Undercurrent

Steve Simpson is the director of legal studies at the Ayn Rand Institute. A former constitutional litigator for the Institute for Justice, Simpson has litigated major constitutional cases in courts across the nation, including the United States Supreme Court. Simpson writes and speaks on a wide variety of legal and constitutional issues, including free speech and campaign finance law, cronyism and government corruption, and the rule of law. The rise of Donald Trump and recent violence at his rallies have prompted much discussion about free speech issues, in politics and more broadly. The Undercurrent’s J.A. Windham had the pleasure of speaking with Simpson on these timely issues. The Undercurrent: There’s been a lot of discussion lately about free speech on the campaign trail—when it applies, who supports it, etc. I’d like to kick us off with a basic question: what is “free speech,” and why should we care about it? Simpson: “Free speech” is the term we use for the legal right to engage in speech protected by the Constitution, but also the individual moral right to speak freely. And the proper meaning of that right—to boil it down to its essence—is that it protects your freedom to say what you want, about anything you want, so long as you don’t use speech to violate the rights of others (which is true of any right). So, for example, you don’t have the right to commit fraud or libel, to threaten others, or to incite violence. The core of the right—why we have it to begin with—is that we’re thinking beings who have to use our minds to guide our actions. One way we do that is by communicating with other people. We live in society, which is a huge benefit, and we therefore should and must have the right not only to think for ourselves but to express our thoughts to other people. As long as you do that in a way that respects the rights of others, the proper understanding of the right to free speech is that you can say any damn thing you want. Now, that’s not how it’s understood today, and there’s a lot of confusion about what the right entails. We’ve seen that a lot in recent times with popular objections to “offensive” speech and calls to limit political speech, but views like these ultimately flow from an improper understanding of the right to free speech. TU: How do you view the relationship between freedom of speech and political discourse in this country? What role does the First Amendment play in this relationship? Simpson: Let me address a preliminary issue first. We need to ask ourselves: “What is the relationship between freedom of speech and civilized society?” Political discourse is obviously part of civilized society and is very important, but the importance of free speech goes far beyond that. I would call free speech one of the foundations of civilized society. Simply put, you can’t have a free society like ours without protections for freedom of speech. Ayn Rand once said that the two primary benefits we get from civilized society are the division of labor (specialization, trade, and cooperation) and the accumulation and dissemination of knowledge. Progress happens in a society only because people can profit from the knowledge and ingenuity of others through communication and trade. None of that can happen without freedom of speech. So one way to think about the importance of free speech is that, without it, you don’t get the modern world and all of its amazing benefits. Now with that context in mind, it’s easy to see how important free speech is to politics. We really couldn’t have the type of government the Founders gave us—a government that protects our rights—without freedom of speech. In fact, one of the reasons they included the First Amendment in the Constitution was to protect the right to speak about government. This is one of the reasons campaign finance laws are such a flagrant violation of the First Amendment. In essence, they seek to limit and ration people’s speech on an issue that is vitally important, which is politics. You can actually see a lot of what I’ve said about free thought and free speech reflected in the First Amendment itself. The structure of the Amendment is really quite fascinating. It starts with the freedom of religion clauses, then it goes to free speech, then freedom of the press, assembly, and petition. And if you think about it, there’s a logical order to that: first is freedom of conscience (which you can think of as free thought on the type of fundamental questions that religion involves), and then it goes to the various expressions of that principle—first to speech, then to the main means of mass communication at the time, which was the press, then to the right to associate and speak out with others (freedom of assembly), and finally to the right to speak directly to government, which is the right to petition. This circles back to something that I raised before, which is that the core of the right to free speech is freedom of thought, which goes to the role of reason in human life. We have to guide our own lives, we have to make choices, and we have to think to survive. In order to do that, we have to be free—both to think and to act on our thoughts, and therefore to communicate with others. That’s not just because it’s fun to talk to other people, but because part of the process of figuring out what’s true and good in our lives involves discussion and debate. Think about it from the perspective of the scientific method. You put your data and your ideas out there, others evaluate and possibly criticize them, and through the process of deliberation and debate, trial and error, everyone learns. Freedom of speech—indeed, freedom in general—is absolutely essential to this process. TU: I’d like to apply some of this to recent events. For instance, much has been made of the so-called “riots” that prompted the cancellation of a Donald Trump campaign rally in Chicago last week, which Trump and many others have described as a violation of his First Amendment rights. Are they right? Simpson: No. Those aren’t violations of the First Amendment, but they could still be violations of his and other people’s rights. The First Amendment is a restriction on government and government only. What it essentially says is that government can’t make any laws that abridge your freedom of speech. It doesn’t apply to private parties at all. But to be clear, that doesn’t mean protestors can disrupt a Trump rally or prevent him or others from speaking—or, for that matter, that Trump supporters can prevent others from speaking. It just means that the conduct of private parties toward one another is a matter for criminal and tort law to resolve, not the First Amendment. So while protestors blocking your way to a Trump rally (as we saw last week) is not a violation of the First Amendment, it’s still criminal conduct—it’s a violation of your personal right to go where you want, to own and use property, to trade and deal with others, and the like. This is precisely why we criminalize conduct like assault, battery, trespass, and the like. And from that standpoint, there’s bad conduct on both sides of this dispute. It may be helpful to recall what I said earlier about the nature of rights, which is that they protect your freedom of action, but only to the extent that you don’t infringe the rights of others. One way to think about rights is that they define zones of freedom within which you have the authority to act to carry on your life. They exist to prevent conflicts, not to create them. One of the great confusions about free speech today is that it’s somehow a “special” right that trumps other rights. A common example of this is the idea that my right to speak somehow trumps your property rights, so that protestors have the right to invade a private gathering and disrupt the speakers. That’s completely wrong. I have the right to free speech—on my property, and at my expense. I don’t have the right to come into your living room and to deliver a political lecture to you. And if I did, you would have every right to tell me to leave. That’s not a violation of my right to free speech; it’s an example of you invoking your right to your own property. This apparent “clash” of rights is where I think a lot of confusion about free speech comes from. The Supreme Court has held that you have the right to speak in a public space or on a street corner so long as you don’t disrupt other people’s right to travel and carry on their lives. But people often times confuse that with the idea that they therefore have the right to speak anywhere they want. Assuming Trump’s rallies are private and he paid for the venue, he can tell you to shut up or leave. Now, we might criticize him for that, depending on the circumstances. But that’s no violation of your right to free speech. You don’t have a right to go into somebody else’s arena and blabber on while they’re giving a speech. TU: Let’s talk about what happens in those arenas. Recently, increasing violence at Trump’s rallies, coupled with comments that appear to show the candidate at least encouraging physical confrontation, have led some to accuse him of “inciting violence” and others to defend the encouragement as protected free speech. Can you tell us a bit about what “incitement” actually is, and whether Trump is really committing it? If not, is he engaged in protected speech? Simpson: Sure. Let’s start with what the crime is, and we’ll go from there. “Incitement,” simply put, is calling on people to engage in violence or unlawful behavior. It can get complicated, but to understand it it’s helpful to know that in the criminal law, there are all sorts of ways to violate other people’s rights and to break the law by acting in concert with others. For example, you could pay someone else to hurt or kill another person or to steal his property, or you could concoct a plan for a number of people to achieve those ends together. There are a number of categories in the criminal law that cover conduct like this, such as aiding and abetting, solicitation, and conspiracy. Incitement is in the same type of category—it’s a kind of collective lawlessness. It’s one person encouraging another, and both of them in a sense joining together to commit some violation of rights or the law. The classic example of incitement is that you’re in a crowd of people who are restless or angry and verging on violence, and you say something like, “let’s all get together and loot that store.” You’re as guilty as they are for the ultimate robbery because you intended to bring it about, and you would be properly subject to criminal punishment for that. Based on what I’ve read, it sounds like Trump may have committed incitement on a couple of occasions during his rallies, when he has said things that seem like they are encouraging his supporters to use force and violence against protestors. But to really judge that accurately would take more than just reading a few news reports. TU: So how should the attendees of Trump rallies or Trump himself respond to these protestors? Simpson: Assuming Trump has the exclusive right to use the venue, then the answer is either don’t let them in, or, if they get in and you can’t convince them to stop, call the police. As far as I can tell, the people who are coming in and protesting Trump rallies are trespassing and physically impeding other people from engaging in conduct—holding a rally and speaking or listening—that Trump’s supporters have every right to engage in. But the fact that somebody trespasses on your property doesn’t give you the right to right to punch him or tackle him and drag him bodily out the door. The proper response is to call the police and let them take care of that. Of course, you have the right to defend yourself to the extent that it’s necessary to prevent someone from harming you. But short of that, call the police. TU: In another vein, Trump has expressed a desire to “open up our libel laws” so that he can sue media outlets that criticize him. What do you make of this proposal? Simpson: I make of it that it’s completely stupid. And I put it that way on purpose, because it’s a totally unserious proposal that betrays a real ignorance of law and government, not to mention a real disdain for free speech. The president doesn’t have the power to change the libel laws. He’d have to change the law in all 50 states and then overturn a lot of Supreme Court precedent or amend the Constitution. His view on this (and many other things) is cause for concern because he’s running for president—he’s going to have a lot of power over other people. So even though he can’t just up and change the libel laws, it’s troubling that somebody with that kind of authority would boast about his intent to use the power of the presidency against people who criticize him. Political candidates willingly put themselves in a position in which they’re obviously going to be criticized and in which they should be criticized. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that they should never be able to sue for libel, but if you’re going to run for an office that gives you the kind of power politicians wield today, the law should give ample leeway to allow people to criticize you (and I think the Supreme Court has done a pretty good job of establishing the right standards). I usually find it tiresome for any politician to whine about the media being “unfair” or the like, but for a candidate to threaten to use the power of law against the media is scary. TU: What’s your ultimate assessment of Donald Trump on freedom of speech: friend or foe? Simpson: I would put it like this: Trump, like most candidates for political office today, is not a friend of freedom itself. It’s not just on free speech, which he seems not to understand or care about at all. Trump is anti-intellectual and opposed to freedom at its core. To take one example, after the attacks on the “Draw Muhammad” contest in Garland, Texas, Trump’s reaction was something like, “Don’t you have anything else to draw? Why are you drawing pictures of Muhammad? Draw something else.” Not only does this ignore the reasons someone should want to draw Muhammad, but it’s also egregiously anti-intellectual. “If people get mad at your speech, stop speaking,” is really just idiotic for anybody to think, let alone somebody who wants to be president. I should add, though, that Trump is not the only person, let alone the only politician, who reacted that way to the Garland attack. Another example is Trump’s praise for the “strength” of the Chinese in responding to the Tiananmen Square protests, or his praise for various oppressive leaders. He’s got a real authoritarian streak. He admires despots and dictators, people like Putin who “can get things done.” “Getting things done” is wonderful if you’re in business and engaging with people on a voluntary basis. But we have to make a sharp distinction between that and “getting things done” when you’re heading up a government that wields force. That’s a whole different ballgame. I think all of this goes deeper than just free speech. I don’t think a guy like Trump views free speech as a separate phenomenon, because I don’t think he has any understanding or appreciation for what freedom itself means. I should add that I think most candidates out there—Sanders and Hillary certainly, and I think to a large extent the others who have been in the race—are about as bad as Trump on this. We live in a time in which most candidates for office are essentially authoritarians, and in which, sadly, the only real question is over how much they want to use the power of government to control your life. The only thing that I find really unique about Trump is that he wears his authoritarianism on his sleeve, and, importantly, that his supporters seem to like that about him. That’s certainly unpleasant, but I think it tells us something about the direction in which this country is going. That doesn’t mean we can’t fight it by educating people and promoting better ideas, but it is something we should take very seriously. The Undercurrent is happy to offer interviewees a platform for their ideas. Their responses do not necessarily represent the views of the publication at large. Image courtesy of the Ayn Rand Institute The post Free Speech, Politics, and the Trump Controversy: An Interview with Steve Simpson appeared first on The Undercurrent. Link to Original

The rise of Bernie Sanders along with some astounding new data suggest that young people today hold an increasingly favorable view of socialism. Although campus publications across the country appear to be overrun with such students, there is another side to this debate—the pro-capitalist side—and it’s time to make our voices heard. In an effort to stimulate a more vibrant national discussion, The Undercurrent is calling on like-minded students everywhere to write in to their campus papers explaining why they identify as proudly pro-capitalist. The following note was submitted by TU writer J.A. Windham as a “letter to the editor” for publication in various campus papers. The version below was posted in The Cornell Review, and a lengthier version was subsequently published in The Prince Arthur Herald. It’s our hope that this simple act of speaking out will inspire students across the country to follow suit and to let their classmates know why they too are #CapitalistAndProud! Although our goal is to see these notes published in campus papers nationwide, the TU blog is committed to posting any similar #CapitalistAndProud letter that you’ve at least submitted to your own school’s paper—whether ultimately printed on your campus or not. Any such submissions should be sent to [email protected]. Letters published in campus papers or on this blog by April 22 will be eligible to win $1,000 in the Ayn Rand Institute’s “Campus Writing Contest”! Please visit the contest page for further details. Capitalist and Proud Support for “democratic socialism” is growing on campuses across the country. With so many students caught up in Bernie fever, this seems like an appropriate time to bring some diversity to the conversation—some intellectual diversity. Due to word count limitations, I’ll keep this short and sweet. Below are five reasons that I’m proudly pro-capitalist.* Capitalism respects my right to live—not for the sake of the group, the nation, the race, the proletariat, or for any of you—but for my own sake. Capitalism recognizes that my mind is my basic tool of survival and that in order to think, I must be free to use it. Capitalism treats me as the sole proprietor of my own life. Under capitalism, my time and energy—my triumphs and failures—my burdens and my beloved dreams—are my mine alone. Capitalism treats me as the rightful sovereign of my soul, respecting my authority to chart my own course in the one, precious life I have on this earth. Because capitalism does not chain me to any of you—because it does not demand that I serve you or that you serve me—I’m free to value you. Because my goal here is to stimulate discourse, I’m calling on all like-minded students to let your classmates know if you too are #CapitalistAndProud! *By “capitalism,” I mean a laissez-faire social system that protects each individual’s right to life, liberty, and property by banning the initiation of physical force from human affairs. For more on nature of capitalism, check out the course “What is Capitalism” on the ARI campus website. The post Announcing #CapitalistAndProud: A National Campus Initiative appeared first on The Undercurrent. Link to Original

Last semester, enterprising students from across the country and beyond gathered in Atlanta, Georgia, for the Leven Foundation Student Conference on “The Morality of Value-Creation and Trade,” co-hosted by STRIVE and the Ayn Rand Institute. Students enjoyed a series of lectures and breakout sessions by entrepreneurs, professionals, and intellectuals on the philosophical and business principles necessary to create and trade value. To stimulate reflection on the weekend’s experiences, ARI offered attendees a $1,000 prize for the most thoughtful short essay on the personal value of the conference to them. What follows is this year’s winning essay, from Ryerson University’s Sareema Husain. Congratulations Sareema! Is This a Cult? A Personal Reflection on the Leven Foundation Student Conference: The Morality of Value-Creation and Trade I’m wary. As I make my way downstairs in the elevator and glance at the posh individuals gleaming in their suits, I think to myself, “What am I even doing here?” I consider myself far from what one would consider a “business kid.” I love English, fine art and philosophy. I hang out with dropouts that cling to their artistic passions like a lifeline. It was initially Ayn Rand’s entrancing philosophy that brought me to this conference. The gripping, unique characters in her novel The Fountainhead reeled me in, and I’m hoping to be surrounded by a bunch of Howard Roarks and Dominques this weekend, individuals who don’t have time to care about hierarchal pyramids because they’re too busy focused on creating. But that’s just hopeful thinking—books seldom mimic reality, and I prepare myself for pretentious small talk cluttered with jargon. But I’m pleasantly surprised. Only ten minutes into the introductory dinner and I am chatting up the people sitting beside me, learning more about who they are rather than just their career profiles as I had expected. The two main topics I was constantly challenged on throughout the conference were capitalism and altruism. In today’s culture, the word “capitalism” carries negative connotations because it implies class divisions. However, it also encompasses opportunity, growth and entrepreneurship. Growing up, I’d hear stories about grandparents that arrived in Canada with nothing but a dime in their pocket and, through hard work, became millionaires. If this was the case, why did everyone in my grade 12 politics class hate capitalism? What other political and economic system did they have in mind that would reap more benefits and fewer casualties? Listening to the lectures opened my eyes to the obvious benefits of popular systems that get shoved under the rug because their glaring defects are difficult to eradicate. The concept of having a “noble duty” and “giving back to the world” is one that has been entrenched in me since childhood. Being involved in activism and volunteerism, I constantly debated in my head whether I was doing it because I actually cared about the cause, or because it made me feel good about myself. This conundrum would always invite an existential crisis or two. A key message I took from the conference that settled this long-time debate was this quote: “Make the world a better place . . . by doing something for yourself.” It made me realize that innovation comes from thinking for yourself, and that the virtue of independence is not something that should be tossed into the trunk for the sake of a false noble duty. Noble duties won’t inspire you at 3 a.m. when you’re on your third coffee and your eyelids are heavy. Even as an artist, the value of this conference was immense. I’m thankful there was a panel called “Value Creation in the Arts.” I was able to ask questions and obtain knowledge about getting over creative blocks, why failure is the only option and how opportunity lies in the good ideas that often look like bad ideas. Networking with seasoned artists was unexpected, and it was humbling and eye-opening to gather advice cultivated from their first-hand experiences in industries I hoped to work in. Most importantly, this conference taught me how to get over myself. Halelly Azulay’s speech on motivation and resilience skills is one I’ll never forget. Listening to her talk about creating new grooves and paths in your mind by changing your thinking patterns made me realize that we’re all just creatures of habit, and change is at the tips of our fingers. I’ve already been adopting a growth mindset instead of a fixed one. I find that it’s been aiding me in battling a long-time speech impediment and giving me the confidence to not become disheartened by anxiety and fear. In today’s school system, we’re taught to be critics. We’re trained to put new information through many filters. This leads to our not trusting our gut instincts. But innovation comes from thinking for yourself, thinking selfishly. As much as I liked Ayn Rand’s philosophy at first, I found it hard to practice because I couldn’t see myself adopting it and still being a Good Samaritan. It was one based on selfishness, after all. But having an open forum to discuss her ideas showed me how this wasn’t a bad thing at all. As she puts it, “a creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.” Scanning textbooks of topics I couldn’t care less about, not taking care of my health, putting all my ideas on the back burner for when I had free time, which as a student, seldom ever comes around—it made me realize how I was wasting the most important resource of all—myself. I have never been in a setting where small talk has been so intellectually arousing. It wasn’t even heavy, as the people you conversed with were not pretentious in the slightest and were open-minded, wanting to gain new knowledge as much as they wanted to share their own ideas. I’m never going to forget that while devouring pizza, I was also talking about poetry, favorite journalists and analyzing sex scenes from The Fountainhead. It was amazing and incredibly inspiring to meet like-minded individuals from all over the world who were dedicated to growth. My prejudices were torn down in front of my eyes. The conference introduced this whole new paradigm of answering traditional questions that college kids struggle with. What do you want to do . . . for you? ARI and STRIVE were constantly emphasizing the importance of coming to your own conclusions about the world around you. Nobody was trying to shove their beliefs down your throat, and open dialogue and asking challenging questions was strongly encouraged. One talk in particular made me realize that despite thinking I was a libertarian arts kid who was free-spirited and didn’t succumb to societal ways of thinking, I was actually subconsciously giving into conventional stereotypes about businessmen and business culture. By the end of the conference, I realized that the fact that I was perpetually asking myself “Is this a cult?” was a defense mechanism I was using to hold onto my prejudices because they were comfortable. As an arts kid, the tables had turned. We hate it when the suits contemptuously judge our life decisions without knowing us. I had been doing that my whole life to the business sector, stereotyping CEOs and, therefore, dehumanizing them. This was made especially apparent when Keith Lockitch talked about why Rand regards industrialists as heroes but society vilifies them as “Robber Barons.” I was being nothing more than a sheep when I gave into the low public perception of business elites. What’s my mission statement? What does success look like to me? These are questions I’ve been readdressing with a whole new paradigm since the first time I used those earlier paradigms, during college applications. This conference empowered me to increase my own personal value and helped me gain vision in my own creative and intellectual pursuits. I’ve been implanted with new-found confidence that anything is possible as long as I am self-reliant and put in hard work. The post Is This a Cult? A Personal Reflection on the Leven Foundation Student Conference: The Morality of Value-Creation and Trade appeared first on The Undercurrent. Link to Original

*Written by Zach Burres On the evening of December 1st, the University of Arizona’s STRIVE club hosted a speaker event called “Right to Try.” There, Christina Sandefur, VP of policy at the Goldwater Institute, delivered a talk to students on terminal patients’ right to use experimental but potentially life-saving medications. She also discussed the current policies in place that deny them that right, and shared stories about families affected by the controversy. “Diego was just 10 years old when he was told that he was going to die,” opened Sandefur. Diego, she explained, was a young boy who was diagnosed with a rare type of bone cancer called osteosarcoma. His parents learned that it was fatal, and the doctor said that while they could still try chemotherapy, it would be very tough on Diego, and would probably have little effect. When Diego’s mother asked if any other treatment existed, the doctor informed her that a very effective and well-tested medication did exist, but that it was not approved by the FDA in the United States. It was, however, available in Europe. Because the FDA was forbidding their child a chance at life, they had to move out of the country to find it. “We’re not talking about medicine to fix your headache, we’re talking about medicine to save your life, and you are not free to take that medicine,” said Sandefur. She explained that the FDA has a “better safe than sorry” attitude when approving drugs, implying some sort of risk threshold. And even when the system does permit treatment, it does so at a damagingly slow pace. “The current FDA system, which has been in place since the 1960’s, takes a decade and a billion dollars to allow life-saving drugs . . . We won’t even have a cell phone that’s a few years old . . . and yet that’s what the government forces upon us. Decades old treatments,” explained Sandefur. In her view, patients have a fundamental right to decide for themselves what level of risk is acceptable to them. “Should the government make these decisions and decide what is an acceptable level of risk, or should you?,” asked Sandefur. “Dying patients certainly have a different benefit-risk calculus.” “This [system] is absolutely immoral,” she explained. “This country was founded on first principles, and one of those is you own your own life.” In response to the government’s violation of this right, Sandefur and the rest of the Goldwater Institute worked to create a “Right to Try” bill to give terminal patients the right to use experimental medication. Originally, this was a federal bill. When that was rejected, the Institute shifted focus to getting it passed in state legislatures. The bill has received bipartisan support, is now law is 24 states (including Arizona, which was the only state to have it passed by popular vote), and protects over half the US population. Sandefur noted that the bill was vetoed in California, even though a similar right for terminal patients to go off life support and pass away was allowed. “You have a right to die, but not to save your own life,” she observed. While many students in attendance felt better-informed by the talk, others also felt deeply touched. “I thought it was fantastic. This topic is very important for a lot of people and for me. It affects so many peoples’ lives,” said Casey Hoyack. Casey’s father had a brain tumor, and qualified for participation in FDA studies on an experimental medication. These trials supplied him with medications that, although unapproved for public use, seemed to eliminate the tumor. Unfortunately, when the trials expire at the end of January, Casey’s father will no longer have access to the medication. Without continued access, he might fall back into illness. “It’s such a nerve racking thing. We have to be proactive. He isn’t terminal and things are going well, but could be ruined. It’s scary that he doesn’t currently fall into the necessary category to continue to take this drug. We don’t want to give up on the clinical trial if it’s working,” said Hoyack. Sandefur was excited to get the conversation started. “That’s what so important about the Right to Try movement. It’s starting a dialogue, about whether the government is performing its proper function,” she said. For his part, Casey was happy to join in the discussion, and took a lot away from the event. “Coming into tonight I knew nothing about the Right to Try movement. I think the fact that there is a lot of hope in people being convinced—the fact that people see this as a human issue, not a political issue—will open up the door for them to have access to drugs that they wouldn’t normally have access to,” he explained. The post Arizona STRIVE: “Right to Try” with Christina Sandefur appeared first on The Undercurrent. [url={url}]Link to Original[/url]

From November 6th-8th, enterprising students from across the country (and even beyond) gathered in Atlanta, Georgia, for STRIVE’s annual student conference. At this year’s event, on “The Morality of Value Creation and Trade,” students attended lectures and breakout sessions by entrepreneurs, professionals, and intellectuals on the philosophical and business principles necessary to create and trade value. The following is one in a series of reports composed by enthusiastic attendees on their favorite among the weekend’s presentations. Three philosophers talking about Ayn Rand’s philosophy, dozens of students standing in line to ask questions and over a hundred more listening to the answers—this is what it was like to attend the last panel at STRIVE’s 2015 student conference. Objectivism, Rand’s philosophy, was the basis for many of the talks at the conference. So, at the last panel, students were invited to pose final questions about Objectivism to the panelists. The panel was comprised of philosophers Jason Hill (DePaul University), Greg Salmieri (Anthem Foundation; Rutgers University), and Onkar Ghate (Ayn Rand Institute). Many of the questions and answers were related to Rand’s idea of self-interest or selfishness, a foundational concept in the moral framework of Objectivism. One student asked each panelist to explain which of Rand’s ideas they found most difficult to realize and understand. In response, Hill mentioned the relationship between self-interest and benevolence, stating that he wants more conversation in Objectivism “on the virtue of goodwill toward one’s fellow human beings,” where people behave benevolently in ways “that need not result in sacrificing one’s self-interest to others.” Later, in response to a follow-up question, Hill clarified that “any self-respecting person should expurgate from his or her conscience or psyche” the concept of self-sacrifice, which Rand strongly rejected. But Hill also questioned whether everyday interactions (such as smiling at someone else on the elevator) could be explained by Rand’s “Trader Principle,” which suggests that all interactions should involve mutually-beneficial exchanges. Salmieri agreed, explaining that such everyday interactions are not trades. When you engage in ordinary acts of benevolence, he said, you’re really “expressing a feeling of appreciation…for [some characteristic of] human beings in general,” which you are reminded of by “something in this person” (e.g. the random stranger on the elevator). Ghate expanded on this, reminding everyone that “Rand viewed benevolence and altruism as opposites” (and self-interest as compatible with non-sacrificial benevolence), though most people “think that [benevolence and altruism] are synonyms.” Also, on the nature of self-interest, another student asked if people really behave selfishly, even when they do things for avowedly altruist reasons. Ghate noted that there is a common confusion between a person having a goal and having one’s own self-interest and happiness as his ultimate goal. Using the example of Mother Teresa, he pointed out that while people often say that she benefited “spiritually” (in the religious sense) from her actions, “it’s exactly wrong to say that what she was doing was selfish.” This is because, Hill added, there’s a real difference between the pursuit of “subjective happiness” and “rational happiness, your highest moral purpose in life.” A drug addict, he suggested, is not pursuing his self-interest or his rational happiness—rather he’s a slave to his “desires and whims” and self-interest is comprised of seeking rational happiness. Salmieri added that the issue is connected to Rand’s concept of free will (Objectivism holds that free will exists). He said, “If everyone’s really working toward their best interest, then there’s not really free will.” Instead, acting in your own self-interest, he explained, takes volitional thought and work. Another student asked panelists to help her grapple with the issue of doing what you’re good at vs. doing what you love. Is it in your self-interest to choose one over the other? Ghate replied that you need to have a clear answer to the question, “Do I think I can get to a point where, from my perspective, I’m creating values?” Noting that early on, he was very bad at philosophy but later improved, he encouraged the student to strive to be better at what she loved because, as he noted, you have to both have a selfish love of your work and be able to create value through it. Hill agreed, adding that every endeavor “has its own objective currency” by which success is measured, and that it won’t always be money-making. For instance, “the currency that one uses to evaluate a work of art cannot be, of course, if it makes money, but if it solves for example a literary problem or if it achieves an ideal.” “It’s [also] not a good idea to create a false dichotomy between what you want and what you’re good at, because if there’s something that brings vitality to your body, that you feel a sense of aliveness, an enthusiasm, an exuberance for but you’re not good at it in particular, then there are alternative ways to organize such goods in one’s life…it can be a hobby,” Hill continued. Salmieri expanded on this, reminding everyone that “what we choose for ourselves isn’t just a career, it’s a whole life.” According to Salmieri, you can’t think of your career “as an isolated thing” without thinking about the rest of your life. “It’s the whole life that you have to love, and the job is the centerpiece, but it’s not everything,” he explained. Photo credit: Sarah Martinson/The Undercurrent The post STRIVECon Recap: Questions and Clarifications on Self-Interest in Ayn Rand’s Philosophy appeared first on The Undercurrent. [url={url}]Link to Original[/url]

From November 6th-8th, enterprising students from across the country (and even beyond) gathered in Atlanta, Georgia, for STRIVE’s annual student conference. At this year’s event, on “The Morality of Value Creation and Trade,” students attended lectures and breakout sessions by entrepreneurs, professionals, and intellectuals on the philosophical and business principles necessary to create and trade value. The following is one in a series of reports composed by enthusiastic attendees on their favorite among the weekend’s presentations. Entrepreneurs everywhere start companies to create value. They see something missing in the world, or something that could be improved, and they set out to bring their vision into reality. Silicon Valley is the epicenter of high-tech enterprise and research, seeing $48 billion in venture capital investment in 2014. But Silicon Valley is more than a place: it’s a mindset. And students at Jason Crawford’s STRIVECon presentation were offered the opportunity to understand that mindset through comparisons to the ideas animating Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. Atlas Shrugged involves a number of enterprising heroes fighting to bring their own productive visions into reality—quite like what’s happening in Silicon Valley. The ideas put forth in Atlas can serve as a powerful guide for those who want to bring about groundbreaking innovation. Crawford, co-founder and CEO of Fieldbook, as well as the founder of Free Objectivist Books for Students, mentions that while there aren’t a lot of Rand fans in Silicon Valley, her worldview deeply resonates with the worldview of the investors, workers, and founders who inhabit it. He suggests five key points of overlap between Silicon Valley culture and the ideals of Atlas. First, there is the “maker mentality.” In Silicon Valley, creators are revered. Those who act on their ideas and make them real are highly prized. “[The] heroes are those who are driven to create and invent,” said Crawford. So, too, is this the case in Atlas. Industrialists Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden are two of the heroes of the novel whose lives are built around creating value. The outstanding products and services they provide are both highly prized among the book’s protagonists, and serve as the central purpose of their lives. Second, as in Atlas, independent thinking in the Valley is held as an ideal. “In Silicon Valley, you get more respect if you try a new idea and fail than if you copy an idea and succeed,” said Crawford. “You need to find a good idea that looks like a bad idea. You can’t just be right, you need to be ‘non-consensus’ right.” Students noticed the parallel. “I can see how that connects to Rand’s philosophy,” said Jin Yu Li, 19, a student who attended Crawford’s presentation. “Many people [who want to be Silicon Valley entrepreneurs] initially think that their ideas are bad and don’t try to expand upon them—because of critique from others, they are afraid to pursue their passions.” Crawford’s third point of consensus between the Silicon Valley ethos and Rand’s ideals is the goal of “creat[ing] more value than you capture.” Rand’s Trader Principle—featured heavily in Atlas—could be paraphrased as: “seek only win-win situations,” according to Crawford. When there is mutual benefit in a deal, value is created. “‘Create more value than you capture’ doesn’t imply that you’re giving away something for free, but rather that you are creating more value instead of taking up what’s there,” observed Hayden Martz, 18, another student in attendance. The fourth shared value is an emphasis on “playing the long game.” Folks in the Valley look down upon those who treat others unfairly and gain respect for those who admit their mistakes. There is recognition that a short-term mentality is ultimately self-destructive. The characters in Atlas and those in the Valley who think long-range are ultimately the most successful. Fifth, and finally, both Rand admirers and Valley professionals have a shared affection for “unlimited ambition.” Here, Crawford quotes from one of Rand’s heroes in Atlas: Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it’s yours. But as one student observed, this ambitious mentality thrives best when left free: “I think what allows Silicon Valley to have a great culture is that it is largely free from the modern cultural obligations and government regulations that plague other declining economies, like the healthcare industry,” said Martz. Valley innovators—at least for now—are free to dream. Crawford’s talk demonstrates that the spirit of Silicon Valley is akin to the spirit of Atlas Shrugged, and the Valley is living proof that Rand’s ideas can aid in your pursuit of success and happiness. Whether you’re a budding entrepreneur or a curious student, if you’re out to produce and create value in your life, Atlas is a wonderful guide to the creator mentality. The post STRIVECon Recap: “The Spirit of Atlas Shrugged is Alive in Silicon Valley” by Jason Crawford appeared first on The Undercurrent. [url={url}]Link to Original[/url]

From November 6th-8th, enterprising students from across the country (and even beyond) gathered in Atlanta, Georgia, for STRIVE’s annual student conference. At this year’s event, on “The Morality of Value Creation and Trade,” students attended lectures and breakout sessions by entrepreneurs, professionals, and intellectuals on the philosophical and business principles necessary to create and trade value. The following is the first in a series of reports composed by enthusiastic attendees on their favorite among the weekend’s presentations. Lawyers don’t get much love. Indeed, given the strikingly low public perception of lawyers’ business and ethical worth these days, many might find it perplexing to see a panel of legal professionals presenting at a conference on “value-creation.” Aren’t lawyers supposed to be vultures who feed on the problems of their clients—or something like that? At this year’s STRIVEcon, legal experts Paul Beard (Alston & Bird, LLP), Matthew Gerber (Center for Excellence in Higher Education, Inc.), and Steve Simpson (Ayn Rand Institute) set out to offer curious students a more positive view law as a profession. Each brought a unique perspective to the value offered by a principled approach to legal work. Paul Beard works at a major private firm litigating on behalf of developers, energy companies, and other property owners in their efforts to make use of their properties. He considers his work extremely valuable. “I’m very passionate about property rights,” explained Beard. “I do think it’s a basic, fundamental right, without which most rights would not exist. And so I’m very passionate about empowering clients to make reasonable use of their property. I help companies be productive. I help them achieve their productive ends, like oil production—I feel like I’m a part of that process, and helping that production to happen.” Beard, inspired by Ayn Rand’s “Trader Principle,” views his relationships with clients as mutually-beneficial exchanges. “Many see lawyers as predatory,” said Beard. “But in a free society, individuals trade value for value. I see [legal work] very much as a trader relationship—that I’m providing an important value that they should want, and in return, I want their money.” Matthew Gerber agreed, citing an admiration for “production” and “achievement” as his inspiration for joining the legal profession. “Something about the good nature of [business people] made me feel that they should be rewarded for [their production],” he said. “I wanted to find some avenue that I could associate with these people. I thought that the law might be a good avenue to do that.” Gerber took a different track than most lawyers. Rather than join a private firm right out of law school, he sought out entry-level work at a private corporation in hopes of eventually earning an in-house position. “I wanted to work from the ground-up to understand how the business worked,” explained Gerber. “So I took a risk. I started out in sales and marketing, did some customer service, and eventually found myself in a role as their attorney.” For Gerber, the most rewarding part of his in-house work was solving problems—especially challenging ones—for his company. “I got to see what a lawyer could do in a real go-go environment, where a businessman says, ‘I want to do this, find me a way to do it,’” he said. Steve Simpson agreed that a significant portion of legal work is problem-solving in the business arena. “Civil law’s purpose is to solve disputes, to allow businesspeople to continue to produce,” said Simpson. “Lawyers help clients continue to produce. . . . That’s a huge challenge, and it’s hugely fulfilling to do that.” The best part of it all, in Simpson’s view? The hard work involved in fighting for clients and their productive ends. “I learned, very young, that I love hard work. I can remember walking out of my law firm at midnight or 2:00am—hadn’t eaten for hours—and thinking to myself, ‘I absolutely love the fact that I’m working my ass off.’ . . . Life is not fun unless I’m involved in some kind of battle.” For Simpson, for Beard, for Gerber, law is that battle—a deeply fulfilling, richly rewarding, value-creating battle. Students responded well to their message. “I think there is a lot of value to legal work,” commented Giovanni Vasko. Another student, Vincenzo Carcirieri, was less sure at the start. Considering legal work himself, Carcirieri remained undecided on entering the field. But his final verdict on lawyers? “I think they’re value-creators,” said Carcirieri. Image courtesy of STRIVE The post STRIVECon Recap: “Value Creation in Law” with Steve Simpson, Paul Beard, and Matthew Gerber appeared first on The Undercurrent. [url={url}]Link to Original[/url]

Dear Students, It’s been a while since our last update, and much has happened since then. I’d like to fill you in on some of what we’ve been up to. First, although The Undercurrent will remain the official title of our publication, the organization itself will henceforth be known as STRIVE: STudents for Reason, Individualism, […] The post Announcing STRIVE! appeared first on The Undercurrent. [url={url}]Link to Original[/url]

Natalie Coughlin is a professional competitive swimmer, and one of the most decorated athletes in the history of American swimming. She has won a total of sixty medals in major international competition, including twelve Olympic medals and eight World Championship titles. In 2012, the year of the London Olympics, Coughlin experienced the letdown of her […] The post Goal-Setting with Olympic Gold Medalist Natalie Coughlin appeared first on The Undercurrent. [url={url}]Link to Original[/url]

Walking the streets of downtown Raleigh, Tom Richardson saw a man wearing a black t-shirt with the word “really” displayed in white letters. A few blocks later, a woman wearing a light green t-shirt with the word “obviously” printed on it walked past him. Although others around him weren’t surprised by the shirts, Richardson was. […] The post From Homelessness to Happiness: The Story of Tom Richardson’s Life-Changing Idea appeared first on The Undercurrent. [url={url}]Link to Original[/url]

Dr. Tara Smith is a professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of Moral Rights and Political Freedom, Viable Values: A Study of Life as the Root and Reward of Morality, and Ayn Rand’s Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist. Dr. Smith currently holds the BB&T Chair for the […] The post Judicial Review in an Objective Legal System: An Interview with Tara Smith appeared first on The Undercurrent. [url={url}]Link to Original[/url]

Order Our Fall Edition Now! The Undercurrent, STRIVE‘s campus magazine, is proud to present our 27th print edition now available for order. Every year for the last 10 years, we have published a limited edition print issue in the spring and fall featuring the best of our current content, and this year is no different. […] The post Fall Issue of The Undercurrent available for order! appeared first on The Undercurrent. [url={url}]Link to Original[/url]

Slowly but subtly, a change is taking place in university culture. Once havens for free speech and the discussion of ideas, universities are finding ways to restrict student speech and reduce the “psychological trauma” associated with encountering new views. Once places where students prepared for their careers through study, universities are increasingly places where students spend their time at parties. Once places where young people were expected to develop as independent adults, universities are beginning to function like parents. New speech regulations are among the most noticeable changes. A recent report from FIRE estimates that 55% of all universities in the US have instituted speech codes, which, in some cases, are designed to protect students from offending each other. Several universities have cancelled debates on controversial topics because some students might not feel mentally safe hearing controversial views expressed. Others have strongly discouraged the wearing of Halloween costumes deemed “offensive” to certain groups. More still are establishing the infamous “safe-spaces” or “safe-zones,” designed to comfort upset students. But this paternalistic trend isn’t limited to speech. For instance, new students at schools like UC Berkeley are increasingly required to enroll in “alcohol and sexual assault awareness” programs. Further, while some campuses are simply banning the consumption of hard alcohol for its possible role in campus rapes, others, in more extreme cases, have even banned some sexual acts (tipsy kissing, for instance) that fall short of clear rape. The motivation for many of these policies? Surprisingly, as the Atlantic writes, they’re “driven largely by students.” The widespread and pervasive problem that all of these policies are designed to address is described by Law Professor Eric Posner, who opines: “Students today are more like children than adults.” In some respects, Posner’s diagnosis of the problem is correct (though his prescription is not). The nation’s student body is increasingly exhibiting widespread emotionalism, which is often symptomized by child-like behavior. Emotionalism is the belief that a person’s feelings or emotions explain how they should respond to their experiences. Although emotions can aid in the decision-making process, as we’ve previously noted, they cannot and should not serve as stand-alone guides to conduct—as the primary means of determining whether an experience is positive or negative—which is how emotionalists use their emotions. Many of today’s party-focused students, for instance, follow their emotions hedonistically by obeying their every whim in pursuit of the rush or high of an intoxicated night out. Sometimes this behavior carries on to a point where students poison themselves and others—an all too common outcome exemplified by events at both Boston University and The University of Nebraska Lincoln. The problem even extends to well-respected universities, where students have been shown to engage in widespread drug use. The point is that party-focused students eschew rational, productive, goal-oriented behavior, preferring activities that produce instant pleasure. This may in-part explain why campus rape often occurs in the party-focused environment of a frat house. According to one major study, “living in a fraternity or sorority house” is closely linked to binge drinking. And as we’ve written before: “It takes . . . someone with a one-track mind bent on satisfying his momentary whims” to commit the act of rape. It’s this very kind of shallow, hedonistic thinking that is often revealed by less-violent, less-despicable behavior—like binge drinking—that permeates the party culture. But emotionalism is also evident on the other side of campus life, amongst students who are seemingly dedicated to their studies. Instead of treating short-term pleasure as primarily important, this type of student (the so-called “social justice warrior”) treats their feelings of discomfort as a surefire sign that something is evil. In response to an incident where one such student “did not feel safe” reading the rape of Persephone in Ovid’s “Metamorphoses,” a group of students demanded that professors place trigger warnings in their syllabi, submit to mediation when students have “identity based disagreements,” and undergo sensitivity training “to constructively facilitate conversations that embrace all identities.” In other cases, students have inveighed against having to read “‘offensive’ texts written by . . . Mark Twain,” filed sexual assault complaints against professors whose opinions offended them, and protested when pictures of Muhammad were used to advertise a panel on free speech—all because they felt offended. As one writer put it, “social justice communities believe if someone is offended by something—anything at all—then they have every right and reason to be.” As one professor further observes, social justice warriors “pretend eliminating discomfort is the same thing as effecting actual change.” On the surface, the party-focused frat boy and the social justice warrior seem to have very different goals. But really, these students are similarly motivated. Both the student who saturates his body with toxins to feel that high or buzz and the student who protests against reading literature that makes her feel uncomfortable are acting primarily in response to their emotions. While each has a different emotional response to the campus environment, both types feel that something is good or bad and act primarily on the basis of those feelings. Further, both types of student are demonstrably worse off for leading emotion-driven lives. College offers students a unique chance to cultivate themselves in an environment where mistakes are less costly—but the real world is less forgiving. The hedonistic frat boy, who ignored work in favor of partying, is underprepared for the discipline and structure of a productive career. The social justice warrior, who found Ovid too offensive, is underprepared for dealing with ideas different from her own (e.g., controversial ideas that might offend her). Regrettably, universities are not discouraging emotionalism, but enabling it. The alcohol education programs, sexual assault prevention programs, trigger warnings and speech codes are all responses to the fact that today’s college students behave like children who “need protection.” If anything, treating adult students like helpless children can only have a detrimental, infantilizing effect on their intellectual and personal development. Catering to emotionalism stunts the uncomfortable, yet constructive process of seeking out and reckoning with new ideas—a process that requires an active pursuit of knowledge, a willingness to form independent judgments, and the determination to act accordingly. This process plays a crucial role in preparing students for life after school. Of course, there are probably deeper cultural and institutional reasons why students might be relying on their emotions to uncritically make decisions (instead of say, an ethical code). But colleges have no business encouraging this trend through more rules that only coddle students. Instead, universities should challenge students to grow into independent, functioning adults by treating them like the adults they ought to become. Creative commons-licensed image courtesy of Flickr user Carlos Smith The post On Cloud Nine or Crying Their Eyes Out: How Emotionalism is Destroying Student Culture appeared first on The Undercurrent. Link to Original

Last month, close to 400 fans of Ayn Rand gathered in Charlotte, North Carolina at the Westin Hotel for the Ayn Rand Institute’s annual Objectivist summer conference, where people of all ages from across the country discussed the application of Rand’s radical ideas to freedom of speech, foreign policy, antitrust laws, and a number of other political and cultural issues. The Ayn Rand Institute was founded in 1985 to promote the ideas of philosopher-novelist Ayn Rand. Rand wrote the popular novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged in 1943 and 1957, respectively. Rand’s tales of heroic industrialists and innovators undercut the idea that men owe their achievements to society and their lives to others. Challenging centuries of conventional wisdom through her radical philosophy of Objectivism, Rand declared that a person must be selfish to achieve his own happiness. She believed that to truly flourish one must dedicate one’s life to one’s own goals and values, not the goals and values of other people. Now, more than thirty years after her death, ARI, the leading authority on Rand’s ideas, continues her battle for the individual’s right to pursue their own happiness. Every year since 2003, ARI has held an annual Objectivist summer conference to explain and apply Rand’s philosophy to the pressing issues of the day. For many young people, reading Rand’s novels gives them their first indication of the major impact philosophy has on political and cultural issues. Whether a person believes the purpose of his life is to live for his own happiness or the purpose of his life is to live for others will radically alter his stance on political issues. For example, Onkar Ghate explained in his lecture “Charlie Hebdo, the West and the Need to Ridicule Religion,” that if a person believes he has the right to pursue his own happiness, then he should believe in his right to hold and express political views that others find offensive. However, if a person believed that his happiness depended on making other people happy, that belief would prevent him from offending others. Elan Journo explained in his lectures “The Jihadist Movement” and “The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” that if a person believes he has a right to pursue his own happiness, he should not be forced to provide foreign aid to civilians in other countries. Some of the other lectures at this year’s conference were “Free Speech Under Siege,” “Climate Change and Ideology,” “Understanding the Arguments for Universal Health Care,” and “Infectious Diseases and National Security.” To build on students’ knowledge of political issues based on what they discovered in Rand’s novels, for the first time ever, ARI offered exclusive programming for college and graduate students. Throughout the weeklong conference that ran from July 4-9, in addition to general attendee lectures, students had the opportunity to attend exclusive events including lectures, student-led discussions, Q-and-As with speakers, and lively socials. “The program served to further educate these students in Objectivism and how to communicate Objectivist ideas to others, to connect these students with one another and to help them see that they are part of a growing community of young people animated by Rand’s ideas,” said Jeff Scialabba, the college programs manager at ARI. Hannah Monaghan, a first-year student at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia, said the student programming at this year’s OCON tremendously improved her understanding of Objectivism. “The first time I attended was in 2013 at the Chicago conference with my dad,” said Monaghan. “When I went, I didn’t understand a lot of the ideas, and there were no students for me to interact with. With this year’s theme and having a group of students to interact with, I was able to understand Rand’s ideas better than at the Chicago conference.” The theme of this year’s student programming was “Objectivism in Practice.” The special programming focused on teaching students how the principles of Objectivism relate to their everyday lives. The student programming was actually the main reason that Damos Anderson, a graduate form the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, decided to attend OCON this year. What Anderson wanted to learn most about Objectivism was how to apply it to his own life. He said he especially enjoyed attending Onkar Ghate’s lecture “Reason and Emotion” and Jean Moroney’s lecture “Aligning Your Subconscious Values with Your Conscious Convictions” both of which discussed the importance of conscious decision-making and thinking to a happy, prosperous life–which is of paramount importance, according to Objectivism. For many students who attended OCON this year, the conference added to the impact Rand’s ideas have already had on their lives. Before attending OCON, Henry Thompson, a junior and former intern for ARI, was uncertain about whether or not he wanted to go to law school after he graduated from Clemson University. Thompson said getting the perspective of other law students helped him decide he definitely wants to pursue law. “I was impressed with the caliber of students at OCON,” Thompson said. “They were very engaged and driven. I connected with them more than I have with students at other conferences.” Monaghan also enjoyed meeting other students interested in Rand’s ideas. “Coming from different contexts, the students’ perspectives made me think about Objectivism differently,” she said. “I enjoyed comparing my knowledge with theirs.” Thompson said OCON is for students who are serious about ideas and want to learn more about Objectivism. He said it helps for students to have a basic understanding of Objectivism going into the conferences. “Our student programming was aimed at students with a basic familiarity with Objectivism who are inspired by Rand’s ideas and eager to acquire a deeper understanding of her philosophy and how to think philosophically in all aspects of life,” Scialabba said. Next year’s OCON will be held in Seattle, Washington. Scialabba said that ARI would again offer student programming and travel scholarships to help alleviate the cost of attendance for students. Anderson said he is definitely attending OCON next year. “Being around other students interested in Objectivism makes you realize that you’re not alone,” he said. “At my university, there are no students I can talk about these ideas with. It’s refreshing to have that experience.” Image courtesy of the Ayn Rand Institute The post New Programming Draws Student Praise at Annual Objectivist Conference appeared first on The Undercurrent. Link to Original

Peter Schwartz is a distinguished fellow and former chairman of the board of directors at the Ayn Rand Institute, and author of Libertarianism: The Perversion of Liberty and The Foreign Policy of Self-Interest: A Moral Ideal for America. Recently, The Undercurrent’s Sarah Martinson had the opportunity to interview Schwartz about his newest book, In Defense of Selfishness: Why the Code of Self-Sacrifice Is Unjust and Destructive. The Undercurrent: Why did you decide to write your latest book, In Defense of Selfishness? Peter Schwartz: I wanted to write a book that would explain to people the morality of altruism and selfishness, since there are so many misconceptions about both, particularly, about selfishness. I wanted to try to show people how they have basic concepts wrong and offer them a rational alternative, which I hope will start to influence people and change their views on these basic issues. TU: What is selfishness? Schwartz: Rational selfishness means establishing rational goals and rational values, and then determining how you can achieve your goals and values. It means not giving them up because someone tells you have no right to exist for your own sake, but you rather must sacrifice your possessions and your goals and your happiness for the sake of other people. TU: What misconceptions do people have about selfishness? Schwartz: People have a number of misconceptions about selfishness. The worst one is that selfishness refers to swindlers and cheats and robbers and killers. People think selfishness refers to someone who will do anything—lie, steal, cheat, murder, etc.— in gratification of his own desires. Selfishness is conceived as sacrificing others to your self with the only alternative being to sacrifice your self to others. TU: Why do people have these misconceptions about selfishness? Schwartz: Everyone is taught that selfishness is bad from a very early age onward. Altruism has a long tradition in philosophical thinking that has virtually no dissent other than Ayn Rand and, going way back to Greek culture, Aristotle. Since the time Christianity took hold in the West, no philosophers have stepped up to challenge these ideas or to advocate for rational self-interest until Ayn Rand came around. Virtually every major thinker, every philosopher, who addresses selfishness regards the idea as epitomized by an emotionless creature. They tell us that selfishness is doing whatever you happen to desire, rational or not. They think that selfishness is the equivalent of an animal mentality where you just focus on the immediate moment rather than acting on your long-term interests, and this follows from their view of the nature of man as not being rational. TU: How is your book different from Ayn Rand’s book about selfishness, The Virtue of Selfishness? Schwartz: My book is different book from Rand’s in terms of its approach. I take Rand’s code of morality that says man’s life is his standard of value and use it as the foundation for the cultural analysis in my book. My book is about the manifestations and consequences of altruism in our culture as against the alternative of rational self-interest. I show readers that altruism is not what many people think of as simply benevolence towards others, but rather a demand that you subordinate yourself to others and live to serve them. TU: Why is it important to reclaim the definition of selfishness? Schwartz: It’s important because the function of a concept is to identify and classify some facts of reality. In reality, there is a phenomenon of people acting for their own self-interests without victimizing others, and that’s what we need a concept to name. Without a proper concept of selfishness, the producer is lumped together with the amoral parasite, with no distinction between the two. We need to rescue the concept of selfishness to show that there is a distinction between the two. The concept of selfishness simply means acting for your self-interest, and that does not require you to victimize others. TU: Do you think young people are most hurt by the altruist concept of selfishness? Schwartz: I think altruism hurts everybody. The only reason to single out young people is that they are at the stage of life were they are forming their basic ideas about life. They are trying to determine what’s right and what’s wrong, and they are only offered a straw man view of selfishness. It’s a tragedy because people could, if they were given an alternative view of selfishness, come to the conclusion that rational selfishness is good. Instead, the idea that selfishness is good doesn’t exist for them. In colleges and universities, students are only taught the ethics of altruism, so students simply accept it to varying degrees, and that shapes the rest of their lives. So you could single out young people as particular victims of altruism’s approach to morality, but it affects everybody. All who live by the idea that they are not entitled to live for their own sake, to the extent that they accept it and believe it and act on it, are undercutting their own lives and their own happiness. TU: Is selfishness an all-or-nothing proposition? Are you either selfish or not selfish? Is there no in between? Schwartz: In principle, no. Either your life is yours or it belongs to others, just like every dollar in your pocket. Is that money yours or does it belong to somebody else? There is no in between. It’s not like half of it belongs to me and half of it belongs to someone else. That’s still conceding the principle that it’s not yours, if half of it belongs to someone else. Why is one half different from the other half? In terms of its principle and its application to any single decision you make, it’s A or non-A, it’s one or the other, it’s selfishness or non-selfishness. However, most people live a mixture of the two. Most people are inconsistent, sometimes they act to achieve their self-interest and sometimes they act in the accord of self-sacrifice. But in terms of the principle, it’s black and white. TU: In your book, you talk about how making community service a graduation requirement for students can be detrimental to their lives. What are the negative consequences of requiring students to give back? Schwartz: Many high schools will not issue students a diploma unless the student has spent a significant amount of time doing so-called community service, and I think that is terribly unjust. It penalizes the ambitious, career-oriented student trying to prepare for his future. An ambitious student will be devoting himself to getting into a top college, getting a good education, preparing for a career, and instead of doing that, he has to take time away to go find something that will satisfy the requirements of his community service, and anything will satisfy the requirements as long as it harms him and benefits others. I think that’s very unjust and destructive in practice because it takes valuable time away from him. Intellectually, it’s even more destructive because it instills in the student that the moral way to live is by sacrificing himself, by sacrificing his goals, his future, his own happiness, for the sake of others, and that is a terribly crippling idea to instill in a young person. TU: Is it selfless for young adults to do what their parents and teachers tell them to do in regards to their career choices and life goals? Schwartz: How much a person should listen to their parents and teachers depends on a person’s age. If a high school student knows what he wants to do and has good reasons for wanting to do it, then decides not to because his parents want him to be a lawyer, he would be acting selflessly. He would be subordinating his goals and values to his parents. TU: What advice would you give college students for leading selfish lives? Schwartz: Besides reading Ayn Rand’s books and mine, I would tell them to think for themselves. Decide on your own what you think is good, what you think will advance your life, what you think will actually allow you to achieve your happiness, and then, don’t give it up. Don’t accept the idea that the needs of others take precedence over your own and that you exist to serve the demands of others. TU: Are you selfish? Schwartz: I think I am selfish. I am living my life on the premise that my life is my own highest value, and I am unwilling to sacrifice it. And I don’t want others to sacrifice for me. All my relationships are in pursuit of my self-interest and benefit the people involved as much as they benefit me. All of my relationships involve trading values for values. The Undercurrent is happy to offer interviewees a platform for their ideas. Their responses do not necessarily represent the views of the publication at large. The post In Defense of Selfishness: An Interview with Peter Schwartz appeared first on The Undercurrent. Link to Original

Flemming Rose is the Foreign Editor for Jyllands-Posten, Denmark’s largest daily newspaper. In September 2005, he commissioned and published twelve cartoons about Islam, prompted by his perception of the European media’s self-censorship. One of those cartoons, an image of the prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his hair, sparked what would become known as the “cartoon crisis,” in which both peaceful and violent protests erupted across the world. In his new book, The Tyranny of Silence, Rose recounts his personal journey throughout this crisis, and discusses his views on freedom of speech and religion, tolerance and intolerance, immigration and integration. The Undercurrent’s Jon Glatfelter had the honor of speaking with him regarding these timeless—and timely—issues. The Undercurrent: Mr. Rose, as a writer, I want to first express that it is an honor to speak with you. I think your commitment to publicly ridiculing religion, and defending all peoples’ right to free speech—including your intellectual adversaries—is extremely important and courageous. I’d like to begin by talking about your decision to publish Kurt Westergaard’s Muhammad cartoon in September 2005. Why did you feel it was important to do? Rose: Westergaard’s cartoon was one of twelve cartoons published. From the outset, my intention was not to offend Muslims’ religious sensibilities. Those cartoons were published for a reason, as part of a debate about self-censorship in Denmark, and Western Europe broadly, when it came to Islam. Westergaard’s cartoon was made in a context that included, just two months earlier, the “7/7 bombings” in London. On September 11th, 2005, Jyllands-Posten had a piece in the Sunday paper about a research project by Dr. Tina Magaard of the University of Aarhus, which compared concepts of the enemy and images of violence in the central texts of ten religions. That started a big debate in Denmark. Imams joined in. People critical of Islam joined in. And during this time, a Danish children’s writer, Kare Bluitgren, came forward and gave an interview to Jyllands-Posten. He was writing a book for children about the life of the prophet Muhammad, but having difficulties finding illustrators to depict the prophet. Jyllands-Posten had an editorial meeting the following Monday. At that time, we didn’t know if Bluitgren was telling the truth or not. One of our reporters came up with the idea to invite illustrators and cartoonists to draw the prophet to see if self-censorship was legitimately happening. So I sat down and wrote a letter to the Danish cartoonist association and I invited 42 members to draw the prophet as they saw him. There was no requirement to ridicule. Denmark does have a tradition of religious satire, though only four of the twelve drawings published were actually depictions of Muhammad. Meanwhile, several incidents happened in Denmark and Western Europe that convinced me that this climate of self-censorship was real. First there was the incident at London’s Tate Britain gallery in mid-September 2005 involving an installation by artist John Latham. Latham’s work was a copy of the Bible, Talmud, and Koran torn into pieces, titled God is Great. Right before the installation was about to open, the museum’s board removed it without consulting Latham or the museum’s curator—nor did they ask Muslims, Jews, or Christians how they felt about the work—nor did they ask the police whether they saw any danger in displaying the installation. They retracted it because they were afraid of what might happen if they didn’t. So this was a clear example of self-censorship. A similar case in Gothenburg, Sweden occurred, when the Director of the Museum of World Culture removed the work of an Algerian artist that depicted a man and woman having sex. Inscribed above them were the Koran’s opening words.. And then Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who co-wrote the manuscript for a documentary by Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who was killed in 2004 for the film’s focus on the Koran’s justification for violence against women. In 2005, while one of Ali’s books was being translated into several Western European languages, several of the translators insisted on anonymity. They didn’t want to appear on the same cover as Ali because she was receiving death threats. The publisher even deleted a sentence from her book’s manuscript that was critical of the prophet. Around the same time, in an interview with Jyllands-Posten a Danish comedian told me that he had no problem mocking the Bible in front of a camera, but feared for his life in mocking the Koran publicly. Lastly, in Copenhagen, there was a meeting between the Danish Prime Minister and a group of Imams after the 7/7 Bombings. They talked about the relationship between the Muslim communities of Denmark and society-at-large. Afterwards two of the Imams called upon the Prime Minister to use his political influence to mandate that the Danish media cover what they viewed as blasphemous acts against Islam in Europe. They specifically called for laws that would criminalize criticism of Islam. That was clearly a call for censorship, to use governmental laws to control the press, which is incompatible with a liberal democracy. All of these cases happened within a very short period of time. They convinced me that Bluitgren’s difficulty finding an illustrator for his children’s book was part of a broader story. That’s why we published the twelve cartoons. The key point is that the cartoons didn’t come out of the blue. It wasn’t a way to provoke and gratuitously offend. There was a history and a debate and it made perfect sense to me. As a journalist you hear about a problem and want to find out if it is true or not. And one way to find out was to see how cartoonists would handle an invitation to depict Muhammad. We learned that there is self-censorship, and the fear is based in reality. People are being killed for drawing cartoons, as we saw in Paris earlier this year. The Undercurrent: I’d like to turn to an idea you touch on in your book’s closing, which seems to underlie much of your thinking on free speech—the idea that any breach or limit placed on free speech is not merely a “political crime,” but a “violation of human nature.” Would you expand on that? Rose: Yes, this in fact is something that I took from Salman Rushdie who I talked to in 2009. I think he put it very eloquently. The point here is what makes human beings different from other creatures is our ability to use language. We can use words to express ourselves in very eloquent and complex ways. We grow up telling and listening to stories. That’s what turns us into the people we are. We create stories about ourselves, about our family, our environment, about our social interactions. Language is the key in all of this. In authoritarian regimes, what happens is that those in power forbid you from having your own stories. You can’t say “This is the story that I want to tell,” or “This is what I believe,” or “This is important for this reason and that reason.” Take the Soviet Union, where millions of people perished in concentration camps. You couldn’t make that story public in the Soviet Union. You start to talk about it, then people in power say, “No, that’s not the story, the story is building socialism in the Soviet Union.” Preventing people from having the opportunity to tell their own stories is a widespread method used by repressive regimes. But language, the ability to express oneself, is what it means to be human. I agree with Rushdie: when you infringe on that right, you not only commit a political crime against important democratic institutions, but against human nature itself. The Undercurrent: What do you think of hate speech laws? Rose: Hate speech is a relatively new phenomenon. If you look at history, hate speech becomes illegal after the Second World War. I’m not in favor of hate speech. I try to talk politely with people and appreciate when they speak politely with me, but we’re living in a world that is more diverse than ever before. What is one man’s hate speech is another man’s poetry. What is sacred to one group of people will be blasphemous to another group. Hate speech laws are not actually used to combat hatred. If that was their purpose, then to be consistent they would have to criminalize a lot more speech than they in fact do. The laws are ways to force a certain group’s social conventions upon society-at-large. Hate speech laws become more problematic the more culturally diverse a democracy becomes. You can see that clearly in places like Europe, where I live. Most of Europe has laws criminalizing denials of the Holocaust. That’s one example of a hate speech law. Denying the Holocaust is stupid, it’s insulting, it’s a lie, but I don’t think we should criminalize it. Today, there are millions of Muslims coming to Europe, many of whom deny the Holocaust, and feel excluded by these laws. “If the laws protect Jewish populations from discrimination, why,” they ask, “is slandering the prophet Muhammad allowed?” In France, Charlie Hebdo publishes satirical cartoons of the prophet, but people denying the Holocaust are fined or imprisoned. Hate speech laws grew out of a distorted interpretation of the events leading up to World War II and the Holocaust; basically that “evil words will lead to evil deeds.” I don’t deny there is a relationship between words and deeds, but I do think this is an oversimplification. The right way to fight hate is not by criminalizing it, but fighting it through education and open debate. Criminalizing it sets the precedent for groups to foist their own demands on society and insist on banning speech they perceive to be offensive. In the end, there will be nothing left to say. We’ll end up in a tyranny of silence. The Undercurrent: Some claim that there is something distinctive about the religion of Islam that makes it incompatible with freedom of speech and the separation of church and state. Some have argued that, for this reason, Muslims should not be welcome in the West. How do you respond to this line of thinking? Rose: I disagree with that. I’m not deterministic. If you look at Turkey, its population is Muslim-majority, but it’s a secular state. I do though think that Muslims are challenged because the prophet was not just a religious preacher but also a warrior and political figure. He founded a religion and also built a state. There isn’t that clear a distinction between religion and politics in his life, but different people will from time to time interpret these texts differently. I don’t think you can say that by definition, practicing Islam is incompatible with secular democracy. In Western Europe, millions of Muslims are living peaceful, meaningful lives, seeing themselves as devoted Muslims and also democrats. Two weeks ago, I debated someone in Denmark who wants to ban the Koran, the building of mosques, and faith-based schools. I think that is wrong. The Undercurrent: The final chapter of your book includes several modern examples of the tragedies that befall individuals and societies when freedom of speech is restricted. One that struck me was the story of Sayed Pervez Kambaksh, an Afghani student who passed out literature at his university criticizing Islam’s view of women, and who subsequently was sentenced to death. Thankfully he was saved by UN intervention, but there are many other such incidents that don’t end so well. Is your point that people are much safer in countries that protect their choice to ridicule or revere religion, than countries that forbid certain ideas from being communicated? Rose: Exactly. There is no society that protects freedom of religion more than secular democracies, because in societies where one religion rules, different viewpoints will be labelled as heresy and blasphemy. Why? Because the society is built on religion—not freedom for all points of view. In many Islamic countries you receive the death penalty for blasphemy or apostasy. For instance in Pakistan, the crime for blasphemy is being treated exactly the same way as the crime of terrorism. If you kill 500 people you will receive the same sentence as if you criticize a cartoon of the prophet. That is outrageous. The Undercurrent: How would you evaluate European countries on their defense of free speech? America? Rose: In terms of law, I am very critical of Europe. The right way to promote freedom in a diverse society is by allowing more freedom of expression. Unfortunately, many European politicians think the opposite, they say that the more diverse a society becomes, the less expression should be allowed. I think the United Stated has the best laws on protecting freedom of speech. In Europe, the right to free speech is “balanced” with other rights: “right to human dignity,” and so on. In the United States there is no such “balance.” The only limit to free speech is speech that incites violence. Since I wrote my book, though, I have become more critical of the US—not its laws, but its culture. There is an enormous social pressure, far greater than in Europe, except perhaps in England. The US has these inventions: “trigger warnings,” “micro-aggressions,” “safe zones for students.” In Europe people are pushing the limits of the law. There isn’t a big difference between what is allowed and what people are choosing to say. In the United States, even though you have the freedom so say almost anything, people self-censor due to social pressure. That’s extremely dangerous. I wonder what will happen when the current generation grows up and becomes society’s decision makers. The youth of the United States are not in favor of the First Amendment. The Undercurrent: Before working for Jyllands-Posten, you worked as a foreign correspondent in Moscow and Washington DC for 14 years. Could you talk about how your experiences in Soviet Russia influenced your views on free speech? Rose: Very much so, even to a larger extent than growing up in Denmark. In the Soviet Union, working with refugees and dissidents hugely influenced my thinking. I admired them because they were willing to pay a very high price for speaking their mind and standing up for what they believed in. Many of them lost their jobs and friends. Many were sent to camps, others were exiled, and some even killed. I experienced firsthand the intimidation and difficulties of living in a dictatorship. The Undercurrent: Since writing The Tyranny of Silence and having it published in 2014, what’s the reception been like? Rose: I was happily surprised my book was so well received in Denmark and Europe. It was one of The Economist’s Top 10 Books of 2014, which was a great honor to me. What makes the book so rewarding for me is that I had the opportunity to write a coherent argument over several hundred pages (instead of the usual 500 word newspaper article). My argument for free speech is complex, but when people have the opportunity to read it in full, very few negative reactions follow. The Undercurrent: What do you think citizens can do to defend free speech and help prevent another Charlie Hebdo massacre or Garland, Texas shooting from happening? Rose: They can do many things. First, teach their kids the importance of free expression. Introduce these issues into the school curriculum. That’s where the battle for hearts and minds is being fought, at the various educational institutions. Right after the attack in Paris and Copenhagen, a lot of people were afraid—and still are. Editors are censoring themselves and are afraid to admit it. But I think it’s very courageous to admit you are afraid. So we can have this honest discussion: do we want to live in fear society, or a free society? Many of the mechanisms that I saw in the Soviet Union, of a fear society, are showing their face in liberal democracies in Europe, even though Western Europe is fighting not a state, but rather individuals and groups who threaten to kill offenders. I want to have an honest discussion about that. The Undercurrent: For those who are interested in learning more about the “cartoon crisis” and free speech issues, do you have any other reading recommendations? Rose: Yes. Aryeh Neier’s Defending My Enemy. Aryeh, the Director of the American Civil Liberties Union in the 70’s, defended American Neo-Nazis’ right to march through Skokie, Illinois, where many Holocaust survivors lived. Aryeh, himself a survivor, lost most of his family in Nazi Germany in 1937. The Undercurrent: What’s next for Flemming Rose? Can we look forward to any upcoming projects from you? Rose: I’m writing a small book right now. Hopefully, it will be published in September 2016, for the tenth anniversary of the twelve cartoons’ 2005 commission and publication. It’s called A Hymn to Freedom. The Undercurrent: I look forward to reading it. Thank you for your time and it was a pleasure speaking with you. Rose: It’s my pleasure Jon. Thank you for making the effort and having me. I hope some of your readers will enjoy my book. The Undercurrent is happy to offer interviewees a platform for their ideas. Their responses do not necessarily represent the views of the publication at large. Creative commons-licensed image courtesy of Flickr user Valentina Calà The post The Tyranny of Silence: An Interview with Flemming Rose appeared first on The Undercurrent. Link to Original

Ayn Rand, author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, was a woman of strong, radical convictions, whose philosophy encompassed all areas of life. As with any intellectual of her stature, along with droves of fans come scores of dissenters lining up to take a swing at her ideas. But Miss Rand’s critics today remind one of that unfortunate baseball player who, the more he strikes out, the harder and the angrier he swings. Some wonder whether they remember what the ball even looks like. This writer wonders whether they ever knew in the first place. The Atlantic’s Olga Khazan is the latest such critic to step up to the plate. Positively dripping with glee, Khazan informs us of a recent discovery of hers: Ayn Rand’s 1959 television interview with Mike Wallace. In what she presents as a “gotcha” moment, Khazan draws our attention to a question about Rand’s romantic life. Asked whether she finds any contradiction in supporting her husband Frank O’Connor financially if need be, Rand responds: “No, because you see, I am in love with him selfishly.” Sneers Khazan: “The whole thing is worth a listen—you’ll learn how, if you correct your flaws, you, too, can be worthy of love.” By revealing Rand’s staunchly unconventional attitude towards a matter as intimately personal as romance, Khazan hopes that most readers will find this idea of a selfish love as self-evidently silly as she does. Fortunately for my own sanity, I have already explained—in my 2013 response to Seth Adam Smith’s viral blog post, “Marriage Isn’t For You”—why the alternative of a so-called “selfless love” degrades both the lover and the loved. As I wrote then: [suppose] Sally is a college student pursuing her dream job when she meets Paul, a lonely college dropout of the same age. Sally is motivated, hard-working, and goal-oriented. Paul lacks these qualities of character, as well as any kind of long-term motivation. If Sally were to ask “What can I give?” she would find that she has plenty to give to Paul. Her energetic attention and care will help cure his loneliness. With this in mind, Sally decides that she must try to love Paul, because he needs her love. If selflessness is really the standard of love, then it must be Sally’s duty to love Paul. But what would happen if Paul were to ask Sally, “Why do you love me?” If she were honest, she would have to answer, “Even though you aren’t that smart or the best looking guy around, I love you because you need me to.” Imagine how insulted and degraded anyone would be to hear that kind of response! As Rand explains in the interview: “[W]hen you are asked to love people indiscriminately, that is, to love people without any standard, to love them regardless of the fact of whether they have any value or virtue, you are asked to love nobody.” To ask Sally here to love Paul—his faults and failures notwithstanding—to love him unconditionally—is to ask her to fake the most profound feeling of heart and soul she can experience, for the sake of nothing at all. Selfish love is the only meaningful kind of love. As I suggested in my piece, most people would praise Sally for leaving Paul if she met another man who shared her values and interests, someone who enriched and empowered her life, who made her happy—someone more like “another self,” as Aristotle once characterized the nature of one’s beloved. Most would say “good for you, Sally,” rather than urging her to live life as a selfless doormat to the needs of a hapless drifter like Paul. As I explained: The kind of happiness to be gained in loving a person selfishly has the capacity to be fulfilling, long-lasting, and joyously enriching, because the person we love complements rather than hinders our life’s ambitions. Loved ones are like fellow-travelers on life’s journey towards further horizons. Naturally, not only do we want to get to our destination, but we want to choose a partner with whom we can enjoy that journey. Choosing the right fellow-traveler is integral to our enjoyment of life’s journey, and choosing the wrong partner can make it miserable. As Rand says: “In love, the currency is virtue.” Sally’s love for the better man would be her expression of the highest recognition she could pay to his virtue—to his manifest value to her proper joy and treasured life. Scoffing in response, Khazan writes: “It’s easier to understand Rand’s obsession with selfishness as a positive virtue if you consider that she included, under her umbrella of egocentrism, good deeds that make the doer happy. She wasn’t helping her husband, you see, she was helping herself have a husband who pursue his passions.” Khazan botches a crucial point here. Rand never held that whatever happens to make one feel good thereby serves one’s self-interest—she never viewed the self as some kind of drooling, pleasure-seeking thing. In fact, she once referred to her philosophy as “the opposite of hedonism.” To Rand, the self is much more than a mere bundle of feelings—the self is the reasoning, choosing, valuing mind, tasked properly to one’s flourishing on earth. Under this richer conception of the self, one’s life and happiness act as the barometers of a proper love. And any feelings to the contrary notwithstanding, those ends cannot be won by flirting with the pitiful, feeding the vicious, or lying with moochers. If Khazan thinks they can, perhaps she should read The Undercurrent more. This writer would be more than happy to send her a copy, free of charge. Maybe then she’ll even see the ball before her next swing. Creative commons-licensed image courtesy of Flickr user Wendy Nelson. The post Ayn Rand Knew that “Virtue is the Currency of Love” appeared first on The Undercurrent. Link to Original

Dr. Onkar Ghate is a senior fellow and the Chief Content Officer at the Ayn Rand Institute. He has written and lectured extensively on philosophy and serves as Dean for the Institute’s Objectivist Academic Center in Irvine, CA. The Undercurrent’s Jon Glatfelter had the privilege of interviewing Dr. Ghate regarding the recent shooting at the “Draw Muhammad” cartoon contest in Garland, Texas, as well as religion and free speech more broadly. The Undercurrent: Many of the major U.S. media players, including CNN and FOX, still have not published the cartoon contest’s winning piece. Why do you think that is? Dr. Ghate: I haven’t kept tabs on which outlets have and have not published that cartoon, but there were similar responses in regard to the Charlie Hebdo cartoons and, before that, the Danish cartoons in 2005-2006. Sometimes a media outlet would try to explain why it is not showing its audience a crucial element of the news story, and I think these explanations have revealed a mixture of motives at work. Here’s a non-exhaustive list: fear, cowardice, appeasement, sympathy. Let me say a word on each. Some media outlets are afraid of violent reprisals and of the ongoing security costs that would be necessary to protect staff. And because the U.S. government refuses to take an unequivocal stand in defense of the right to free speech, the totalitarians are emboldened, which makes violent reprisals more likely. So that’s one reason. But despite this legitimate fear, I do think there is often an element of cowardice. The likelihood of an attack can be overstated, and of course if more news outlets publish the cartoons, it is more and more difficult to intimidate and attack them all, and less and less likely that a particular organization will be singled out. Here there is strength in numbers. A third motive is the appeaser’s false hope that if he gives in and doesn’t publish the cartoons, he will have satisfied the attackers and no further threats or demands will follow. Finally, many are sympathetic: out of deference to the non-rational, faith-based emotions of Muslims, they don’t publish the cartoons, even though those cartoons are news. They view the cartoonists and publishers as the troublemakers and villains. (The roots of this sympathy I think are complex and often ugly.) The Undercurrent: Some have condemned the contest’s organizer, Pamela Geller, and the winning artist, Bosch Fawstin. They say there’s a world of difference between good-natured free expression and malicious speech intended solely to antagonize. What do you think? Dr. Ghate: I disagree with many things that I’ve heard Pamela Gellar say but I refuse to discuss her real or alleged flaws when totalitarians are trying to kill her, as though those flaws, even if real, justify or mitigate the actions of the aspiring killers. The New York Times editorial to which you link is a disgrace. After a sanctimonious paragraph saying that we all have the right to publish offensive material and that no matter how offensive that material may be, it does not justify murder, the rest of the editorial goes on to criticize the victim of attempted murder. As my colleague and others have noted, this is like denouncing a rape victim instead of her rapists. And notice what the editorial glosses over: in the first paragraph stating that offensive material does not justify murder, it concludes with the seemingly innocuous point that “it is incumbent on leaders of all religious faiths to make this clear to their followers.” This is the actual issue. Why don’t you similarly have to tell a group of biochemists or historians, when they disagree about a theory, that their disagreements don’t justify murdering each other? The answers lies in the difference between reason and faith, as I’m sure we’ll discuss, a difference the editorial dares not discuss. But contra the editorial, the Garland event had a serious purpose. Look at the winning cartoon: it makes a serious point. Whether we will admit it or not, there exists today a growing number of totalitarians who seek to impose their version of Islam on the world and to dictate what we in the West can and cannot say. A precedent-setting episode was the fatwah against Salman Rushdie. A foreign leader openly calls for the assassination of a Western author and those involved in the publishing of his book, The Satanic Verses, and the U.S. and other Western governments do virtually nothing in response, sometimes worse than nothing. Fast forward a few years and should it be surprising that there exists a climate of self-censorship with respect to Islam? Western writers, artists and cartoonists are afraid to publish things that might be deemed blasphemous by Muslims. To investigate the extent of the self-censorship in regard to illustrations of Muhammad, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten runs a cartoon contest in 2005. Worldwide riots and outrage ensue, death threats proliferate, cartoonists and newspaper editors go into hiding, some are later attacked, and the official Western response to all this is again mostly pathetic. To me this is a serious problem. There are many other episodes that could be mentioned to drive home the extent of the problem, but a simple way to appreciate its extent is to ask yourself whether you can imagine that instead of the sacrilegious Book of Mormon winning over audiences and critics on Broadway, it is the equally sacrilegious musical The Koran. Right now, this isn’t even in the realm of the possible. Remember what happened when, in the face of the Danish cartoon crisis, Trey Parker and Matt Stone tried to depict Muhammad on South Park? Now in the face of a totalitarian movement that commands us not to utter blasphemous thoughts and threatens us with death if we do, coupled with our own governments’ appeasing responses, I think it becomes the responsibility of any self-respecting citizen to refuse to cower and for us as a culture to refuse to collapse into self-censorship. Instead, proudly and defiantly utter the blasphemous thoughts. I think a worthy project during the Rushdie years would have been to raise a fund to make his life in hiding easier, purchase the rights to his book for a generous sum, and then publish and distribute millions of copies for free. Similarly with the Charlie Hebdo assassinations, I argued that the forbidden cartoons should be plastered all over the Internet. Let it be seen that the attempt to ban these works achieves the opposite. Make it clear that the totalitarian’s goal requires killing us all. Declare that I, too, am Spartacus. I view the Fawstin cartoon as in this same spirit and thus as making a serious, needed point. The Undercurrent: I have friends who want to stand up for free speech but are worried about being labeled “intolerant” by their friends and acquaintances. How do you think everyday citizens should act? Dr. Ghate: I’ve already indicated part of my answer. The totalitarians’ goal is to silence us and make us obey. The current tactic is assassination of those who dare speak. The hope is that these attacks will create enough fear to produce widespread self-censorship. Unfortunately, that hope is materializing. Defy them. Put up on your Facebook or Instagram pages the forbidden cartoons and explain that you are purposely doing so in the name of free speech and in order to combat the climate of self-censorship. Or put up links to places that do this, such as ARI. More generally, among some of the best people today in the West, there is a frightening lack of understanding of the right to free speech, why it is vital, who its enemies are at home and abroad, past and present. Educate yourself about this crucial right and its history, and then try to convince your friends and acquaintances of the importance of the issue. If you get called names in the process, try to use this as a conversation starter and don’t become defensive. Ask the person what he means by “intolerance” and if he can state his actual position. Is his view that we should obey every religious taboo? Many Hindus regard cows as sacred and find it offensive that we eat beef. Should we stop eating beef out of tolerance or respect? Or should we stop doing so only if a group of organized Hindus starts assassinating chefs at steakhouses? Won’t this encourage religionists to use violence? Or perhaps his view is that we should not criticize religion? Why not? And does he apply this to all religions, or just Islam? If just Islam, why does it warrant special status? So my advice is that if you are truly talking about friends and acquaintances with whom you have a positive relationship, treat them as open to persuasion even if they begin by dismissing or belittling your position, politely stand your ground, and discuss and argue. But of course this presupposes that you have some understanding of the issues involved. The Undercurrent: In a recent panel with Flemming Rose, author of The Tyranny of Silence, you said that an individual’s right to free speech is one application of a more fundamental right: their right to think. Could you explain that? Dr. Ghate: The great battle for freedom in the West was a battle for freedom of thought, including everything this freedom presupposes and everything it leads to. The right to freedom of thought is the right to think for yourself, which means the right to engage in a reasoning process: to gather evidence, logically analyze and weigh it, entertain different arguments, form and follow hypotheses, perform experiments, pursue various lines of questioning, etc., etc. A reasoning process can have no master other than facts and logic. It cannot be subordinate to the approval of a king, pope, president, or fellow citizen, no matter how much they disagree or are offended by what you think. An aspect of this process is to be able to freely discuss and debate ideas with others, and to then present your views and conclusions in an effort to persuade others. Freedom of thought and freedom of speech go together. Historically, the opponents of freedom of thought and freedom of speech are political authorities operating with the sanction of religion (or some other mystical dogma, like Marxism or Nazism) and religious leaders wielding political power. The Undercurrent: If you view faith and force as intimately linked phenomena, do you see reason and freedom as linked? If so, how has the United States, with its largely Judeo-Christian culture, remained arguably more free than less religious parts of Europe? Dr. Ghate: Yes, the connection between faith and force and between reason and freedom is a philosophical issue that some thinkers in the Enlightenment made great strides in identifying and that I think Ayn Rand fully explains. Very briefly, to extol faith is to extol, in thought and action, blind submission and obedience. As a natural consequence, force will be seen as a means of achieving the good: you can make someone blindly submit and obey by threatening to burn him at the stake or to chop his head off. But what you cannot achieve by the instruments of terror is rational understanding, knowledge, enlightenment. These require that a person himself initiate and direct a process of reason. And this means that if the goal is rational understanding and knowledge, the individual must have the freedom to think and speak. This is why the Age of Enlightenment became the champion of these freedoms. To answer the second part of the question, the U.S. is not a Judeo-Christian nation. It is the first nation to consciously separate church from state. It is the last, great accomplishment of the Age of Enlightenment and is built on the Greek-Roman achievements that began to be rediscovered during the Renaissance. Nor is it true that Europe is less faith-based than is America. Yes, Americans are overall more overtly religious, but the faith-based doctrines of nationalism, fascism, socialism and communism swept across Europe in a way that they never did in the U.S. Since the time of the American Revolution and its grounding in the Age of Enlightenment, culturally both Europe and America have moved in the direction of mysticism, but Europe has been more mystical than the U.S. and consequently less free. For a fuller discussion of these issues, you can watch my talks Religion vs. Freedom and The Morality of Freedom. The Undercurrent: In his recent interview with The Undercurrent, Bosch Fawstin labeled himself “anti-Islam.” He described Islam as a fundamentally “totalitarian ideology.” Is it different from other religions in this respect? Dr. Ghate: There is in essence no difference. Any mystical, faith-based doctrine whose leaders are trying to usurp the role of a rational philosophy in human life—as Christians did during the Greek-Roman period, as socialist-Marxists and fascist-Nazis did during the 19th and 20th centuries, and as Islamists are trying to do today—is dictatorial and becomes totalitarian. Each of these movements is seeking blind submission and obedience to a comprehensive worldview. It should come as no surprise that the daily submission and obedience they desire will eventually be enforced at gunpoint. This is true of ISIS, of the theocrats in Iran and Saudi Arabia, of the Taliban, of the communists in Russia and China, of Protestants like Calvin and Martin Luther, and of leaders of the Catholic Church. The Undercurrent: A widely held view is that Islam, to say nothing of the world’s other major religions, is peaceful. In fact, immediately post-9/11, President George W. Bush described Islam as a religion “of peace” that has been “hijacked.” Do you agree? Dr. Ghate: Like much of what comes out of George W. Bush’s mouth, this is the opposite of the truth. As I’ve already indicated, the essence of religion, namely faith, sanctions the use of force. If blind submission and obedience are the goals, coercion is an effective means. A worldview accepted on faith encourages not peace but war. Centuries of religious conflict and warfare are not some inexplicable accident. Also no accident is that the greatest of America’s founding fathers, Jefferson and Madison, deliberately separated church from state. They did so partly in the name of peace. Let us live under principles and laws whose origin is reason, not blind faith, and we can all rationally agree to them and live peacefully together. The Undercurrent: It seems that free expression is under assault on a number of fronts today. What does this issue of free speech mean to you personally? Why have you chosen to dedicate a significant portion of your scholarship to defending it? Dr. Ghate: Because of their viewpoints, many of the Enlightenment’s thinkers were on the run from the political and religious authorities. But they eventually won and put an end to such arbitrary power. It is an enormous accomplishment and an enormous gift, not to be surrendered. I’m an intellectual. My entire career revolves around the reasoned investigation and communication of philosophical ideas and theories, ideas and theories that others often find offensive. If I won’t stand up for my right to freedom of thought and speech, and fight for these, I have no business calling myself an intellectual. And I have no business professing admiration for Locke, Jefferson, Madison and other heroes of freedom, if I stand idly by as people try to smash their achievements. The Undercurrent: Do you have any recommendations for those who want to explore the topics of free speech and religion in more depth? Can we expect any future projects or events on these issues from you or the Institute? Dr. Ghate: I’ve already mentioned a few things of mine and of others at ARI that people can read and watch. Flemming Rose’s book, to which you linked, is also definitely worth reading. For those who don’t know, he was the editor who published the Danish cartoons; I admire his benevolence and courage. In a few weeks I will be speaking at OCON, where I will address some of these issues in more detail, including some issues that we did not have time to touch on today. The talk’s titled “Charlie Hebdo, the West and the Need to Ridicule Religion.” I hope to see some of your readers there! And of course in the months and years to come, look to ARI to continue to uphold and defend the individual’s right to freedom of thought and speech. The Undercurrent is happy to offer interviewees a platform for their ideas. Their responses do not necessarily represent the views of the publication at large. Creative commons-licensed image courtesy of Flickr user Valentina Calà The post Free Speech vs. Religion: An Interview with Onkar Ghate appeared first on The Undercurrent. Link to Original

Bosch Fawstin is an accomplished artist, cartoonist, and free speech activist. His entry, printed above, took home First Prize in the

<p><a href="http://theundercurrent.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Baltimore_riot_police_VOA1.jpg"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-5900 size-full" src="http://theundercurrent.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Baltimore_riot_police_VOA1.jpg" alt="Baltimore_riot_police_VOA" width="660" height="480" /></a></p> <p>Less than a year since the deaths of <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/08/13/us/ferguson-missouri-town-under-siege-after-police-shooting.html?_r=0">Michael Brown</a> and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/12/03/us/2014-12-03-garner-video.html">Eric Garner</a>, police officers in this country are once again under national fire. In the wake of those earlier tragedies—which sparked destructive <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-30190224">riots</a>, mass <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/eric-garner-ferguson-missouri-protesters-converge-on-washington/">protests</a>, and even saw officers violently <a href="http://time.com/3745315/ferguson-police-shooting-arrest/">ambushed</a> or <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/nyregion/two-police-officers-shot-in-their-patrol-car-in-brooklyn.html">murdered</a> in cold blood—the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore poured gas on the <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/27/us/baltimore-unrest/index.html">fire</a> of public dissent. Regularly referred to as “<a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/04/25/baltimore-cops-should-have-listened-to-the-first-cries-of-pain.html">callous</a>,” labeled “<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charlene-carruthers/end-the-antiblack-police-_b_6604488.html">anti-black</a>,” and likened to the “<a href="http://thefifthcolumnnews.com/2015/04/tradecraft-for-cops-how-to-effectively-stop-a-riot/">Gestapo</a>,” police today are taking a <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/04/29/bad-relationship-with-police-breeds-fear/26585499/">public beating</a>.</p> <p>Although reliable statistics remain <a href="http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-many-americans-the-police-kill-each-year/">difficult</a> to come by, there’s no doubt that unjustified police brutality does<em> </em>occur. When it does, the officers responsible absolutely deserve condemnation and punishment for abuses tragically paid for in shattered human lives.</p> <p>But there’s something missing from a perspective that pins the blame for that cost squarely on the shoulders of law enforcement officers.</p> <p>Police officers are trained to be good at a very specific job: law <em>enforcement</em>. Murderers, thieves, kidnappers, and rapists pose a real threat to all of us, and it’s the job of police to enforce the laws that ban such savage, dangerous behavior. When criminals threaten innocent lives, officers must make split-second decisions about how to wield deadly force. It’s therefore crucial that police be well-enough trained and legally empowered to wield this force <em>only</em> in retaliation to the threats that criminals pose. But make no mistake: because their job is to protect people’s <em>lives</em>, officers must still be trained to wield potentially<em> deadly </em>force in response.</p> <p>Understandably, reformers have focused on the need for procedural changes to better hold officers accountable for their conduct. For instance, recall that Officer Pantaleo killed Eric Garner by the use of a chokehold administered on suspicion that Garner was selling untaxed cigarettes—a <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/sep/12/mcquillan-the-real-lesson-from-eric-garners-death/">criminal</a> offense. Had Pantaleo simply followed department rules, some <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/04/us/eric-garner-chokehold-debate/">noted</a>, he would never have administered that chokehold, and Garner would still be alive today.</p> <p>But chokehold or not, Pantaleo’s enforcement would nevertheless have involved some other<em> physical</em> means. Even if there are legitimate procedural concerns about how officers like Pantaleo engage with suspected criminals, adjusting the dial on the <em>amount</em> of force used can’t change the reality that laws must nevertheless <em>be</em> <em>enforced</em>, and that mistakes will sometimes be made. If we dial back the amount of force the police can use, we at some point run the risk of making them impotent bystanders to lawlessness.</p> <p>The real problem—for officers and civilians alike—arises when procedures designed for dangerous criminals are applied to peaceful persons. What should shock us about a case like Eric Garner’s—or <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/30/us/30lima.html?_r=0">Tarika Wilson’s</a>, or <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/id/18328267/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/t/plead-guilty-atlanta-police-shooting-death/">Kathryn Johnston’s</a>, or <a href="http://www.mynews13.com/content/news/cfnews13/news/article.html/content/news/articles/cfn/2015/3/4/man_shot_by_volusia_.html">Derek Cruice’s</a>, or <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2014/05/baby-in-coma-after-police-grenade-dropped-in-crib-during-drug-raid/">Bounkham Ponesavanh’s</a>—is that Garner <em>wasn’t</em> <em>hurting anybody</em>. Had Garner just stabbed a man before resisting arrest, a chokehold might have been appropriate. But there was a glaring discord between Garner’s fundamentally peaceful sale of cigarettes, and the violent chokehold that brought him to “justice.” That discord arose, not as some <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/12/context-for-the-punishment-free-killing-of-eric-garner/383413/">claim</a>, from a problem with chokeholds <em>per se</em>, but from the fact that a <a href="http://thefederalist.com/2014/12/03/hands-up-dont-choke-eric-garner-was-murdered-by-police-for-no-reason/"><em>law</em></a> authorized an officer to exercise <em>any </em>force at all in dealing with Garner.</p> <p>When the law is used paternalistically, to <em>rule </em>peaceful people like Garner, it should come as no surprise when enforcement itself becomes corrupted. While a proper legal code protects peaceful citizens exclusively from dangerous acts like murder and theft, paternalistic law goes beyond this. The hallmark of paternalistic law is that it attempts to use force against citizens for their own good or to enforce conventional morals. Because it creates a series of victimless crimes and seeks to nanny the choices of the perpetrators themselves, paternalism opens the door for police to engage in a litany of abuses not otherwise permissible. Nowhere is this clearer than with the War on Drugs.</p> <p>As David Simon <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/04/29/want-to-fix-baltimore-end-the-drug-war-says-david-simon/">notes</a>, “[p]robable cause was destroyed by the drug war.” Because of the War, police are given greater incentive and leeway to stop citizens randomly in the streets, to pry into their pockets, to search their cars, to break down their doors and to search their homes—all on suspicion of carrying a few leafy greens. Where the standard for police-citizen contact should have been the probability that a suspect was doing harm to others, paternalism reduces it to the probability that a suspect isn’t living the life that the law commands him to live. Paternalism makes nagging tyrants of the men that should have been our protectors. It’s an atrocious sham—a complete mockery of law itself.</p> <p>Predictably—just as <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/unreasonablefaith/2009/03/12-bad-effects-of-prohibition-you-should-know/">occurred</a> during Prohibition—when the law levies the penal code against peaceful persons in this way, it also unnecessarily endangers the lives of all involved. Paternalism forces those who might previously have been peaceful (albeit, flawed) members of society to take security into their own hands. Others, like those seeking to transport and sell large quantities of drugs, get pushed into a deviant criminal underworld where police are the enemy, rather than guardians. It’s no surprise that the greater the incentive for private citizens to take security into their own hands, the higher the chances that police get harmed in the line of duty, and thus the greater the incentive for officers to further militarize enforcement. Asking officers to enforce paternalistic laws exhibits a profound disrespect for their lives and safety.</p> <p>What paternalism does to well-meaning police is especially tragic. While drug pushers don’t force us to smoke blunts, police officers can and<em> must </em>enforce the law against all who engage in such conduct, and by coercive means. Not only does this force officers to risk potentially life-threatening physical altercations (should their fugitives resist arrest or retaliate), it also forces those who signed up “to serve and protect” to act in direct contradiction to that purpose. In so doing, it bastardizes the good-will of those who want to protect, while tragically incentivizing the lowest type of people—those who seek <em>power </em>over others—to sign up for a chance to rule.</p> <p>Paternalism thwarts the very purpose of a proper legal system: to <em>protect</em> <em>us</em> from harm by others. When police dedicate resources to hunting down mere vices, they’re necessarily <em>not </em>focused to that extent on catching truly dangerous criminals. Neglecting dangerous criminals to persecute peaceful persons is a surefire way for police to become public enemy number one. When the public loses trust in officers, enforcing the law becomes vastly more difficult—just ask the <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/04/29/bad-relationship-with-police-breeds-fear/26585499/">Baltimore</a> police.</p> <p>If we recognize the root of the problem, we’ll see that it doesn’t have to come to this. Law enforcement is a <em>two-part</em> endeavor: police enforce the laws—<em>that legislatures enact</em>. While officers like the one who killed Eric Garner deserve to be punished, legislatures deserve <em>primary </em>blame for commanding him to engage a peaceful person in an inherently violent way.</p> <p>Lawmakers aren’t our rulers. Their job is to <em>pass laws designed to protect us</em> from those who <em>would</em> try to rule us—the murderers, the thieves, the kidnappers, the rapists. Just as legislators depend on police to get the job done when they make murder illegal, so too do officers depend on lawmakers to pass laws that are worth the risk of enforcing. When that dynamic is compromised by laws authorizing officers to pull guns on peaceful persons, police are put in lose-lose situations. Officers must then choose between risking their lives to harm the citizens they swore to protect, and turning their backs on the laws they swore to enforce. No officer should ever have to make that choice.</p> <p>The gravity of the power and responsibility with which we entrust officers lends itself to impassioned reactions to their victories, but also to their mistakes. Officers who halt killing sprees are praised as heroes, while officers who gun down innocent men become, in an instant, villains. But police aren’t philosophers or jurists. While we can rightly expect that they think critically about their jobs and refrain from wanton abuse, we can’t expect officers to “pause and reflect” on the justice of every law they enforce and still remain effective. The whole point of their job is not to pick and choose some laws to enforce, but to enforce <em>the</em> law—and to enforce it <em>well</em>.</p> <p>Insofar as lawmakers deviate from their purpose of protecting us, they make tyrants of the men that should have been, and swore to be, our guardians. In so doing, they endanger the lives of officers and civilians alike. We can tinker with enforcement procedure all we want—and we ought to, until we get it <em>right</em>. We can blame and punish police officers all we want—and we ought to, until <em>they</em> get it right. But no amount of procedural justice can cure the abuse implicit in fundamentally oppressive laws. And letting legislatures off scot-free grants them license to continue corrupting law enforcement at its core. That’s a dangerous way to treat our police officers, and quite a vile evil to unleash on our fellow citizens.</p> <p><em>Creative commons-licensed <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Baltimore_riot_police_VOA.jpg">image</a> from Wikimedia. </em></p> <p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://theundercurrent.org/legislative-paternalism-how-toxic-laws-endanger-police-and-civilians-alike/">Legislative Paternalism: How Toxic Laws Endanger Police and Civilians Alike</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://theundercurrent.org">The Undercurrent</a>.</p> <div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/the-undercurrent?a=fRl2m5g2ZcI:GyU9QLAekbc:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/the-undercurrent?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/the-undercurrent?a=fRl2m5g2ZcI:GyU9QLAekbc:JUhcmGiK9AQ"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/the-undercurrent?d=JUhcmGiK9AQ" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/the-undercurrent?a=fRl2m5g2ZcI:GyU9QLAekbc:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/the-undercurrent?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/the-undercurrent?a=fRl2m5g2ZcI:GyU9QLAekbc:WkrIHMmXu7Y"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/the-undercurrent?i=fRl2m5g2ZcI:GyU9QLAekbc:WkrIHMmXu7Y" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/the-undercurrent?a=fRl2m5g2ZcI:GyU9QLAekbc:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/the-undercurrent?i=fRl2m5g2ZcI:GyU9QLAekbc:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/the-undercurrent?a=fRl2m5g2ZcI:GyU9QLAekbc:gIN9vFwOqvQ"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/the-undercurrent?i=fRl2m5g2ZcI:GyU9QLAekbc:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/the-undercurrent?a=fRl2m5g2ZcI:GyU9QLAekbc:l6gmwiTKsz0"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/the-undercurrent?d=l6gmwiTKsz0" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/the-undercurrent/~4/fRl2m5g2ZcI" height="1" width="1" alt=""/> Link to Original

The conspirator behind the Boston Marathon bombings was found guilty only days before the second anniversary of the bombings and a week before the second marathon since the attack. The Boston bombing was a terrible tragedy. Thousands of marathon runners descended upon Boston to celebrate human achievement, and in minutes, their lives were turned into madness and unimaginable terror. Despite the horrific nature of this event, in the midst of the panic that erupted, people didn’t let the actions of the man behind the Boston Marathon bombing destroy their optimism about their lives and futures. One story in particular illustrates this poignantly. A year ago, in Vancouver, British Columbia, to the shock and awe of many, Adrianne Haslet-Davis, a dance instructor and professional ballroom dancer, made her dancing debut after losing her left leg in the Boston Marathon bombings. With the help of a bionic prosthetic ankle, Haslet-Davis was able to learn to dance again. Only days after witnessing gruesome horror and bloodshed with her stitches still in place, Haslet-Davis announced on national television against the unlikely odds that she would dance again. For months, Haslet-Davis spent hours in intense physical therapy with unwavering focus. When the nub of her left leg swelled up from a poor fitting prosthetic, she endured the pain and kept walking. Every time she fell down, she got back up. Despite the uncertainty of whether she would ever be able to dance again, she had the resilience to keep moving forward in her recovery. During Haslet-Davis’ recovery, walking through the streets of Boston was a nightmare for her. Everywhere she went, she thought a bomb might explode and that every stranger was out to kill her. Even though she felt this way, she did not succumb to her sorrows. Instead, she continued to live a productive life. She had the honesty to accept that what had happened to her was only one moment in her life and it didn’t have to define the rest. With integrity and courage, she moved forward by persistently trying to find a way to dance again. But her story doesn’t end there. Despite her determination, Haslet-Davis wouldn’t have been able to dance again without the help of a biomechatronics professor for MIT, Hugh Herr. A traditional plastic prosthetic leg only allowed Haslet-Davis limited motion, but dancing is a tricky art that requires a full range of movement. To dance, a person has to be able to move consistently to a steady beat in a systematic way. She has to be light on her feet while being able to pivot 360 degrees, all while maintaining a center of gravity. When she tried to move gracefully, her prosthetic leg was like a ball and chain tripping her every step. She needed a prosthetic limb that was light and allowed her a full range of motion. The limb she needed didn’t exist until Hugh Herr created it. Herr first heard about Haslet-Davis’ story when he saw her initial interview with Anderson Cooper on CNN where she proudly announced she would dance again. After hearing her story and meeting her in person, he realized the only way she would be able to dance again was if he created her a custom bionic leg, and he decided to do just that. When Herr was 17, he was in a mountain climbing accident on Mount Washington in New Hampshire. He and his friend were stranded in a blizzard for four days that resulted in the amputation of both of his legs. After his accident, Herr felt an overwhelming amount of guilt because the expedition had been his idea. Now he could no longer mountain climb, his friend had lost his left leg, and a rescue worker died in the avalanche trying to save them. Despite his grief, he was determined to climb mountains again. Before Herr, little advancement had been made in prosthetics. Until the last decade, prosthetics operated very much as they did 500 years ago when they were first invented. Since there were no prosthetics designed to help Herr climb mountains again, he decided to create his own. At first Herr used raw materials such as scrap metal and wood, but it would not be long before his technique would become more sophisticated. He studied mechanical engineering at MIT and went on to earn his Ph.D. in biophysics at Harvard. Later, he got a postdoc at MIT to study biomedical devices. In 2004, TIME magazine named his computer-controlled knee prosthetic one of the year’s best inventions. In 2011, TIME named Herr the “Leader of the Bionic Age.” To achieve all that he did, Herr had to have much more than a Ph.D. in biophysics. He had to have honesty to accept what happened to him and then the courage and integrity to move forward with his life. Since no prosthetics were available to help him climb mountains again, he had to be self-reliant and take control of his situation. Through his years of school, he had to have unyielding focus on his goals and endure the demanding and frustrating mental task of discovering new ways to improve prosthetics. His situation seemed bleak, but Herr had to have the determination and perseverance to make it better. Herr related to Haslet-Davis’ story because of the way she braved circumstances he had faced himself. She was determined not to let the actions of men that tried to kill her define her life. In defiance of the terrorists who tried to end her life, she reclaimed it. Similarly, when nature tried to seize the reins of Herr’s life, he did not surrender. He maintained his control over his life. For Herr and Haslet-Davis to achieve their goals, they first had to develop the character traits necessary to achieve specific goals and values. Haslet-Davis’ recovery depended on her honesty, productivity, courage, determination, self-reliance, and integrity. And before Herr could help Haslet-Davis, he had to possess these same character traits to pursue his own recovery and a career as an inventor. By developing the same self-sustaining virtues, Herr and Haslet-Davis were able to improve their lives tremendously. Yet the virtue we are told to strive for today is not selfish dedication to our own lives, but selflessness. Instead of investing in our own goals, our parents, teachers, and political leaders tell us to dedicate our lives to others. They tell us to put others before ourselves. We are told to devote our time and money to the less fortunate in soup kitchens, retirement homes, and third-world countries. We are told that our happiness is not possible otherwise. We are told that we owe our success to society and dedicating our lives to others is payment for our debt to them. But imagine if Herr and Haslet-Davis followed this advice. Would the outcome of their stories have been the same? If Haslet-Davis had put others before herself after the Boston Marathon bombings, she would have dedicated her time and money to other families affected by the tragedy. But if she had spent her time consoling others impacted by the tragedy, she would not have been able to put the necessary time into the physical therapy she needed to dance again. If Herr had spent all his time in VA hospitals bonding with veterans who had missing limbs like himself, he wouldn’t have had time to scavenge scrap yards for materials to build new prosthetic limbs, and he wouldn’t have had time to experiment with his new limbs on canyons and cliffs. Incidentally, Herr and Haslet-Davis have both been able to help others far more by putting their own lives first. By choosing to create better, more mobile prosthetics, Herr helped Haslet-Davis enormously on her journey to dance again. But before Herr could create a custom prosthetic for her, he first had to pursue his own rational self-interest. Herr’s happiness depended on improving his own life above all. Haslet-Davis’ dancing triumph has now become an inspiration to other amputees that their disability does not have to be a barrier from achieving their goals. But she had to value her own ability to dance above all other things to be able to offer this inspiration. What Haslet-Davis and Herr’s story powerfully illustrates to all of us is what a person can accomplish when he pursues his own rational self-interest and what he can accomplish with others who do the same. Creative commons-licensed image courtesy of Flickr user Steve Jurvetson. The post Triumph over Tragedy: The Tale of Adrianne Haslet-Davis and Hugh Herr’s Self-Dedication appeared first on The Undercurrent. Link to Original

The Undercurrent is celebrating its tenth anniversary this April and big changes are in store. For the first time ever, TU has hired an executive director who is reinventing the organization’s leadership, clubs, and programming to reach a broader audience of students. Ten years ago, TU was founded by a group of friends looking for a way to increase the longevity of their Objectivist college campus clubs. Once club leaders graduated, clubs would lose momentum and dissolve. TU’s founders hoped that a student Objectivist publication would help connect campus clubs across the country and keep club leaders involved in their clubs and the student Objectivist movement after they graduated. From the very beginning, TU’s commentary was focused on applying philosophy to current events and contemporary issues students cared about. TU merged with OClubs in 2011 to offer mentoring for Objectivist club leaders, to help leaders reach out to more students by improving the quality of their discussion meetings and programming. In 2013, TU partnered with student Objectivist clubs to create the “It’s Your Life, Own It” campaign, which focused on the personal and practical importance of applying philosophy to one’s own life. TU produced a series of videos interviewing successful Objectivists, asking them what it meant to live selfishly, what it takes to live the best life possible, what it takes to achieve one’s own happiness. To offer students more rigorous leadership training, TU held its first Leadership Seminar in the fall of 2013 at Stanford University. The three-day event brought together 20 of the top Objectivist student club leaders to discuss club development, marketing strategies, and longevity. Last fall in Washington, D.C., TU held its first student conference, where students could ask experts their questions about Objectivism. The theme of the conference was “Ayn Rand’s Individualism and the Case for Liberty.” Inspired by TU’s campaign, its new executive director, Margaret Malewski, wants to structure TU to focus more on career building and self-development for students. Objectivism is a philosophy about self-development and growth, so Malewski wants TU’s lectures, events, and workshops to be geared toward helping its members and students at large improve themselves. Self-development is what college is all about and why many students elect to attend it. “In college, my expectations were that I had to be wealthy, and I had to have things I could show other people that communicated my wealth and success to them,” Malewski said. “In retrospect, that’s not as important. What’s important is that you like what you do and seek to be independent. And ultimately, that does lead to wealth and success, but that’s only an effect.” Future events will include networking opportunities for students to meet industry professionals who share their career values and workshops that help students learn how to apply Objectivist ideas to moral dilemmas encountered in everyday life such as questions about how to make career decisions in the face of parental objections, or how to weigh career goals against romantic relationships. By focusing on self-development and career building, Malewski believes more students will learn of the value Objectivism and TU have to offer. “There are always students who want more,” Malewski said. “There are always students who want to develop themselves in some way. If you are a student that wants to get the most out of your university time, but believe not everything is learned in the classroom then you will want to join a club or organization that will help you do that.” Malewski’s views on education and career were informed by her college experiences in post-communist Poland during the early 1990s. Poland’s universities were highly focused on academics and students pursued their studies as a kind of intellectual hobby, since there was little connection between academic or extracurricular achievement and finding a job in the largely state-controlled workplace. To gain more from her educational experience, Malewski participated in Board of European Students of Technology, a student organization that focused on providing students with career and leadership opportunities. Through BEST, Malewski gained the professional experiences above and beyond the standard curriculum, which became vital to her success as the founder and CEO of her company Liquivision Products, Inc., a hardware startup that was recently acquired by Huish Outdoors. “I think the most important thing for students to learn about Ayn Rand’s philosophy is how to be their own person,” Malewski said. “Growing up, that was very difficult for me. I couldn’t tell the difference between the things I had to do because they were expected of me by my parents and the things I wanted to do for me. Objectivism helped me do that.” In light of TU’s major executive changes, Margaret is recruiting 10 students from across the U.S. to pioneer the organization’s new programming. The 10 chosen students will spend the next five months working with Margaret to plan events and workshops that clubs will host during the upcoming academic year. Students will also develop programming for TU’s second national student conference that will be in the fall. The post The Undercurrent Gains Momentum as 10th Anniversary Approaches appeared first on The Undercurrent. Link to Original

The woman leaned out the window and pointed to the flashing sirens as the firetrucks left the street. “Isn’t this amazing,” she said. “You created all this.” Tony Hsieh was more relieved than amazed. He hadn’t been arrested. It was New Year’s Eve 1999, and 26 year old Hsieh (who would later become CEO of the online shoe store Zappos.com) had thrown the party of the millennia. The party was held in a loft at the top of the building where Hsieh lived. Several months earlier he had entered loft 810 and fell in love with it. He immediately envisioned it as a hangout spot for his expanding network of friends—as a fun, comfortable environment during the day, and a great place for parties at night. Hundreds had come to the New Year’s Eve party, but when he had amped up the fog machines at 3:00 AM, firemen quickly responded to the alarms. Expressing his relief at not being arrested, Tony was preparing to return to his guests when the strange woman stopped him. She told him this party was a great accomplishment. And she said to always “envision, create and believe in your own universe, and the universe will form around you.” Tony was dumbstruck by the words. The woman left without another. In my previous piece I explored the first of three hidden lessons within Tony Hsieh’s autobiography, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose. I showed how Hsieh never waited for circumstances to become negative in order to take positive action in his life. Starting at nine with a failed worm farm, he continued to make alterations to his path in light of his experiences with failed or dissatisfying ventures he had undertaken along the way. Now we will take a deeper look at what brought him billion dollar success. Lesson 2: Invest Everything in Your Vision and Be Willing to Lose It All Hsieh and his friends had nicknamed the loft “Club BIO.” Initially it had been exciting to create shared experiences with friends, but this wore off. He realized that as much as he loved throwing parties, what Club BIO lacked was a purpose beyond just being a place to hang out. After selling LinkExchange to Microsoft, Hsieh had been searching for a meaningful purpose. Club BIO was one result. He had also started a Venture Capital firm, Venture Frogs. The firm would invest in startups and, if successful, pass them along to a larger VC firm for more capital. Letting startups fail if they did not meet the larger VC firms’ standards was fundamental to their diversification strategy. Recalling the encounter during New Year’s, however, he found himself searching for that universe to believe in and create. One startup they had invested in was called Zappos. When the initial founders were ready for their second round of investing, however, the large VC firms turned them down. Venture Frogs would have to let Zappos collapse or break their own strategy. Yet Hsieh believed in the Zappos founders’ vision and core business idea. Footwear was a $40 billion industry, and 5 percent of that was already mail-order. 5 percent equaled $2 billion. Becoming the number one online shoe store would be to get a significant piece of a multibillion dollar pie. More importantly, he thought the founders were passionate, determined, and “actually interested in trying to build something for the long term.” Hsieh decided that he would infuse additional funding to get them through the next several months and hope that another VC firm would fund the company later. It would be three years before an outside source provided capital. So he was confronted with an enormous financial conundrum: either let Zappos fail or push through and hope for the best. Exhibiting the trait found most typically in successful people, he contemplated the value of Zappos and chose to believe in it. Zappos grew steadily, but still required more capital. There was never a guarantee that the company would take off. At one point, Hsieh had to either sell the last of his personal investments—his loft—or let Zappos go. He decided to sell what had been his universe, the loft. Zappos, however, was so cash strapped that if he didn’t sell quickly enough, they would fail anyway. So he decided to sell the loft at 40% market value just to provide the needed cash. If Zappos were to fail, Hsieh would have to start anew with nothing. And he did not merely invest money—he “took off his investor hat and put on his entrepreneurial hat.” He worked on the computer systems needed to coordinate the shoe inventory and ship the products to customers. He worked on advertising and hiring and business relations. For years he worked and allotted himself only one dollar in salary. All without knowing if it would pay off in the end. It would take years of practice, but Hsieh had tried and failed to find his own universe so often that he had formed an iron will. Fundamentally, self-confidence is a willingness to take action and fail, because a confident person understands that despite the possibility of failure, they are capable of succeeding. Tony failed to make a profit with his first business, a worm farm; at LinkExchange he failed to build the proper culture; at Club BIO he failed to infuse it with purpose. No matter the setbacks he never stopped taking action. Too often people are scared of failure and merely dream of success; they don’t act to achieve it by investing their time, energy, money. In his famous poem, If, Rudyard Kipling says: If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of Pitch-and-Toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings, And never breathe a word about your loss; …Then yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it. This is the mentality of the successful. It tells a twofold tale. The first is to choose what you know is good and believe in it. This may be as small as a worm farm, or as big as the world’s largest online shoe store. Nevertheless, once you decide on a vision, the second lesson is to invest everything and be willing to fail. Because in the end, you may fail. In fact, this is likely. After years of building something just to discover it was not the universe he was looking for, Hsieh finally envisioned, created and believed in his own universe: Zappos. Hsieh has infused his soul into the company. From his values and passions to leadership beliefs and even operation techniques. Today, Zappos is famous for its culture of fun and community. It has profits, passion and purpose. All ingredients Hsieh had failed to achieve along the way. Next time I will tell how Zappos went from $0 to $1 billion in ten years all through Hsieh’s uniquely defined path to profits, passion, and purpose. Creative-commons licensed image from Flickr User John-Morgan. The post To Win Your World, Risk It All appeared first on The Undercurrent. 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Do You Want To Join An Exceptional Leadership Development Initiative? The Undercurrent is recruiting 10 ambitious students to become the founding leaders of The Undercurrent Student Clubs network. Candidates accepted into the program will participate in five months of intensive training and development and, as the TU 2015 Leadership Team, will play a central role in creating and implementing the Undercurrent’s visionary new student-centered programming. The ideal candidates are familiar with Ayn Rand’s ideas and have an interest in applying them to their own lives. They also have at least 2 more years of study planned at their current institution and will undertake to participate in 5 months of training, at The Undercurrent’s expense, prior to rolling out new programming on campus in the 2015/16 academic year. They will continue as local club leaders in the throughout 2016 and will also be candidates for the first generation of the National TU Executive, training the TU 2016 Leadership Team. What is changing at TU? The Undercurrent is updating its vision of student clubs to create a self-renewing student movement. To make the kind of impact we envisage, it’s not enough to simply study Ayn Rand’s philosophy and debate the best way of applying it to the world. We must think hard about how to use the principles of first-handed judgment and pursuit of a rational purpose to our own lives, and develop the leadership skills to engage others in this process of self-examination as well. We must inspire and invite not only those interested in political activism, but a much wider audience of students—those interested in living full, rich, meaningful lives. To the extent that we can empower and intellectually support the next generation of students who choose to live this way—in the pursuit of his own life, liberty and happiness, without encroaching on others—we will transform and save the world around us. So how does this new focus impact the way we run Objectivism-inspired campus clubs? The answers are not obvious—it requires a lot of deep thinking and creative work to define and enact a program that achieves these outcomes. We have developed the outline below, and have some good preliminary ideas. The next step is to turn this promising beginning into a robust, integrated program. The first step is very simple. We are looking to recruit 10 exceptional student leaders to work with the Undercurrent leadership, and with professional Objectivist intellectuals, to develop this new programming, and then roll out a pilot version in the Fall Semester. The new programming will be centered around 4 pillars: “It’s Your Life, OWN It”: These workshops—open to all students—will offer insights on how to make rational, first-handed choices in matters related to career, personal development, friendships and relationships, and how to overcome parental, religious, and societal obstacles to doing so in a reasonable way. “O-Fundamentals”: These workshops will introduce Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand, to club members, from a personal perspective: “how does it apply to my life and my dealings with others?” “Writing”: These workshops will give club members the opportunity to develop clear thinking skills by writing on topics relevant to their life as a student… and the best pieces get published in The Undercurrent Magazine. “Social”: Objectivism is a philosophy for living a full and happy life, and so The Undercurrent’s new programming will seek to incorporate music performances, art shows, parties and sports events open to all students on campus What commitment will I be making? Monthly Weekend Development Meetings from April to August. As a TU Student Leader, you will engage to participate in weekend meetings, held monthly, for the purpose of brainstorming and developing the new TU Programming. Generally speaking, you can expect to fly to the meeting location on a Friday night, and return home on a Sunday evening. We will cover the cost of your flight, lodging and a daily meal allowance. We expect the weekends to be hard work, but also a lot of fun, spending time with 10 other like-minded, highly motivated peers. The current Board of Directors of TU met while developing their student clubs and became friends for life, despite pursuing very different professions. April Meeting: Understanding the new vision for TU. Refining it. Deciding on the “TU Story”—what we stand for, who we recruit, why we are an awesome group to join. Training on leadership. Club registration and launch fundamentals. May Meeting: Developing the “It’s Your Life, Own It” workshop themes. Training on how to deliver a workshop. Working through any hiccups in club registrations. June Meeting: Developing the “O-Fundamentals” programming for the clubs. Training from experts on Objectivism on how to teach and communicate Objectivist ideas. Starting to brainstorm ways to launch and market the new TU Clubs in the Fall. July Meeting, likely to coincide with OCON 2015 in Charlotte: Developing the “Social” programming for your TU club. Training on project and budget management. Creating marketing and promotion strategies for the new TU Clubs. August Meeting: Developing the “Writing” program. Learning to discuss controversial ideas and present them in writing in an engaging and thought-provoking, rather than incendiary way. Training from TU writers and editors on how to write for TU. Final TU Club launch logistics prior to club launch in September Program Development Between Meetings (About 15-20 hrs/month). Between meetings, you will be assigned a topic for further development based on the brainstorming and work that occurred during the meetings. The goal, at the end of August, is to have a full “User Manual” on how to start and run a The Undercurrent club. We expect this to be about 15-20 hours of work each time. Optional: Honorary Alumni Project. A key aspect of the “It’s Your Life, OWN It” campaign is connecting students with professionals who can act as role models, sharing how they may have made a difficult career decision, or how they apply rational ideas to their work and in their workplace. As Student Leaders, you will have the opportunity to connect with professionals and engage them into this project. This will also be exceptional exposure for you and an opportunity to network. By participating in this project, you increase your chances of joining the TU National Executive in 2016. Optional: Fall Student/Professional Conference. We will all be working together on hosting a fall Student/Professional Conference. The TU Student Conference will be the second conference on Objectivism for liberty-oriented students—and a great recruiting ground for new club members and the 2016 Student Leadership Team. The Professional Conference will be the first conference by Objectivist professional on they apply Objectivism and rational ideas to their work and workplace, discussing what works well and what challenges they face—and a great recruiting ground for Honorary Alumni. Most importantly, the students and professionals will have opportunities to network and get inspired by each other. Working on this project will be great for leadership development, project management skills and networking. By participating in this project, you increase your chances of joining the TU National Executive in 2016. Monthly Implementation and Review Meetings from September to November. September Meeting: Debrief the TU Club launches on your campuses and results of your recruitment efforts; share learnings. Final preparation prior to the Fall Student/Professional Conference. October Meeting/Fall Conference: Attend the Fall Conference. November Meeting: Debrief the Fall Conference. Follow up with student Conference participants to engage them in existing clubs, or to join the 2016 Leadership Team who will be trained, much like you are this year, to launch clubs on their campuses. Follow up with professional Conference participants to recruit them as Honorary Alumni. Make plans for 2016. 2016: Leading Your Campus Clubs & Applying to Join TU National Executive. In 2016, you will be the leaders of your local campus clubs, and candidates for the TU National Executive, a group of paid student leaders who will be responsible for the national direction of TU and for the recruitment of the 2016 Leadership Team. The National Executive will meet with the 2016 Leadership Team and train them to start clubs on their campuses much like you were trained by TU to start a club on yours. The National Executive will be ultimately responsible for TU’s programming and project management in 2016, as well as for fundraising, donor and Honorary Alumni outreach, working closely with the TU Board. Election to the National Executive and exposure to this level of leadership experience will be a phenomenal resume item, making any National Executive member a strong candidate for the professional workplace after his or her one-year term expires. What will I get in return? A unique opportunity to transform the Objectivist student movement by creating the blueprint for the new TU Clubs A tremendous opportunity for personal development and training in key life skills, including leadership, workshop moderation, project management, writing skills and more A potential to meet your best friends for life—any intense experience where you work closely with a team to deliver a common goal will create a bond, and here it can be made stronger by your shared values and purpose Great networking with Objectivist professionals and academics, with possibilities for on-going mentorship and career opportunities A big challenge, a big reward when it all works out, a great line in your resume and a lot of fun! What Are We Looking For? A strong interest in Ayn Rand’s ideas, a belief that applying them to one’s own life and decision-making is important to be successful—so you feel comfortable running an “It’s Your Life, OWN It” workshop Good academics—so you can keep up with your studies even in face of this extracurricular commitment Evidence of leadership—have you created or helped create a unique program or event? Have you been a team leader? This program will require you to launch an Objectivist club on your campus – so some experience of leadership will help How Do I Apply? Please complete the online application by Monday, April 6th. FAQ How is this TU student program related to the Ayn Rand Institute’s student programming? The past year ARI and TU have increased their level of collaboration in reaching and supporting college students, to ensure the efforts of each organization complement rather than duplicate each other. This program–as all of TU’s programs–remains independent from ARI, but the organizations will continue to work together in the delivery of the new vision. Can I apply to this TU program as well as to ARI’s internship or OCON programs? Yes, absolutely. We will make sure that the June meeting doesn’t conflict with interning at ARI and that the July meeting doesn’t conflict with any obligations you may have towards ARI as a result of being a sponsored student at OCON. The post Announcing TU’s Leadership Development Initiative appeared first on The Undercurrent. Link to Original

Dear Students, We’re sorry about the long radio silence. There are a lot of exciting developments at The Undercurrent, and we’re eager to fill you in! A New Team We’d like to begin by saying a heartfelt goodbye. Brittney Fay Rivera, who has been The Undercurrent’s Director of Development for the past year, has moved on to new adventures. We are very appreciative of the time and energy Brittney has put into her work, and for the momentum she has helped create in the Objectivist student movement, including the first-ever student conference about Objectivism. Brittney wanted to share this parting message with you: “I’d like to thank everyone—students, staff, and supporters—who made TU a great place to begin my career promoting free-market philosophy. I wish the best of luck to the team and look forward to seeing a new stage of Objectivist activism.” Brittney, The Undercurrent thanks you for your work, and wishes you the best in your future endeavors. To help lead the next stage of The Undercurrent’s growth, we’re very pleased to announce that we have hired our first full time Executive Director: Margaret Malewski. Margaret brings to this new role a boundless entrepreneurial spirit, a proven strategic capacity, deep familiarity with Objectivism, and many years of experience in student activism. Prior to joining The Undercurrent, she was co-founder and CEO of Liquivision Products, Inc., a hardware startup which was acquired by Huish Outdoors. Margaret read The Fountainhead in high school; she went on to use most of her first six months’ income to attend her first OCON, and has been a part of the Objectivist movement ever since. In college, she was also a member of her Faculty Student Council, of EASA (European Architecture Student’s Association) and BEST (Board of European Students of Technology). And YOU could be part of our new team. We’re looking for 10 student leaders to join Margaret in transforming The Undercurrent. These students will meet monthly—at TU’s expense—to develop new programming and get training in leadership, outreach, marketing and project management from leading Objectivist professionals. Read on to learn more! To obtain more information and apply: [email protected] Join our Webinar about the Student Leader program on Thursday, March 26 at 8:30 PM EST (5:30 PM PST): https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/3702654150282876162 A New Vision For The Undercurrent Building on the “It’s Your Life, OWN It” theme developed in the past few years, Margaret and the 10 Student Leaders will develop new programming that applies Objectivist principles to issues relevant to their lives, such as decisions on career, personal development, friendships and relationships. Rather than focusing exclusively on activism, The Undercurrent will become a place where students can acquire leadership training, professional networking and skill-building opportunities, coaching and mentoring from Objectivist academics and business leaders, and more. On this model, TU will broaden its outreach to include a much wider range of student fans of Ayn Rand and individual liberty, and create a vibrant Objectivist campus movement centered around empowering students to utilize Objectivism in the pursuit of their own personal and professional happiness. Here are two components of the overall vision: Undercurrent Clubs. These student clubs, which can operate in parallel with traditional Objectivist Clubs, will include a strong leadership development focus, with members progressing from event coordination to event planning and leadership, and eventually to Club leadership. The strongest Club leaders will be candidates for the National TU Student Executive, paid positions one year post-graduation. Honorary Alumni. To emphasize the personal value of the Objectivist philosophy, The Undercurrent will regularly showcase and engage professionally successful Objectivists as examples of what it means to live a rational, purposeful life and the rewards it can bring. Students will have the opportunity to seek mentors among TU Alumni, and gain first-hand perspective on what precisely is involved in pursuing a rational career in business, science, arts, engineering or in academia. TU Alumni will have the opportunity to recruit proven young leadership talent from the ranks of TU Club members. If you know anyone who might be interested in becoming an Honorary TU Alumnus, please let us know at: [email protected] Join Us! Apply to become one of TU’s 10 new Student Leaders! If you’re chosen, you’ll have the privilege of working closely with talented, like-minded peers, coached by a diverse mix of successful Objectivists. You’ll be part of a collaborative team building The Undercurrent’s exciting programming around 4 main pillars: “It’s Your Life, OWN It”: These workshops will offer insights on how to make rational, first-handed choices in matters related to career, personal development, friendships and relationships “O-Fundamentals”: These workshops will introduce Objectivism to new student audiences from a personal perspective “how does it apply to my life and my dealings with others?” “Writing”: This program will give students the opportunity to develop clear thinking skills by writing on topics relevant to your life as a student… and the best pieces get published in The Undercurrent Magazine. “Social”: Objectivism is a philosophy for living a full and happy life, and so The Undercurrent’s new programming will seek to incorporate music performances, art shows, parties and sports events. As part of the core team developing and piloting these programs, you have the opportunity to help shape the way the next generation of students encounter and experience Objectivism on college campuses—all well developing valuable professional skills under the expert coaching of successful Objectivist businessmen and intellectuals. To obtain more information and apply: [email protected] Join our Webinar about the program on Thursday, March 26 at 8:30 PM EST (5:30 PM PST): https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/3702654150282876162 Support Our New Vision If you or anyone you know would like to support The Undercurrent’s new vision, please help fund our efforts! Any amount you can afford is fine—even a $5 per month recurring donation can make a big difference. To donate to The Undercurrent, please visit: https://orders.theundercurrent.org/donate Yours, Margaret Malewski and The Undercurrent Board of Directors The post A New Team and a New Vision for The Undercurrent appeared first on The Undercurrent. Link to Original