ARI’s revamped writing division is hitting its stride now with two recent OpEds in major publications:
The August 18, 2010 Wall Street Journal published Alex Epstein’s piece, “Obama Follows Nixon On Oil Spills“.
The August 17, 2010 Forbes published Don Watkins’ and Yaron Brook’s piece, “The U.S. Anti-Business Epidemic“.
I’m very encouraged to see their work get such good media exposure. And as long as Americans are willing to discuss and debate their ideas, this country still has a chance.
If you aren’t able to attend tomorrow’s lecture “You Are Not Your Brother’s Health Care Provider” by Yaron Brook at University of Pennsylvania, you can still hear the talk via a live internet videocast.
Thank you, Dr. Evan Madianos, for arranging this option!
On September 11, 2009 CEI and the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights held an “intellectual ammunition” strategy session at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. to brief the participating in the 9/12 March on Washington on the ideas of liberty.
This video includes the presentation “Individual Rights and the Tea Party Movement” by Prof. John D. Lewis of Duke University and questions from the audience.
What an inspiring speech! Plus Dr. Lewis gives excellent practical advice for anyone who wants to fight for free market health care reform.
While attending a medical conference last week in Washington DC, Diana and I also spent some time with our friend Lin Zinser, Vice President of Public Outreach at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights (ARC).
The ARC office is located in the heart of Washington DC, just a few blocks away from other think tanks, the National Press Club, the White House, etc:
Besides the usual office stuff (computers, phones, conference room), they had a few historical artifacts from the Ayn Rand Archives in California, such as these original pages from Rand’s hand-written draft of The Fountainhead:
Given the current political climate, I’m glad that they’ve been working hard to get Ayn Rand’s ideas circulated amongst the opinion-makers in DC. It’s hard to believe that they’ve only been in operation for only a year, and I’m looking forward to seeing the results of the second year of operation.
If you do wish to visit, call ahead first, as the staff there are busy!
Their address/phone number is:
The Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights
555 12th Street NW, Suite 620 N
Washington, DC 20004
202-454-1997
Here are a few photos from the July 4, 2009 Boston Tea Party, including the Ayn Rand Center booth as well as some of the OCON attendees carrying signs.
The weather was perfect — sunny and clear, but not too hot. Attendance was probably 200-300, although it varied during the day. The crowd was philosophically mixed, and not obviously dominated by religionists or fringe ideological groups.
I didn’t hear the talks by John Lewis or Yaron Brook because the schedule ran late and I had a conflicting engagement. I was told they were well received but I’ll leave it to others to link to their speeches once they are available online.
I’m posting lots of quick updates about OCON on Twitter — including many about Yaron Brook’s currently happening “State of ARI” presentation. To read those, visit my feed @DianaHsieh. Others at OCON are tweeting too; you can find them via this search for #OCON.
On May 30, 2009, Yaron Brook gave the following speech to the Virginia Republican Party as their keynote speaker.
He gave a strong, principled defense of individual rights, capitalism, and the separation of church and state. And he properly blamed the Repubicans for their failure to uphold these basic American ideals.
You can watch his talk here at the ARC-TV website.
His speech is also available on the ARI YouTube channel in two parts — Part 1 and Part 2:
Yaron Brook has appeared several times on the Pajamas TV internet news and commentary website. I’ve enjoyed all of his videos, and I’m glad to see him getting such a wide exposure in the “New Media” world.
Here are the links to his appearances:
3/18/2009: “Is Atlas Shrugging?“
3/30/2009: “Is the Government in the Car Business?“
4/10/2009: “A Rally to Come on Wall Street?“
4/15/2009: “Yaron Brook & Terry Jones on the Tea Parties“
4/17/2009: “Tea Party Aftermath; Recovery Coming?“
The interviewer Allan Barton asks good questions, and he has given Yaron Brook excellent opportunities to discuss fundamental ideas. So if you haven’t watched these videos yet, go check them out!
The ARC is also maintaining a dedicated webpage for these and future appearances on PJTV: “The Ayn Rand Center on Pajamas TV“.
Overall, PajamasMedia has been a good outlet for Objectivists. In the past three months, they’ve also published the following OpEds by Amit Ghate and myself:
2/10/2009: “Obama’s Regulatory Chief Believes in Paternalistic Government” by Paul Hsieh
3/02/2009: “Ayn Rand and the Tea Party Protests” by Paul Hsieh
3/22/2009: “Health Insurance Industry Sells Its Soul to the Devil” by Paul Hsieh
4/13/2009: “Ayn Rand as Prophet?” by Amit Ghate
(Disclaimer: Neither Amit nor I work for the ARI/ARC. We speak only for ourselves in our respective writings.)
At the recent Heartland Institute 2009 conference on climate change (featuring dissent views to the environmentalist orthodoxy), Yaron Brook gave a lecture on the reasons people keep accepting bad environmental science.
He dissects the bad moral premises that Americans unwittingly accept (and must be challenged) in order to defeat the underlying anti-man ideology.
You can listen to his lecture here.
(Via VfR.)
The September 19, 2008 issue of Time magazine recently quoted Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, in its recent article on the economic crisis:
What Would Ayn Rand Have Done?…But as the largest bailout in government history unfolded in almost dizzying waves over recent days, a very different view prevailed at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, an outpost of free-market, anti-government thinking located just a few blocks from the newly aggressive and highly interventionist Department of Treasury in downtown Washington.
“It’s a complete disaster,” said Yaron Brook, the executive director of the center. “Its a form of national socialism of the financial markets…This is socialism 101.”
…Brook doesn’t blame speculators, traders or financiers for the market’s near-collapse, but instead blames government for having overregulated the markets in the first place. The business leaders bailed out by government this week “are victims,” he said, “and the government set it up.” Washington underreacted to previous crisis, let Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac spin wildly out of control as quasigovernment agencies while taxpayers piled up unsecured debt in their names. The crisis, he added, was “really fed throughout by government policies.”
He also notes that the current Republican administration is doing more harm in intervening in the marketplace than a Democratic administration likely could have.
