In this episode of New Ideal Live, Ben Bayer and Onkar Ghate discuss the reasons why Objectivist commentary usually appears to emphasis the negative.

Among the topics covered:

Whether it’s true that Objectivist commentary is unqualifiedly “negative”;Why Ayn Rand thought reporting on achievements would not be symptomatic of the intellectual atmosphere of her time;Why philosophical negatives show the essential trend of our culture;Why a philosophy for living on earth doesn’t separate guidance for living from political and cultural commentary;Whether emphasizing positives inspires more people to follow better ideas;Whether things are bad enough to justify a strike as in Atlas Shrugged;Whether anyone is tracking the influence of Objectivism in the culture;How clarity on negative issues helps one understand them and prevent their recurrence;Whether it is healthy to say “things could always be worse.”

Mentioned in the discussion are Ayn Rand’s essay “How Does One Lead a Rational Life in an Irrational Society?” and her talk “Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World.” Also mentioned is New Ideal Live’s episode “How Can We Change People's Minds About Ayn Rand's Controversial Ideas?”

This podcast was recorded on August 18, 2021. Listen to the discussion below. Listen and subscribe from your mobile device on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher. Watch archived podcasts here.

https://youtu.be/mSbftQaw-g4

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In this special episode of New Ideal Live, Onkar Ghate and Elan Journo discuss the Taliban’s capture of Kabul, and what explains the fall of Afghanistan.

Among the topics covered:

A summary of the crisis currently unfolding in Afghanistan;The flawed “nation building” goals of the Afghanistan campaign, starting after 9/11;The unwillingness to identify the ideological nature of the enemy after 9/11;How the Taliban were able to take over Afghanistan so quickly;Presidents Obama, Trump and Biden’s failures in the Middle East;Why the peace accord with the Taliban exemplifies the morally bankrupt, anti-intellectual, and geopolitically impractical approach of American foreign policy;Why the Soviets failed in Afghanistan;Lessons from American policy in postwar Japan;ARI’s unique, philosophical approach to the Afghanistan conflict and foreign policy in general.

Mentioned in the discussion is the new expanded edition of the Ayn Rand Institute’s book Failing to Confront Islamic Totalitarianism, available online now at New Ideal.

This podcast was recorded on August 16, 2021. Listen to the discussion below. Listen and subscribe from your mobile device on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher. Watch archived podcasts here.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/T3VucIRZihw

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In this episode of New Ideal Live, Elan Journo and Agustina Vergara Cid discuss Ayn Rand’s distinctive, philosophical perspective on the United Nations.

Among the topics covered:

Ayn Rand’s commentary on the UN as an example of her engagement with the important issues of her time;Ayn Rand’s philosophical evaluation of the UN vs. other conventional views;The “grotesque pretense” of an organization with Soviet Russia as a charter member;The consequences of the UN’s moral equivalence between free countries and dictatorships;How the UN Human Rights Council provides moral cover for evil regimes such as Venezuela and Cuba;The contradiction of having dictatorships monitor violations of rights;Whether essentially free countries benefit from membership in the UN;Whether the UN can be reformed;The difference between “humans rights” and “individual rights.”

Mentioned in the discussion are Ayn Rand’s essay “The Anatomy of Compromise” from her book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, Elan Journo’s essay “The UN’s Unscrupulous Attacks on Israel,” Agustina Vergara Cid’s essay “How the UN Whitewashes China’s Crushing of Free Speech” and the Ayn Rand Lexicon entry on “foreign policy.”

This podcast was recorded on August 10, 2021. Listen to the discussion below. Listen and subscribe from your mobile device on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher. Watch archived podcasts here.

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In this episode of New Ideal Live, Onkar Ghate and Ben Bayer discuss the signs of growing animus against business "monopolies," motivated by changing attitudes about antitrust law.

Among the topics covered:

The current status of antitrust efforts;The unprecedented levels of control being proposed;The baseless claims about the harms of “anticompetitive” consolidation;The invalid economics of “perfect competition” used to support antitrust;The arbitrariness of the “public interest” standard;The abuse of the concept of “competition”;The difference between economic power and political power;The invalid concept of economic “liberty” invoked to justify antitrustThe real motive behind antitrust efforts;How honest confusion about “monopoly” lends support to antitrust law;The psychological insight of Ayn Rand’s essay “The Age of Envy”;Economic vs. geopolitical competition between countries;The proper role of government in protecting consumers against fraud.

Mentioned in the discussion are Ayn Rand’s essays “America’s Persecuted Minority: Big Business” (available in her book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal) and “Antitrust: The Rule of Unreason” (available in her book The Voice of Reason).

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In this episode of New Ideal Live, Keith Lockitch and Agustina Vergara Cid discuss the reasons why Jeff Bezos’s recent flight to space should be admired and not mocked or vilified.

Among the topics covered:

The impressive spectacle of the Blue Origin launch vs. the backlash against it in the media;How the animosity toward Bezos stems from taking Amazon’s achievements for granted;How claims about the insignificance of the Blue Origin launch ignore its long-range technological and economic purpose;How claims about the immorality of billionaires’ paying to go to space ignore the economics of the early adopter effect;How altruism permeates people’s thinking about the achievements of successful businessmen;How scapegoating and envy drive animosity toward successful businessmen;How to evaluate people and companies in light of their distinctive achievements;How Bezos built something new by using existing resources others had not used.

Mentioned in this discussion are Ayn Rand’s essays “America’s Persecuted Minority: Big Business” (available in her book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal), “The Age of Envy”(available in the book Return of the Primitive), “Apollo 11” and “Epitaph For a Culture” (both available in the book The Voice of Reason). Also mentioned is Ayn Rand’s 1966 interview on the so-called robber barons.

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In this episode of New Ideal Live, Aaron Smith, Mike Mazza and Agustina Vergara Cid answer questions about Objectivism submitted by the podcast’s audience.  

Among the topics covered:

1: Does Objectivism discourage engaging in fantasy art?

1a: Are works of “art” that don’t objectify values actually “art”?

2: How important is free will to the Objectivist philosophy?

2a: Is it impossible to scientifically prove the nonexistence of free will?

2b: If we can’t control certain aspects of our personalities, does this mean there is no free will?

3: How are libertarianism and Objectivism different?

3a: How did Rand evaluate the charge of “extremism”?

4: How does one keep from giving up the fight for Objectivist ideas when faced with the trends in society?

Mentioned in the discussion are the books The Art of Fiction, edited by Tore Boeckmann, and Ayn Rand Answers, edited by Robert Mayhew.

This podcast was recorded on July 21, 2021. Listen to the discussion below. Listen and subscribe from your mobile device on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher. Watch archived podcasts here.

If you’d like to ask a question to be answered on a future episode, please send an email with “Podcast question” in the subject header to [email protected].

Podcast audio:

In this episode of New Ideal Live, Elan Journo and Onkar Ghate discuss whether governments should give out lottery prizes or other incentives for getting vaccinated, or mandate vaccination when people refuse it.  

Among the topics covered:

Why the role of the U.S. government should shift given the end of the pandemic;How the problem that unvaccinated people pose to others is mainly due to socialized health care;Why incentivizing vaccination through “vaccine lotteries” is unjust paternalism;Differentiating the policies packaged together as vaccine “mandates”;Whether it is proper for governments to mandate vaccination;How government control of industry obscures the application of these principles;How collectivism generates conflict between people and discourages individual responsibility;Whether government mask mandates are justifiable;Whether the government involvement in vaccine distribution is a reason to fear the vaccine;The proper role of government in a pandemic.

Mentioned in the discussion are Onkar Ghate’s paper “A Pro-Freedom Approach to Infectious Disease: Planning for the Next Pandemic,” Ben Bayer’s article “The Unscientific, Un-American Ethics of Vaccine Distribution,” and Ayn Rand’s comments on vaccine mandates and quarantine.

This podcast was recorded on July 14, 2021. Listen to the discussion below. Listen and subscribe from your mobile device on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher. Watch archived podcasts here.

Podcast audio:

In this episode, Ben Bayer reads aloud his article, "The Unscientific, Un-American Ethics of Vaccine Distribution." In that essay, he argues that it's absurd to treat philosophers’ “intuitions” as standards for government distribution of the Covid vaccine. Bayer's article was originally published in New Ideal, the Ayn Rand Institute's journal, on April 14, 2021.

In this episode of New Ideal Live, Elan Journo and Keith Lockitch discuss the false viewpoint that Ayn Rand belonged to the “conservative” movement.

Among the topics covered:

Why people associate Ayn Rand with the “conservative” movement;Rand’s own experience with the conservative movement;What people saw conservatism as standing for in Rand’s time;Rand’s view that the defense of freedom has to be based in the morality of self-interest, not altruism;Rand’s central charge that conservatism was intellectually bankrupt and unwilling to reject altruism;Rand’s response to the conservative arguments for freedom;How Rand predicted the rise of militant conservative mystics in the 1980s;Rand’s criticism of the conservative attack on abortion rights;Rand’s criticisms of conservatism summarized;Whether conservatives and libertarians are better candidates than liberals and progressives to be persuaded by Objectivism;Tribalism in both conservativism and the left;Rand’s opposition to the military draft.

Mentioned in the discussion are Ayn Rand’s essay “Conservatism: an Obituary,” her talk “The Age of Mediocrity,” and Elan Journo’s essay “What Was Ayn Rand’s View of ‘Conservatism’?”.

This podcast was recorded on July 7, 2021. Listen to the discussion below. Listen and subscribe from your mobile device on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher. Watch archived podcasts here.

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In this episode of New Ideal Live, Ben Bayer and Keith Lockitch discuss the full meaning of the "independence" in Independence Day and what we should be celebrating about America.

Among the topics covered:

A message from ARI’s first CEO regarding Independence Day;The reason the Americans declared independence from Britain: the principle of individual rights;Why it’s ominous that the injustice the American colonists revolted against was mild compared to what today’s government’s perpetrate;How the value of individual rights rests on the need for intellectual independence;How today’s anti-freedom ideologies are rooted in hostility to intellectual independence;The American Revolution’s insufficient independent thinking about morality;The moral independence declared by Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged;Thomas Jefferson’s own words on the meaning of Independence Day, and Rand’s view on the Declaration;Whether there will ever be a day to celebrate the achievement of laissez-faire capitalism in America.

Mentioned in the discussion are Onkar Ghate’s talk “Atlas Shrugged: America’s Second Declaration of Independence” (text version) and Ayn Rand’s talk “A Nation’s Unity.”

This podcast was recorded on July 1, 2021. Listen to the discussion below. Listen and subscribe from your mobile device on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher. Watch archived podcasts here.

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