while many individuals they approached mentioned Brexit, for or against, a constantly repeated theme on the doorstep was a visceral dislike of Jeremy Corbyn. Many voters did not take instinctively to Boris Johnson, but the anti-Corbyn effect was much more striking. As it turned out, it let Boris Johnson win almost by default. He has Mr Corbyn to thank for his victory.

And Brexit. The election was his personal triumph. But now he has to lead. He says his is a One Nation Conservative Party, and if he really means it he will have to be ruthless with his many Tory colleagues who are unreconstructed Ayn Rand-reading state-shrinking Thatcherites.

A comfortable majority in the House of Commons will give him room to do that. But he is about to be reminded that the Conservative Party is in fact a coalition of many conflicting interests and beliefs. He has just added a new ingredient, Brexit-supporting ex-Labour voters in some of the more marginalised areas of the country who are heavily reliant on State support but damaged by years of Tory cuts and austerity, to this unstable mix. Theresa May failed to manage it, even without that. Can he? Let us hope so, as with Labour in post-election meltdown, people-powered strategy notwithstanding, there really is no alternative.

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Why Johnson can thank Corbyn for victory - The Tablet

The sorites paradox is concerned with the question of when an object ceases to be an object. To demonstrate, a hypothetical mound of sand is depleted one grain at a time: at what point, after which grain, does the mound of sand cease to be a mound at all? This paradox is what now defines the status of those migrants to the UK who have traditionally voted Conservative, and the party loyalties of their children.

I often think of the depleting mound whenever the chancellor, Sajid Javid, appears, frantically trying to justify another racially suspect Conservative policy by pointing to his own brown existence within the party. I am sure that, at one point, Javid thought he was promoting a legitimate defence of the party he joined as an idealistic upwardly mobile Ayn Rand-loving student in the 1980s. In contrast, he has been tasked with defending todays party against claims of Islamophobia, racism and draconian policies such as citizenship-stripping. At what point does Javid cease to be a loyalist, and turn into a pawn? At what point does the party that first captured his loyalty finally cease to exist?

The past 10 years in general, and the previous three in particular, have turned the heat up on members of, and voters for, the Conservative party who come from migrant backgrounds. After the Windrush scandal, the hostile environment and the coronation of Boris Johnson a man whose entire career has been marked by racist insults and comments the calculus of plausible deniability for the sake of free commerce and support of businesses no longer works. The partys toxic policies can no longer be ringfenced or ignored by those who voted for it based on an affinity with conservative values in their countries of origin. An estimated 20% of ethnic minority voters voted Conservative in 2017 a number that rose to 40% among British Indian voters but its now getting hard to claim the Tory party will not detrimentally affect their lives.

In recent years, Conservative policy has made it extremely hard for non-EU citizens to come to, and live, in the UK. Voters from migrant backgrounds tend to have links to their or their parents countries of origin, rendering them direct victims of the hostile environment, increasingly cut off from relatives, and even spouses, abroad. It will be a challenge to find many such households where time and money has not been spent securing something as basic as a visitor visa for a relative.

A direct promise by Tory Brexiters during the EU referendum was that a leave vote would secure more working visas for south Asians to work in Britains curry industry. The votes were given, but the visas did not materialise. The message is loud and clear, the party will play on the commercial insecurities of such communities, then abandon them.

Religious and ethnic affiliations have also been manipulated. One of the lowest points in this countrys recent political history was Zac Goldsmiths 2016 London mayoral campaign, which profiled voters based on their backgrounds and their propensity to vote Conservative, and sent British Indians leaflets claiming that Sadiq Khan was a danger to their community as he did not attend an event welcoming the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, and supported a wealth tax on family jewellery. David Cameron himself doubled down on the gutter tactics by sending a letter targeting Hindus and Sikhs in an attempt to convince them not to vote for Khan (who has Pakistani descent) because closer ties between the UK and India have been a priority for me.

Even if one were to ignore the race-baiting, for migrants who are more business-minded, Labour has now become the natural party of choice by virtue of its soft Brexit position and anti-austerity economic strategy. Appealing to the entrepreneurial, free enterprise spirit of some migrants and their children no longer holds water at a time when the government is putting politics before trade. Brexit is predicted to harm small business owners more dramatically than large corporates. A third of the 1,000 companies surveyed by the Federation of Small Businesses in September said Brexit had already caused either temporarily or permanently reduced profitability.

No one wants their politics to be assumed based on the colour of their skin, wrote Conservative campaigner Binita Mehta-Parmar in 2015. We second- or third-generation British Asians dont possess the leftover feelings from the 70s and 80s, when many automatically associated with Labour as they championed anti-discrimination laws. The bad news for these voters is that these leftover feelings arent mere political flotsam, remnants of a bygone time. They are accurate fears about a party that still views ethnic minorities as political pawns, pits them against each other and cynically stokes anti-immigration fears to capture votes. The subliminal party slogan is, If you want another immigrant for a neighbour, vote Labour, recalling the notorious Smethwick campaign in the 1964 election.

Grain by grain, what once distinguished the party has ebbed away: the fiscal responsibility and pro-business agenda has disappeared, leaving only the racism and opportunism. For Britains migrants and their children, a vote for Labour now is not a defection to another tribe, it is a matter of self-preservation.

Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist

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Many migrants once voted Tory. Now their loyalty is fading fast - The Guardian

10 Dec, 2019 | Tue | 00:10

A banana duct-taped to the wall grabbed international headlines after three editions of it were sold for prices between US$120,000 and US$150,000 at Art Basel Miami. The artworkcontinued to go bananas in the art world as a hungry artist took it off the wall and ate it amid a crowd of stunned onlookers.

David Datuna ate the US$120,000 banana

The artwork titled Comedian was created by Maurizio Cattelan

TitledComedian, the artwork comprised of a banana bought in a Miami grocery store and a single piece of duct tape. Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan created three editions of the banana art and presented them at Perrotin Gallerys booth at Art Basel Miami.

The gallery's founder, Emmanuel Perrotin, said the bananas are a symbol of global trade, a double entendre, as well as a classic device for humor. Two editions of Comedian were sold for US$120,000 each to two French collectors on the first day the workwas exhibited. Several museums are bidding for the third edition for $150,000. Maurizio Cattelan has been known for his satirical artworks which include an 18-karat golden toilet titled America, which was stolen from Blenheim Palace a few months ago.

Comedianwas on display at Perrotinand became an instagrammable selfie spot

Maurizio Cattelan is also the creator of the golden toilet sculpture which was stolen from Blenheim Palace a few months ago

Last Saturday, American artist David Datuna walked into Perrotin Gallerys booth at the fair. He peeled the overripe banana from the walll and called himself a hungry artist. Datuna later posted the video on his Instagram account with the caption "Art performance by me. I love Maurizio Cattelan artwork and I really love this installation. It's very delicious."

The act immediately shocked everyone on the scene. The empty spot on the wall was replaced with a fresh banana and Police were later deployed to guard the replacement banana. Datuna was not arrested and no further action will be taken. "[Datuna] did not destroy the art work. The banana is the idea," Lucien Terras, a director at the gallery.

David Datuna is a New York-based artist known for hisViewpoint of Millionsseries that explores the sources and meaning of cultural identity from each unique point of view. Datunas signature technique inViewpoint of Millionsis a network of positive and negative optical lenses suspended over a large-scale layered, collaged and painted image. The mixed media palette often includes photography, newspaper articles, magazine clippings, paint, and color.

In October 2011, Datunas portrait of Vladimir Putin made out of miniature images of Mona Lisa was sold for US$269,000. In December 2011, Datuna's Steve Jobs / Ayn Rand portrait sold for US$210,000 at SCOPE Miami Art Show

Datuna's Steve Jobs / Ayn Rand portrait

The artwork ismade out of miniature images

Datunas portrait of Vladimir Putin

In 2015 filmmakers Michael Huter and Brian Bayerl produced a documentary about Datuna calledDatuna: Portrait of America. The film tells the story of Datuna's escape from the repression of the former USSR to pursue his dream of cultural and artistic freedom in America.

On October 18 2016, Datuna unveiled hisMake America Stronger Togetherinstallation at the doorstep of Trump Tower in New York City. He has combined the themes MAKE AMERICA (Donald Trump) with STRONGER TOGETHER (Hillary Clinton) representing a divided nation. The work consists of two American flags facing back-to-back covered in a collage of newspapers, quotes, and images reflecting the current climate with the messages "SOS" and "ONE."

Make America Stronger Together

A closer look at Make America Stronger Together

Due to the overwhelming popularity of the artwork, together with the stunt pulled off by Datuna, Perrotin Gallery decided to remove the banana art one day early.

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David Datuna: The Hungry Artist Who Ate a $120,000 Banana Art at Art Basel | Auctions News - TheValue.com

Rorschach, whose visage is prominently featured in HBOs new Watchmen series, is a growly detective who wears a mask, hunts criminals, and refuses to compromise on his principles. That probably sounds familiar.

But Rorschach isnt parodying the icon with pointy ears and the cape. His black and white moral ideals are a political philosophy that Watchmens writer, Alan Moore, found laughable, not laudable.

Heres the real comic book origin story of Rorschach, starting with something that seems obvious, until you realize its anything but.

At least, not primarily.

In the early stages of conception, Moore planned for the leads in Watchmen to be heroes from the stable of Charlton Comics, which DC Comics had recently acquired. But when DC editorial decided theyd rather incorporate those characters into the main DC Universe, Moore and artist Dave Gibbons created original characters to evoke similar well-known comic book archetypes. Doctor Manhattan evolved from a carbon copy of Captain Atom to a parallel for Superman. The Comedian mashed the Peacemaker with Nick Fury.

And it would be easy to assume, in this era, that Rorschach is supposed to represent Batman. After all, Batman is exactly the kind of guy who opens a comic by monologuing about how dirty his city is. Batmans traumatic past has transformed him into a criminal-hating revenge machine who mistrusts all authority. Batman smashes through windows to interrogate thugs by breaking ribs and fingers.

But Rorschach isnt solely based on Batman because Batman wasnt any of those things when Watchmen was written. The Batman of the early 80s was darker than his 1960s counterpart, certainly, but he was still gadget-loving and justice-devoted. What we consider the foundational texts of our modern idea of Batman The Dark Knight Returns (1986), Batman: Year One (1987), Alan Moores own The Killing Joke (1988) simply had not been written yet when Watchmen #1 (1985) came on the scene.

The schlubby Nite Owl (who evolved from a retread of Blue Beetle) is just as much a Batman analogue as Rorschach, with his nocturnal animal theme, his basement full of gadgets, and his fancy vehicle with its onboard flamethrower.

Rorschach owes his ideals, his visual design, and his penchant for violence, to a couple of other characters who were doing the Late-80s-Batman thing way before Batman. Namely, the vigilante detectives known as the Question and Mr. A.

Mr. A first appeared in a 1976 issue of the underground comics anthology series witzend, as a vigilante who wore an impassive steel mask and the wardrobe of a 1940s private detective fedora, suit, and tie but all in white. His calling card was a literal card with a half-black, half-white face, symbolizing his belief that there was no grey area of morality, only good and evil. And, of course, he was the enlightened man who could tell the difference.

Less than a year later, the Question came on the scene, as a backup feature in Blue Beetle. He was a vigilante who also dressed like a 1940s private detective and wore a pseudoderm mask that made him appear to be entirely without facial features. But unlike his other Silver Age comics contemporaries, hed leave the occasional criminal to drown if he felt they deserved it.

The Question and Mr. A were both from the pen of writer-artist Steve Ditko, one of the co-creators of Spider-Man. The reason they seem so similar is that the Question was simply Ditkos attempt to make Mr. A fit into Comics Code restrictions, which would make him a much more lucrative project.

Both characters were Ditkos way of expressing his politics through the superhero metaphor.

Ditko was an avowed Objectivist, following the philosophy first espoused by Ayn Rand, which rejects altruism for the individualistic platform that mans moral obligation is to achieve his own happiness and act as his own judgement determines. Therefore, unobstructed free capitalism is the only moral society, and the only role of the government is to provide police, armed forces, and objective courts.

With Mr. A and the Question (and a few other characters, notably DCs Hawk and Dove) Ditko sought to express that philosophy through fiction, much as Rand herself had done with novels like The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. And naturally, with superhero comics as his genre of choice, that meant that Mr. A and Ditkos Question (though other creators would shift the Questions ideology significantly) were dealers of Objectivist justice.

Fools will tell you that there can be no honest person, Mr. A tells the reader in one story, That there are no blacks or whites ... that everyone is grey! [...] When one knows what is black, evil, and what is white, good, there can be no justification for choosing any part of evil! Those who do so choose, are not grey but black and evil ... and they will be treated accordingly!

In another Mr. A story, Ditko presents a hippie in tattered clothes and hair as the enemy of the good, as the man exhorts the masses to follow his brotherhood of the collective. We must banish individual selfishness, rights, property and good! [...] There is no one truth, but a truth that works for the common good! No differences are important! Better or worse is a cruel hoax! All must blend into equality! Ignore impotent reason and logic! Forget right or wrong!

Ditkos implication is that an altruistic push for equality, peace, and the haves helping out the have-nots is the path to a slave society. The bamboozled men taken in by the hippies words agree: Some guys never learn to compromise, to give in ... stubborn ... wont listen to reason ... greedy ... wont share their good fortune ... they need a practical lesson in getting a long with people.

Its not hard to see the path from Mr. A to Rorschach, who refused to compromise even in the face of armageddon.

Moore has minced no words about how he never intended Rorschach to be a laudable hero. And over the years, hes also talked about his opinion of Ditkos openly Randian leanings.

The writer respected Ditkos commitment to putting his politics in his art, telling Comic Book Artist magazine that that in some ways set him above most of his contemporaries. But he felt pretty differently about the content of those politics.

I have to say I found Ayn Rands philosophy laughable, Moore continued. It was a white supremacist dreams of the master race, burnt in an early-20th century form. Her ideas didnt really appeal to me, but they seemed to be the kind of ideas that people would espouse, people who might secretly believe themselves to be part of the elite, and not part of the excluded majority.

Moore and Gibbons Rorschach isnt the shining example of the philosophy that Mr. A represents. Rather than exhibiting objective moral beliefs about every persons right to pursue their own happiness, he is a casual misogynist and homophobe. His closest allies find him, at best, off-putting and hard to get along with contrary to Randian reasoning, his commitment to his ideals has not brought him personal success or happiness.

Rorschachs final act of Watchmen, in which he refuses to keep Ozymandias hoax a secret, is considered by many to be the characters most purely heroic moment. But its an empty one, as Rorschach believes that hes already spoiled the whole thing by mailing his journal to the New Frontiersman. Moore and Gibbons had a different idea in mind: Not self-motivated heroism of the individual, but the self-imposed tragedy of individualism.

We realized Rorschach wouldnt survive the book, Moore told the BBC documentary Comics Britannia. It just became obvious; we realized that this was a character if ever there was a character that had a king-sized death wish. He was in pain, psychological pain, every moment of his life, and he wanted out of it, but with honor in whatever his own twisted standards of honor might have been.

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Alan Moore created Rorschach to dunk on Randian superheroes - Polygon

If you think youve heard every argument about climate change, you werent at a debate at CU Boulder on Monday.

It pitted Alex Epstein, a leading conservative voice on climate change and the author of "The Moral Case For Fossil Fuels," against Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmentalist likely best known as a leader in the anti-vaccine movement.

The question before them: Should the world radically restrict fossil fuels to prevent climate change?

Epsteins answers revealed how some on the right have shifted tactics on climate change. Rather than focusing on science, he emphasized all the good fossil fuels have done for humanity and what society may have to give up to move to alternatives.

A few hundred people packed a vast auditorium on campus to hear Epstein and Kennedy square off. Many worked in the oil and gas industry and wore I Love Fossil Fuels or Colorado Energy Strong buttons. Some paid $300 to attend a VIP meet-and-greet ahead of the event, stocked with wine and chocolate mousse cups.

Fox News contributor Guy Benson moderated the debate. Right at the start, he told the audience that hes a center-right kind of guy, then added another point.

We're not up here debating whether climate change exists, he said before shifting into an impression of President Donald Trump with a single finger framing either side of his face. There's no one up here saying: It's a total hoax made up by China."

That comment won a laugh from Epstein, who wore a gray blazer and read notes off of an iPad. A philosopher and a past fellow of the Ayn Rand Institute, Epstein is now the founder and director of the Center for Industrial Progress, a for-profit think tank.

Epsteins main argument is that eliminating fossil fuels would come at a major cost to human flourishing. In particular, he said it would deny the worlds poorest access to cheap, reliable energy.

If we want more people in the world to have long, healthy, opportunity-filled lives, we need to continue our massive use of fossil fuels, he said. And we actually need to expand it.

Epstein has been tagged as a climate denier in the past. While he rejects the label, he did quibble with some widely accepted points of climate science during the debate.

For example, he said he believes humans have contributed to some warming but not run-away, catastrophic warming. Scientists have long connected human society to a rapid rise in atmospheric carbon. The latest report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change also warns of the major toll climate change could take on humans, by fueling things like food shortages and massive wildfires, no later than 2040.

As a debate opponent, Kennedy largely shared Epsteins admiration for free-market capitalism. While he said he doesnt support a radical restriction of fossil fuels, he is in favor of market-based solutions like a price on carbon. Such a policy, he said, would force companies to cover the cost of greenhouse gas emissions, rather than passing those costs to the public.

Cleaning up your mess is a lesson we were all supposed to learn in kindergarten, he said.

At some points, Kennedy also veered off track and tried to debate Epstein about vaccines.

Republican CU Regent Heidi Ganahl founded the Free To Be Coalition, the campus free-speech group that organized the debate. When asked why her group chose two such controversial participants, she said the students involved wanted to bring intellectual diversity to campus.

We need to stop labeling people and start listening to people, she said.

Cory Katuna, a 28-year-old CU alumna who attended the event, was glad she got the chance to hear out Epstein. While she said she didnt agree with all of his points, he did manage to break her out of what she called a liberal bubble.

I do hear a lot of the same stuff from the left and Im starting to get skeptical, she said.

In Epstein, she saw someone who hadnt bought into the dogma and offered an optimistic picture of humanity. It reminded her of Ben Shapiro or Jordan Peterson, two right-wing intellectuals she follows online.

At the very least, she said shed make a point to check out Epsteins podcast.

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How Has The Right Shifted Tactics On Climate Change? A Debate In Boulder Had Some Answers - Colorado Public Radio

In the 1985 movie "Back to the Future," Marty McFly (played by Michael J. Fox) travels in a time machine from the 1980s to the 1950s. When he tells people of the '50s he is from the '80s, he is met with skepticism.

1950s person: Then tell me, future boy, who's President of the United States in 1985?

Marty McFly: Ronald Reagan.

1950s person: Ronald Reagan? The actor? [chuckles in disbelief] Then who's vice president? Jerry Lewis [comedian]?

In the 1950s, Reagan was head of the Screen Actors Guild and led the purges of Hollywood actors, writers and directors who were suspected of having left political sympathies, but the idea that he might, one day, become president must have sounded absurd.

In the waning months of the Reagan administration (December 1988, nearly 30 years before Trump became president])Mad Magazine presented a parody of Donald Trump, imagining him telling the story of the 1946 Christmas movie "Its a Wonderful Life":

George Baily [Jimmy Stewart] inherited a small building-and-loan business from his father. He lent money for mortgages. When people couldnt make their payments he told them not to worry about it. What a schmuck! He should have foreclosed and kicked them out! He could have gotten a tax abatement and build condos, a high-rise office complex, and a gambling casino. He just didnt understand the art of the deal

In my opinion, George was a total loser! He never made a million-dollar deal, he never had his picture on a magazine cover, and he never shook hands with Mike Tyson [champion boxer] or Don King [boxing promoter]

This is a wonderful life? Come on!

In the 1980s, Trump was already famous as a billionaire who articulated the philosophy oflook out for your own profit and dont care how much you hurt anyone else in the process. However, no one would imagine he would eventually become president. Long before he entered politics, Trump called anyone who challenged him a loser. With that vocabulary, he perpetuated the idea that victims are weak and lazy and don't have the stuff to prevail. They deserve their fate and must submit to the triumphant. As a landlord, Trump brutally intimidated his tenants cutting heat and hot water, refusing to maintain and repair his buildings, which sometimes became rat infested in the hope of driving them out of rent-controlled apartments that he planned to convert into condominiums.

Trumps presidency has been treated as a fluke, but it actually represents a very old ideology of capitalism. When Trump became president, the media and liberals became nostalgic for Reagan, saying that Reagan would never do what Trump was doing. In reality, Trump was Reagans heir. Reagan appointed Alan Greenspan as Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Greenspans five terms as Chairman included two reappointments by Bill Clinton, which suggests his paradigm was accepted by some Democrats.

Greenspan regularly published with Ayn Rand, the self-proclaimed philosopher and novelist of capitalism. Her economics underlie Reaganism and Trumpism and have a long lineage, going back at least to the British workhouses of the early 1800s and the American gilded age of the late 1800s and early 1900s. She divided the world into two distinct orders of being: creatives and moochers. To defend her when her book "Atlas Shrugged"was badly reviewed, Greenspan wrote in a letter to the New York Times:

Atlas Shrugged is a celebration of life and happiness. Justice is unrelenting. Creative individuals and undeviating purpose and rationality achieve joy and fulfillment.Parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should.

Similar to Trumps winners, Ayn Rands creatives are chosen to rule by some higher, perhaps biological, force and, if unrestricted, will bring progress and prosperity to everyone. They must be motivated with the promise of greater wealth in order to fulfill their productive potential. She was convinced If they are unrestrained in their pursuit of fortune, their riches will trickle down and bring affluence for everyone, although, of course, ordinary people will never be as rich as they are. Unfortunately, creatives are often held back by the moochers-similar to Trumps losers. At various times, especially during the New Deal from 1932 to 1980, the moochers controlled the state, with disastrous results. The ruling moochers were the liberal professional-managerial class (PMC), bleeding hearts who were so selfish they could not bear to look at other mooches poor parasites who might be homeless and destitute. To soothe the PMCs guilt, they used the state to give the extremely poor welfare and other government benefits. They may have improved the lives of the victims in the short run, but in the long run, they denied the poor the incentive to uplift themselves by their bootstraps and allowed them to wallow in their misery. The programs were presented as benefiting the poor, but they really served the PMC who have to be thrown out of power for the good of everyone else.

The Capitalist class itself is divided over the cut-throat ideology of Rand-Reagan-Trumpism (also called neoclassicism and neo-liberalism), with some embracing it as a license to do whatever they want, but others fearing it is too blatant in telling the 99% they are on their own and the elite owes them nothing. Under neoclassicism, wealth did not trickle down; rather from 1980 to 2016, the ratio of pay for the average Standard & Poors 500 American corporate CEO to the average worker grew from 42 to 1 to 347 to 1 as the percentage of national income held by the richest 1% doubled. Capitalism strives to win the support of the 99% through a utilitarian pledge of a higher standard of living for everyone willing to work hard. It will be shared, but not equally. The gap between the 1% and the 99% shows this is not a promise kept. Accordingly, if capitalism is going to win the acquiesce of the vast majority, it must find another way of legitimating itself a kind of glorious cause. This become urgent when inequality zooms up and workers are forgotten. In the first year of Trumps presidency, the stock market as measured by the Dow Jones Industrial average grew 27%, but the wages of working people were stagnant, growing at 0%. Wages, in fact, had been stagnant since the beginning of the Reagan presidency.

Western Capitalist democracies proclaim equality, material prosperity and security but produce extreme differences in wealth and power. The promises broken, elites often turn to other visions partially borrowed from feudalism to win public support. Nations turn to glory, honor, nobility and war as a way of winning over workers and legitimating the capitalist system itself.

Capitalisms contradictions have produced a cultural divide. Borrowing terms from German sociologist Wolfgang Streeck, we call one side cosmopolitans mainlyurban people, who see themselves as citizens of the world, notone region or country, identify assecular, value critical thinking, preach multi-culturalism, champion racial diversity, entertain state welfare systems, and are cautious about going to war. Their opponents, called by both Streeck and us, traditionalists, are primarily people who live in rural areas, reject welfare, tend to be racist, are super-patriotic, are often living paycheck to paycheck, feeling left behind, economically insecure, and culturally deplored. They typically champion community, tradition, authority, God, family, and their race and nation.

Materially, feudal peasants lived in a misery hardly anyone in the modern West could imagine. However, feudal ideology, resting heavily on Christian religion, offered a sense of ultimate meaning and purpose which capitalism cannot match, for capitalism envisions nothing higher to strive for than economic wealth. Under capitalist secular ideology, if life here on earth is bad, there is no compensation. Feudal Christianity gave hope of a better life in the next world, even if it can only be reached after death. While capitalist ideology teaches youre on your own, psychologist Erich Fromm pointed out that even the lowest medieval peasant gained a sense of security from the knowledge that he had been assigned a place within the Great Chain of Being:

The social order was conceived as a natural order, and being a definite part of it gave man a feeling of security and of belonging.

Feudal ideology does not obligate the ruling aristocrats to deliver anything concrete, observable and measurable. On the other hand, capitalism promises a prosperity that can clearly be seen. Hence, it is obvious when capitalists fail to deliver. Largely because capitalism was never able to eliminate economic and social insecurity, feudal values never completely died. To prevent discontent from going rampant in times of anxiety, capitalism might borrow a vision of ultimate purpose from feudalism. Feudalism teaches sacrificing yourself for some higher cause, which capitalism does not. Feudal values like honor and valor are more likely to galvanize soldiers to kill and die in war than the capitalist pursuit of profit. They might willingly forfeit their lives for their king or country, but not for Shell Oil.

The feudal crusades, with their devastation, plunder and massacre of tens of thousands of Moslems, Jews and Christian were Divinely sanctioned missions to restore the Holy Lands from the heathens for Christ. While capitalism offers individual profit as a reward, feudalism promises Gods grace, a place in the world to come, community and national identity, honor, valor, glory -all bringing a sense that you are part of some greater cause beyond yourself. Feudalism promoted the idea that if my God, my king, my community, my nation is great, I am great- an attitude that persists today and capitalism finds useful. It does not matter if I am starving peasant or an underpaid worker; I am great! Since my side, whether tribe, nation, or civilization, is sanctioned by some higher force- be it God, nature or whatever-it is good; its foe is evil.

When the 99% faces a declining standard of living, appealing to feudal values might help breed stability. Reagan successfully did this when Europe and Japan began to challenge American economic domination and America lost a war in Vietnam. In an extreme crisis, when capitalism is in danger of collapse, the capitalist elite has -and might again- turned to fascism which melds capitalism with feudal thinking.

A compete merging of feudalism and capitalism would be difficult to achieve for they are logically incompatible. The Medieval Catholic Church labeled usury, avarice, pride and gluttony as deadly sins. The New Testament teaches The love of money is the root of all evil. Ayn Rand openly called selfishness a virtue. She was a Russian born Jewish atheist who considered religion a tool of moochers. Capitalists saw feudal aristocrats as lazy, parasitical and incompetent, while aristocrats considered capitalists upstarts, who grubbingly worked for money, and lacked grace, refinement and manners. The aristocracy saw themselves as endowed with a superior essence that biologically separated them from the common lot. With a grace given to them by God, they were blue blooded guardians within a great chain of being, grounded in tradition, in which everyone was interconnected but had an assigned place. The goal was to maintain harmony, order and stability. As such, progress, trying to uplift yourself, or seeking a profit was shunned. Living off of trade or industry was a sign of inferiority. The truly worthy glowed in their essence and their inherited status and need not work. Despite these differences, aristocrats and capitalists often intermarried, especially as the aristocracy lost the power to challenge capitalism.

Both supporters and critics of capitalism see it as undermining the sacred. Even Karl Marx, probably its greatest opponent of all, praised it for this. While Marx wanted to see capitalism overthrown, Max Weber, another social theorist almost as acclaimed as Marx, begrudgingly accepted it. However, he feared capitalism would lock people into iron cages where they would lack a feeling of meaning, purpose and direction and he worried who or what would fill that void. Weber feared capitalism, along with science and bureaucracy, would produce disenchantment without a mystical sense binding people together. Consequently, capitalism would be unstable.

As intellectualism suppresses belief in magic, the world's processes become disenchanted, lose the magical significance, and henceforth simply 'are' and 'happen' but no longer signify anythingBureaucracy develops the more perfectly, the more it is 'dehumanized', the more completely it succeeds in eliminating from business love, hatred, and all purely personal, irrational, and emotional elements which escape calculation.

Marxs critique of capitalism was much more brutal than Webers. To rally the 99% against it, Marx and his followers on the Left addressed the rational interests of people they considered its victims. On the other hand, rightwing movements, including fascism, the American Christian right and the Ku Klux Klan, effectively won followers by offering an alternative to disenchantment, and appealing to the irrational, an alleged reality- not knowable through science, reason or empiricism.

Fascism may carry these ideals to extreme, but even in more democratic forms of capitalism, the rulers need a population that will be compliant employees and fight their wars. The Marines would have little trouble fitting into fascism. They recruit by proclaiming themselves The Few, The Proud, The Brave and expect subordinates to show they have the right stuff through blind obedience. The private is supposed to submit to the sergeant, who in turn must submit to the lieutenant, all the way up the hierarchy to general. This is little different from the feudal great chain of being, which it may be modeled after, with the peasant expected to submit to the lord who also carries deference up the chain all the way up to king.

The feudal peasant seldom ventured more than a few miles from where he was born and felt strong affinity to his manor or village. In contrast, the largest capitalist corporations are cosmopolitan, transcending national boundaries, and as they become global, willingly sacrifice local communities to profit. Throughout much of American history, there was antagonism between large monopoly capitalists and traditionalists. Traditionalists tend to be more patriotic, have more intense national and racial identities, and stronger ties to community, family and religion. Reagan did something that, at one time, would be considered unimaginable. He built an alliance between traditionalists and the corporate cosmopolitan elite. As of this writing, this alliance continues. It is referred to as conservativism and it is the core of the Republican Party. It brought us Trump. It has not yet brought us fascism, but in a more extreme crisis, it could.

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In extreme crises, conservatism can turn to fascism. Here's how that might play out - Salon

A political scientist in Washington says President Donald Trump's suggestion next year's G-7 summit be held at one of his resorts raises concerns under the Constitution's emoluments clause. (Aug. 27) AP, AP

Trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent.

Or as we say in 2019 a sucker.

What else can you say these days, in this culture? A culture of doping athletes, abusive priests,Wall Street scammers,piratical corporations, sexual predators, college admissions cheats,and a swaggering chief executive, now rapidly barreling toward impeachment.

Ethics defined by Merriam-Webster as "a set of moral principles" sometimes seem to have vanished, like the passenger pigeon, from the American landscape.

Nor do you have to look to Washington D.C. for examples. There are others,closer to home. As theNovember elections near, we can't help but wonder: is the local mayor or council person we pull the lever for today going to be resigning in disgrace tomorrow? Certainly there are ethical boondoggles enough in New Jersey: nepotism in Palisades Park, political skulduggery in Englewood Cliffs and Rockaway Township. And of course, the Matterhorn of Jersey scandals: "Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee."

And yes, there are unethicaljournalists. Even if it is the ethically questionable Donald Trump who says so.

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Playing by the rules, it would appear, is achump's game in 2019 something best left to Boy Scouts, whose famous 1908 "law," quoted above, might soundquaintin an era of Bernie Madoff, Felicity Huffman and Paul Manafort. "Boy Scout," these days, can bealmost a sneer. As in, "He's a real boy scout." Not a compliment.

Yet Ryan Hanley, 15, of Dumont,takes the scout oath at every meeting. And he means it.

Boy Scout Ryan Hanley of Dumont, 15(Photo: Nancy Ziemba)

"Society, in general ignores these principles that describe what a model citizen should be," said Eagle Scout Hanley, a member of troop 1345. He's been a scout for 10 years.

"We, as a society, are preoccupied with things that we feel are more important," Hanley said.

Is America on the verge of an ethical extinction event? Are principles, standards, moral codes as endangered as the polar ice caps?

Or have we always been this way and just too naive to know it?

The story continues below the quiz.

"I don't think we have evidence to say it's worse than it's ever been," saidElizabeth Kaye Victor, who teaches "value theory" a.k.a. ethics at William Paterson University in Wayne.

"There were robber barons, oil barons, 100 years ago," Victor said. "But one of the things we're getting more evidence about is that people are making more subjective judgments about what's right and wrong."

Officially, Americans value honesty.We'rea nation of Sunday schools, honor rolls, gentleman's handshakes.

But we're also something else.

We are also, famously, a nation of liars, flim-flammers, con men.

P.T. Barnum, the original humbug(Photo: AP file photo)

Among our heroes:P.T. Barnum, The Wizard of Oz, Frank "Catch Me if You Can"Abagnale, and Harold Hill, the bogusmusical instrument salesman in "The Music Man," which is coming back to Broadway in 2020 with Hugh Jackman.

We love the guys who Get Away with It. The ones who are wised-up. The ones who look out for No. 1.

There used to be a synonym for ethical:"square." Asquare deal, a square meal, treating someone fair and square. Square, because all sides are equal.

Inthe 1930s and '40s, a new term came into use. It referred to people who were conventional, naive, high-minded.People who played by the rules.

They were called "squares."

"Americans have always had a dual consciousness," Victor said. "We do like the noble person, the George Washington, the paragon. But we also like the renegade, the man who pushes and breaks and redefines the rules."

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Americans, in short,have struggled overethics for centuries ever since George Washington chopped down the cherry tree.

George Washington, painted by Charles Willson Peale, didn't chop down a cherry tree -- but he was a strong believer in "Virtue Ethics"(Photo: Montclair Art Museum)

That famous story, which biographer Parson Weems used to teach kids not tolie, was a lie.

"We tell all sorts of lies to get children to behave, to adhere to our system of ethics," Victor said. "This gets into the whole question of the Noble Lie. Is a lie sometimes better than the truth?"

Many of us wouldagree that ethics can besituational.Lying is bad but so is telling your friend what you really think of his singing. Stealing is wrong but letting your family starve is worse.

From there, of course,it's a short step to the Felicity Huffman defense.Cheating on a college admissions test is criminal but so is not helping your kids succeed.

Actress Felicity Huffman was convicted of cheating to get a child into college(Photo: DANNY MOLOSHOK, AP)

The judge who fined the actress $30,000 and sentenced her to 14 days jail time didn't agree.

"That's a classic struggle in ethics," Victor said. "Do we allow exceptions to our ethical code?"

George Washington, for his part,really did care about ethics. He was very conscious that he was setting an example. Everything he did, including famously relinquishing power after two terms, was about personal honor. There's a term for this in philosophy: "Virtue Ethics." Leading a good life because being good leads to happiness. Aristotle and Confucius were big boosters.

"In Virtue Ethics, you're asking what kind of person should I be," said Lisa Cassidy, who teaches a course on ethics at Ramapo College in Mahwah.

A comedic take on what a goofy talk show interview between this reporter and Founding Father George Washington might look and sound like, on the topic of ethics. Paul Wood Jr., Jim Beckerman and Michael V. Pettigano, North Jersey Record

Meanwhile, Americans, over the last 400 years,have found lots of other reasons to Do the Right Thing.

Preachers, from Cotton Mather to Martin Luther King Jr.,have proclaimed ethics from the pulpit. The Ten Commandments has the ultimate endorsement: God. The Divine Command Theory, it's called.

Pastor of Trinity Baptist Church, George Maize IV, in 2017(Photo: Wexler, Kevin, Kevin R. Wexler/NorthJersey.com)

"The TenCommandments came from God," said Rev. George Maize IV, pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in Hackensack. "The further we get away from God, the more unethical we get."

Others, like your mother, subscribe to the theory of Duty. We are obligatedto not behave badly because what if everyone else did the same? Immanuel Kant,the 18th century philosopher, championed this idea.

"All mothers are Kantian, because they always tell you, 'What if everybody else did that?' " Cassidy said.

Then thereareutilitarians the greatest good, for the greatest number overall. Consider thehero firefighters of 9/11, who sacrificed their own lives to rescue others. Philosopher John Stuart Mill is their spokesman.

"Utilitarians are very concerned with the greatest outcome, overall, for everybody," Cassidy said. "You almost have to do a calculus: the unhappiness of some, compared to the happiness of most."

Compassion, too, is an ethical ideal."Care Ethics," Cassidy said, has feminist roots."Caring is a rational activity," Cassidy said. "It involves choices to preserve relationships, to preserve what matters to us."

But America is alsothe land of "individualism." So it's no surprise thatselfishness, here, its has cheerleaders.

Ayn Rand, co-author of "The Virtue of Selfishness"(Photo: File)

Ayn Rand the thinker beloved of libertarians and conservatives like Paul Ryan and Alan Greenspan is mostassociated with this viewpoint. But Rand,said Gregory Salmieri, co-editor of a book on the subject, is often misunderstood.

Rationality, not greed,is really the point of the "Objectivist" philosophy that Rand espoused in books like "The Virtue of Selfishness,"Salmieri said.

"It's about treating people rationally, which means justly," said Salmieri, who teaches at Rutgers University. "Which means above all else leaving them free to lead their own lives, by their own judgment, and for their own sakes."

Living for your own sake does not mean living dishonestly, Salmieri points out.

But in practice, if winning is everything, and cheating helps you win?

Such attitudes, by the way, are not confined to the so-called far right even if that's where the media spotlight is right now.

Abbie Hoffman, left, authored "Steal This Book," a counterculture guide to theft(Photo: AP)

In 1971, activist AbbieHoffman published "Steal This Book," a paperback thaturged hippiesto shoplift, swipe food from restaurants, and use slugs in vending machines. A quarter-million people bought the book,thoughit may have reached more given how many radicals and college students likely stole it from each other.

So what, at the end of the day, is ethical behavior? And who gets to decide?

No secret that our culture is fragmented. More and more, we're marching to our own drummers. Fundamentalist Christianity, radicalsocialism, predatory capitalism eachhas its cheering section, greatly magnified by the media.

But ethically compatible?Not so much.Rules, we may have but no one setthat everyoneagrees on.

The"social contract"is the basis on which the stateexists, according to philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679).Now, some fear, it might be unraveling. Much as thestate itself might be unraveling.

"One of the things that's really broken down, in the last 30 years, is trust in experts." Victor said. "Experts including journalists, politicians, professors. Even those we might think of as the source of ethics in our community, like church leaders. People don't know who to trust."

"Ethics," Salmieri points out, means morethan just social rules. The word "Ethos"is Greek, meaning habits or customs. But more casually, most of us would probably define ethics in terms of our relations to others. It'sourprinciples of behavior in thelarger world.

If weare less ethical now than in the past, JosephChumanwonders, could it be because of our relationship to other people? Is it because we'remoresolitary?

"People are more alienated and isolated than they used to be," said Chuman,leader of the Ethical Culture Society of Bergen County, a Teaneck-based chapter ofa 142-year-old national organization thatpromotes social justice andethicalbehavior.

Joseph Chuman, leader of the Ethical Culture Society of Bergen County, speaks in 2012(Photo: Joe Camporeale)

More people these days, he said, are interacting with each other second-hand, on iPhones and computer screens. We spend more time alone,texting and tweeting, and less time in groups, in churches, in social and fraternal organizations.

Including yes The Boy Scouts.

"Scouting guides us on how to become a leader, from teaching younger Scouts how to tie a knot, all the way through giving back to the community through an Eagle Scout project," Hanley said.

Scouting, in other words, is inherentlysocial. Scouts interactwith the community, with adults, with other scouts

People who don't relateto others, face to face, are also likely to spend less time thinking about how theyshould relate to others. Our neighbors and the rest of the world become abstractions. As in the old ethical test: "What if you could press a button and get a million dollarson condition thatsomebody you didn't know dropped dead?"

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That's whatChumanworries about as the 21st century barrels on, and the crimes and scandals mount.

"Social institutions call them unions, clubs, fraternal organizations, churches command less attention and membership," Chuman said. "When people are isolated, they are not reinforced to act in ethical and moral ways. Hyper-individualism is not good for strengthening the ethical fiber of a society. If we suffer from radical individualism, ethics erodes. People need to be together. "

Email: beckerman@northjersey.com;Twitter: @jimbeckerman1

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What are ethics and do they still matter in Donald Trump's America? - NorthJersey.com