In modern America, February 2 is best known as Groundhog Day. But it also marks the birth of one of the most praised and criticized thinkers of the past century – Ayn Rand. Rand sold more than 30 million books. Atlas Shrugged has been ranked behind only the Bible as an influence on readers’ lives.
READ MOREYesterday afternoon I received an email from the dean of my 5-year-old daughter’s school. When I saw my little girl’s name in the subject line, my first thought was that she had said something naughty. (She’s a goofball and recently discovered scatological humor.) But that wasn’t the case. Kelly and Jonathan, Just wanted to let
READ MOREAre men afraid to tell women their true desires? The answer to that question may hinge on what those desires are. If those desires are for women to break through the glass ceiling and do everything a man does, then it’s likely men are not afraid to spill their desires to the woman in their
READ MORENo movie comes more highly recommended than La La Land, which won more Golden Globe Awards (seven) than any other movie in history and which is now poised to sweep the Oscars (fourteen nominations). Does La La Land, as its admirers assert, really evoke the Hollywood of old? Is it a classic musical that spurns the irony and
READ MOREThe problem of evil is a classic dilemma in the philosophy of religion. The relative ease with which the problem can be stated belies the depth of the challenge that it presents to traditional monotheism. Roughly, it can be summarised as follows: If God is omnipotent, then He has the power to create a world
READ MOREBefore I even had my Saturday morning coffee I received a text from a friend linking to a New York Times op-ed with the headline, “Trump’s Immigration Ban Is Illegal.” As I ground beans, the wife of a prominent conservative friend posted on Facebook that she was “heartbroken” over the ban, and that she promised
READ MOREHave you ever imagined what you would do in the event of a zombie apocalypse without the zombies? End times without the return of the savior? A nuclear winter? An environmental catastrophe? A bloody revolution? Most of us have, but preparing for the apocalypse seems pointless. At most, we might drive to the local warehouse
READ MORE“The pain of our corruption must be healed by virtue, knowledge, and eloquence.”—Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) In the wake of the “Trump phenomena” and other recent political developments, many people have become concerned that we have entered a “post-truth” era characterized by a contempt for objective facts. Fittingly, Oxford Dictionaries made “post-truth” the word of the
READ MOREGrowing up, I knew better than to utter those two infamous words of childhood: “I’m bored.” The reason I rarely uttered them was because I knew that my mother would immediately find some type of chore to “entertain” me with. Today’s kids rarely utter the “I’m bored” phrase either. Only their reason for not doing
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