The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) have become a major force to contend with in U.S. politics, as seen in Zohran Mamdani’s election as mayor of New York and in a series of congressional electoral successes. However, while many see the DSA as an idealistic alternative to the status quo, their ideals are deeply rooted in dogmas held on faith, such as their faith in “economic democracy,” in the future promise of socialism, in the evil of Israel, and in the view of capitalism as inherently exploitative.

In this episode of the Ayn Rand Institute podcast, Tristan de Liège and Ben Bayer expose the DSA’s agenda as a series of articles of faith, one based especially on a religious approach to morality.

Topics include:

• How democratic socialists conceive of exploitation

• Socialists’ obsession with democracy

• Evading socialism’s failures in the 20th century

• Why democratic socialists defend dictatorships like Iran and Venezuela

• How altruism sustains the belief in socialism

Resources:

• Ayn Rand Lexicon entry on “socialism”

• ARI Podcast, “What Democratic Socialists Truly Want,” Aug. 27, 2026

• ARI Podcast, “The Marxists’ Exploitation Myth,” Feb. 26, 2025

• Ben Bayer, “The Dishonesty of ‘Real Socialism Has Never Been Tried’,” New Ideal, Aug. 9, 2020

• Ben Bayer, “Meet the New Socialism, Same as the Old,” New Ideal, Sept. 2, 2019

• Ben Bayer, “One God Further: Preface to Breaking Free from Faith-Based Morality,” New Ideal, Oct. 6, 2026

This episode was recorded on October 28, 2026.

This essay by Aaron Smith was originally published in New Ideal on September 15, 2021.

Both Stoicism and Ayn Rand’s philosophy, Objectivism, purport to offer guidance on the pursuit of values and the conduct and improvement of our lives. But, unlike Objectivism — which upholds free will — Stoicism embraces a deterministic worldview that’s incompatible with moral guidance, or so I argue in my article “The False Promise of Stoicism.” “For a philosophy to be useful as a guide,” I wrote, “it must at least acknowledge that we have some genuine, volitional control over our actions and choices — actions and choices that make a difference to where we end up in life.”

Massimo Pigliucci, a professor of philosophy at The City College of New York and a prominent voice in the contemporary Stoicism movement, disagrees. In his essay “Epic Battles in Practical Ethics: Stoicism vs Objectivism,” Pigliucci insists on a perspective held by many philosophers and scientists today — namely, that to reject determinism, as Objectivism does, amounts to believing in magic.

Consider Pigliucci’s argument for this position.

Is free will magic?

“Determinism,” writes Pigliucci, in its “simplest and broadest definition” means that “things happen as a result of cause-effect, or because there are laws of nature.”

If you accept that the cosmos works by cause-effect, then your attitude about human volition (“free will”) can fall into one of two categories: (a) You believe there is no such thing as volition, it’s an illusion (deterministic incompatibilism); or (b) You believe that volition is just another aspect of the lawful behavior of things in the universe, including human beings (compatibilism).

If you don’t like either of the above two stances on volition, then your only remaining choice, (c) is to reject the premise of determinism and claim special status for human free will (contra-causal incompatibilism). The Stoics — like most contemporary philosophers — chose option (b). Smith, apparently, wants something like (c). Which, based on what we know of how the world works, amounts to believing in magic, just like many religious people do: it’s called “contra-causal” free will because the notion is that, somehow (but how??), human volition can transcend the laws of physics and biology.1

Observe that Pigliucci’s argument relies on equating determinism with cause and effect and scientific lawfulness. This equation is of course not unique to Pigliucci. Daniel Dennett, one of the most influential philosophers in the contemporary free will debate, characterizes determinism similarly as “the idea that every event has a cause, which has a cause, which has a cause, in a causal chain that goes back to the Big Bang, if you like, and that there are no events without causes — undetermined events.”2 (My emphasis)

This equation — which, as we will see, Objectivism rejects — leads Pigliucci to narrowly frame our theoretical options as either: (i) accept the universality of cause and effect and scientific lawfulness (and therefore determinism) — dismissing free will as either an illusion or a deterministic action or (ii) accept free will and therefore reject the universality of cause and effect and the laws of nature (i.e., determinism). Since Objectivism openly rejects determinism, Pigliucci assumes that Objectivism must endorse a non-causal (or “contra-causal”) theory of free will.

But it doesn’t. Volition, according to Objectivism, is both causal (no need for magic) and free (non-deterministic). Perhaps the reason Pigliucci gets Rand wrong is that the Objectivist view of free will (and causality) doesn’t fit the alternatives that he and others consider viable contenders.

To be in a position to evaluate Objectivism’s account of free will, one would need to consider what Rand wrote (or endorsed) on the subject and seek to understand it, especially since Rand’s view offers an alternative to those envisioned by Pigliucci.3

Rand on free will and causality

Consider just a few aspects of Rand’s account.

According to Objectivism, causality (or cause and effect) is not a principle relating antecedent events to their necessary consequences (determinism), but one that relates an entity’s identity (what it is) to its actions (what it does). Objectivism holds that since every entity has a specific identity, constituted by its specific set of characteristics, it can perform only those actions it has the capacity to perform; it cannot act apart from or in contradiction to its nature. As such, there can be no uncaused actions and no miracles. (There goes anything “contra-causal.”)

Objectivism accepts the universality of cause and effect. But it stresses that the principle of cause and effect by itself does not legislate that all cause-effect relations are deterministic (such that one and only one outcome is possible from — and indeed necessitated by — a given set of antecedent circumstances). Nor does the principle of causality tell us which specific actions an entity can take in a given context; it tells us only that an entity must act in accordance with its nature; it cannot act in contradiction to it.

Contrary to Pigliucci’s assumptions, the Objectivist view of free will is not that volition magically transcends identity and causality — as God’s volition is traditionally supposed to. Rather, Objectivism holds that volition is a form of causation.

Questions about what specific actions entities are capable of must be settled by reference to observed facts about the behavior of the relevant entities. And when it comes to human volition, the proper place to begin is with the data of introspection — i.e., with what we can directly observe of the operations of our own consciousness. What we observe thereby is that we possess a certain kind of control over our consciousness. This observed control, this causal power to initiate and direct action, is what Rand calls “free will.”

As Rand puts it, what is fundamentally and directly under our control is the process of thinking:

To think is an act of choice. . . . Reason does not work automatically; thinking is not a mechanical process; the connections of logic are not made by instinct. The function of your stomach, lungs or heart is automatic; the function of your mind is not. In any hour and issue of your life, you are free to think or to evade that effort.4

To say that we have “free will,” in Objectivism, is to say that reason operates by choice. You can choose to think — to exercise your cognitive faculties, to seek to know, to classify, to reach a wider and deeper understanding. Or, you can allow your mind to drift — letting it glide on autopilot, guided only by undirected stimuli, emotions, and associations. Or, you can choose to deliberately throw your mind out of focus — to refuse to know, to pretend facts are other than they are, turning your mind away from the goal of awareness, thereby subverting its functioning. You can also realize (clearly or dimly) that you are out of focus and choose to exert the effort that a state of goal-directed awareness requires — an effort nature does not compel you to exert or sustain.

Contrary to Pigliucci’s assumptions, the Objectivist view of free will is not that volition magically transcends identity and causality — as God’s volition is traditionally supposed to. Rather, Objectivism holds that volition is a form of causation. Free actions, according to Rand’s theory, are caused not by antecedent events (as determinism would have it), but by the actor choosing to initiate action, fundamentally cognitive action.

To say that a process of thought is caused by the actor, does not mean only that it is caused by factors that are internal to the actor rather than external, as many determinists would say. It means that the actor possesses the capacity to initiate action and chose to exercise that capacity.

It is only because we have free will that we need, and can make use of, a philosophic perspective to guide our choices toward a vision of what our lives and character could and ought to be.

If the deterministic framework that so many philosophers and scientifically minded people today accept doesn’t allow for this directly observable form of causation, then that framework should be revised. The alternatives — dismissing the observed fact of choice as an illusion (deterministic incompatibilism) or rewriting it to fit the prevailing theory as compatibilist accounts of volition like Pigliucci’s attempt to do — are unscientific.5

Pigliucci’s compatibilist account of volition

Pigliucci — as someone offering advice on how to live and what to value — seems to want to maintain some genuine notion of free will, presumably because he realizes that moral agency is impossible without it.

Our decisions are the result of external causes (other people’s opinions, events, etc.), combined with internal causes (our character, considered judgments, etc.) Human beings aren’t passive receivers of external influences . . . we are part and parcel of how the universe works. And the intriguing thing . . . is that volition, as an internal cause, can act on itself in a recursive fashion. A fancy way to say that we can reflect on our own judgments and change them. And the more we engage in cognitive and behavioral steps, the more we change our internal causality. If our changes are in the right direction we become better persons, the goal of Stoic practice.

This is as close as one gets to “free will” in a universe governed by laws and by relations of cause-effect.

Summarizing this perspective later in the essay, he writes:

Nothing is really ours, except the considered judgments we arrive at. Those are the ones on the basis of which we should be thought of as worthy or unworthy human beings. And lucky for us, those are under our control. Which means that the objective of living a life worth living is also under our control.6

But when Pigliucci says that our considered judgments are “under our control” and that “we can reflect on our own judgments and change them,” the essential question is: are both alternatives — to consider or not consider, to reflect or not reflect, to think or not to think — within our power to choose under the circumstances? Or is our act of reflecting or not reflecting itself necessitated by antecedent events? If we take determinism seriously, then whether we become a better or worse person today or tomorrow is not within our power to choose. It was determined for us long before we were born.

In his book Stoicism and the Art of Happiness, fellow modern Stoic Donald Robertson presents the Stoic position on determinism more accurately as “the idea that absolutely everything in life necessarily happens as it does.”

Your own thoughts and actions are necessitated as part of the whole “string of causes” that forms the universe . . . so that even if there are things in life that seem to require great effort on our part to achieve, whether or not we make the effort is fated along with the outcome . . .

What happens next will depend, in part, on what you choose to do next because you are a tiny but essential cog in the vast machinery of the universe. However, your choices themselves are the consequences of a massive string of causation set in motion countless billions of years before you were even born, at the beginning of the universe.7

The essential point here is that, for a cog — whose every thought and action is necessitated by factors outside his control — a philosophy of life is useless. It is only because we have free will that we need, and can make use of, a philosophic perspective to guide our choices toward a vision of what our lives and character could and ought to be.

If you’re seeking a philosophic perspective on life according to which there genuinely are things that are up to you — that you face genuine alternatives, such that if you make the right choices, you can become a better person and live a better life — you need a philosophy that embraces free will, not one that gives you the illusion of freedom while insisting on a worldview that denies it.

Ayn Rand famously held Aristotle in high regard, describing him as a “philosophical Atlas who carries the whole of Western civilization on his shoulders.” Given such a statement, it’s not surprising that there are rich connections to be found between Aristotle’s philosophical system and Rand’s, which she called Objectivism. Scholars of Aristotle and Rand have found deep connections between the two in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics.

In this episode of the Ayn Rand Institute podcast, Tristan de Liège, Jim Lennox, and Greg Salmieri explore some of these connections, discussing issues such as the nature of logic, how humans form universal knowledge, and what it is to live a good life.

Topics include:

• Axiomatic concepts and the laws of logic

• The problem of universals

• Scientific knowledge as fixed versus dynamic

• What biology can tell us about ethics

• Nobility and virtue

• Convincing academia to take Objectivism seriously

Resources:

• James Lennox and Gregory Salmieri, eds, Two Philosophers: Aristotle and Ayn Rand

• Allan Gotthelf and Gregory Salmieri, eds, A Companion to Ayn Rand

• Allan Gotthelf and James Lennox, eds, Concepts and Their Role in Knowledge

• Allan Gotthelf and James Lennox, eds, Metaethics, Egoism, and Virtue

• Allan Gotthelf and James Lennox, eds, Foundations of a Free Society

This episode was recorded on October 19, 2026.

Image credit: Pach Brothers

Skeptic Magazine commissioned the following essay for a special issue on the theme of nationalism, (vol. 27, no. 4 / Dec. 2022). We are pleased to reprint a slightly revised version of the essay, with permission, in New Ideal. Part I appeared last week.

National conservatism’s anti-Enlightenment crusade

Distancing themselves from nationalism’s blood-soaked legacy, those who call themselves “national conservatives” would have us believe that their ideology is pro-liberty, that it is in fact the path to restoring the American vision. But as with the nationalism of the last century, their vision is hostile to reason, individualism and liberty.

National conservatism fundamentally devalues the individual’s rational mind, and consequently, it repudiates the principle of individual rights. In his book, The Virtue of Nationalism, Hazony argues that — contrary to the evidence — human reason is incapable of arriving at universal truths. He writes that, “no human being, and no group of human beings, possesses the necessary powers of reason and the necessary knowledge to dictate the political constitution that is appropriate for all mankind.”1 Therefore, he believes, it is wrong to regard the principle of individual rights as a universal truth. Instead, he downgrades it to a “cultural inheritance of certain tribes and nations.” (And as we’ll see, despite pro-liberty rhetoric, this view empties the principle of individual rights of all meaning.)

National conservatism is tribalism with a theoretical fig leaf. If you unpack Hazony’s idea of “the national state,” inside, like nesting Russian Matryoshka puzzle dolls, you find tribes; unpack tribes, and you find clans and families. Unpack families, and yes, there is a reluctant concession that families consist of individuals, but the basic unit of value is really the family/tribe. Binding the collective together are a common language, and history and the self-recognition as a community. To be part of this collective is to owe your devotion to its “collective self-determination.” (This implies divining the “collective’s” will, by some means transcending our senses and reasoning minds.) Here as with twentieth-century varieties of nationalism, the nation’s needs take precedence over the lives and judgment of individuals.

National conservatism repudiates the Enlightenment’s focus on individual sovereignty. Yoram Hazony, in a keynote at a nationalist conference, announced that “We declare independence from neoliberalism, from libertarianism, from what they call classical liberalism — you can give it any name you want — but that set of ideas that sees the atomic individual, the free and equal individual” as central to political thought.2

Will a national conservative state protect your individual rights? To have even a semblance of freedom, in this view, you have to live in a tribe or nation where that is a “cultural inheritance.” (Tough luck if you’re born where “honor killings” and female genital mutilation are accepted cultural inheritances.) Whatever degree of freedom you may be afforded is not a matter of your moral right, but rather a permission granted by the collective, and hence a permission that it may withdraw. Essentially, your life and freedom actually belong to the nation. To echo Hegel, your life is “something subordinate,” and if the collective “claims life, the individual must surrender it.”

National conservatism seeks not to safeguard individual liberty, but to exert authoritarian control. You can see this in a 10-point manifesto that Hazony co-authored, “National Conservatism: A Statement of Principles,”3 which bears the signatures of a long list of writers, political figures and activists. The document puts forward several anodyne positions that give it a veneer of compatibility with freedom: an embrace of the rule of law; a repudiation of racism; the idea of constitutional government; a nod to the idea of free enterprise. These, however, are merely window-dressing.

The manifesto’s conception of the purpose of government is overtly collectivist. Government is not instituted for the sake of securing the rights of individuals, but “to establish a more perfect union among the diverse communities, parties, and regions of a given nation.” To serve the collective’s welfare, national conservatives call for imposing a “national economic policy” to command every individual and prop up favored industries (while somehow, miraculously, avoiding “cronyism”). In reality, this erects but the facade of enterprise, trade and private property, while negating their essence.

The manifesto’s distinctive aim, however, is religious authoritarianism. National conservatism seeks to demolish one of the signal achievements of the American political system — the separation of church and state. This separation reflected a sober recognition of historical experience: the Old World had been racked by wars of religion and by the political dominion of one Church or another. For their part, national conservatives assert that:

No nation can long endure without humility and gratitude before God and fear of his judgment that are found in authentic religious tradition. [. . .] Where a Christian majority exists, public life should be rooted in Christianity and its moral vision, which should be honored by the state and other institutions both public and private.

Such a Christian nationalist regime, we’re assured, would protect religious minorities. Notice, however, the statement’s glib evisceration of the First Amendment’s protection of intellectual freedom. The national conservative manifesto simply states: “Adult individuals should be protected from religious or ideological coercion in their private lives and in their homes.” [Emphasis added.]

To say that freethinkers, dissidents or atheists, for instance, “should be” protected “in their private lives and in their homes” is not to say that they have a right to freedom of thought and speech. That would necessarily include the right to voice and write and publish your ideas. A protection that extends only to your private life and home conflicts with that; it implies that you cannot hire a lecture hall, run a blog, publish books, release videos, exhibit artwork or run advertisements to express your views. And why exclude children from such protection? Presumably, national conservatives are only too eager to see children in state schools indoctrinated in the state’s dogmas (Christian dogmas, here in the U.S.).

Moreover, whatever this protection looks like, it is conditional. The nation’s “collective self-determination” takes precedence, overriding any permission granted to individuals. It is hardly an original tactic to promise people a vague freedom that the government can later revoke, once it has seized sufficient political power and no longer feels obliged to put on a friendly mask.

The authoritarianism latent in national conservatism can be seen elsewhere in the “Statement of Principles.” In keeping with the goal of marrying church and state, the government’s purpose is not only to bring criminals to justice. Its mission also encompasses the imposition of a religiously rooted morality: in areas “in which lawlessness, immorality and dissolution reign, national government must intervene energetically to restore order.”

And how, exactly, does a government’s energetic intervention against “immorality and dissolution” square with protecting individuals from “religious or ideological coercion”? Further evidence of the religious authoritarian agenda is contained in the document’s alarm at “radical forms of sexual license and experimentation” and the notion that government must foster “stable family and congregational life and child-raising as priorities of the highest order.”

These goals — policing sexual behavior, promoting traditional “family values,” encouraging childbearing — are shared by Islamist regimes such as Iran and Saudi Arabia and, especially, the self-styled Christian regimes of Vladimir Putin and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán (fittingly, Orbán was an honored guest at one of the national conservatism conferences). There is a deep kinship between these authoritarian regimes and national conservatism.

Notice also the points of commonality between national conservatism and a political vision that came to power in the last century.

[This outlook] is a religious one in which man is viewed in his permanent relation to a higher law, endowed with an objective will transcending the individual and raising him to conscious membership of a spiritual society. [. . .]

Being anti-individualistic, . . . [it] recognizes the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with those of the State . . . ; outside of it no human or spiritual values may exist, much less have any value. [ . . .]

To achieve this purpose it enforces discipline and makes use of authority, entering into the mind and ruling with undisputed sway.4

The similarities are marked: Religion as a political foundation. Subjugating the sovereign individual to the nation. Authoritarian control. These are the words of a political figure who elevated the nation above the individual; who allowed the facade of enterprise, trade and private property, while negating their essence; and who built a militant dictatorship. That this statement from Benito Mussolini resonates with the political vision of national conservatism should be disturbing.

National conservatism is an ideology crusading for religious authoritarianism.

In The Virtue of Nationalism Hazony insists that his brand of nationalism is narrow, unambitious and therefore peaceful. Yet, by design, Hazony’s theory puts the life and freedom of the individual at the mercy of the tribe/nation, and so vulnerable to being exploited in the name of “collective self-determination.” What recourse is possible to an individual if his duty is to subordinate himself? What hope can there be of resolving disagreements peacefully through persuasion, if this society is predicated on sidelining reason and rejecting universal truth? What’s left, except physical force? Nothing.

These points are evident in examining actual societies that devalue reason and subordinate individuals to the collective. They exhibit an ingrained “us-versus-them” mindset, which leads to viewing outsiders with suspicion, if not contempt. How can disagreements and conflicts be settled in such societies? Why try to reason with “outsiders” who are inferior, wrong or beyond redemption? Think of the Rwandan genocidal tribal war in 1994. Recall the “ethnic cleansing” and concentration camps during the nationalist wars in the Balkans. 

Nationalism is notorious for conflict and bloodshed, and that’s fitting: it pushes aside the faculty that enables individuals to avoid and resolve conflicts through persuasion.

A pro-reason, pro-American alternative

Why abandon the Enlightenment ideals at the foundation of America in the name of national conservatism? Because, we’re told, today’s cultural disintegration and the “woke” phenomenon are products of consistently practicing reason, individualism, liberty and their political-economic expression, capitalism. Supposedly, reason ends in alienation, individualism ends in nihilism, capitalism ends in unemployment, poverty, despair and misery. In their place, national conservatives offer religious collectivism as a cure. 

Yet this is a fraud. Reason is our means of understanding the world, ourselves and others. It is our way of taking control of our lives, earning self-esteem, bonding with friends and lovers, resolving conflicts and creating lives of meaning. Nihilism and alienation are products not of reason, but of rejecting it in the name of faith and other forms of irrationality, a prevailing cultural trend. Moreover, it is not individualism but the focus on group identity and tribalism that dominate our culture. It is not capitalism but the betrayal of political and economic freedom that has been the theme of the past century. The economic upheavals and angst we’re witnessing are products of our refusal to uphold liberty — the full separation of state and economics — consistently.

National conservatism is not a cure for our cultural ills, but part of what’s ailing us.

But there is a rational alternative. What’s urgently needed today is a rethinking of the ideals of reason, individualism and freedom — and a commitment to realize them fully, consistently, without compromise. 

In the twentieth century, the foremost champion of these philosophic ideals was Ayn Rand. Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism takes reason, not faith, as the only means to knowledge. It teaches us to follow our best, most rational judgment, not treating feelings as tools of cognition. Individualism is the theme running through Rand’s novels and thought. The hallmark of individualism is a fundamental orientation to facts and a commitment to grasping the truth first-handedly, rather than obedience to authority or unthinking social conformity.

This thoroughgoing individualism implies a distinctive moral code. The moral purpose of an individual’s life, Rand argues, is “the achievement of his own happiness.” Happiness cannot be achieved by the satisfaction of irrational whims; it entails “using your mind’s fullest power” to identify, pursue, and achieve genuinely life-furthering values. And the Objectivist ethics of rational egoism holds that “human good does not require human sacrifices and cannot be achieved by the sacrifice of anyone to anyone.”5

Politically, the government’s proper function is not to subordinate the individual to some alleged greater good, “the public interest,” the community, the “race,” God’s will or the nation — but to protect his freedom to pursue his own path in life. Rand wrote:   

Individualism regards man — every man — as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being. Individualism holds that a civilized society, or any form of association, cooperation or peaceful coexistence among men, can be achieved only on the basis of the recognition of individual rights — and that a group, as such, has no rights other than the individual rights of its members.6

The Enlightenment bequeathed to us the idea of the sovereign individual, but since then this idea was attacked and marginalized. In Rand’s philosophy we find the philosophic validation, grounded in empirical facts and logic, for America’s foundational ideals. It is these secular ideals properly understood and defended that we desperately need today, not any whitewashed form of collectivism.

Recently, author and ARI’s VP of Fundraising and Marketing Don Watkins was interviewed on the Texas Talks podcast, where he discussed Ayn Rand’s unique moral admiration for productive work, her new conception of self-interest, and ARI’s work to preserve and spread her philosophy today.

Topics include:

• Why Ayn Rand has an enduring appeal

• The morality and spirituality of wealth creation

• Working, marketing, and fundraising at ARI

• News about the Ayn Rand Center in Austin

• Why we need a new conception of self-interest to defend capitalism

• ARI’s work and programs

Resources mentioned in the interview:

Yaron Brook and Don Watkins, Free Market Revolution: How Ayn Rand’s Ideas Can End Big Government

Bradley Swail is the host of the Texas Talks podcast, not an employee of the Ayn Rand Institute.

Skeptic Magazine commissioned the following essay for a special issue on the theme of nationalism, (vol. 27, no. 4 / Dec. 2022). We are pleased to reprint a slightly revised version of the essay, with permission, in New Ideal. Part II will appear next week.

America is being torn apart. Amid growing strife, many people are experiencing angst concerning the future of this country, a country once renowned for its exuberant spirit of discovery, progress, liberty. From across the increasingly tribal political landscape, one can observe attacks on the ideas that fueled America’s spectacular rise: reason, individualism, and political freedom. From the illiberal left the “woke” phenomenon has emerged, rising to dominance in cultural institutions and calling for “canceling” those institutions, symbols, and even thoughts it deems heretical. Standing in opposition to it is another new movement that promises to reunite us and rebuild a society true to the American vision. That latter promise calls for embracing the ideology of nationalism.

The movement to rehabilitate nationalism has a fervent vanguard. Among its leaders is the scholar Yoram Hazony, and his organization, the Edmund Burke Foundation. Under the banner of “national conservatism,” the Foundation has sponsored major international conferences. The most recent event in Miami, FL, featured more than 100 speakers, including keynote talks by Gov. Ron DeSantis, Sen. Josh Hawley, and entrepreneur Peter Thiel. The national conservatives are joined by still other factions, who often describe themselves as the “illiberal right.” And it was a significant moment when then-president Donald Trump thrilled a crowd at one of his rallies by telling them that he’s a nationalist.1

The reemergence of nationalism is a worse problem than it may seem. Nationalism in the last century ravaged Europe. Nationalists today would have us believe their agenda will somehow lead to different results. Despite wrapping themselves in the Stars and Stripes, they push essentially the same destructive ideas. The more power and influence nationalism gains, the bleaker our future. What’s needed to counter this movement is a deeper understanding of, and a commitment to fully realize, the Enlightenment ideals at the foundation of the American experiment.

America’s Foundation: Reason and Individual Rights

The original American political system was an innovation in political thought. For most of human history, government was an instrument of domination over the individual. Individuals were duty bound to kneel before some authority, whether embodied in a tribe, throne or church. The individual was literally a pawn at the disposal of the rulers. With the dawn of the Age of Enlightenment, however, the ground began to shift. Thinkers such as John Locke advocated a fundamentally different view of the relation between individual citizens and the state. That political shift stemmed from a philosophical emphasis on reason. The individual, these thinkers believed, is capable of observing the world, understanding it and discovering truths; and so, people could use their reason to guide their own lives. What emerged was a recognition of the individual as sovereign — in thought and in action.

Consequently, a new view came into focus regarding the individual’s relation to the state. The state’s purpose was not to dominate and exploit, but rather to protect the individual’s sovereignty. This view informed the Founders, and it reverberates in the words of the Declaration of Independence. The individual — every individual — has the rights to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” and government exists “to secure these rights.” When government “becomes destructive of these ends,” it is the right of the governed to abolish it and institute a better system that “shall seem most likely to affect their Safety and Happiness.” Thus, the state’s raison d’être is to protect individual rights, that is, to protect individuals’ freedom to pursue life and happiness based on their rational judgment.

It is important to recognize, however, that in the implementation of America’s founding principles there were contradictions and moral failings. The most obvious was the institution of slavery, which persisted until the Emancipation Proclamation (which only freed slaves in those territories still under Confederate control) and the ratification of the 13th Amendment (which abolished slavery throughout the entire nation). Even after those landmark actions, Jim Crow laws, which institutionalized legal racial segregation, remained on the books through the mid-20th century. It took the 19th Amendment, which was ratified just one hundred years ago, to enable women to vote. These were genuine, if much belated, steps toward a more consistent application of the principle of individual rights.

One feature of the original American system deserves special emphasis: the safeguarding of intellectual freedom. The principle of church/state separation fenced religion off from political power.

The First Amendment leaves individuals free to form their own conclusions and to express their ideas — emphatically including criticism of religion and the state. This reflects a view of the individual as capable of rational thought, owing no submission to dogma, and, above all, entitled to pursue the truth by their own best judgment. The unshackling of individuals to gain new knowledge about the world, without fear of retribution from religious leaders, would prove to be both a cause and an accelerant of progress. 

Despite failing to protect the rights of all individuals, the United States remains a stunning example of the power of (albeit incomplete) liberty to fuel progress. Once a backwater of the British Empire, the United States became the world’s most scientifically, technologically and economically advanced nation. The Scientific Revolution not only accelerated human knowledge but also instilled a cultural norm of truth seeking, replacing conformity to the specific dogmas of the dominant church. The Industrial Revolution, coupled with a significant degree of economic liberty, supercharged economic progress.

The myriad advances in science, technology and industry demonstrated the power of the rational mind to understand nature and reshape it to serve the goal of improving life. Look around at the world we live in: Life expectancy in the twentieth century has roughly doubled. Refrigerators, microwave ovens, air-conditioning, televisions and mobile phones are fixtures even in the homes of Americans who live in poverty. Thanks to the pioneers of Silicon Valley, the number of digital screens — smartphones, tablets, laptops — outnumber the occupants of a typical household, putting at our fingertips access to practically all music, films, books and the accumulated knowledge of humanity. Medical science has tamed or cured terrible diseases. And during a once-in-a-century pandemic, biotech companies were able to produce not just one, but multiple, vaccines for COVID-19 in a matter of months rather than years.

These material advances, coupled with a culture in which liberty is protected, have made the United States a beacon to the rest of the world, an inspiration to be emulated. That is why the brightest and most ambitious people from all over the world have sought and continue to seek to immigrate to America. What made America such a success story? Its foundational ideals of reason, individualism, and freedom — and the human spirit they unleash.

Nationalism is hostile to all of those.

What is Nationalism?

Nationalism is not synonymous with loyalty to one’s own country; it is a specific political-social doctrine. The essential feature of nationalism is the very un-American notion of elevating the group over the individual.

German romanticists — the original nationalists — held that the “nation-state or folk-state was not a societal organization based upon human law with the purpose of assuring man’s liberty, security and happiness, but an organic personality, God’s creation like the individual himself. . . .”2 The German philosopher Georg Friedrich Hegel, a major influence on both nationalism and Marxism, did not see the state as an association of individuals, but rather as a kind “person” transcending and subsuming them. “A single person . . . is something subordinate,” Hegel wrote, “and as such he must dedicate himself to the ethical whole. Hence if the state claims life, the individual must surrender it.”3 The state, in Hegel’s view “is the Divine Idea as it exists on Earth.”4

Because nationalism devalues the individual, it is at odds with the principle of protecting individual liberty. Indeed, nationalism is best understood as a species of collectivism. Fundamentally, writes the philosopher Leonard Peikoff, collectivism “holds that in human affairs, the collective — society, the community, the nation, the proletariat, the race, etc. — is the unit of reality and the standard of value. On this view, the individual has reality only as part of the group, and value only insofar as he serves it.” It is predicated, observed Ayn Rand, “on the view of man as a congenital incompetent, a helpless, mindless creature who must be fooled and ruled by a special elite with some unspecified claim to superior wisdom and a lust for power.”5

Nationalism is thus a cousin of tribalism. Both define membership based on accidental or unchosen characteristics (place of birth; “race,” ancestry, language). Both demand unthinking loyalty, obedience and self-sacrifice, one to the “nation,” the other to the “race,” family, clan, tribe. Nationalism, unlike tribalism, typically relies on some theoretical scaffolding, enabling today’s advocates of nationalism to pass off their ideology as civilized. But nationalism, like tribalism, has a bloody legacy. 

With its stress on “race,” language and ascriptive group identity, nationalism is primed for in-group supremacism and out-group conflict. In Germany, the National Socialist party built a totalitarian state, in keeping with the idea that the individual citizen is but a cell in the organic nation. It was essential, in Hitler’s words, that the individual should “realize that his own ego is unimportant when compared with the existence of the whole people, and that therefore the position of this single ego is exclusively determined by the interests of the people as a whole, . . . above all he must realize that the freedom of the mind and will of a nation are to be valued more highly than the individual's freedom of mind and will.”6

When German citizens are merely fragments of the “nation’s mind and will,” and when non-Aryans are dehumanized as vermin, it is left to the incarnation of the nation’s Will to restore the nation’s glory, ensure its purity and provide for its needs. Pan-Germanism, which predated the Nazis and influenced Hitler, had “demanded above all a Greater German Lebensraum (living space), overseas colonies, and a big navy.”7 The Nazi regime infamously pursued “Lebensraum,” it exterminated human beings by the millions, and it fought to realize the dream of German domination.

The twentieth century was blighted with still other forms of nationalism. Japan’s form of nationalism featured worship of a god-like emperor. Arab Nationalism, infused with socialism and Islam, gained authoritarian power in Egypt and Syria, where it led to stagnation, the exploitation of the subject population and regional wars.

By the early 1970s there were assorted nationalist movements making separatist demands, often using violent means; for instance in Canada (Quebec), Spain’s Basque region, and the perpetually restive Balkans. The term Balkanization entered the lexicon as a byword for the disintegration of Western societies into warring tribal and nationalist factions.

Today, nationalism can be seen in Russian belligerence. It is a major part of Vladimir Putin’s justification for invading Ukraine. In a long essay, Putin claims that Russia and Ukraine are essentially one nation. Ukraine, he contends, is an artificial creation, which must be reunited with Russia, regardless of the cost in individual lives.8

Nationalism is a repudiation of the sovereign individual, the ideal central to a free society. Whatever semblance of credibility nationalism may have had in the last century, it lost that on Europe’s corpse-strewn battlefields and in the gas chambers. Today, at the forefront of the campaign to revive nationalism are the self-described “national conservatives.” What reason if any is there to believe that their ideas will lead to a different outcome?

Recently, ARI Senior Fellow Ben Bayer 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.

Topics include:

• The essence of Rand’s philosophy.

• Why today’s philosophers don’t dramatize their philosophies in stories.

• Why Rand’s heroes resonate with so many people.

• How the philosophy in The Fountainhead compares to that in Atlas Shrugged.

• How Objectivism differs from Stoicism.

• Today’s confused oscillation between Judeo-Christian altruism and pragmatism.

• Bayer’s forthcoming book, Breaking Free from Faith-Based Morality.

Bradley Swail is the host of the Texas Talks podcast, not an employee of the Ayn Rand Institute.

On December 1, ARU Press will publish ARI senior fellow Ben Bayer’s Breaking Free from Faith-Based Morality. The book is a collection of essays published in New Ideal on the theme that the morality of altruism is essentially religious and that a truly scientific ethics must embrace an ethics of rational self-interest. You can pre-order the book through Amazon here. To introduce readers to the book, we’re happy to publish its preface. (Modest revisions were added here on October 16, 2026.)

Religious belief dies hard. On some level, most atheists know this. But do they know what it really takes to give up all of the holdovers of religious belief?

I first abandoned religion around the age of seventeen. I did it by grappling with skeptical questions from friends and by befriending peers from different faiths, who made me wonder why the Catholicism I’d absorbed from my parents was so special.

But even after I consciously rejected my religious beliefs as unfounded and irrational, their influence endured. It took the better part of a year to get over the disappointment of no longer believing in eternal life. And in one memorable experience, I was terrified at my first viewing of The Exorcist because, even though I was nearly an atheist, I hadn’t fully shaken the idea that demons might still be real.

The power of the remnants of religious cosmology paled in comparison to that of religious morality. Part of how I came to reject religion was by taking religious sexual morality very seriously, but realizing how it came at the expense of personal relationships and happiness. So it would take years, if not a decade, to shake the Catholic guilt I’d come to associate with sex.

Leaving the church was easier than breaking free from its morality. I’m sure I’m not the only one to experience or recognize this.

This book is about how Western secular culture remains in the grip of religious morality. That’s especially so because religious morality is broader than just sexual prudishness and misogyny. And its greater scope of concerns is just as destructive.

The reason to note this predicament is not merely sociological. It’s to urge that we break this grip. Even as I first began to doubt my religion, I never lost sight of the urgent need for rational norms to guide my choices. This book clears the ground of religious relics to show how we can build a new, secular morality.

What drives the culture-wide religious fervor?

In this preface to my fuller argument, I want to point briefly to just the tip of the religious iceberg that still keeps secular culture’s moral progress frozen in time. We see the tip in some recent political controversies. I explore the rest of the iceberg in the book.

Everyone knows that the American conservative movement is awash in Christian religiosity, with the result that Roe v. Wade was overturned and the Ten Commandments are back up in classrooms. But the religious upheaval is not just on the American “right.”

Recently, two “progressive” Democratic politicians have worn their Christianity on their sleeve: Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia and James Talarico, a candidate for the Senate from Texas. Both went to divinity school. Warnock is still a practicing minister.

And the “religious left” is broader than the overtly Christian Democrats. We see another kind of religiosity in the practices of the “woke” egalitarian movement, which many have likened to a new religion. Describing the irrational dogmatism of this movement, John McWhorter notes their articles of faith: racism is the indelible original sin driving every social problem, anyone who offers evidence of progress in combating racism is “fragile” or a heretic, and an anointed “elect” of “woke” saints should instead lead us in service to racism’s victims.1

Jason Arday, the late Cambridge sociology professor, leveraged his (likely fabricated) status as a victim to become one of the “elect” saints. But what’s most revealing about his case isn’t what got him hired, but the reaction within academic culture once the evidence against him mounted. It was not taken as a “teaching moment” to reflect on whether university DEI missions incentivized this behavior at the expense of academic rigor. Instead, far too many refused to consider the evidence, defended Arday without real grounds, smeared all of his critics as racists, and even tried to elevate him into a kind of martyr to the cause of the “woke” articles of faith.2

We see the same religiosity in green activists, like the members of Extinction Rebellion who embrace faith in an imminent environmental apocalypse and anathematize every high-tech form of alternative energy like carbon-free nuclear power.3 Their saint is Greta Thunberg — who became a child prophet at fifteen in spite of lacking any expertise. Indeed, having gone on strike against her own education was part of her appeal. She regularly effaces herself by refusing to travel by plane and by submitting to arrest at green protests. And her movement urges imitation of the green saints, shaming anyone unwilling to give up modern standards of living.

And then there is the recent upsurge in support for democratic socialism. Its followers twist definitions to maintain their articles of faith: that real socialism has never been tried, and that their group of saints will somehow have better luck this time avoiding economic destruction, political oppression, and mass death. Instead, they’ll lead us to a magical heaven on earth in which each of us puts in minimal time at work, lives without debt or insurance, and enjoys abundant leisure time.4

What drives this religious fervor among activists who are not known for their church attendance? It’s here that we can see how religious morality exerts its pull.

In his account of the religiosity of the “woke” movement, McWhorter brushes up against the central issue. “Elect ideology stipulates that one’s central moral duty is to battle racism and the racist” (my emphasis).5 Our moral duty, in their view, is to submit not only by “taking a knee” to victims of racism (real or alleged). Job candidates are also to give up jobs for which they are qualified, and hiring committees are to give up their intellectual standards to elevate unqualified candidates merely on the grounds of their alleged status as victims. McWhorter notes that such submission — especially submitting our minds to the “woke” articles of faith — “is all very Abrahamic as religion goes.6

Each of the other activist movements demands similar Abrahamic submission. Whether we are to sacrifice economic prosperity to Gaia’s pristine wilderness or economic freedom and property rights to the classless society of the future, the activists demand we sacrifice ourselves and our values on the altar of the allegedly “higher” end of serving some Other. This moral outlook enjoins the virtue of humble self-sacrifice and condemns heretics who commit the sin of prideful self-esteem. Even though many of the modern activists think of themselves as secular, they draw these core doctrines from none other than Judeo-Christian religion — whether they know it or not.

More rational thinkers in the secular camp may agree there is something wrong with the religious fervor that motivates these activists, but concede that there is something noble about their (professed) ends. They may say that the Bible verses quoted by Talarico and Warnock are from a primitive mindset, but they motivate people to uplift the poor. But how do these thinkers know that their conception of the noble end is noble and not itself a product of that same primitive, religious mindset?

I think secular altruism — the doctrine that morality consists in selfless service to others — is in fact such a product, a holdover from Christianity’s two-thousand-year monopoly over our thinking about right and wrong, good and evil.

How the book diagnoses the fervor, and its antidote

This book demonstrates how not only the activist left but also the broader secular camp in American culture has uncritically absorbed the essence of Judeo-Christian morality and never seriously considered a rational alternative. This runs the gamut from secular philosophers to the atheist and effective altruist movements. And it shows how this altruistic morality is responsible for the irrational fervor in American political culture, and for even many rational people’s unwillingness to stand up against it.

The most rational, pro-science secular thinkers, when commenting on questions of morality, are eager to point to the moral theories developed by nominally secular philosophers as alternatives to religious morality. In the first part of the book, I examine a cross section of these theorists, philosophers such as Immanuel Kant, Henry Sidgwick, John Rawls, Derek Parfit, and Peter Singer, who posit one or another view about how morality demands impartial, disinterested action. I examine their approach to how we know ethical principles (chapter 1) and the nature of moral value (chapter 2), and identify the Judeo-Christian religious core of these approaches (a faith-based epistemology with its attendant supernaturalistic metaphysics).

The implication is not that religious morality is unavoidable or that morality is dispensable. On the contrary, I show that Christianity derailed the first nonreligious attempt in history to offer rational guidance for living, and that it has monopolized the conscience of moral thinkers ever since (chapter 3). The first attempt — the project of classical Greek philosophy — was also notably unconcerned with selfless service to the needy. This history helps demonstrate not only Christianity’s unique role in crafting modern altruism but also that the origin of altruism is infused with all the worst forms of irrationality and resentment of worldly knowledge and happiness that animate religious mysticism (chapter 4).

In the second part of the book, I show how the monopoly of religious morality is so extensive that it has penetrated even the most secular sectors of our culture: the atheist movement (chapter 5), the leading secular defenders of science (chapter 6), and the effective altruist movement that influences so much of the technology industry today (chapter 7). In each case, the influence of religious morality undermines the advocates of science and reason in their efforts to win the “culture war” and imperils their optimism about the power of science to solve the world’s technological problems.

In the final part of the book, I return to questions of ethical theory with a view to building a positive, rational alternative. I first show (in chapter 8) how a healthy approach to ethics needs to focus on answering everyday life questions faced by ordinary people, not niche puzzles about artificial dilemmas between people. I then argue (in chapter 9) that the focus on artificial dilemmas has been encouraged by an overly narrow conception of the subject of ethics that confines it to questions about interpersonal obligations rather than to questions of basic choices of value and virtue that guide the big questions about how to live life, whether they concern other people or not.

In the final chapter (chapter 10), I show how — once we clear the ground of confusions instilled by religious approaches to morality — we can build a fully secular ethical theory, using the values of science itself as our basic building blocks. This chapter in particular draws on the moral philosophy of Ayn Rand, whom I take to be the leading defender of Enlightenment values. Her critique of altruism and her positive alternative are behind the scenes of every chapter in the book.

Together, the essays collected here demonstrate the book’s theme, though they were not all originally drafted with the present sequence in mind. They were originally written as separate articles, mostly for New Ideal, the journal of the Ayn Rand Institute. (Chapter 4 was originally published in Free Inquiry and subsequently republished in New Ideal.) To integrate them into the structure of this book, I have revised them all to some extent to make them read better. (Chapters 7 and 9 in particular have been significantly revised from the originals.)

Rejecting the final god

I’ve mentioned that after I abandoned religion, religious sexual morality still kept its claws in my psychology for years. The same was true of Christian altruism, even after Rand’s influence led me to disavow it as well. Even thirty years after abandoning religion, I still at times fear the disapproval of altruists and feel distant twinges of guilt for being selfish. But when I reflect more consciously, these feelings disappear.

Consider: if even I, a vocal advocate for Ayn Rand’s conception of rational selfishness, occasionally feel these distant twinges, what must be true for other secular people who’ve never scrutinized the origin of their moral beliefs? No matter their atheist credentials, they are likely to feel in spades the fear and guilt induced by altruism. That’s because they’ve never faced the fact that while they’ve rejected so many other doctrines of their childhood preachers, altruism is the one they’ve never been willing to let go of.

Richard Dawkins has popularized the idea that most people have no trouble denying the existence of gods for which there is no evidence. Most reject the existence of a plethora of polytheistic gods. He urges them to “go one god further.”7 This book directs a similar challenge to atheists to reject a final baseless posit of religion: the worship of self-sacrifice.

It’s time for the secular world to fully grow up and break free from the bonds of religious morality. This is the only path to self-conscious, rational progress in the field of morality, and to the civilizational progress it will enable.

Recently, ARI senior fellow Ben Bayer participated in the Texas Tribune Festival, Austin’s largest annual policy and culture conference. The festival regularly hosts events featuring state governors, U.S. congressmen, professors, journalists, and thousands of attendees. This year, it invited ARI to appear on a panel discussing the construction of the Ayn Rand Center in Austin.

Alongside Bayer, the panel “Free Markets, Free Ideas: Austin and Heterodox Thinking” featured the president of the University of Austin, Carlos Carvalho, and the director of government affairs at the Cicero Institute, Nick James. The three discussed the educational or political activities of their respective institutions and how those activities fit into the Texan political environment.

In his remarks, Bayer differentiated Ayn Rand’s pro-reason, pro-individualist philosophy from both “libertarianism” and “conservatism.” Against “libertarianism,” he emphasized Rand’s view of the necessity of a government that protects individual rights. Against “conservatism,” he emphasized Rand’s rejection of religion and altruism. He also discussed how her conception of freedom is all-encompassing, covering not only economic freedom but also intellectual freedom and, for instance, the personal freedom of a woman to have an abortion. Bayer also observed that today’s Republicans have abandoned any support for economic freedom in favor of supporting the tribal, fascist-leaning MAGA movement.

We hope the opening of the Ayn Rand Center in Austin will create more opportunities to present Rand’s ideas and participate in intellectual discussions in the Austin community — and beyond.

In NI Weekly, we gather together all the articles and videos published over the previous week. All you need to do is read the short summaries and decide what interests you. Here’s what we featured between September 26 and October 2. Enjoy!

• An episode of ARI Bookshelf, our book review and discussion series, analyzes The Mattering Instinct by philosopher Rebecca Newberger Goldstein. Greg Salmieri, Ben Bayer, Mike Mazza and Sam Weaver discuss Goldstein’s account of why questions of meaning and purpose are so important in people’s lives, and her method of evaluating answers to such questions by how they help us fight “entropy.” They also correct the book’s brief but imprecise mention of Ayn Rand view of heroic people.

• A short report on our recent student conference, AynRandCon-US, in Austin, Texas, surveys the program and spotlights feedback from students and faculty. Senior fellow and speaker Ben Bayer characterized the conference as “probably the most exciting student-oriented Objectivist conference I’ve attended.”

• An article by Robertas Bakula defends the “Most Hated Company in America.” Bakula argues that the moral and economic accusations against Live Nation Entertainment about “gouging” concertgoers are smears that scapegoat a competent, successful company.

• An interview with Greg Salmieri was featured on the Texas Talks podcast about Rand’s ideas and their relation to other philosophies and political movements. Among others, Salmieri discussed Aristotle, Marx, and “libertarians.” He also discussed his own work and interest in philosophy.

• An article by Ben Bayer was published as the cover story for Free Inquiry, a secular magazine published by the Center for Inquiry, one of the leading atheist-agnostic organizations in the U.S. Bayer reviewed Bart Ehrman’s book Love Thy Stranger, which traces today’s dominant morality of self-sacrificial altruism to the teachings of Jesus. Bayer argues that Ehrman’s scholarship should cause skeptics of religion to doubt the rationality of altruism.

Last month, Ayn Rand fans from across the world gathered in Austin, Texas for AynRandCon US, ARI’s annual US student conference. Among them were 67 scholarship students from 16 countries. For many of them, it was their first encounter with Ayn Rand’s ideas beyond her novels — and their first chance to meet Objectivist intellectuals and fellow Ayn Rand fans. Across three days, the program combined lectures and Q&A sessions with long breaks for mingling with faculty and other attendees, as well as an evening reception and a social event.

The conference kicked off on the evening marking 25 years since 9/11, with Onkar Ghate and Elan Journo examining America’s failures before and after the attacks. Their talks drew on more than two decades of expertise in the subject and were livestreamed on YouTube.

Ben Bayer opened the second day of the conference with a lecture on the morality of capitalism. He argued that industrial and commercial activities demand the same exalted dedication to truth and integrity as intellectual pursuits protected by the First Amendment — and thus they also deserve to be protected by right. Onkar Ghate followed with a talk focused on reason vs. faith, explaining why people follow religion and why only a philosophy of reason can provide the values that the better minds among them are searching for. Then, a panel discussion with Ghate, Bayer, Journo, and Tal Tsfany explored the value of intellectual careers, encouraged students to consider them, and promoted study at ARU and training at ARI’s Intellectual Incubator.

On the final day of the conference, Greg Salmieri explored how Ayn Rand’s ethics of selfishness helps us build a life of reason, purpose, and self-esteem, allowing one to grow up philosophically and move beyond faith-based moral codes. Tal Tsfany followed him and offered practical tools for self-discovery and the creation of a passionate, individualized life. Sealing the conference, Harry Binswanger presented the Objectivist view of free will, explaining how it works and why it is at the root of Objectivism’s approach to reason, individualism, political freedom, and romanticism.

Following the conference, one of the students wrote that she now knows “that there are interesting, intelligent, wonderful students and professors of Objectivism and that that community exists and has myriad opportunities to engage in as a student, attendee, professional, etc.” Another commented that “more than anything, I left the conference with a clearer sense of direction and a renewed desire to make the most out of my life.” Both enrolled at ARU after the conference, as a number of other students did. Other students said they are interested in engaging more with ARI through the Institute’s online content, while considering or preparing to apply to ARU.

Faculty members were enthusiastic as well. Bayer, who has spoken at many ARI conferences, said that “this is probably the most exciting student-oriented Objectivist conference I’ve attended. Our engagement team worked overtime to select the most curious and intellectually serious students to attend ARU. The conversations I had with them — both in Q&A sessions and between sessions — showed the fruit of their efforts. I was peppered with questions on a huge range of topics, both theoretical and applied. And I’ve been encouraged to learn that many of these students are now applying to ARU. I can’t wait for our conversations to continue into the fall and spring in our new Intensive seminar.”

Reflecting on the conference success, Brian Alspach, ARI’s director of engagement, said that “looking forward, AynRandCon will continue to play a central role in ARI’s strategy as we work to attract and engage students with future intellectual potential.”

If you wish to attend a future AynRandCon, registration and scholarship applications are now open for AynRandCon Europe, which will take place in Vienna on April 16–18, 2027.

In her recent book The Mattering Instinct, philosopher Rebecca Newberger Goldstein argues that much of what human beings do is driven by a universal need to matter — to prove to ourselves that we are worthy of consideration. She argues that efforts to fulfill this need are responsible for a wide range of human projects, from the greatest achievements of scientific discovery and artistic creation, to the worst atrocities of murder and genocide.

On this episode of ARI Bookshelf, Greg Salmieri, Ben Bayer, Mike Mazza and Sam Weaver discuss Goldstein’s book. The episode includes discussions of the merits and limitations of Goldstein’s account of mattering and her emphasis on the idea that life involves resisting entropy. They also comment on the book’s brief mention of Ayn Rand and relate her ideas to Goldstein’s.

Topics include:

• Goldstein’s basic account of why people have a need to matter

• Her conception of what constitutes objective mattering

• The absence of businessmen and entrepreneurs from her categories

• The book’s quotation of Ayn Rand in a section about intolerance

• How Goldstein uses the concept of entropy in her account of mattering

• Her apparent unwillingness to radically rethink conventional ideas about morality

This episode was recorded on September 19, 2026.

We are pleased to announce that “Stranger Danger: How Bart Ehrman’s Latest Unmasks the History of Altruism,” Ben Bayer’s review of Bart Ehrman’s Love Thy Stranger, has been published as the cover story of the October/November 2026 issue of Free Inquiry. You can read the opening paragraph below and the full essay at Free Inquiry.

Anyone today who cites the Bible to make moral objections to homosexuality or premarital sex becomes an easy target for a certain critical question: Why follow those passages but not the Old Testament rules permitting the sale of one’s children into slavery and condemning the act of touching pigskin?

Read the full article at Free Inquiry.

Topics include:

• How Salmieri became interested in Ayn Rand

• Rand’s view of “libertarianism”

• Rand’s admiration of Aristotle and her improvements to his philosophy

• What Objectivism as “an ordinary, high-powered philosophy” means

• The Ayn Rand Center and Austin’s intellectual scene

• Rand’s view of religion

Resources mentioned in the interview:

• James G. Lennox and Gregory Salmieri, Two Philosophers: Aristotle and Ayn Rand

• Allan Gotthelf and Gregory Salmieri, A Companion to Ayn Rand

Bradley Swail is the host of the Texas Talks podcast, not an employee of the Ayn Rand Institute.

I can’t afford a Rolex, but I don’t accuse the watchmaker of robbing me. If I wince at a bill in a fancy restaurant, I don’t sue the owner. Similarly, if a Taylor Swift ticket is too expensive, I close the Ticketmaster tab and move on, looking for entertainment I can afford. I don’t fume at the concert organizer.

I’m shocked how many don’t share my attitude and instead demand live entertainment on a silver platter at a discount price — or else.

Many concert-goers feel “robbed” by high ticket prices and fees. They rejoiced when a Manhattan jury found Live Nation Entertainment (LNE) and its subsidiary Ticketmaster liable for monopolization under federal antitrust law (the “or else”).1 Finally, they imagine, the “greedy” corporation that “skins” music fans will get what it deserves and the fantasy of premium seats at top-tier live music tours at bar-band prices will become reality.

A fantasy, because Live Nation’s dominance did not cause prices to rise.

Especially after Covid, demand for live shows has exploded.2 An increasingly prosperous worldwide audience is willing to pay for a night out. But top-tier artists don’t grow on trees. No one has a monopoly on Bad Bunny’s performances like Bad Bunny himself. Where fans outnumber seats, prices rise.

Ticket prices also likely rose to replace the falling recorded-music revenue. Today, we stream all music for a small monthly price, but pay more to attend concerts that artists rely on. Artists and their teams set the face value of the ticket, and retain 80 to 90 percent of the final ticket price (a figure no one disputes). Concert prices went up because tours have to fund careers, not because LNE runs the industry.3

In this new music economy, Live Nation learned to put as many fans in front of as many artists as the calendar and logistics allow. Reliably managing venues, ticketing, routing, staging, security, and the rest of a modern tour’s machinery is a Herculean feat. LNE also carries the risk of the tour, often paying artists an upfront guarantee, absorbing the loss if the tour underperforms, and carrying insurance to recover costs in the event of cancellation. It’s no scandal that a firm like this ends up with more business. It is what competence looks like.

Does Ticketmaster “gouge” concertgoers? The resale market suggests otherwise. If Ticketmaster charged outrageous prices, scalpers couldn’t keep earning a windfall. Highly profitable resale is evidence that, if anything, Ticketmaster is undercharging.

What sparked popular outrage against LNE is more evidence that prices were not “too high.” In 2022, Ticketmaster buckled under the enormous opening-day demand for Taylor Swift’s Eras tour. Had prices been unaffordable to many, an onslaught of fans and scalpers wouldn’t have crashed the system the moment tickets dropped.4

What about steep fees for premium seats and parking, which even some Live Nation employees privately said were “robbing them blind baby”?5 Such language helped plaintiffs inflame the jury. But it proves only that a few employees — like many of LNE’s critics who object to ticket prices — tragically misunderstand the value of premium services to fans. It’s not robbery; it’s high-value trade.

What about Live Nation’s exclusive long-term contracts with major concert venues, or their allegedly “monopolistic” business model?6 The scary “flywheel” is actually the strategy that keeps prices from rising further (though they probably should). Concert staging, logistics, advertising, and accounting earns little money, but feeds volume into highly profitable ticketing (Ticketmaster) and sponsorships (brand placement and vendors). Without exclusive contracts ensuring that the staging and promotion business is supported by ticketing and ad revenue, the business might not be sustainable. If LNE were broken up, prices at separated concert promotion venture would likely have to rise, or artists’ share would have to fall.

In short, Live Nation built a good business in a complex and changing economic reality. Antitrust prosecutors are trying to scapegoat them for high prices.

State plaintiffs had to display mental gymnastics to concoct “evidence” against LNE. The best they could muster was to compare LNE’s average price to that of AXS, the closest rival. But AXS itself acknowledged its services were not comparable in value to LNE’s.7 Even so, the price gap was a mere $1.72. Using this cooked-up pocket change, the government is hounding a company that brings you the shows you value. As LNE is asking in its latest motions, the judge should toss the groundless verdict.8

What to do about rising concert prices? The answer is plain: don’t buy the ticket.9 Whenever I skip a show I find too expensive, I remember that no one has a right to luxury entertainment and turn to my essentially free library of unlimited music in my pocket. Neither fans who pay for a night out nor those who cannot afford to are victims.

For over 40 years, ARI has preserved Rand’s legacy through archival and educational activities. Two years ago, ARI announced it would cement that legacy in actual concrete by building the Ayn Rand Center in Austin, Texas. Earlier this month, the Institute broke ground on the building. The Center will house the Ayn Rand Archives, classrooms, event spaces, studios, public gathering areas, a state-of-the-art immersive educational experience, and the home campus of ARI’s education program, ARU. It will play a vital role in preserving Objectivism and in spreading it to ever-larger audiences. To learn more about the groundbreaking event, the Center’s inspiring vision, and the founders behind it, watch our special Ayn Rand Institute Podcast episode with CEO Tal Tsfany and Senior VP Elan Journo. In addition to the discussion, the episode includes building simulations and video clips from the groundbreaking event.

Topics include:

• The plan for the Ayn Rand Center and the strategic vision behind it

• The architect and architecture of the Center

• Inspiring anecdotes on the building process and the Center

• Mailchimp founder Ben Chestnut’s donations and vision

• Tal Tsfany’s remarks at the groundbreaking event

Resources:

• Website of the Ayn Rand Center

In its lawsuit against the FCC, Disney, the parent company of ABC alleges that Chairman Brendan Carr violated the First Amendment by using unprecedented early license renewals for all ABC-owned stations in retaliation for content decisions President Trump disliked. The FCC responds that early renewal is a tool to get Disney to cooperate in the FCC’s equal-employment/DEI investigation. But Disney argues that numerous threats by President Trump and Carr to revoke licenses in response to content decisions prove that investigations are pretextual. The real harm here is the self-censorship of broadcasters: a threat left hanging forces every editorial decision to be weighed against the possibility of losing the license.

In this episode, Robertas Bakula and Onkar Ghate commend Disney for making their case on fundamental constitutional grounds rather than settling behind closed doors. Too few of Disney’s defenders ever dare to challenge the FCC’s underlying licensing authority or the employment mandates that also violate freedom of association. They warn that Carr is trying to reinvigorate and expand the FCC’s power over speech and argue that no depoliticized FCC is possible. The only real solution is privatizing the spectrum.

Topics Include:

• Disney’s lawsuit against the FCC for violating the First Amendment

• How self-censorship works in practice

• Broadcaster’s historical complicity in creating the FCC

• Brendan Carr’s goal to expand the FCC’s power

• Why defenders of free speech do not challenge the FCC and its DEI policies as violating intellectual freedom

• The only way to remove the FCC’s ability to chill speech is to privatize the broadcast spectrum

Resources:

• Ayn Rand, “Choose Your Issues,” The Objectivist Newsletter, 1962

• Ayn Rand, “Have Gun, Will Nudge,” The Objectivist Newsletter, 1962

• Ayn Rand, “Vast Quicksands,” The Objectivist Newsletter, 1963

• Ayn Rand, “The Property Status of Airwaves,” The Objectivist Newsletter, 1964

• Ayn Rand Institute Podcast episode “Trump vs. CBS: How Government Pressures Companies to Self-Censor”, Jul 31, 2025

• Ayn Rand Institute Podcast episode, Trump vs. Kimmel: The Tribal Weaponization of the FCC against Free Speech, Sep. 25, 2025

Image credit: Potjanan Surirug / iStock / via Getty Images.

Recently, ARI senior fellow Onkar Ghate had an essay published in an undergraduate philosophy textbook, Problems in Applied Ethics (Bloomsbury Press, 2026). The original essay was invited by the editor Steven B. Cowan, in particular to comment on whether or not hate speech laws were legitimate exceptions to the principle of free speech. In the essay, Ghate challenges the very idea of exceptions to free speech.

The full textbook has now been published, and we are pleased to have received permission from Bloomsbury Press to reprint Ghate’s essay in two parts.

Read Part 1 here.

What the Right to Freedom of Expression Means and Protects

I’ve now briefly discussed the individualist justification for the right to freedom of speech or freedom of expression.1 Now let’s consider in a bit more detail what the content of this right is, what the right encompasses, and what it does not.

The right to freedom of expression, like all rights, sanctions and protects an individual’s freedom to take certain actions. As the philosopher Ayn Rand formulates the point in a seminal essay, “The concept of a ‘right’ pertains only to action — specifically, to freedom of action. It means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by other men.”2 The right to property, for instance, “is not the right to an object, but to the action and the consequences of producing or earning that object. It is not a guarantee that a man will earn any property, but only a guarantee that he will own it if he earns it. It is the right to gain, to keep, to use and to dispose of material values.”3

No right guarantees a specific outcome. Just as the right to property protects your freedom of action to, for instance, pan for gold on your land and to own any gold you discover, but does not guarantee that you will discover any gold — so the right to the pursuit of happiness protects your freedom of action to try to build a happy life, but doesn’t guarantee that you will succeed. Similarly, the right to freedom of speech “does not mean that others must provide a man with a printing press, a publishing house, a newspaper, a theater or a television studio through which to express his views.”4 It sanctions and protects only a certain form of action: “the freedom to advocate one’s views and to bear the possible consequences, including disagreement with others, opposition, unpopularity and lack of support.”5

For something to be an individual right, it must be co-possible, which means every individual must enjoy the same freedom of action, and no individual can legitimately interfere with the sphere of action protected by another’s right. Your rights entail that other people refrain from trespassing on your rights, just as their similar rights entail that you refrain from trespassing on their rights. But rights do not require that other people perform any particular action: that requires their voluntary, uncoerced consent.

The right to freedom of association, for example, means that you can try to associate with whomever you choose — and that other people can refuse to associate with you and go their separate way. The right to freedom of trade means that you can buy and sell with whomever you choose — and that other people can refuse to buy from you if, say, they think the price you’re asking is too high, or refuse to sell to you if they think the price you’re offering is too low. The same goes for freedom of speech. Important in understanding this right is understanding that “Freedom of speech includes the freedom not to agree, not to listen and not to support one’s own antagonists.”6

It is important to understand, in the context of hate speech laws and other proposed abridgments of the right to freedom of expression, that the exercise by an individual of any of her rights can and often will affect other people in ways they judge both positively and negatively. But neither are grounds to abridge the right — not so long as those other people retain the same rights, that is, the same freedom of action. This means in particular that the fact that one person’s exercise of her rights “harms” (i.e., in some way negatively affects) another person is not sufficient grounds to outlaw the action.

For example, I may paint the front door of my house red, a color my neighbor dislikes, or plant a maple tree in my backyard, a type of tree that unfortunately evokes for my neighbor memories of home and a difficult childhood. But these negatives experienced by my neighbor, though real, don’t give her veto power over the color I paint my front door or the trees I plant in my backyard, not so long as she retains the same freedom of action: She can paint her front door green and plant birch trees in her yard.

Or: I may open a new office building for a thousand employees, and the increased lunchtime foot traffic may help make nearby restaurants more profitable. But though this positive effect on the restaurants is real, it doesn’t entitle me to veto their increased sales unless they share with me a portion of their increased profits. If I wanted to try to take advantage of the increase in foot traffic, I retain the same freedom of action as those restaurant owners: I could open and run my own restaurant.

Or: smartphone manufacturers like Apple may make the cameras on iPhones so good that most people stop buying film or digital cameras, and companies like Canon lose sales. But this negative, though real, does not give Canon veto power over the smartphones Apple can design and sell, not so long as Canon retains the same freedom of action: Like Apple, Canon is free to try to design and sell its own smartphones.

The same goes for the right to freedom of expression. Consider first the commercial realm. If Apple advertises the cameras on its latest iPhones — a form of expression Apple of course regularly engages in — and those advertisements persuade customers to buy an iPhone over a Canon PowerShot camera, Apple’s expression does result in a negative for Canon. But this negative does not give Canon the right to demand that Apple’s advertising be silenced, not so long as Canon retains the same freedom of action: the freedom to advertise its own cameras and try to persuade people to buy them.

Consider now the intellectual and ideological realms. Atheists may persuade people to abandon their religion, and churches may see a drop in attendance. Though a real, negative effect, it does not give priests the right to demand that atheists be censored, not so long as the priests retain the same freedom of action, the freedom to try to persuade people that they should not abandon but embrace religion. Even if the priests are scandalized and upset by the atheists’ views, which they regard as blasphemous, this does not give them the right to demand that atheists be silenced.

Or: a socialist or white nationalist may persuade people of their collectivistic doctrines, and in the process teach people to hate and despise large swaths of other people, be it profit-seeking businessmen in the case of socialism or darker-skinned individuals and immigrants in the case of white nationalism. This may lead to a social atmosphere that is less benevolent, less welcoming, less American, and to demands for the passage of anti-business or anti-immigration laws, which are certainly experienced as real negatives by the individuals being demeaned.7 But in neither case do the opponents of socialism or of white nationalism have the right to demand that socialists or white nationalists be censored, not so long as they possess the same freedom of action: The opponents are free to try to persuade people of the irrationality of socialism and of white nationalism (and I hope they exercise this freedom).

It may surprise you that I list socialism as an irrational doctrine that foments hatred against innocent people, but that is part of the point. Though this is my actual evaluation of socialism, I’m not trying to convince you of the truth of that evaluation.8 Rather, the example illustrates that what constitutes irrational doctrines that foment unjust hatred against whole groups of people is a contentious matter. As in today’s world, historically this has been an issue over which there has been heated disagreement. Catholics have regarded Protestant doctrines in this way, and Protestants likewise have regarded Catholic doctrines in this way, similarly for Sunni and Shiite Muslims, for some Enlightenment thinkers toward Christian doctrines and for some Christians toward Enlightenment doctrines, for abolitionists toward proslavery doctrines and for enslavers toward abolitionist doctrines, for capitalists toward the doctrines of socialism and for socialists toward the doctrines of capitalism. Whose speech should hate speech laws ban — and by what right? These examples from history help showcase, from another angle, the danger of claiming that your neighbors have the right to veto your freedom of expression if they consider what you say irrational, hateful, or demonizing of large groups of people.

As an individual, the only right you possess to oppose expression which you regard as evil is to ignore the speaker and walk away or to engage in counterspeech. To the government we delegate the power to enforce our rights, but it is not within my rights to silence my neighbor, even when I abhor what she is saying, and it’s not within her rights to silence me, even when she abhors what I’m saying. Just as her expression, however objectionable to me, does not interfere with or trespass on my freedom of action, so my expression, however objectionable to her, does not interfere with or trespass on her freedom of action.

What the Right to Freedom of Speech Does Not Protect

If the individual’s right to freedom of expression is indeed a right, then, like all rights, it is absolute: It permits no breaches or exceptions. Many defenders of free speech deny this. They contend that the right to freedom of expression is compatible with some exceptions, such as legal prohibitions against threats, incitements to violence, and harassment. For the legitimacy of hate speech laws in particular, then, the question becomes whether or not they too should be considered allowable exceptions to the right to freedom of expression.

Nadine Strossen, for example, in her book HATE: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship, writes approvingly that

government may punish speech when necessary to avert serious harm that cannot be averted through non-censorial measures — notably, law enforcement and counterspeech. Accordingly, government may punish “hate speech” (or speech conveying any other message) when, in context, it directly, demonstrably, and imminently causes certain specific, objectively ascertainable serious harms. The Supreme Court has identified several kinds of situations in which speech satisfies this general emergency standard, specifying particular criteria for each. These criteria are appropriately strict, to circumscribe officials’ opportunity to assert the potential harm as a pretext for suppressing speech merely because its message is disfavored, disturbing, or feared.9

She goes on to discuss, among a few others, such emergency exceptions as “True Threats,” “Punishable Incitement,” and “Harassment.”10

But this conceptualization in terms of emergencies and exceptions is misguided. Many types of actions involve, or at least often involve, speech or other forms of expression and communication. This does not mean that all such actions are protected by the right to freedom of expression or that a legal system, in order to prohibit these actions, must carve out exceptions to the right to freedom of expression. Properly understood, threats, incitement, and harassment are not exceptions to the right to freedom of expression; they are actions that fall outside the protection of this right in the first place. Why? Because these acts are, in essence, not acts of expression or communication to a willing audience, which is free to walk away (and engage in counterspeech), but acts of coercion, which seek to override other people’s voluntary choices and consent.

To see this, let’s briefly consider the nature of threats, incitement, and harassment.

Threats

If I walk into a bank and declare, “This is a stick up. Hand over all your cash!” — and the police come to arrest me, it’s absurd for me to protest that the police are interfering with my right to freedom of expression, since, after all, I was just having a conversation with the teller. Why is my protest absurd? Because I have introduced into the situation physical coercion. I have changed my relationship with the bank from the voluntary to the coercive. If, say, I don’t like the interest rate the bank is offering, I’m free to go elsewhere; if the bank considers my initial deposit to be below its minimum threshold for that particular kind of savings account, it can refuse to open an account for me. Each of us is free to walk away if we don’t consent to the particular terms the other is offering. But this is no longer true after my threat. The teller cannot just walk away — not without the worry that I might put a bullet in his back if he does.

It does not matter if I actually have a gun with me or not, or if I do, whether I intend to start shooting if the teller refuses my demand. As long as it is reasonable for the teller to think I might carry out my threat, his decision-making should no longer be seen as fully voluntary but as coerced, as occurring under physical duress. This is why such threats are prohibited by law. The verbal threat that I may resort to physical coercion if I don’t get my way is the introduction of coercion into the relationship. It is my declaration that I will not let the other party walk away, that I will deny them that freedom of action, that is, deny them that right. The police do not have to wait until I start shooting before they arrest me.

The essence of a threat is that it is not an act of persuasion, rational or irrational, in which the other party is free to walk away if they disagree, but an attempt to bypass the need for persuasion. What a court must decide, therefore, is whether an actual threat has been made; if it decides that a threat has been made, there is no legitimate objection that prohibiting the threat violates the right to freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment.

Incitement

Perhaps the easiest way to grasp the essential nature of incitement is to see its similarity to plotting a crime, which properly is held to be an illegal activity on the part of the co-conspirators. Like many other forms of criminal activity, plotting a crime involves speech or expression. A crew of four who are planning to rob a bank will be communicating with one another. Which bank are they targeting? What kind of security system does it have? Where will they get the explosives to blast off the safe’s door? Who will drive the getaway car? And how will they split the money afterward? This is what they are discussing. But for the law to treat the plotting of a crime as itself a crime is not an interference with the plotters’ freedom of speech, for the same basic reason as in the case of threats: The plotters are introducing physical coercion into human affairs.

The plotters are not planning to make the bank an offer — “We want to buy all your deposits on hand for a thousand dollars, do you accept?” — an offer the bank is free to refuse. The plotters are planning to physically seize the bank’s deposits without the bank’s consent. In such a situation, the police do not have to wait until the plotters enter the bank, or blow off the safe’s door, or start driving away with the money, before they can arrest the plotters. The attempt to rob the bank begins with the active plotting and becomes criminal at that point for all who are actively involved. Even if the mastermind of the plot plans to stay home and to send only his henchmen to enter the bank and seize the money, all are guilty of a crime.

Incitement can be regarded as hatching a criminal plot in the moment. It is more spontaneous, less considered or deliberative than, say, plotting to rob a bank, but no less criminal. For instance, if a group of people is protesting an election result outside a government building, and someone in the group starts to egg the crowd on, to declare that they will never get justice, that they will lose their country if they don’t do something now, and that maybe they should take the law into their own hands, maybe some government officials need to be hanged, and these words help rile up the crowd, and the crowd storms into the government building, the person who helped rile up the crowd is guilty of incitement, as if he helped plot the crime. In other words, he is part of the action of breaking into the government building, even if he, like the mastermind who plotted a bank robbery, never entered the bank. Of course, the individuals breaking into the government building are also guilty of a crime, like the henchmen who break into the bank, but the point is that so is the inciter, who actively helped launch the action.

And again, the fact that the action of incitement, like the action of plotting, involves speech does not mean that in legally prohibiting it, the government is interfering with freedom of speech or carving out some exception to the right to freedom of speech. Just as plots to initiate the use of physical coercion are not essentially acts of expression, so inciting others to initiate the use of physical coercion is not essentially an act of expression. Both are attempts to coerce others, to bypass their voluntary participation and consent, and their freedom to walk away.

Harassment and Disturbances of the Peace

Like threats and incitement, certain forms of harassment and certain forms of disturbances of the peace are also often categorized as permissible exceptions to the right to freedom of speech, but should not be. If I follow a man or woman through the subway system of New York City, commenting on their appearance and attractiveness, or if every morning I ring the doorbells of all the houses on my street, trying to convince their occupants to convert to Christianity, I’m guilty of harassment. And it is not a legitimate defense for me to say that I’m expressing my views, so my action is protected by the First Amendment. Precisely because I am not allowing the other person to consent to the activity — to decide if they want to listen and engage or not — I cannot claim that my action is part of the freedom of action protected by the right to freedom of expression.

Similarly, if in the backyard of my house, I play my speaker system so loud that it disturbs my neighbors, I am guilty of disturbing the peace. The freedom of action encompassed by my freedom of speech never included the freedom to blare my speaker system outdoors at 110 decibels. Individual rights, as I indicated above, must be co-possible. I have the right to listen to what I want to listen to, but so do my neighbors. That in blaring my speaker system, I’m disturbing the peace really means that I’m depriving my neighbors of their freedom of action to decide what they want and don’t want to listen to. My music is so loud that even if they don’t want to listen to it, the sound nevertheless intrudes upon them. There is no right to trespass on the rights of others, in this case, on their right to freedom of expression. I never had the right to force my neighbors to listen to the music I like, and in prohibiting me from doing so, the government is not carving out an exception to freedom of expression but is rather protecting my neighbor’s right to freedom of expression.

In short, threats, incitements, and verbal harassment and disturbances of the peace are not exceptions to the right to freedom of speech. They are not essentially acts of expression and should not be classified as such. If a legal system prohibits these actions — and when these actions are properly defined and delimited, it should — it is not carving out exceptions to freedom of expression.

Conclusion

The right to freedom of speech is an absolute. Any individual who values his own pursuit of the true and the good should claim the right to freedom of thought and to freedom of expression. She should never relinquish these rights, never cede to government the power to censor any form of expression, to infringe in any way on the individual’s right to think and speak freely. But in embracing freedom of expression as an absolute, one is not thereby forced to tolerate threats, incitement, harassment, and the like as the supposed price one must pay for a free society, because such acts are not essentially expressive acts. They are acts that introduce physical coercion into human relationships, acts that seek to bypass other people’s voluntary consent and participation, and the legal prohibition of these acts is compatible with, indeed often part of protecting, the right to freedom of expression.

^[1] “Expression” is the better term, encompassing as it does both verbal and nonverbal content, such as that of a symphony or ballet.

^[2] Ayn Rand, “Man’s Rights,” in The Virtue of Selfishness (New York: New American Library, 1964), 110 (https://courses.aynrand.org/works/mans-rights/).

^[3] Ibid., 110–11.

^[4] Ayn Rand, “Freedom of Speech,” in The Ayn Rand Column, rev. 2nd ed. (New Milford: Second Renaissance Books, 1998), 71.

^[5] Rand, “Man’s Rights,” 114.

^[6] Ayn Rand, “The Fascist New Frontier,” in The Ayn Rand Column, 106.

^[7] If anti-business or anti-immigration laws are actually passed in the United States, I contend that they should often be declared unconstitutional by the courts because the laws abridge the third fundamental right explicitly mentioned in the Declaration and featured prominently in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution: the right to liberty. But that, of course, is an argument for another time.

^[8] But for a bit more on this evaluation of socialism, see the entry on socialism in The Ayn Rand Lexicon (New York: Penguin, 1998), 463–66 (https://courses.aynrand.org/lexicon/socialism/); and Rand’s essay, “America’s Persecuted Minority: Big Business,” in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, 44–62.

^[9] Nadine Strossen, HATE: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 59. As the title of her book should make clear, Strossen does not regard hate speech laws as legitimate exceptions to freedom of speech.

^[10] Ibid., 59–68.

In 1947, Ayn Rand published Screen Guide for Americans. Her analysis of how collectivist ideas can penetrate American art and culture remains as relevant today as when she published it seventy-nine years ago. Rand wrote the original twelve-page guide while she was working as a contract screenwriter in Hollywood. At the time, she was actively engaged in efforts to oppose communist influence in the motion-picture industry. The guide was, in part, a response to those Americans (and especially American filmmakers) who believed that ideological and philosophical issues were irrelevant to their work.

Rand believed that because the defenders of Americanism had abdicated the realm of ideas, that this vacuum was filled by collectivist intellectuals. They did not necessarily spread their ideas onscreen through explicit political slogans, but built-in moral assumptions, such as portraying the pursuit of wealth as evil.

In this discussion, Elan Journo and Brandon Lisi explore the historical circumstances that led Rand to write the essay, the deeper philosophical ideas behind her analysis, and the significance of ARI Press’s new authoritative edition. They also discuss Michael Berliner’s new afterword and the archival materials that illuminate Rand’s work in Hollywood, including additional documents now available through the Ayn Rand Archives.

Topics include:

• What’s new in ARI Press’s authoritative edition of Screen Guide for Americans

• Why Ayn Rand wrote Screen Guide for Americans in 1947

• Communist influence in 1940s Hollywood

• How propaganda can influence a culture without explicit political slogans

• How to access additional archival materials related to the “Screen Guide” online

Resources:

• Ayn Rand, Screen Guide for Americans

• Archival Supplement: Screen Guide for Americans archival supplement

Recorded on August 25, 2026.

A previous version of this article stated that Screen Guide for Americans was published in 1946 and was seven pages long. The correct year is 1947, and the original pamphlet was 12 pages long. The seven-page count referred to a condensed version published in Plain Talk magazine. We regret these errors and apologize for the oversight.

Thumbnail image: Bettmann via Getty Images

9/11 was one of the most consequential events of the 21st century. Yet twenty-five years later, the attacks and their aftermath are still widely misunderstood. In two consecutive talks at our student conference in Austin, Onkar Ghate and Elan Journo analyzed America’s failures before and after 9/11, drawing on more than two decades of work on the subject. They show how the self-abasing morality of altruism shaped American policy, leading the US to betray its ideals, appease its enemies, sacrifice its soldiers, and lose its wars. This double lecture is a must-watch for anyone who cares about America and wants to make it secure.

Among the topics covered are:

• How 9/11 was experienced and perceived in the immediate aftermath

• The religious, modernity-hating motivation behind 9/11

• America’s emboldening of Islamists in the decades before 9/11

• America’s abject, craven response to the Danish cartoons of Muhammad

• The intellectual rot 9/11 exposed and Objectivism’s potential to change it

• How American altruism crippled its troops’ ability to fight

• How America refused to recognize or defeat its enemies

• The devastating consequences of our altruistic approach to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars

• Q&A

Resources:

• Onkar Ghate and Elan Journo, Failing to Confront Islamic Totalitarianism: What Went Wrong After 9/11.

The livestream was recorded on September 11, 2026 at the Ayn Rand Con event for students in Austin, Texas.