Next Meeting: What are Rights?

The next meeting will be this Wednesday (Oct. 28) in 127 Henderson South at 7 p.m.

We will finish watching the debate from last week. As a follow-up, we will also discuss man’s rights.

Nowadays “rights” is a term used loosely. According to most, we have a “right” to many things, such as health care, housing, food, jobs, education, and even the Internet. Thomas Jefferson wrote in a Founding Document of this nation, however, that people only have the inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Why didn’t the Founding Fathers include a right to health care or a right to a job in the Declaration of Independence? Why didn’t they say that it was the government’s job to make sure everyone was able to purchase a house, regardless of whether they could afford it or not?

In this next meeting, we will discuss the nature of man’s rights and why material objects, such as health care, food, or education, cannot be a right because if they are, they will require the sacrifice of other people’s rights.

The most profoundly revolutionary achievement of the United States of America was the subordination of society to moral law. The principle of man’s individual rights represented the extension of morality into the social system—as a limitation on the power of the state, as man’s protection against the brute force of the collective, as the subordination of might to right. The United States was the first moral society in history.
-Ayn Rand in “Man’s Rights”

Material to be Discussed:
“Man’s Rights” by Ayn Rand
Text online:
http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ari_ayn_rand_man_rights

Next Meeting: Capitalism vs. Socialism

The next meeting will be this Wednesday (Oct. 21) in 127 Henderson South at 7 p.m.

We will be watching a debate about capitalism vs. socialism.

Capitalists: Dr. Leonard Peikoff and Dr. John Ridpath
Socialists: Dr. Gerald Caplan and Dr. Jill Vickers

Positions
Dr. Gerry Caplan: “Socialism is an ideal that tries to touch the best in people and to elevate the best into the norm.”

Dr. Leonard Peikoff: “The system which guards the freedom of man’s mind is … based on the concept of inalienable individual rights: laissez-faire capitalism.”

Dr. Jill Vickers: “I am a socialist committed to broad humane values which transcend the bankrupt visions of societies that are subservient to economies.”

Dr. John Ridpath: “Socialism denies and assaults every basic social need of man and must therefore ultimately result in tyranny and destruction.”

Next Meeting: Money as the Root of All Evil?

The next meeting will be on Wednesday, Oct. 14 in 127 Henderson South at 7 p.m.

We will be discussing the meaning of money.

The financial crisis has been blamed on the bankers and the executives on Wall Street. They have been accused of selfishly pursuing profits at the expense of our financial security. They have been labeled greedy, irresponsible, and ruthless in their drive for making money. Pharmaceutical companies have likewise been depicted as villains. They are accused of making drugs exceedingly expensive in order to reap profits off sick people. They are blinded above all else by their desire to make money, knowing that many sick people are not able to access their drugs because of their high cost. Insurance companies, too, are to blame. In order to increase their profits, they deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions and drop people’s coverage once they become exceedingly sick. This ruthless desire to make money has been blamed for many of the problems we are facing today.

But is money really the root of all evil? And if we money shouldn’t be used to trade goods and services, what are the alternatives? Are these alternatives any better? In Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, Francisco d’Anconia delivers a powerful speech in which he expresses a revolutionary view of the meaning of money and the kind of people who strive to make it.

If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose–because it contains all the others–the fact that they were the people who created the phrase ‘to make money.’ No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity–to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words ‘to make money’ hold the essence of human morality.
-Francisco d’Anconia in Atlas Shrugged

Material to be Discussed:

“Francisco’s Money Speech” in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged
Text online:
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=1826

Other supplementary material:

Why Businessmen Love Atlas Shrugged
Alex Epstein, analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfcpykambQU

The Money-Making Personality
Ayn Rand
http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ar_money_making

Next Meeting: Objectivist Ethics Part 3

The next meeting will be in 127 Henderson South on Wednesday, Oct. 7 at 7 p.m.

We will be concluding our discussion of the Objectivist ethics.

Conventional wisdom often holds that we face a dilemma: either we surrender our interests to others or we exploit others. According to this view, there are unavoidable conflicts of interests among people.

In our final discussion on the “virtue of selfishness,” we’ll examine the psychological and social facts Ayn Rand identifies that undermine the inevitability of conflict and sacrifice, and her view of how the rejection of sacrifice supports the establishment of laissez-faire capitalism.

“[J]ust as life is an end in itself, so every living human being is an end in himself, not the means to the ends or the welfare of others—and, therefore, that man must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. To live for his own sake means that the achievement of his own happiness is man’s highest moral purpose.”
-Ayn Rand , “The Objectivist Ethics”

Material to be discussed:

“The Objectivist Ethics,” pp. 30-39 (paragraphs 67-end) in Ayn Rand’s The Virtue of Selfishness
Order the book:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0451163931
Full text online:
http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ari_ayn_rand_the_objectivist_ethics