"The cause of the U.S. health-care mess is governmental interference. The solution, therefore, is not more governmental control, whether via nationalized medical insurance or a government takeover of medicine." Onkar Ghate, "No Right to ‘Free’ Health Care," Ayn Rand Institute, June 11, 2007.

Spare me the pearl-clutching — especially from Republican Members of Congress and online MAGA grifters who have cheered President Trump's weaponization of the government against those he doesn’t like, as recently as last week. This is a subject I know something about: Less than a year ago, Trump directed the DOJ and FBI to investigate me, and then tried to criminally indict me for a 90 second video, exercising basic free speech. The same free speech you’re exercising now, lying about what I said in this clip. If not for an anonymous group of grand jury members standing up for America's laws, I’d be criminally indicted for sedition. President Trump has turned the government against people, with raucous support from you and virtually all D.C. Republicans. So spare us the manufactured outrage. America must be a place where the rule of law still matters. Those laws should apply to everyone equally. If you have aided in the corrupt use of U.S. taxpayer dollars to benefit the President or his family, or you have violated the law in order to carry out guidance from the President, you should be held accountable. And given how rampant that corruption appears to the average American, people looking to work for his Administration should realize that while the Supreme Court has granted the President immunity, it has not done the same for those who do illegal things at his behest.

Ayn Rand's significant contribution is to answer the big questions about human life raised by classic philosophers, but better identifying what's distinctive about the human form of life and the virtues it demands.

"One of the grimmest monuments to altruism is man's culturally induced selflessness: his willingness to live with himself as with the unknown, to ignore, evade, repress the personal (the non-social) needs of his soul, to know least about the things that matter most, and thus to consign his deepest values to the impotent underground of subjectivity and his life to the dreary wasteland of chronic guilt." Ayn Rand, The Romantic Manifesto: A Philosophy of Literature, rev. ed. (New York: Signet, 1971), Kindle edition, p. 4.

MIDTERM ELECTIONS: The biggest threat to our freedom comes from those who reject the rule of law. Today, those rejecters are Trump and his Republican abettors. The Republicans need to be replaced by Democrats--even if they are "democratic socialists."

Rejecting faith without rejecting faith-based morality is only half the battle. In his new book, "Breaking Free from Faith-Based Morality," @BenBayer challenges atheists and secularists to understand how the dominant morality of altruism is rooted in religion, and shows how to build a secular ethics free from its grips. Read the preface 👇

Interview with Ben Bayer on Texas Talks Podcast Recently, ARI Senior Fellow @BenBayer was interviewed on the Texas Talks podcast, where he discussed Ayn Rand’s unique approach to philosophy as a practical means for living, the life-promoting philosophy she developed as a result, and how her idealist-realist heroes dramatize it. Bayer contrasted Rand’s approach and views with the dominant ones in today's culture, focusing specifically on Stoicism and altruism.

Dr. Mary Ann Franks identifies what's evil about the anti-abortion movement and of people like Lila Rose (2025): Introductions: ~ 7 min Debate (Keynote, Rebuttal, Cross Examination, Dialogue): ~ 41 min Q&A: ~ 40 min

“Richard Dawkins has popularized the idea that most people have no trouble denying the existence of gods for which there is no evidence…. He urges them to go ‘just go one god further.’ This book directs a similar challenge to atheists to reject a final baseless posit of religion: the worship of self-sacrifice.”