Soon ARU Press will release a collection of Ben Bayer’s essays, Breaking Free from Faith-Based Morality. The collection will feature essays previously published in New Ideal on the religious roots of altruistic morality. Aimed at secular readers who consider themselves rational and scientific, it argues that altruism is essentially faith-based and that a principled commitment to reason requires abandoning it. We are pleased to republish this substantially revised essay on effective altruism in anticipation of the book’s release.

Originally published March 22, 2023. Significantly revised, October 2026.

The collapse of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange in the fall of 2022 put the influence of a previously obscure philosophical movement in the spotlight. The company’s CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, was a leading advocate for and financial sponsor of the “effective altruist” movement.1 More recently, effective altruism entered the spotlight again due to its ongoing influence on the leaders of the artificial intelligence industry, especially at Anthropic.2

Why are so many young leaders of cutting-edge technological innovation attracted to an obscure philosophical movement?

Bankman-Fried learned this philosophy directly from a friend, the Oxford philosopher William MacAskill, one of the theory’s most prominent advocates.3 Effective altruist roots at Anthropic run deep. Cofounder Dario Amodei became involved in effective altruist charities as early as 2010, pledging to give away 10 percent or more of his income, and later became one of their advisors.4 Another sign is that Anthropic’s in-house philosopher, who is the main author of the constitution governing Claude, is the effective altruist Amanda Askell (who also happens to be William MacAskill’s ex-wife).5

Effective altruism stresses the importance of using a rational, scientific approach to calculating the most impactful way to help the most people. According to the effective altruists, too much charitable giving is motivated by sentimentality without a view toward its actual impact on those with the greatest need. Celebrities telling feel-good stories about sponsoring poster children may pull at the heartstrings. But only scientific methods like the randomized controlled trial can determine the most effective means of improving health and educational outcomes (in East Africa, it seems to be deworming medicine).6 So effective altruists work to set up charitable organizations like Giving What We Can and GiveWell that do in-depth research about effective charity, drawing on the math of probability and expected value.

And those charities need money. This is why MacAskill advised Bankman-Fried years ago not to become an activist or a nonprofit worker but a businessman who could earn billions to give away to effective altruist causes.7 (There’s at least some reason to think this is why he took significant risks with his investors’ money.8)

Effective altruism also urges guarding against decisions and policies that could have unanticipated disastrous consequences. AI surely will have revolutionary consequences, so it’s no surprise that effective altruists gravitate toward offering guidance about its use. Here again, they draw on the mathematics of expected value (and disvalue) to calculate long-term impact.

Young tech leaders look to effective altruism because they have pressing questions about how to live meaningful lives amid their success. Doubtless their own commitment to science and technology makes effective altruism’s quantitatively oriented approach seem ready-made for their purposes.

But a closer look at both the full meaning of the philosophy and its intellectual roots suggests that it is anything but rational and scientific. Silicon Valley’s cutting-edge tech platforms appear to be running on legacy code — a legacy moral code from a more primitive era.

The absurd martyrdom of longtermism

If you really squint, from a distance effective altruism looks like common sense: don’t make decisions by doing what feels good in the short term; use hardheaded numbers to assess long-range consequences. But in focus, its ultimate advice is anything but common sense. It demands the kind of martyrdom for a cause you’d expect from a religious cult.

The philosophical father of effective altruism is Peter Singer, the Australian philosopher, whose 1972 essay “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” was seminal. Singer argues that if we agree we should wade into a shallow pond to save a child from drowning, we should also want to save the lives of strangers overseas dying from starvation or disease.9 And, since there could be millions of such strangers, we should be working full time to give so much that we might lower our standard of living to only slightly better than that of the suffering people we should be helping.10 According to Singer, this is our moral duty: it’s immoral not to do it.11

Effective altruists have gone on to practice what he preached. There are the tech and finance professionals (like Bankman-Fried) who earn huge salaries but live like grad students just so they can give the money away.12 One practitioner of this ethic was not content to give away millions: he also gave a kidney to a stranger (over the objections of his family).13 Others who were directly influenced by effective altruist ideology have now done the same.14

If that doesn’t already make effective altruism sound like a religious cult, William MacAskill’s manifesto of the latest “upgrade” to effective altruist ideology should make it especially clear.

Just months before the FTX scandal, MacAskill released a major new book, What We Owe the Future. The title conjures the “longtermist” version of effective altruism he advocates, which urges us to orient our thinking toward our impact on potential generations in the distant future and work overtime for their sake.

What does this mean practically? Because the longtermists also believe in maximizing the sum total of happiness, they think more of us should work to have and raise more children because an increase in the population adds more to that sum total.15 Longtermists also emphasize the moral imperative to colonize outer space, as this is seen as necessary for the expansion of consciousness across the universe.16 Some longtermists even seriously urge that we create the preconditions for the evolution of new post-human digital beings whose artificial consciousness, once it replicates itself, will add vast new quantities to the sum total of “happiness” of the universe.17^,18

This explains some of the effective altruist interest in artificial intelligence. Longtermists hunger for the day when it gives birth to more digitally conscious offspring. But more pressing than any hopes for AI’s happiness are fears of its wrath.

The longtermists regard worries about catastrophic climate change as too short-term and not existentially threatening enough. For them, real long-term thinking means trying to anticipate impacts centuries or even millennia into a future that no one we love will ever know. So they are concerned to prevent global pandemics and nuclear wars, but not because of the immeasurable suffering these could cause for the present human population. Instead, they’re concerned about the small chance they could cause the eventual extinction of the entire human race and so prevent the expanding happiness of distant future generations.19

What really animates their long-term ambitions is the concern that the wrong values could be locked into the programming of artificial intelligence, such that AI could someday turn on us, manipulate our values, and cause our extinction.20 No doubt there are massive challenges posed by rapidly developing AI technology — as there are extraordinary opportunities — just as we would expect from any revolutionary technology. But as with their account of pandemics and nuclear war, the longtermists do not think about the challenges of AI in the way the rest of us do, or should.

Consider: MacAskill’s book actually proposes that the extinction of humanity might not be all that bad, since it might be just what AI needs to achieve the greatest sum of happiness in the universe. The reason to fear this outcome is only that before this happens, we might not succeed in locking the right values into our AI. Such “misaligned” AI could then terrorize its own digital underlings. “The key issue, in my view, is not whether humans or AIs are in control. . . . The key issue is which values will guide the future.”21

MacAskill actually thinks that maybe we shouldn’t care about human extinction if it is good as a means to AI’s end, and that we should care about the impersonal sum total of happiness for digital beings we can neither know nor imagine. Both ideas are absurd. What reason could we possibly have to be humble servants dedicated to maximizing an impersonal mathematical sum of “happiness” that is not to be experienced or valued by anyone alive today, nor by any single individual ever? Why should we keep our eyes on the heaven or hell in the stars that awaits our distant human or digital grandchildren? Mostly, longtermists seem to fear a coming hell.

What’s the root of this absurd call to martyrdom?

The ideal at the root of longtermism’s absurdities

Critics claim that the effective altruist obsession with a far-off, improbable future is inexcusable when there are real people suffering and dying in our world today.22 To explain longtermism’s detachment, its conventional critics point to everything from the idiosyncratic sci-fi interests of tech nerds to the bias induced by donors eager to excuse their wealth and power.23 Still others claim it’s excessive idealism: longtermists are foolishly “hubristic” to think that any vision of the good can be achieved.24

None of these critics seriously consider the intellectual content of the ideal of altruism itself. We can begin to see why by looking closer at MacAskill’s book.

“Morality, in central part, is about putting ourselves in others’ shoes and treating their interests as we do our own.”25 That’s MacAskill’s foundational assumption about the nature of morality, one that few of effective altruism’s critics would challenge. But if it’s true, where shall we find all the other shoes to put ourselves in? If altruism is to be understood by looking to consequences of one’s actions for the largest number of people, why wouldn’t one look to the very long-term future where most of the other people will be?

What about the idea that it’s heartless to ignore the others in our very midst? MacAskill invokes another idea from Peter Singer, that we should not be any less concerned for strangers halfway around the world than we are for a child drowning in a pond in front of us. But if distance in space from the self is not morally relevant, why should distance in time be? The moral concerns of the conventional critics of effective altruism seem too sentimentally connected to the selfish present.26

Another inspiration for the effective altruists’ obsession with future generations is philosopher Derek Parfit. If Singer is the father of effective altruism, Parfit is the grandfather (he was also MacAskill’s mentor at Oxford).27 Parfit famously argued that if we should maximize the total sum of happiness, we should do it even if it means increasing the population in a way that makes each individual less happy (his infamous “repugnant conclusion”).28 Parfit’s reasoning is then clearly at work in the longtermists’ baby-making project.29

Why care about maximizing the total sum of this alleged “happiness” across all time, anyway? Parfit supplies an answer that reveals a core assumption of altruism, “effective” or otherwise. He famously challenged the idea that the individual has a stable personal identity over the course of his life. In this view, prudent planning and working for one’s future is really just sacrificing for the sake of one’s “future self,” a totally different person. There is no interest of an enduring self. But then one’s reason to serve one’s future self at a given time is not one of self-interest. It’s a moral reason that’s no different from one’s reason to serve other future people.30 All that matters morally is maximizing the impersonal total quantity of happiness.

Caring about such an impersonal sum should now look especially absurd. Who is there to enjoy any happiness, and for how long, if there are no enduring selves able to enjoy it? Who is there to care about anyone’s happiness, if there are no selves to care?

Yet the altruists are just following the logic of the path that’s been laid down by eminent moral philosophers — and religious gurus — of the past. They say morality is really about caring more about others than about yourself, since there are so many more others than you who need your equal attention. And the best way to be concerned with the most others is to concern yourself with the vast future beyond the interests of your insignificant, fragmented self.

If effective altruist practices are absurd, we should take seriously that this long-cherished moral ideal is the real absurdity at their root.

The faith-based roots

Effective altruism has long portrayed itself as a rational alternative to an irrational, emotionalist approach to charity. We are urged to ignore feel-good appeals about saving cute children and endangered species we connect to personally, when our resources could have greater impact by serving a greater number of distant others who bear no connection to our lives. Yet as we have seen, the practice of its doctrine has all the trappings of a cultish religion. Working overtime to earn money and sacrifice it while also churning out babies, all for the sake of appeasing and facilitating the creation of higher digital beings in a far-off future, sure does sound like joining a religious cult.31

But none of effective altruism’s critics today — not even those who call it a cult — consider that the essence of altruism itself is the source of the religious fervor. Yet even as the gurus of effective altruism urge us to avoid irrational sentiment when deciding on our means, they themselves indulge in it in their choice of end.

Peter Singer’s entire case for effective altruism rests on an article of faith, the idea that “if it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it.”32 Singer thinks that even those who earn a salary that barely affords them a modest middle-class lifestyle should give it up to live just above the poverty line.33 That salary is not of comparable moral importance in his view, and so giving it up is obligatory, according to his faith.

In an effort to suggest that his faith is not “wildly out of line” with common sense, Singer quotes none other than St. Thomas Aquinas quoting St. Ambrose: “The bread which you withhold belongs to the hungry; the clothing you shut away, to the naked; and the money you bury in the earth is the redemption and freedom of the penniless.”34 His quotation of Christian theologians should drive home that his basic premise derives from a cultural atmosphere that draws its basic moral doctrines from religion.

Elsewhere, when he seeks to defend the rationality of his methodology in ethics — to show it is not just faith — Singer finds a more general principle to deduce his arguments from. That “each one is morally bound to regard the good of any other individual as much as his own” he takes as an intuitively obvious axiom, like a first principle of mathematics.35

But as Singer must know, such an axiom is far from clear and certain to everyone. It very likely would have been alien to Socrates, who founded the subject of moral philosophy to determine the virtues necessary to achieve one’s own happiness or eudaemonia. It would have been alien if not absurd to Aristotle, who said that while the end of one’s flourishing could include the good of one’s parents, children, spouse, and friends, “we must impose some limit; for if we extend the good to parents’ parents and children’s children and to friends of friends, we shall go on without limit.”36 And I for one reject it outright. Is my intuitive capacity for grasping moral truth damaged?

Parfit’s philosophical premises are no more exempt from faith-infused sentiment. He was the child and grandchild of Christian missionaries.37 And while he self-identified as an atheist, in the final appendix of his book Reasons and Persons, he tells the reader about how the foundational assumption of his ethics, about the nonexistence of an enduring self, can be found in the works of the Buddha, citing a poem: “The mental and the material are really here, / But here there is no human being to be found. / For it is void and merely fashioned like a doll, / Just suffering piled up like grass and sticks.”38

Effective altruists who pride themselves on their scientific approach seem oblivious to the possibility that their “intuitions” do not yield access to some self-evident truth but are nothing more than emotional reactions conditioned by ideas they’ve accepted uncritically from a social milieu pervaded by two millennia of Christianity. However dispassionate they think they may be about their selection of means, their end is dictated by an uncritical sentiment inherited from the teachings of their parents and grandparents.

The irrationality of effective altruism’s demands is due to the faith-based irrationality of its ideal, the ideal of altruism itself. This is the faulty legacy code of effective altruism’s sector of the tech industry. But it can be reprogrammed.

The real alignment problem

Many of the more rational people among the tech entrepreneurs who are attracted to effective altruism may see it as a source of optimism about the future. If they can use rational calculation to solve so many problems in technology, why can’t they do the same for the biggest social problems?

It’s an understandable attitude, but its flaw comes from the assumption that rationality only concerns the calculation of means to foreordained ends. Crucially, it leaves the end they seek to achieve — the greater good of the altruist’s impersonal sum — unscrutinized by reason. For those optimists bold enough to challenge the code of their elders, there’s an unprecedented opportunity to “disrupt” our society’s default thinking about morality.

For as much as AI doomsayers worry about the “alignment problem” — between the “values” locked into AI and those held by human beings — there’s a bigger alignment problem to solve. It’s the alignment between human values and reality. The assumption that some mix of our culture’s values is already good enough, that it’s just a challenge to make the machines “value” what we do, betrays a dangerous complacency. It’s the same complacency that leads longtermists to take altruist values to their logical consequence and propose bizarrely cultish forms of martyrdom.

Technology optimists should throw off that complacency and think more carefully about what it means for our values to align with reality, and then work first to instill those first principles into the culture of Silicon Valley, before they consider how to program their machines.

Image credits (left to right): Sam Deere, GRÉEA, and Anna Riedl / Wikimedia Commons

In the recent, highly contentious midterm elections, it is noteworthy that virtually no politician cared to seriously discuss, let alone consistently defend, the political principle at the heart of America and its Constitution: Individual rights. Ayn Rand did.

Rand extensively commented on the politics of her time. Armed with an uncompromising, philosophical reverence for America and capitalism, she took a principled stance against socialism and communism, as well as the idea that a majority can democratically vote to redistribute the hard-earned wealth of an individual. But she also vehemently opposed attempts by many “conservatives” to mix support for the free market with religion.

Her opposition to so many ideologies did not make her a “moderate.” Rand considered herself a “radical for capitalism,” a position she presented in a collection of essays, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, which identified capitalism’s deep philosophical roots.

To help you get a taste of Rand’s distinctive views, we gathered below six short audio recordings of her answering different questions about politics. Watch, learn, and enjoy!

1. The Protection of Individual Rights: Ayn Rand’s Case: Rand offers an essentialized understanding and defense of individual rights and the role of government in protecting them. She also rejects so-called “economic rights” (e.g. to health care and income) as they involve the use of force to violate property rights.

2. Conservatism vs. Objectivism: Ayn Rand Explains the Difference: Rand contrasts her definitive stand as a “radical for capitalism” with many “conservative’s” vague support for free markets and the disaster of their attempt to tie capitalism to religion.

3. ‘Moderates’ vs. ‘Extremists’: Ayn Rand’s View: Rand clarifies that moderation in issues of principle, especially the protection of individual rights, is no virtue.

4. Democracy vs. a Constitutional Republic: Ayn Rand’s Case: Rand identifies the evil of democracy — whether direct or indirect — and contrasts it with a proper form of government, a constitutional republic.

5. Communism’s Real Danger: Ayn Rand’s View: Rand unequivocally identifies communism as evil and destructive, but notes the non-intellectuality of many anti-communists.

6. Ayn Rand on How to Change the Country’s Politics: Rand stresses the importance of voting in certain elections and the need to spread the right philosophical ideas in order to change politics.

If you were intrigued by the short recordings, you can take a deeper dive into Rand’s distinctive political thought by reading the following essays:

1. Man’s Rights, April 1963.
2. The Nature of Government, December 1963.

And if you found them insightful, you can purchase Rand’s political essay collection, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.

This essay by Gregory Salmieri was originally published in New Ideal on January 7, 2019.

The United States of America is regularly described as a “democracy” in a way that implies that this word names the essence of our political system. By “essence,” I mean the fundamental feature that sets the American system apart from the systems by which other nations were governed in the centuries prior to America’s founding, and the feature that America has since inspired much of the rest of the world to adopt. Because of this, “democracy” is often regarded as our fundamental political value — as the basic thing that we should strive to achieve more consistently in our own government and to promote abroad. Our oldest surviving political party dating back to 1828 takes its name from the word. Since about that time, a host of measures have been championed as “democratic.” These include the extension of suffrage to African Americans in 1870 and women in 1920, late-nineteenth-century amendments to many state constitutions allowing laws to be passed by referendum, and the establishment of campaign finance laws in the late twentieth century. Throughout this period, the term “democracy” has been used to champion laws such as the antitrust acts and various taxation and welfare policies aimed at reducing economic inequality. With regard to foreign policy, America entered World War I, in Woodrow Wilson’s words, to “make the world safe for democracy,” and the guiding principle behind George W. Bush’s response to the 9/11 attacks was the promotion of “democracy” in the Middle East.1

However, it is not always clear what “democracy” means, whether it always means the same thing, and, if not, which of its meanings refer to something that is both good and consistent with the American system of government. Recall that some of the most evil and repressive regimes of recent history have described themselves as democracies: the “German Democratic Republic,” which had to build a wall to prevent its oppressed citizens from escaping into West Berlin; “Democratic Kampuchea,” which killed millions of its citizens during its five-year reign; and the present-day “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” more commonly referred to as “North Korea.”

The word originates, of course, in ancient Greece, where it referred to a political system, such as that of Athens, in which the power (crasis) resides in the people (demos) as a whole. This was literally true in Athens, where as many decisions as practicable were made by an assembly of all available male citizens (a category that excluded slaves and resident aliens). The remaining decisions were made by smaller groups or individuals selected either by vote or by lot. The majority was empowered to do whatever it pleased.

By its fickle will, prominent citizens were regularly ostracized and occasionally executed. Socrates’ execution in 399 B.C. for “impiety” is the most famous example, but the philosophers Anaxagoras and Aristotle each faced similar charges, in both cases shortly after political factions with whom they were associated fell out of favor. Athenian generals and orators were also regularly exiled, and sometimes recalled from exile, for similarly transient reasons. Ancient critics, including Plato, Aristotle, and Thucydides, blamed democracy for a host of other rash and unjust decisions, including those that led to the decades of war with Sparta that ended Athens’ standing as a world power. As a system of majority rule, such democracy lends itself to the abuse of minorities of all sorts. In particular, the ancient critics point out, “democracy” is a system in which the wealthy are vulnerable to expropriation by the envious masses.

In eighteenth-century English, “democracy” was understood to mean a political system like that of Ancient Athens. America’s Founders were anxious to point out the differences between democracy and the system they were building at both the state and federal levels. In Federalist 63, James Madison writes that what distinguishes “the American Governments” from those of ancient city-states is “the total exclusion of the people in their collective capacity” from American government. Neither at the state nor the federal level did citizens vote directly on policies. Instead, policies were set by popularly elected representatives, and the system of representation was devised so as to hinder the formation of majority factions that could sacrifice the rights of minorities.

Even apart from the historical examples, it should be easy to see the perils of “democracy” in its original meaning, which Ayn Rand glossed as follows: “unlimited majority rule, a social system in which one’s work, one’s property, one’s mind, and one’s life are at the mercy of any gang that may muster the vote of a majority at any moment for any purpose.”2

The frequent appeals to “democracy” in our contemporary political rhetoric reflect and reinforce the misguided idea that voting is the essential feature of the American political system and the cause of its moral legitimacy.

Voting certainly is one essential feature of our political system, but it is not the essence of the American system, nor is it sufficient to make a government morally legitimate. If it were, no essential difference would exist between the American system and the mob rule of ancient Athens, and nothing would be wrong with a political system under which people are routinely killed or exiled when the public mood turns against them.

The myopic focus on voting fostered by the current use of the term “democracy” has had disastrous effects. Wilson’s attempts to promote democracy abroad helped set the stage for the formation of Communist Russia, Fascist Italy, and Nazi Germany.3  America’s recent attempts to promote democracy in the Middle East precipitated the elections by which both the terrorist group Hamas came to power in the Palestinian Territories and Islamic theocrats came to power in Egypt. It also led to the chaos in Iraq and Syria out of which ISIS emerged. In each case, American policy opposed autocratic regimes in favor of alternatives that had more popular support, but our policymakers gave little thought to what sorts of governments the majorities among these populations supported.

Extolling “democracy,” as the term is presently used, leads to an exclusive focus on the question of who should govern (the majority or some special faction), ignoring the question of how people ought to be governed. But this latter is the fundamental question; by comparison, the issue of how specific officials and policies should be selected is a mere detail. Putting aside for the moment the question of who governs, we can see that certain ways of governing are better — more just — and others worse.

For example, a government that prohibits slavery is better than an otherwise similar government under which some people are allowed to  “own” others. Likewise, a government under which individuals cannot be punished until a jury of their peers has convicted them of violating a specific law that is objectively written and published in advance is better than a government under which some people are empowered to summarily punish anyone they please. It is not the will of the people that makes objective law and the prohibition against slavery good. Quite the reverse: what makes a people good is recognizing and implementing such moral truths as that objective law is just and slavery is unjust. It is only on the basis of such truths that we can grasp why voting is essential to the moral legitimacy of a government.

This is the essence of the American system of government. Our founding document, the Declaration of Independence, begins with a metaphysical and moral foundation, from which it first derives the proper function of government, and only then addresses the issue of how and by whom a government should be established or altered. It is this objective moral perspective rather than the subjective deference to majority rule that animated the American Revolution, including the process by which our state and federal constitutions were crafted.

The Declaration’s foundational premise is “that all men are created equal.” To claim this is to deny that there are any innate distinctions of rank, by which some individuals or groups have natural authority over others. Reflecting on the Declaration fifty years later, Thomas Jefferson described this fundamental premise as “the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of god.”4 It is “from that equal creation,” as Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration puts it, that human beings derive the “inalienable rights” among which the Declaration counts the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The finished draft of course says that men are “endowed by their Creator” with these rights, but the context makes clear that the Creator — whether a personal God or an impersonal Nature — endows us with rights precisely by creating us as equals. Each of us is equally a human being, who can and must lead his own life, using his own judgment to define and achieve his own happiness, rather than relying on anyone else to rule or to serve him. Because of this, each of us needs and has a right to lead his own life devoted to his own chosen ends, free from forcible interference by others. A right, as Rand aptly put it, is “a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context.”5

It is “to secure these rights,” the Declaration tells us, that “Governments are instituted among Men.” The fundamental standard for evaluating a government follows from this statement of its purpose. A government is good insofar as it serves to protect individual rights, and it is bad insofar as it jeopardizes them.

Since government’s purpose is securing the rights of the governed, and since no one is by nature entitled to govern over anyone else, it is the individuals governed by a government who must judge whether it is fulfilling its purpose, and they must alter or replace it when it fails to do so. It is in this sense that the Declaration tells us governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed” so that “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [viz. individual rights], it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

Since none among the governed (much less anyone apart from them) has any natural authority over the rest, when making decisions about how to govern themselves, they must approach one another as equals. Voting is an indispensable means to decision-making among equals, since it distributes authority equally among all concerned. This is why voting is an essential component of a moral government. This does not mean, however, that individuals are morally entitled to vote for any system of government they please. An inalienable right is one that no one, and no group, may violate. Accordingly, there can be no right of any majority to structure the government in a way that sacrifices the rights of a minority.

The people have the right to institute only that form of government that they judge will best promote their safety and happiness by protecting the inalienable rights of all the individuals involved. It is the principle of rights, and not the mere will of the people, that makes a government legitimate. The people’s right and responsibility is to recognize and implement this principle, and each of the people has a moral responsibility to himself and his fellows to take this principle as his standard when casting his vote.

The passage we have been discussing from the Declaration of Independence concerns a people’s decision to fundamentally alter its system of government —  to establish a new constitution or amend an existing one. But the point that voters have a moral responsibility to vote only for those people or measures that they judge to be consistent with the government’s function of protecting individual rights applies also to all the votes within a proper political system. This includes both votes by individual citizens for representatives and votes by legislators for laws. The power that voters of both sorts properly have is not a power to impose their will on others; it is the power to use their judgment to determine how best to carry out the proper functions of government. As Rand puts the point:

Voting is merely a proper political device — within a strictly, constitutionally delimited sphere of action — for choosing the practical means of implementing a society’s basic principles. But those principles are not determined by vote.6

As we have seen, even in the case of voting to ratify or amend a constitution, the basic principles cannot be determined by vote. For it is only by recognizing that all human beings are equal with respect to their rights (so that none may subjugate others) that a people realizes the moral need for voting as part of the process of establishing or altering a system of government. It follows from this same principle that voting is not the source of individuals’ rights, but instead a means by which a society can work together to articulate and secure these rights.

Voting certainly is one essential feature of our political system, but it is not the essence of the American system, nor is it sufficient to make a government morally legitimate.

Some individuals will necessarily be subjugated by others in any society that does not implement what Madison called “the vital principle of free government” namely: “that those who are to be bound by laws ought to have a voice in making them.”7 For this reason voting is an indispensable part of any moral system of government. Its purpose is not to enable the majority to exercise its will, but to prevent anyone from being in a position to arbitrarily impose his will on others — as lawmakers would be if they were not answerable to the people. This is the genius of the system that Madison and America’s other Founders devised. Leonard Peikoff explains:

By defining in detail the division of powers within the government and the ruling procedures, including the brilliant mechanism of checks and balances, they established a system whose operation and integrity were independent, so far as possible, of the moral character of any of its temporary officials — a system impervious, so far as possible, to subversion by an aspiring dictator or by the public mood of the moment.8

What does this imply about the questions surrounding the word “democracy” with which we began?

With regard to the terminological issue, we have seen why it is misleading to describe America as a democracy. Some of the defects of this description are remedied by the phrase “liberal democracy,” which The Oxford English Dictionary defines as “a democratic system of representative government in which individual rights and civil liberties are officially recognized and protected, and the exercise of political power is limited by the rule of law.”9 The phrase has gained currency over the past few decades, prompting its addition to the dictionary in 2010.

Describing America and similarly governed nations as “liberal democracies” is a marked improvement over describing them merely as “democracies.” However, both the phrase and its definition imply that this system of government is a species of the genus “democracy,” and that the feature of voting (which unites all the members of this genus) is fundamental to the feature of respecting individual rights (which sets liberal democracies apart from democracies of other sorts).

In fact, as we have seen, the reverse is the case: America was founded on the understanding that protecting individual rights is the purpose of government, and voting is merely a crucial means to this end. If the term “liberal” (here meaning “respecting individual rights”) is to be paired with the term “democratic” (meaning “involving elections”) to describe the American system of government, they should be paired in the opposite order: America has a democratic liberal system, not a liberal democracy.

In any case, once one has established that we have a system based on individual rights, it is redundant to add a term denoting the presence of elections because they are a necessary feature of any rights-respecting system. Moreover, the term “liberal” is itself vague, being associated with a nineteenth-century political movement that began as a defense of individual rights, but gradually transmuted, in the United States at least, into a movement that apologized for socialism.10 Unfortunately, there is no unambiguous name for the American system of government. The term “republic” was often used by our Founders, but this term too has often been used in other senses, as in the names of several Communist dictatorships mentioned earlier. Given this history, we might use the term “constitutional republic” or perhaps “individualistic republic” to name the American system.

Voting is essential to America and to any moral system of government, not because it enables the majority to assert its will, but because it protects each individual from being subject to the will of others. With this in mind, how should we evaluate the various policies that are promoted in the name of democracy? Those “democratic” reforms that extend the vote to previously disenfranchised individuals, such as African Americans and women, are morally good and represent a more consistent implementation of America’s founding principles. The same cannot be said of “democratic” reforms, such as constitutional amendments allowing referenda, that are intended to make the government more directly responsive to the will of the majority, nor can it be said of any measures that violate the rights of some in order to make people more equal in respects other than their freedom to lead their own lives by their own judgment.

With regard to encouraging “democracy” in other countries, we must recognize that, as Rand put it:

The right to vote is a consequence, not a primary cause, of a free social system — and its value depends on the constitutional structure implementing and strictly delimiting the voters’ power; unlimited majority rule is an instance of the principle of tyranny.11

It is only to the extent that a society is committed to the principles articulated in America’s Declaration of Independence that it is capable of forming and maintaining a just government, and there has not yet been a society that has implemented these principles consistently. How a society with a substantial commitment to these principles, such as our own, should interact with one that has little or no recognition of them is a difficult question to which I do not have a complete answer. But part of the answer is that we must understand and promote what is good about our own form of government. This includes understanding the specific function elections properly serve in our system of government and encouraging other societies to hold elections when they will serve this function, rather than encouraging them even when they will be vehicles for majorities to tyrannize over minorities.

Above all, we must not let our own elections devolve into such vehicles. Every prominent figure in contemporary American culture encourages us to gang up on some minority group, be it the rich, immigrants, or others, and impose our will on them via the ballot box. In the face of this, each of us must remember that the fact that a majority of us wants something is no reason to think that it is right for us to have it, much less that it is right for us to seize it by governmental force at the expense of some minority. Every individual has an unalienable right to his life, his liberty, his property, and the pursuit of his own happiness. The sole purpose of a proper government is to secure these rights. We therefore have no moral right to vote for any person or any policy for any motive other than the sincere and reasoned conviction that it will serve this purpose.12

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. (The textbook also contains a counterpoint essay by the philosopher Andrei Bespalov, along with a pair of responses by both Ghate and Bespalov to each other.) This piece represents the latest work in Ghate’s ongoing project of defending free speech. You can read more in Defending Free Speech (Steve Simpson (ed)., ARI Press, 2016) and The First Amendment: Essays on the Imperative of Intellectual Freedom (Tara Smith (ed.), ARI Press, 2024).

Free Speech Absolutism (Part 1)

With the exception of the United States, hate speech laws prevail throughout the Westernized world. In my native country, Canada, for example, “Everyone who, by communicating statements, other than in private conversation, willfully promotes hatred against any identifiable group is guilty of (a) an indictable offence and is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years; or (b) an offence punishable on summary conviction.”1 Canadian law puts special emphasis on denial of the Holocaust: “Everyone who, by communicating statements, other than in private conversation, willfully promotes antisemitism by condoning, denying or downplaying the Holocaust (a) is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years; or (b) is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction.”2

As these sections of Canadian law should make clear, what is being legally prohibited is speech. The government has the power to censor the expression of certain ideas or viewpoints. In the United States, by virtue of the First Amendment, hate speech laws such as these would (or at least should) be declared unconstitutional. “Congress shall make no law,” the First Amendment reads in part, “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”3 No matter how irrational or abhorrent the content of a person’s speech, no law means no law.

The US Constitution, in other words, deprives the government of the power to censor; it treats the right to freedom of speech as absolute, permitting no legal abridgement, no carving out of exceptions. This, I will argue, is the correct approach to freedom of speech. Or at least if the fundamentally new form of government that the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution brought into existence is the correct form of government, which I believe it is, then freedom of speech should be regarded as an individual, absolute, inviolable right.

The New, American Form of Government

The radicalism of the American Revolution consists in rooting proper government, not in the theories of collectivism but of individualism. Previous forms of government regarded the individual as subordinate to the state and its goals or ends. The individual was a subject, the quasi property or possession of the nation as a whole and its representatives or spokesmen, be it the king or the pope or the aristocracy or the majority, who were responsible for upholding the collective will. On this conception of government, a collective good — the glory of our nation, the propagation of our religion, the advancement of the public interest — transcends the interests and life of the individual. The individual is subordinate to this collectivist goal, a mere means to an end.

In principle, though certainly not in full practice given the continuation of slavery, the Declaration and Constitution broke with this long-standing view. The individual was no longer viewed as subordinate to some higher goal or end embodied by the state. The individual was the end, the state the means. That the individual has a right to the pursuit of her own happiness, a moral right to live her own life, preexists government.4 Government, properly, is created solely to secure and protect these rights: a proper government protects the freedom of every individual to pursue her own happiness. On this new conception of government, we as individuals are no longer subjects but citizens. As citizens, we are not subordinate to government; government is subordinate to each of us. As the Declaration famously states these points,

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.5

Thus, representative, constitutionally limited government came into existence. The government is the representative of the individual: each individual delegates to government the power to secure and protect her rights, her legitimate freedom of action. That is the only enforcement power she can delegate to government. And that delegation establishes the only legitimate function of government: to secure and protect the rights of each and every individual within its jurisdiction, including, as the First Amendment makes clear, the right to freedom of speech.

Freedom of Speech under Collectivist Forms of Government

Under collectivist forms of government, the ruling authorities have the power to censor the speech of individuals in order to further the specific collectivist goal that the state is thought to embody or secure. If, for instance, the glory of our nation or the propagation of our religion is thought best served by silencing a particular individual, the authorities lawfully can silence that individual. The Church’s censoring of Galileo by the charge of heresy to prevent him from expounding the heliocentric theory of the solar system is an important historical case in point, one with which the creators of America’s new form of government were certainly familiar.6

Today, we can see this same collectivist approach in Canadian hate speech laws. At first glance, Canada seems to recognize the individual’s absolute right to freedom of expression in terms similar to those of the First Amendment. Section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms states that “Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms: (a) freedom of conscience and religion; (b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication; (c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and (d) freedom of association.”7

But in reality, these supposed guarantees of the individual’s freedom of thought and expression are not held by right. They are held by permission of the government, as the enforcer of a collectivist goal, in this case, the public interest. Section 1 of the Charter states that “The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”8 In terms of freedom of thought and expression, this means that so long as the individual exercises his thought and expression in a way that the government deems to be in the public interest, the government permits the individual to do so. But if he exercises his thought and expression in a way that is deemed to harm the public interest, the government can censor him. This is precisely what the Canadian hate speech laws do: they outlaw the expression of certain content when expression of that content is deemed incompatible with the so-called public interest.9

Just as the Canadian government can censor speech, it can permit speech with the very same content when it deems that speech to be in the public interest. A valid defense against the charge of hate speech, as mentioned in an earlier endnote, is to show that one’s “statements were relevant to any subject of public interest [emphasis mine], the discussion of which was for the public benefit [emphasis mine], and if on reasonable grounds he believed them to be true.”

In Canada, as in other countries with hate speech laws, freedom of speech is not an absolute; it is not an individual right, but a permission granted by the state in the name of a collectivist goal, a permission that can be and sometimes is rescinded in the name of that collectivist goal.

Freedom of Speech under the New American Form of Government

The US approach is fundamentally different because it is individualistic, not collectivistic. Neither the Declaration nor the US Constitution charges the government with the task of advancing the public interest when the “public interest” is conceived to, at least sometimes, transcend the interests and rights of specific individuals. The task of the government is to secure the rights of each and every individual, not to abridge any individual’s rights in the name of some collectivist goal or cause. And in the American approach, the rights to freedom of thought and speech are regarded as integral to the rights listed in the Declaration: the individual’s rights to life and the pursuit of happiness. Why?

To live my own life and pursue my own happiness, I have to possess the freedom to chart and then travel my own course, to figure out for myself what is true and good and to then follow through on my convictions in action, all the while recognizing and respecting the same freedom of action of every other individual in my society. The authors of the Declaration and Constitution understood that the pursuit of happiness is a difficult endeavor, requiring careful thought and much effort on the part of each individual, but it’s possible to a rational being who is left free to function as a rational being.

To figure out what I think is true and what I think is good requires that I’m free to examine any and every idea, argument, viewpoint, fact, potential lead, and alleged piece of evidence that to me seems relevant, and to express, listen, discuss, argue, and debate with whomever I judge it valuable to do so. The quest for the true and the good is difficult, and no doubt I’ll make false starts and go down wrong alleys. In discussing with others, I’ll find some of what they think and say helpful and illuminating, and some wrongheaded, irrational, even evil. But these are precisely the judgments I must make for myself if I’m to grasp the true and the good.

To cede to government the power to curtail the freedom of thought and expression, to allow government to declare some viewpoints heretical or inimical to the public interest, and so to declare certain books or ideas or arguments off limits to me, on penalty of fines or imprisonment or death, is to abandon my quest for the true and the good. Instead, government officials will decide for me what counts as viewpoints worth entertaining, arguments worth considering, or leads worth investigating — and I’ll content myself with sifting through their blinkered view of reality. To accept such a predicament is to relinquish control of my life and happiness. How can I decide if Galileo’s heliocentric theory or someone’s denial of the Holocaust is well-reasoned or not, rational or perverse, without being able to read their books or listen to their claims?

It does not matter if the government censors viewpoints that are in fact true, like Galileo’s, or false and abhorrent, like the denial of the Holocaust. If I cannot consider any and all viewpoints and arguments that I judge might have some bearing on the truth — even if I later come to think, as will often be the case, that some of these viewpoints are false and even corrupt — I cannot genuinely make up my mind. Instead, someone is trying to make up my mind for me.

To put the same point another way: if I don’t yet know that denial of the Holocaust is false and perverse, I cannot permit government to declare that viewpoint off limits to me, to prevent me from even considering it; if I know that denial of the Holocaust is false and perverse, it’s only because I was free to consider the matter.

This, in short, is the case for freedom of thought and expression on an individualist approach. If government is not the master but the servant of the individual, then it cannot possess the power to censor. As an individual, I don’t have the right to tell other individuals what they can or cannot think or say or listen to, and so could not delegate enforcement of this right to government. And likewise, no other individual has the right to tell me what I can or cannot think or say or listen to, and so could not delegate enforcement of this right to government. In the individualist as against the collectivist approach, government does not have the power to censor any individual. As the First Amendment declares, freedom of speech is an absolute: a proper government must make no law abridging it.

For 17 somber minutes, on a cloudless summer morning, it was imaginable that an airliner crashing into the north tower of the World Trade Center could be an accident. But it was unimaginable when a second plane slammed into the south tower, and then a third, into the Pentagon. I recall news anchors on live broadcasts straining for words to describe the carnage, the horror, the devastation. We heard the phrase an “act of war.” The next morning’s New York Times roared, in a banner headline, “U.S. ATTACKED.”

But who had attacked us? The initial answer: the “Bin Laden organization,” or al-Qaeda. This was not fully wrong; the hijackers were al-Qaeda members. They were terrorists, we were told, and they had managed to terrify. This prevailing view of the enemy as a band of terrorists, however, was profoundly wrong. Disastrously wrong.

Who had attacked us? In the aftermath of 9/11, the intellectual and political leadership of the United States failed to understand the enemy. We at ARI demonstrated that America faced an ideological movement, Islamic totalitarianism; that al-Qaeda was one prominent faction of many; and that central to this movement were Islamist regimes that provided inspiration and funding, chiefly Iran and Saudi Arabia.

The wholesale failure to grasp this reality cannot be explained by ignorance. For some, particularly in the George W. Bush administration, it was active self-deception, a desire not to see; for others, it was an inability to believe that anyone could truly be ideologically driven.

Who had attacked us? The deliberate severing of 9/11 from its animating ideology was so acute, that I remember a time when people spoke of the attacks as akin to natural disasters, rather than the vicious deeds of human beings choosing to act on ideas they believed.

Who had attacked us? For the last twenty-five years, in op-eds, essays, blog posts, TV interviews, on radio, in lectures, at college talks, in podcasts, in books — in every channel, venue and forum open to us — my ARI colleagues and I consistently stressed the fundamental need to understand that enemy, we explained its essentially ideological nature, at length, and what was necessary to defeat it.

Today, as our nation marks a quarter century since 9/11, we reprint an in-depth essay from New Ideal, “Jihadists: Understanding the Enemy,” that illuminates a question that so many, for so long, have deliberately clouded and evaded.

* * *

This essay appears in the newly released ARU Press book Failing to Confront Islamic Totalitarianism: What Went Wrong After 9/11. The book, now in its third expanded edition, features ARI analysis spanning the last 25 years.

Finally, my colleague Onkar Ghate and I will be speaking today about the meaning of 9/11 at an ARI conference in Austin, Texas, and I invite you to join the livestream.

— Elan Journo

Jihadists: Understanding the Nature of the Enemy

Originally published April 16, 2018

At the peak of its strength, the Islamic State (or ISIS)1 not only controlled a large swath of territory — an area roughly the size of the United Kingdom — it also proved itself a formidable global menace. It instigated, directed, and inspired attacks from Brussels to San Bernardino, London to Orlando, Paris to Istanbul, Manchester to Barcelona. Now that ISIS has been practically routed from the territory it had once controlled in Iraq and Syria,2 the natural question is: Will this mean a reduced threat of further attacks?

Perhaps yes, in the near term; but beyond that, no, and we have every reason to expect the problem to persist.

Why? The reason is not just that the Islamic State might linger on, rebuild, or morph and re-emerge in the shape of a new, more deadly faction. That’s entirely imaginable. The Islamic State itself began life around 2003 as a member of the Al Qaeda network, later breaking away and eclipsing its former partner in brutality, territorial conquest, and global reach.

Nor is the problem just that future attacks might look different. Al Qaeda made its mark with the intricate September 11 plot to hijack four passenger jets simultaneously and ram them into buildings. But the Islamic State has recruited people to carry out simpler, often unsophisticated, mass murders using knives, guns, and vehicles to mow down their victims.

The reason that we can expect future attacks is that there’s far more to the problem than these attacks; more than the Islamic State; more than Al Qaeda. In some vague way, many of us sense that. While people often talk loosely about the “terrorist” threat, it doesn’t take much to see that terrorism is a tactic — a means, not an end. And it is a tactic commonly deployed by various groups and organizations (think of the Irish Republican Army, the Basque separatists of ETA, or the Ku Klux Klan), so it’s nowhere near a uniquely distinguishing feature of the problem.

What, then, is this cause? Who is the enemy? We should be able to answer these vital questions. Any rational attempt to deal with this threat must begin with a clear conception of the enemy’s nature and goals. That’s a necessary condition of defining an effective plan for ending the menace. The point holds true in every conflict. Can you imagine America achieving victory in World War II if we had viewed the enemy as “Kamikaze” attacks — the tactic of deploying fighter pilots on suicide missions — rather than imperialist Japan? And yet today, nearly seventeen years since 9/11, we have nothing like clarity on the nature of this enemy.

Notice the semantic breakdancing around the issue of what to call the attackers. For example, after the September 11 attacks, George W. Bush launched a “Global War on Terrorism,” referring to our enemy variously as “terrorists,” “haters,” “evil doers,” and “hijackers” of a noble religion. The Bush administration tried out the term “Islamofascism,” but quickly dropped it. Barack Obama’s team whipsawed between the overly narrow — “Al Qaeda”; then “ISIS” — and the hopelessly broad, favoring the worse than meaningless term “violent extremists.” Donald Trump has at times talked of “Radical Islamic terrorism,” suggesting some ideological features of the menace, though the administration’s own view is less than coherent on that point.

What all this betrays is much more than semantic confusion. It reveals an underlying conceptual failure: a major part of the problem is that we haven’t properly defined the problem. We see some of the enemy’s features, if dimly; we fixate on non-essential or derivative aspects; we play down, ignore, or evade others that are fundamental to it.

That leads to a failure to understand the nature of the enemy. It’s a misconception to view the problem as hinging primarily on the most salient faction — whether that’s Al Qaeda, or ISIS, or a successor group — or on its preferred tactics. To view the problem so narrowly is to miss what’s essential to this enemy, why it predates Al Qaeda and has persisted long after Osama bin Laden’s death, why it will outlast the routing of ISIS, what animates it fundamentally — and, thus, what’s needed to end it.

We urgently need a clear understanding of the enemy, what ideas animate it, and why. Such clarity is an indispensable condition for combating it effectively, a point confirmed by the failures of American Mideast policy over the last two decades. Let us then step back, take a wider perspective, and bring into focus the nature of this foe.

Confronting difficult questions

What’s the point of all the slaughter? What’s the enemy’s end goal? The path to reaching the answers we need is crowded with difficult issues — difficult to untangle, but also difficult emotionally. For example, the killers call themselves jihadists (holy warriors) fighting for the supremacy of Allah’s law on earth. While it may be an uncomfortable thought, we must still confront the question: is religion — specifically Islam — the animating force behind the self-identified jihadists?

For many people, particularly our political and intellectual leaders, the answer is a vehement no. The killers, we hear, have nothing to do with any faith, let alone the Muslim faith. We hear that they distort that religion, which is a religion of peace. But is it true that the killers have nothing to do with the religion of Islam? It’s quite obvious that many, many Muslims repudiate the self-styled jihadists, and that they themselves are peaceful, productive individuals. But does it follow that the agenda of such jihadist groups as Al Qaeda and the Islamic State bears no connection to the religion’s commonly recognized teachings?

To ask this question is to risk being accused of prejudice toward Muslims. The worry here is that such a question is meant to imply that the problem is somehow all Muslims. That worry stems from a profound distortion and an actual issue in our culture.

There is real prejudice toward Muslims, often manifesting in the United States as xenophobia. Sometimes it manifests as a kind of racism that considers Muslims — whether from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, or Indonesia — as interchangeably non-white and somehow constituting a race. There’s no place for racism, xenophobia, or prejudice in any civilized society.

The distortion is that some people blur together race — which is unchosen — and a religious outlook — which is a chosen set of beliefs. Such blurring leads some to feel an unwarranted, collective hostility toward all Muslims. (Partly reacting to that distortion, other people adopt an uncritically positive view of the religion, regarding any analysis of it and of its followers as taboo.) To make sense of the jihadists, however, we must keep the issues of racial identity and religious/ideological outlook sharply differentiated.

Then there’s another line of thinking that tells us that what really animates jihadists is something non-religious. This view holds that, although these self-styled jihadists quote holy texts and pledge their faith to Allah, fundamentally there are other factors that drive them, notably political or economic grievances. For example, observe that jihadist recruitment videos and talking points hammer on American Mideast policy and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What are we to make of such seemingly non-religious factors?

The answers here are not obvious, but they are attainable.

What I intend to convince you of is that the enemy constitutes an ideological movement rooted in Islam. Let me stress key elements of that claim.

It is an ideological movement: it’s a religious outlook, based on ideas and teachings of Islam, which the followers of the movement choose to embrace. It’s not about anyone’s race, nor is it fundamentally animated by material (political or economic) factors.

It’s crucial to see that it is an ideological movement: despite murderous enmity, sectarian rifts, splintering, and infighting among its constituent regimes, groups, and factions, what unites them — and defines the movement — is their common end. It is the aim of creating a totalitarian society under similar interpretations of Islamic religious law.

It’s an ideological movement deeply rooted in Islam

Let’s start by looking at the evidence of what the jihadists themselves believe and act on. Read the notes left behind by the leader of the 9/11 hijackers, a four-page document with minute guidance on how to prepare for martyrdom. Listen to the courtroom testimony of the man who slaughtered Theo van Gogh, a Dutch filmmaker, proudly admitting his crime in the name of Allah. Notice how the Charlie Hebdo attackers — like so many others — screamed “Allahu Akbar!” (God is great!), adding that they were avenging the Prophet Mohammad. Or recall how the shooter at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, described himself as a soldier of Allah, pledging his allegiance to the Islamic State. To these examples we can add many more. The commonality is that they see themselves as fighting in the name of Islam.

These holy warriors have been instructed, inspired, and guided by the intellectual leaders of their movement. Prominent among these intellectual leaders are Abu al-Ala al Mawdudi (1903–1979), Sayyid Qutb (1906–1966), and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (1902–1989). Many differences separate these three. Mawdudi and Qutb came out of the Sunni sect of Islam; Khomeini, from the Shiite sect. Their arguments are colored by their local political context and concerns. Mawdudi was an Indo-Pakistani thinker, Qutb helped shape the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, and Khomeini became the founder and first “Supreme Leader” of Iran’s theocracy. Despite these and other differences, several fundamental themes unite them.

First, they see the world around them, and especially the political system, as pervaded with corruption and impiety. Unbelief and godlessness abound across the face of the earth. Islamic religious law, or sharia, no longer governs men’s thought and action. Wherever you look, according to Qutb, people’s ideas, habits, traditions, culture, art, and laws reflect an ignorance of Allah’s will.3

Second, they believe that Islamic law, or sharia, must be universal, shaping every facet of society, politics, and the individual’s life. Qutb argued that it was necessary to ensure “that the obedience of all people be for God alone,” everywhere.4 The faithful must establish an Islamic dominion, under divine authority, with the ultimate goal of carrying their faith “throughout the earth to the whole of mankind, as the object of this religion is all humanity and its sphere of action is the whole earth.”5

Third, they hold that it is time for the righteous to solve these problems — the world’s deviation from the true path — by imposing religious law as an all-encompassing, total political-social system. In the words of the Muslim Brotherhood, a group that gave rise to Al Qaeda, Hamas, and many other factions, “Islam is the solution.”6 In Khomeini’s political vision, realized in the Iranian regime, it is a cleric — one deeply knowledgeable about (religious) law and justice — who must hold ultimate power within society.7 While Qutb and Mawdudi had their own views of how to structure government, they agreed with Khomeini on the basic solution to the impiety pervading the world: a sharia regime enveloping the totality of human life and society, where religion and the state are one. It is a political system wherein every individual must submit to Allah’s will. A fitting description for this vision is Islamic totalitarianism.

Qutb, Mawdudi, and Khomeini also share the belief that jihad is a means for bringing about a truly just world. The term “jihad” is seen as having two meanings — referring both to personal struggle and to a holy war.8 But what Qutb, Mawdudi, Khomeini, and kindred thinkers call for — and lionize — is the waging of war to expand the dominion of Islam. The Iranian regime was both an embodiment of that totalitarian vision and a self-declared leader in exporting its revolutionary doctrine beyond its own borders. Indeed, the Iranian regime has been not only a galvanizing force for the Islamist movement globally, but also a major leader of it.9

It is this political-ideological vision that underlies the jihadist bombings, massacres, and random-seeming violence. The ultimate point of the attacks and killing is to punish unbelievers, compel us to submit in obedience to Allah’s law, and enforce sharia law, everywhere. That desire for world domination sounds fanciful and unachievable, but what matters here is that it animates the enemy.

Here’s how the Islamic State explained their outlook. Because the statement is particularly clear and emphatic, it’s worth quoting at length:

We hate you, first and foremost, because you are disbelievers; you reject the oneness of Allah — whether you realize it or not — by making partners for Him in worship, you blaspheme against Him, claiming that He has a son, you fabricate lies against His prophets and messengers, and you indulge in all manner of devilish practices. It is for this reason that we were commanded to openly declare our hatred for you and our enmity towards you. “There has already been for you an excellent example in Abraham and those with him, when they said to their people, ‘Indeed, we are disassociated from you and from whatever you worship other than Allah. We have rejected you, and there has arisen, between us and you, enmity and hatred forever until you believe in Allah alone’” (Al-Mumtahanah 4). Furthermore, just as your disbelief is the primary reason we hate you, your disbelief is the primary reason we fight you, as we have been commanded to fight the disbelievers until they submit to the authority of Islam, either by becoming Muslims, or by paying jizyah — for those afforded this option — and living in humiliation under the rule of the Muslims. Thus, even if you were to stop fighting us, your best-case scenario in a state of war would be that we would suspend our attacks against you — if we deemed it necessary — in order to focus on the closer and more immediate threats, before eventually resuming our campaigns against you. Apart from the option of a temporary truce, this is the only likely scenario that would bring you fleeting respite from our attacks. So in the end, you cannot bring an indefinite halt to our war against you. At most, you could only delay it temporarily. “And fight them until there is no fitnah [paganism] and [until] the religion, all of it, is for Allah” (Al-Baqarah 193).10

When judged by their words and deeds, what motivates the jihadists is their interpretation of Islam.

Nothing to do with Islam?

Nonetheless, many people insist that these killers have nothing to do with the religion of Islam.

Part of what gives that notion some plausibility is that within the global community of more than one billion Muslims, there are indeed differences on how to understand the Koran and the sayings and deeds attributed to Mohammad. There are rival sects within Islam, and there are also multiple schools of thought on the body of laws known as sharia. But does the outlook of jihadists have nothing to do with Islam?

That’s the strong claim we hear in many of the post-9/11 speeches of George W. Bush (here, here, and here, to give just three examples). Bush went so far as to describe them as “traitors to their own faith.” The view has persisted. In 2014, after the Islamic State slaughtered an American citizen, President Barack Obama stated that the group’s “actions represent no faith, least of all the Muslim faith.”

The claim that some interpretation of Islam (or another religion) is a departure from, a perversion, or a “hijacking” of the one true faith relies on a dubious assumption. It counts on the assumption that religious dogma — by definition lacking objective, empirical foundation — lends itself to one definitive interpretation. Conflicting and warring sects may each hold that view, but from the vantage point of the outsider, we see that there is no way to answer which is the true version of, say, Christianity or Islam.

To evaluate whether the Islamist movement is deeply rooted in Islam’s teachings and ideas, we need to approach the issue differently. We need to look at whether the movement’s views, agenda, and actions constitute an intelligible interpretation of Islamic books and historic doctrines. Put another way, the question to ask is whether the views and injunctions that jihadists take away from their reading of Islamic texts mesh with the religion’s commonly recognized teachings — or fly in the face of those religious teachings by denying, for instance, mankind’s fundamental duty of submission to religious authority.

The answer we find is that what the leaders of the Islamist movement call for connects to commonly recognized teachings of Islam. Let’s compare three key features of the outlook of Islamic totalitarians with commonly identified teachings of the religion of Islam. Take the Islamist demand for (1) submission to Allah’s law; (2) the universal scope of sharia law; and (3) expanding the dominion of Islam. For an account of Islam’s teachings, let’s consult John L. Esposito’s college textbook, Islam: The Straight Path (Oxford University Press, 3rd ed.). Esposito is a noted scholar of Islam at Georgetown University, and his book is a sympathetic account of the religion.

1. Submission

“Despite the rich diversity in Islamic practice,” writes Esposito, “the Five Pillars of Islam remain the core and common denominator, the five essential and obligatory practices all Muslims accept and follow.”11 From Esposito’s discussion of the Five Pillars, we can observe that the sum of these supreme duties is to effect and demonstrate the believer’s complete submission to authority.

The first pillar is the call upon a Muslim (“one who surrenders”) to proclaim: “There is no god but the God [Allah] and Muhammad is the messenger of God.” With this acknowledgement, writes Esposito, “a person professes his or her faith and becomes a Muslim.”12

The second pillar is to reaffirm this commitment through prayer, five times a day.

The third pillar is the obligation of alms-giving (zakat): “All adult Muslims who are able to do so are obliged to pay a wealth tax annually”; Esposito goes on to explain: “This is not regarded as charity since it is not really voluntary but instead owed, by those who have received their wealth as a trust from God’s bounty, to the poor. The Quran (9:60) and Islamic law stipulate that alms are to be used to support the poor, orphans, and widows, to free slaves and debtors, and to assist in the spread of Islam.”13

The fourth pillar is the annual fast of Ramadan, when Muslims refrain from eating, drinking, and sex, from dawn to dusk, for a month.

The fifth pillar is the duty to make a pilgrimage (the Hajj) to Mecca, incumbent on males.14

What do these obligations add up to? We can see that to practice his religion, the believer is duty bound to bow continually before Allah; reaffirm his submission five times a day; cross oceans and continents in pilgrimage to demonstrate unwavering faith; sacrifice worldly values and efface personal desires in the name of devotion to the supernatural master.

All of this hinges on a belief grounded only on faith. To have faith means to believe without evidence (and despite counter-evidence), to suspend one’s own perception and rational judgment. The faithful individual is required to put the dictates of religious authority above his or her own grasp of facts. He must learn that he is not a sovereign individual; Allah alone is sovereign, and man must bow to religious authority. What this moral code offers is guidance on how one can achieve the ideal of becoming a servant of Allah.

Islam demands the individual’s submission to religious authority. Fundamentally, leaders of the Islamist movement also call for mankind to submit to religious authority. Listen, for example, to Sayyid Qutb:

The theoretical foundation of Islam, in every period of history, has been to witness “La ilaha illa Allah” — “There is no deity except God” — which means to bear witness that the only true deity is God, that He is the Sustainer, that He is the Ruler of the universe, and that He is the Real Sovereign; to believe in Him in one’s heart, to worship Him Alone, and to put into practice His laws. Without this complete acceptance of ‘‘La ilaha illa Allah,” which differentiates the one who says he is a Muslim from a non-Muslim, there cannot be any practical significance to this utterance, nor will it have any weight according to Islamic law.

Theoretically, to establish it means that people should devote their entire lives in submission to God, should not decide any affair on their own, but must refer to God’s injunctions concerning it and follow them. We know of God’s guidance through only one source, that is, through the Messenger of God — peace be on him. Thus, in the second part of the Islamic creed, we bear witness “Wa ashhadu anna Muhammadar Rasul Allah” — “And I bear witness that Muhammad is the Messenger of God.”15

If the Five Pillars form the core of Islam, is not Qutb’s one intelligible interpretation of their meaning and application?

2. Universality of Sharia

Islam provides a body of laws, or sharia, derived mainly from the Koran and interpretations of sayings and deeds attributed to Mohammad.16 Esposito explains:

Law in Islam is both universal and egalitarian. The Sharia is believed to be God’s law for the entire Islamic community, indeed for all humankind. In the final analysis, God is the sovereign ruler of the world, head of the human community, and its sole legislator. As a result, Islamic law is as much a system of ethics as it is law, for it is concerned with what a Muslim ought to do or ought not to do. All acts are ethically categorized as: (1) obligatory; (2) recommended; (3) indifferent or permissible; (4) reprehensible but not forbidden; or (5) forbidden. To break the law is a transgression against both society and God, a crime and a sin; the guilty are subject to punishment in this life and the next. The idealism of the law can be seen in the fact that ethical categories such as recommended and reprehensible were not subject to civil penalties. Islamic law is also egalitarian; it transcends regional, family, tribal, and ethnic boundaries. It does not recognize social class or caste differences. All Muslims, Arab and non-Arab, rich and poor, black and white, caliph and craftsman, male and female, are bound by Islamic law as members of a single, transnational community or brotherhood of believers.

The belief that Islamic law was a comprehensive social blueprint was reflected in the organization and content of law.17

Notice in Esposito’s description how morality and political life are united (the breaking of religious law is both a sin and a crime).

The Islamists agree that Islam’s embrace must be universal, and that the Koran answers the needs of mankind. For example, Qutb notes that “The distinctive feature of a Muslim community is this: that in all its affairs it is based on worship of God alone.”18 Islamists argue that Muslims and their rulers have strayed from the requirements of piety by adopting man-made laws, which are morally corrupting, instead of recognizing that sovereignty belongs only to Allah.

For the Islamist movement, the universality of Islam means that it must encompass all of a believer’s existence but also the existence of non-believers. It must span all of Allah’s creations. Mawdudi, for example, argued that a sharia regime cannot be limited in its scope: “Its approach is universal and all-embracing. Its sphere of activity is coexistent with the whole of human life.”19 Qutb echoes that theme: Islam, he writes, “addresses itself to the whole of mankind, and its sphere of work is the whole earth. God is the sustainer not merely of the Arabs, nor is His providence limited to those who believe in the faith of Islam. God is the Sustainer of the whole world.”20

3. Expanding the dominion of Allah’s law

The call to fight unbelievers in order to expand Islam’s earthly dominion flows out of Koranic statements, and it is reflected in the example of the Prophet Mohammad, whose actions are widely seen as embodying the true path. For example, the Koran (9:29) states: “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, [even if they are] of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.”21

And in practice, during the last nine years of his life, Mohammad is “recorded as having participated in at least twenty-seven campaigns and deputized some fifty-nine others — an average of no fewer than nine campaigns annually.”22 Islam’s vast empire grew under the shadow of the sword. Mohammad’s successors marched on.

Fighting unbelievers in order to expand Islam’s earthly dominion is precisely what Islamic totalitarians seek to do. That’s what the Islamic State sought to do, a point evident in the lengthy passage I quoted earlier. Long before the Islamic State eclipsed Al Qaeda, and before both were household names, the Islamist movement’s standard-bearer was, and largely remains, the Iranian regime.

“The Iranian revolution,” declared Ayatollah Khomeini, “is not exclusively that of Iran, because Islam does not belong to any particular people. . . . We will export our revolution throughout the world because it is an Islamic revolution. The struggle will continue until the calls ‘there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah’ are echoed all over the world.”23

Islamists demand total submission to sharia, they believe sharia’s scope to be universal, and their widest aim is to enforce religious tyranny, everywhere. Does that fundamental end, and the idea of fighting to achieve it, fly in the face of Islamic teaching? No. Does the Islamist movement’s interpretation intelligibly flow out of Islam? Yes.

The Islamists constitute an ideological movement deeply rooted in Islam. We should believe jihadists, then, when they tell us that they are Muslims. But while all jihadists are Muslims, it’s plainly false that all Muslims are jihadists. Rather, the Islamist movement is a subset within the community of people who profess the religion of Islam. Clearly, even though all Muslims are expected to accept the Koran, only some — the jihadists — hold and practice their interpretation of Islam as a totalitarian ideological-political cause.

To put this point into even sharper focus, let’s consider two contrasting views which I brought up earlier in this essay. Each in its own way pushes back on the idea that Islamic ideas are fundamental to the nature and aim of this movement. One blurs ideas and race; the other plays down or negates the role of religious ideas and tells us to look to material factors, such as political or economic issues, as fundamental. Let’s take each of these in turn.

It’s not about heredity; it is a chosen religious-political worldview

It’s true and important that many, many jihadists were born into families and communities that are Muslim. That fact, however, is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition of becoming a follower of the Islamist movement. It’s not about genetic lineage (an unchosen group membership); it’s about what is being taught and a recruit’s chosen embrace of a religious-political worldview.

You can see that from the cases of individuals who’ve chosen to join — and from some who reject — the movement. For example, Maajid Nawaz was born in the UK to a Pakistani family. Not particularly religious when he encountered the Islamist movement, he became deeply involved in it and worked for some years as a recruiter for the cause. But he eventually turned his back on the movement and renounced it.24

By contrast, John Walker Lindh was raised in Maryland and in Marin County, California; his father is Catholic and his mother, a follower of Buddhism. Having converted to Islam, he went on to read Islamist materials, and made his way to Afghanistan before 9/11, where he trained at an Al Qaeda camp and took up arms alongside the Taliban.

The Islamic State trumpeted the fact that it attracted converts from Christianity who emigrated to live and fight under its black flag. In the July 2016 issue of its magazine Dabiq, for example, the Islamic State featured one former Christian from Trinidad, another from Finland.

Yet many people today fail to understand that the Islamist movement is an ideological phenomenon — that its followers are fundamentally driven by a set of religious ideas about life, the world, and the good.

No one is born a follower of any religion or ideological cause — whether Islam, Christianity, Judaism, or Marxism. These are belief systems that an individual must come to adopt. An individual may well do so passively, conforming with the flow of the people and culture around them; but it remains the case that they can choose to question that ideological outlook and reject it.

Observe an important implication of this point, which relates to the widespread lack of understanding about the Islamist movement.

Clearly it’s essential that we analyze, discuss, criticize and morally judge this ideological movement, just as we must every ideological movement, secular or supernatural. In doing so, we’re evaluating a set of ideas and the people who choose to embrace them. That’s in sharp contrast with racial, tribal, or xenophobic condemnations of groups of people, which is obviously wrong.

If we recognize this critical distinction, then we should reject the increasingly prevalent idea of “Islamophobia.” This deliberately confusing term seeks to shut down critical analysis of the Islamist movement and its ideas by smearing such discussion as inherently prejudiced against Muslims, or worse.

No one seeking to combat prejudice toward Muslims can honestly believe that that problem can be solved by silencing discussion of the Islamist movement and entrenching the cultural ignorance already besetting this issue.

Fundamentally, it’s religious ideas, not political or economic factors, that animate the Islamist movement

Let’s turn now to a contrasting view that would seem to loosen, if not fully sever, the fundamental causal link between jihadists and their religious worldview. The Islamists quote holy texts, but (on this line of thinking) their ideological outlook is not what ultimately motivates them. Instead, we should look to material factors, such as political or economic issues, as fundamental drivers of the movement.25

What makes this perspective plausible? Consider two salient points: (1) Some followers are poor, and the Islamist ideologues themselves invoke political grievances in their manifestos and in recruitment propaganda. (2) Some followers of the movement seemingly lack deep knowledge of religious ideas.

Certainly, some jihadists, in some parts of the world, come from desperate poverty. Note, however, that many other people around the world face similar, if not worse, circumstances, but few of them become holy warriors. You can also find eager jihadists who are well-educated, raised in middle-class homes in some of the world’s freest, most-advanced countries.26

Islamist tracts, recruitment materials, and propaganda videos do invoke various political grievances. For example, bin Laden’s infamous 1996 “Declaration of Jihad” against America decried the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia. It also emphasized the issue of “Palestine,”27 which has been all over various jihadist propaganda, for years.28 Islamists have leveraged these claims (along with various others) to recruit for their jihad.

But when we take a closer look, it becomes clear that such grievances are effective precisely because of a fundamental religious narrative that frames them. In that story there is a cosmic struggle for a “just” world, one subservient to religious dogma. The crux of that is the striving of the faithful (Islamists) against the unbelievers (impious Muslims, apostates, infidels, atheists; particularly in the West). Within that framework, a great many issues and conflicts can actuate new recruits, who see themselves as part of a global Muslim community (or, “umma”).

Here are some emotional-ideological “buttons” that the Islamists have pushed in order to galvanize, recruit, and draw people into the movement. The fight against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, during the 1980s, attracted a significant influx of foreign holy warriors (Osama bin Laden among them). The Bosnia conflict, during the 1990s, was another trigger, because Muslims were targeted.29 In his memoir Maajid Nawaz recounts how seeing videos of Muslims being slaughtered in the Bosnia conflict inflamed him. The victims were all strangers to him, but they belonged to a global Muslim community, and Nawaz felt impelled to fight for the redemption of his co-religionists.30 The bond of collective religious solidarity was that strong. During the mid-2010s, the rise of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria proved an even more powerful magnet for international jihadists; one of its themes was the sectarian hostility toward non-Sunnis.

The common factor here is the specifically Islamist narrative that frames the worldview of recruits, manipulating their emotions. They are primed to feel a powerful solidarity with co-religionists throughout the world and to regard anything short of an all-encompassing Islamist regime as a metaphysical injustice that they must fight to rectify.

For example, in the case of the “Palestine” issue, the basic concern of Islamists is not any political grievance about Israeli borders, land-use policy, or alleged oppression of particular individuals.31 They demand not freedom and prosperity for Palestinians (or anyone else), but submission: Islamists seek to enslave the world — including Palestine — under Allah’s laws. Only conquering Israel and raising the flag of Islamic totalitarianism over Palestine and Jerusalem could satisfy them.32

The same applies to their framing of American foreign policy in the Middle East. The removal of American troops from the region would not pacify the Islamists, nor the cessation of American military strikes in Muslim lands, nor the halting of American backing for some of the region’s dictators. U.S Mideast policy is riddled with serious problems (which I’ve written about at length), but there’s no version of American policy in the region, and no genuine problems we might rectify, that Islamists would regard as unproblematic. Their basic objection is that we’re unbelievers, everything we do is an affront, and, in the end, it is they who should dominate, everywhere, in the name of religious totalitarianism.

Consider how the Islamic State explained this point in its magazine Dabiq. Among the reasons for hating and fighting to overthrow the West’s secular, liberal societies, the article lists American foreign policy, but stresses how that is a derivative factor.

What’s important to understand here is that although some might argue that your foreign policies are the extent of what drives our hatred, this particular reason for hating you is secondary, hence the reason we addressed it at the end of the above list. The fact is, even if you were to stop bombing us, imprisoning us, torturing us, vilifying us, and usurping our lands, we would continue to hate you because our primary reason for hating you will not cease to exist until you embrace Islam. Even if you were to pay jizyah and live under the authority of Islam in humiliation, we would continue to hate you. No doubt, we would stop fighting you then as we would stop fighting any disbelievers who enter into a covenant with us, but we would not stop hating you.

What’s equally if not more important to understand is that we fight you, not simply to punish and deter you, but to bring you true freedom in this life and salvation in the Hereafter, freedom from being enslaved to your whims and desires as well as those of your clergy and legislatures, and salvation by worshiping your Creator alone and following His messenger.33

What, then, are we to make of the fact that some followers of the Islamist movement appear to lack substantive knowledge of religious doctrine? One anecdote that’s taken to illustrate the point: before setting out for the battlefront in Syria, two British would-be jihadists ordered copies of Islam For Dummies and The Koran for Dummies.

Leaving anecdotes to one side, researchers have found that recruits certainly have varied profiles. Peter Neumann and his colleagues at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at King’s College, London, found that recruits bound for the Islamic State fell into three broad categories: “defenders” who were devout and seeking to protect co-religionists; “seekers” attracted to the jihadist counterculture, which met their “need for identity, community, power and a feeling of masculinity”; and “hangers-on” who join because the leader of their social circle decided to.34

Should we be surprised if some, many, or most of the tens of thousands of recruits who flocked to join the Islamic State were drawn by the desire for a pseudo self-esteem as heroes for the cause, a source of religiously endorsed self-worth and identity? Should we be surprised that for some the appeal lies in the opportunity to live out a video-game fantasy where they actually get to murder people? None of that should be surprising; it makes sense that such abhorrent specimens of humanity would gravitate to a movement seeking domination.

More broadly, it’s a feature of ideological movements that they tend to attract people of varying levels of understanding, from the ardently committed to those whose understanding of the cause is shallow. Was every last warrior for communism a theoretician, or deeply versed in Marxism, or qualified to interpret the sacred theory of dialectical materialism? Clearly, no. What defines the Islamist movement is its over-arching ideological-political end.

Why it matters that we grasp the enemy’s ideological character

If we are to develop anything like a sensible policy response to the Islamist threat, we need to begin by conceptualizing it as an ideological movement. This has at least two major implications.

First, we need to take a wide-angle perspective. There are many Islamist groups, factions, organizations, regimes. Among them, there are differences over doctrine, sect, tactics, even strategic priorities. And they fight among themselves, a lot, and brutally. For example, Saudi Arabia is hostile to the Islamic State, and both revile Iran. They jockey over who is more pious, and who will dominate where. Yet what unites all of them — along with the Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbollah, Hamas, Boko Haram, and still others — is their common ideological goal.

Second, a crucial feature of this movement is that particular regimes — notably Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, and above all, Iran — are central to it.35 The Iranian regime has been the movement’s spearhead, galvanizing the Islamist cause.

The Muslim Brotherhood, a foundational group in the movement, started in Egypt in the 1920s, but accomplished little. What supercharged the jihadist cause was the 1979 Iranian revolution. That shockwave brought to power in Tehran an Islamic totalitarian regime determined to export its ideological revolution. Iran was such an inspiration because it made the Islamist cause seem achievable. Iran armed, trained, and funded Lebanese Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad. It has backed insurgent groups in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, in its own way, the Saudi regime has nourished the Islamist cause. The Saudis invested millions of dollars setting up religious schools, distributing books, and proselytizing across the globe for its preferred strain of Islamic totalitarianism. Saudi money funds various jihadist groups, including the Taliban.

And the Gulf states, for their part, have bankrolled their favored jihadist factions. Qatar, for example, is a backer of Hamas.36

Absent the inspiration and material backing of these regimes; absent the galvanizing spectacle of real-life, functioning Islamist regimes such as in Iran and elsewhere; the jihadist cause would have amounted to little more than a bunch of seething pamphleteers and ineffectual revolutionaries. Such regimes make the ideal actuating the jihadists appear righteous, potent, practical.

With that understanding, we can define a policy response that directs the full range of our diplomatic and military resources toward eliminating these regimes. Without that understanding? Take a look at the confused mess that has been our Mideast policy for upwards of two decades.

Prior to September 11, American policy was prone to a fragmented, myopic outlook. The 9/11 attacks came as a surprise, but they should not have. Islamists had tried to bring down the Twin Towers before, in 1993, using a truck bomb. Nor was that the only jihadist attack prior to 9/11; in my book Winning the Unwinnable War, I describe how the road to 9/11 was punctuated by an escalating sequence of violent attacks. Our policymakers and leaders viewed the threat as a series of crises, to be dealt with in the moment, without wider, ideological context. There were many dots, and we recognized each as a problem, but we failed to connect those many dots to see the bigger picture: the common ideas animating the Islamist movement.

Earlier, I pointed out how George W. Bush continually insisted that jihadists were motivated by something other than religious ideas. Bush’s perspective denied the common denominator uniting the Islamist movement. This was a factor in his evasion of the fundamental centrality of Iran and Saudi Arabia to the movement. Despite some of Bush’s rhetoric about going after those who harbor and support the “terrorists,” recall that Iran and Saudi Arabia were not merely omitted from the “Global War on Terrorism”; Saudi Arabia was affirmed a loyal ally, and, eventually, Bush sought to engage Iran in diplomatic negotiations. After scattering the jihadists in Afghanistan, the focal point of Bush’s response became Iraq — a regime that had little to do with the Islamist cause.37

The Obama administration, vowing to avoid Bush’s failures, reverted to a kind of hyper narrow conception of the threat (our enemy is Al Qaeda! no, it’s ISIS!). This conception was drained of ideological substance; a person becomes a “violent extremist,” we were told, mainly because of political grievances and economic privation.38 By playing down the role of ideas, by viewing the problem as consisting of many disparate groups, factions, regimes, rather than a movement united by an ideological outlook, Obama’s policy saw no contradiction in seeking to combat “terrorists” while also engaging leading regimes within the movement, chiefly Saudi Arabia and Iran.

The Trump administration has no coherent view of the problem. Trump has at times used the term “Radical Islamic terrorism,” but he has also implied that the problem is in some sense all Muslims (for example, recall the openness to creating a Muslim registry). Furthermore, he’s put great emphasis on the fact that certain attackers were “outsiders” — that they did not share his (or, in his view, “our”) Anglo-Saxon identity (notice Trump’s repeated emphasis on the fact that some attackers were immigrants or the American-born children of immigrants).39 This blurring of ideas and racial identity obscures the crucial fact that we’re dealing with an ideological movement, one that individuals must come to embrace by choice (rather than belong to through heredity). Among other things, this means that those who adopt and advance this ideology can — and must — be evaluated morally. But notice that, like his predecessors, Trump is not only willing to (re)negotiate with Iran, but is also friendly with Saudi Arabia.

From these sketches of how we’ve approached the problem, you see that by putting out of focus the nature and goals of the Islamists, we end up with inconsistent, short-term, immoral, and, in the end, ineffectual policy. And it is our persistent failure to confront Islamic totalitarianism that helps explain the durable appeal of this cause. That’s reflected not only in the masses who flocked to live under the Islamic State, but also in the ability of that group and of Al Qaeda to actuate independent, so-called lone-wolf jihadists to carry out attacks on their own initiative. Central to that phenomenon is the appeal of furthering a cause that the jihadists continue to see as viable.

For many years now, our approach to the problem has been deeply flawed. We had no clear idea of the nature of the problem, and we persuaded ourselves of explanations that were worse than superficial, fixating on non-essential features.

But it’s well within our capability to end this menace. Any sensible response to the jihadist threat requires that we confront not only the salient factions but also, and especially, the regimes at its forefront.

To formulate a workable plan for achieving that goal, we must start by grasping clearly the nature of our enemy.

Marc Andreessen, a legendary venture capitalist, helped shape some of the defining companies of the last two decades — Airbnb, Coinbase, Facebook, Skype — and has assumed the role of thought-leader. When Andreessen speaks about what it takes to succeed as an entrepreneur, people listen closely and emulate.

So, naturally, his comments on David Senra’s podcast trashing “introspection” blew up online, with Elon Musk and many others applauding. Andreessen sees “introspection” as a problem, a genuine blocker to success, because it leads us to “feel guilty” and “dwell on the past,” stagnating unproductively in fear and doubt.

For accomplished entrepreneurs like Andreesen and Musk, it seems, constant action is an imperative and “introspection” just slows them down. But do we really have to choose between stagnation induced by introspection and a life of achievement without self-knowledge?

Those who think we face this choice misunderstand introspection. In fact, it is crucial for an action-oriented and productive life to understand oneself deeply.

Introspection is the “examination of one’s own thoughts and emotions.”1 It means identifying what one knows or doesn’t, what evidence one has, what assumptions one is making, etc. It also means identifying one’s emotions and their causes, allowing one to evaluate one’s motives for action. It’s a demanding task that can easily err and must be consistently practiced. Thus, it’s a much broader and more important phenomenon than Andreessen suggests.

Andreesen makes two serious errors in characterizing introspection.

First, the idea that introspection means “dwelling on the past” falsely equates introspection with rumination, i.e., obsessing over distressing thoughts. Rumination is problematic: for instance, one might obsessively dwell on having turned down a promising job at a startup because of fear of failure. In such a case, one might repeatedly think to oneself, “I wish I had chosen differently” or “I gave into failure at that moment.” But such rumination is unhealthy introspection, since it involves dwelling on one’s mistake without a clear purpose. To properly address this mistake, healthy, purposeful introspection is needed, that is, asking if and why one acted from fear, to what extent one’s fear was justified, given what one knew at the time, and so on, in order to improve one’s choices and character going forward.

Second, introspection doesn’t mean “feeling guilty” and not doing anything about it. Some introspection generates guilt one should feel, as in the above example, if one irrationally gave into fear. Here, accepting responsibility for giving into fear helps correct the mistake that generated earned guilt, allowing one to move forward in a productive career — perhaps by seeking ambitious opportunities in the future despite feeling some trepidation at doing so. In such cases, this introspective work is not done at once but requires an ongoing process of identification and revision. If one defaults on that work, one will likely continue to act from fear and miss great opportunities.

However, guilt can be “unearned,” if it results from doing no wrong. For instance, suppose that one feels guilt for pursuing a career as an engineer when one’s parents expected one to pursue medicine. In this case, it’s crucial to examine and revise the premises that generate the unearned guilt. For example, one might identify the false premise that “one should meet one’s parents’ expectations, no matter what,” or identify that one has always had an irrational fear of disappointing one’s parents. Correcting the false premise and overcoming the fear clears the way to take proper pride in one’s career, which is crucial to sustaining it. The introspective work involved here is also crucial for a healthy relationship to one’s parents, one not dictated by fear or guilt. Such work can take years to execute correctly — and many default on this task.

By characterizing introspection as obsessively dwelling on feelings of guilt, there is a danger that what Andreesen wants is to exempt entrepreneurs from judging the morality of their own actions. But no one is exempt from this responsibility. Elon Musk should think about the truth and effect of some of what he posts online. Andreesen should think about his role in the DOJ’s persecution of Microsoft in the 2000s. To do so, and to change course and make amends when necessary, is not to pointlessly dwell on the past.

And when one looks at the careers of great entrepreneurs, one characteristic that stands out is their willingness to constantly question themselves and their ideas, at least in business.

Successful entrepreneurs need to know their purpose. For example, consider Jeff Bezos’s “regret-minimization framework,” in which he projects himself at 80 and reflects on what he would like to have done with his life.2 Bezos employed this framework early on, when he needed to identify whether working at an established hedge fund in New York was more meaningful to him than pursuing a new vision as an entrepreneur. Was his dream of entrepreneurship just a fantasy or something he could really carry out? Did he have the right temperament to deal with the massive uncertainty in entrepreneurship? Could he really be happy staying in the hedge fund world? Answering these questions required identifying his motivations, what he knew, considering what he cared most deeply about, and projecting what kind of person he wanted to become. Ultimately, this introspective work led him to refocus his life to transforming the online customer shopping experience, and channel all his efforts to that one goal.

Billionaire investor Ray Dalio practices what he calls “pain + reflection.” When painful mistakes happen, Dalio uses that pain as an opportunity for active reflection, to understand what happened and how to learn from it.3 For instance, Dalio reflected deeply when he nearly ruined himself in the early 1980s, operating on the flawed assumption that Mexican banks would default on U.S. loans. Instead of simply dwelling in shame or self-doubt, he worked to identify his flawed assumptions and better identify the state of his own knowledge. He realized that although he was right that too much money had been lent to Mexican banks, he was not in a position to predict that the outcome would be the banks defaulting on those loans. Thus, he changed his approach, carefully self-monitoring what he was actually certain of and what he wasn’t — an approach that’s impossible without introspection. His career was forever changed: He credits his masterful awareness of uncertainty in markets over time for much of his success as an investor.4

Few would consider Sam Walton (discussed in the aforementioned podcast) to be an exemplar of introspection. But if introspection is an ongoing and active self-awareness of one’s thoughts and motivations, Walton did it intensively in developing Walmart’s philosophy. He spent years studying what allowed other discount-style supermarkets to succeed or fail, and concluded that a company can lower markup while earning more with increasing volume.5 To reach this conclusion, Walton had to constantly consider whether his assumptions were warranted or not, by asking questions such as: Do I really know whether investing in distribution systems is unimportant? Do I have evidence that stores can only succeed in big cities? Am I sure that high margins are necessary for high profits? None of the answers are obvious or easy to apply. But without this introspective questioning, merely observing market conditions or taking on conventional assumptions would not have led to Walton’s distinctive approach.

There is no escape from the need to introspect. Without introspection, one consigns oneself to a life of ignorance, leaving one’s inner self a mystery. Imagine a Jeff Bezos who never asked himself what he truly wanted, a Ray Dalio who never asked himself what premise led him to his crucial error, or a Sam Walton who never questioned his (or others’) assumptions. Identifying your own knowledge and purposes, analyzing your emotions, and integrating them appropriately with action is crucial not just in business but across life. It’s through introspection that one learns from mistakes, focuses on achieving one’s deepest purposes, and builds character with integrity.

Since September 11, 2001, the Ayn Rand Institute has commented extensively (via articles, books, interviews, lectures, and podcasts) on why the 9/11 attacks happened, how America should have responded, and why — 25 years and three wars later — the United States still fails to confront Islamic totalitarianism.

ARI’s analysis of 9/11 and its aftermath has proven tragically accurate. To mark 25 years since the attacks, we are pleased to announce the publication of the third, expanded edition of Failing to Confront Islamic Totalitarianism, which includes short essays on October 7 and the war in Iran, and we invite you to join us for two special events.

• On September 2, 2026, we will host a live broadcast of the Ayn Rand Institute podcast on the meaning and impact of 9/11 with Yaron Brook, Elan Journo, and Onkar Ghate, the Institute’s three leading experts on these issues.

• On September 11, 2026, we will livestream lectures on 9/11 by Onkar Ghate and Elan Journo from our U.S. student conference in Austin.

To watch these livestreams — and to receive a free digital copy of the new third edition of Failing to Confront Islamic Totalitarianism — please register here.

Below you’ll find the preface to the book’s new edition.

Preface to the Third Edition of Failing to Confront Islamic Totalitarianism: What Went Wrong After 9/11

On August 15, 2021, the Taliban walked into Kabul. While American military planes evacuated from Hamid Karzai International Airport, frantic Afghans ran along the tarmac, clinging desperately to the fuselage and landing gear; as one of the aircraft left the ground, some fell to their deaths. After twenty years of war, trillions of dollars, and thousands of lives, America had let the jihadists return to power, triumphant.

The self-delusion in Washington reached a new nadir. The world’s superpower had failed to defeat a vastly weaker enemy, but President Joe Biden described the humiliating American withdrawal as an “extraordinary success.” Apologists told us that the Taliban, which had hosted the 9/11 planners, had “moderated,” even as they re-imposed religious control and the subjugation of women.

The Afghanistan retreat, echoing the Fall of Saigon in 1975, was another ignominious effect of the fundamental problem subverting American foreign policy. This book exposes that problem: the influence of irrational philosophic ideas, which led to the persistent evasion of the enemy’s nature and the lack of moral clarity America needs to act assertively in its self-defense.

The intellectual-moral weakness of America, and of other free societies, encourages the Islamist movement. At its peak, the Islamic State established a “caliphate,” in parts of Syria and Iraq, that attracted thousands of zealous recruits from North America and Europe. From its stronghold, the Islamic State directly and indirectly inspired attacks in Paris, Orlando, and Manchester. Even after its collapse, jihadists attempted to carry out murderous attacks: the Salman Rushdie stabbing in Chautauqua, New York (2022), the plot targeting Taylor Swift concerts in Vienna, Austria (2024), and the deadly shooting spree at Bondi Beach, in Sydney, Australia (2025).

But the most significant jihadist attack since this book’s last edition was the air, sea, and land assault from the Hamas-governed Gaza Strip into southern Israel on October 7, 2023. Palestinians loyal to Hamas massacred some 1,200 people in a single day and seized 251 more as hostages. The killers gleefully filmed themselves committing atrocities.

The reaction to October 7 in the United States, Canada, and Europe was itself revealing. During a livestream podcast on October 7, one of us (Elan) predicted that the world’s immediate sympathy would give way to accusations of Israeli war crimes, once the conflict stalemated or otherwise resolved. That prediction was partly wrong; the sympathy lasted not weeks but mere hours.

By the next morning, a statement co-signed by some thirty student groups at Harvard University had gone viral. These students held “the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” Mass rallies soon clogged the streets of major cities and world capitals. Student protests brought universities to a standstill. Demonstrators shut down roads and bridges.

Hamas called its invasion the al Aqsa Flood. Another morally obscene deluge poured into the streets of major cities and the campuses of elite universities in the West, where activists blamed the Israeli victims and whitewashed their Palestinian murderers.

The October 7 backlash affirmed the wider theme of this book: the fundamental role of philosophic ideas in shaping culture (and thus foreign policy). The widespread unwillingness to face Hamas’s Islamist nature has to be understood in the context of two decades of intellectuals and politicians evading that religious ideology and enforcing a taboo on any discussion of it. This evasion was a signature policy of George W. Bush, who insisted that the 9/11 killers had “hijacked” Islam, that it was a religion of “peace.” A second, deeper contributing factor: the anti-freedom, anti-capitalist, anti-individualist ideas that universities have been inculcating for generations. (Here, one positive sign that we wrote about was the decision of prominent donors to withdraw their funding from universities in protest. See Part 7.)

The third major development since the last edition is enormously consequential, but also (at the time of writing) unresolved. On February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel went to war against the Islamic Republic of Iran.

For reasons identified in Dr. Leonard Peikoff’s essay “End States Who Sponsor Terrorism” and in our writings that follow, we regard an American war with Iran as a retaliatory act: a war of self-defense, decades overdue.

Predictably, however, this war has been fought without a clear objective. The proclaimed goals kept changing. A partial list:

• eliminate “imminent threats” from Iran and prevent it from gaining nuclear weapons (February 28, 2026);

• “destroy the missile threat, destroy the navy, no nukes” (Hegseth; March 2, 2026);

• “unconditional surrender” (Trump; March 6, 2026) to be determined not by the facts, but Trump’s say so;

• victory had occurred already in Trump’s view (March 7, 2026), so “We don’t need people [i.e., NATO allies] that join Wars after we’ve already won”;

• degrade Iran’s missile and nuclear capability, which Trump insisted after a 2025 bombing had been “obliterated”; on March 14, 2026, Trump stated that “We have already destroyed 100% of Iran’s military capability” even as the regime continued fighting back;

• “regime change” was a goal that Trump took credit for, with the killing of key Iranian leaders, but also claimed wasn’t the goal (April 21, 2026);

• a diplomatic bargain to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapon (2025; throughout Feb–May 2026) for which Trump was willing to negotiate with the Iranians, granting the regime what the Obama deal had likewise conceded: an undeserved moral legitimacy.

The administration failed to provide a coherent justification for the war and refused to seek congressional approval for it, violating the rule of law. As the president told one audience on March 25, 2026, “I won’t use the word ‘war’ because they say, if you use the word ‘war,’ that’s maybe not a good thing to do,” adding: “They don’t like the word ‘war,’ because you’re supposed to get approval, so I’ll use the word ‘military operation,’ which is really what it is.” Bothered by unfavorable media coverage of the war, Trump’s FCC chairman threatened to revoke the licenses of TV networks, violating the First Amendment.

Early on, Trump told the New York Times, “What we did in Venezuela, I think, is the perfect, the perfect scenario” for Iran. This was a reference to the forcible U.S. removal of Nicholas Maduro from power, leaving his cowed subordinates to govern under American oversight. Whereas Venezuela is run by thugs and gangsters, Iran is an ideologically driven regime. Failing to recognize that reality has been a central flaw in the Iran war.

The war’s conclusion remains to be seen. Clearly, the elimination of key leaders and the significant degradation of Iranian military capabilities are worthy accomplishments. By the April ceasefire, however, the regime had (predictably) seized the Straits of Hormuz to strangle the flow of cargo ships carrying oil. One major risk is that the war ends in a stalemate, which given our military superiority, would mean an American defeat. For the Iranian regime, surviving this war is a kind of victory.

Moreover, permitting Iran to exact tolls on ships in the Straits of Hormuz means affording it a new revenue source to fund its militant agenda. And a diplomatic agreement fixated on nuclear weapons capability — which appears to be an aim of the Trump administration — would be a regression to the Obama-era evasion of the regime’s Islamist nature, its sponsorship of jihadists, and its manifold other forms of aggression.

Unless Iran’s ideological goal is shown to be a lost cause, unless it and other Islamists are demoralized, unless they lose all hope of realizing their nihilistic agenda, we can expect the Iranian regime (and other jihadists) to seek to resume their holy war. That was one lesson of Israel’s disastrous “mowing the grass” policy in Gaza. A degraded but undefeated Hamas rebuilt and resumed the fight on October 7.

We published the first edition of this book in 2016, and the second, in 2021 during the Afghanistan withdrawal. Now, a quarter-century on from the 9/11 attacks, we issue a third. Our philosophic analysis has been proven correct, and we believe it needs to be heard.

Here briefly is the argument: The fundamental obstacle to defeating Islamic totalitarianism is not a deficit of military capability. The problem is philosophic. The prevailing moral idea of self-sacrifice has negated American self-confidence, and it has crippled the ability of our leaders and intellectuals to conceptualize the enemy and to define and pursue our self-interest. Irrational philosophic ideas have subverted the world’s greatest military force.

But we remain convinced that ending the Islamist menace is achievable — if the United States adopts, understands, and consistently acts on rational moral ideals.

***

Added to this edition are seven short essays on: the Afghanistan retreat; the 2022 “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests in Iran; the October 7 attacks and their aftermath; and the Iran war’s early phase. Also added as an afterword is an interview about ARI’s response to 9/11, why it was so important for the Institute to engage on this issue, and how our distinctive analysis is informed by the philosophy of Objectivism. Removed from this edition are lists of resources that can be found online.

To keep up with ARI’s ongoing intellectual work — podcasts, essays, books, and more — subscribe to email updates from our journal, New Ideal.

***

Finally, we wish to thank ARI’s donors for their support of the philosophic ideals that we hold in common, and for making possible our work on this crucial issue. We are grateful for their dedication to the Institute’s mission of advancing Objectivism. Special thanks to Jay Snider, for generous funding through his family foundations, and to Larry Berkelhammer, for his encouragement and generous support of our research and writing.

Elan Journo
Onkar Ghate
June 2, 2026

Since Zohran Mamdani’s shocking election to mayor of New York, candidates supported by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) have recently enjoyed significant victories. More generally, socialism is experiencing a resurgence, especially among younger voters. Why, after the horrors of 20th-century socialism in the Soviet Union, China, Venezuela, Cuba, and elsewhere, do people still support socialism?

In a recent, widely seen episode of the Ayn Rand Institute Podcast, Ben Bayer and I propose an answer that is contrary to many popular explanations. We observe that young socialists driving this resurgence are morally confident and determined in their vision, and this is no accident: From their perspective, morality is on their side. We suggest that a culture-wide commitment to the morality of altruism — according to which one has a duty to sacrifice to those in need —has led directly to a re-energized socialist movement.

Young people have heard all their lives that the needs of society outweigh the needs of individuals, and that we have a duty to serve others. What better way to make the individual subservient to society than to dismantle a system based on private property and profit? What better way to serve the needs of others than to expropriate the wealth of the successful to fund public housing, public grocery stores, and endless other social programs?

They’ve also heard all their lives that democracy is good and just — in essence, that if a majority votes on a policy, that makes it right. What could be more democratic than the democratic control of the economy that democratic socialism offers? If we can vote on whether we have more welfare or more progressive taxation, why not vote on whether private corporations can exist at all?

As to the history of socialism, these socialists don’t care — they will always believe their approach will be the one that “really works.” This helps show that the morality of altruism is a religious commitment: No one has ever rationally demonstrated why a human being should sacrifice values for others.

Thus, only a rejection of its faith-based moral foundation can defeat socialism. It is merely the consistent political implementation of altruism. As we have argued in previous podcasts, the only response that can succeed is one that rejects both altruism and unlimited majority rule (the true meaning of democracy) as evil and incompatible with human flourishing.

Watch the podcast here:

Image credit: Selcuk Acar / Anadolu via Getty Images

This article originally appeared in the Objectivist Forum, a bimonthly journal of ideas edited and published by Harry Binswanger, between February and April 1981. Copyright © 1981 by TOF Publications, Inc.; republished by permission.

Raphael’s painting “The School of Athens” portrays the great thinkers of Ancient Greece. Appropriately, the central figures dominating the scene are Plato and Aristotle. They are shown walking toward the viewer, engaged in earnest discussion. Raphael was able to convey the essential difference between these philosophic titans by means of the gestures they make: Plato crooks a finger toward the heavens, but Aristotle’s hand is stretched out, palm down, as if to bless the earth.

Whether or not Raphael understood it consciously, that is the root of the opposition between the two men and between the two world-views they represent: the mysticism of some “higher” dimension versus the commitment to life on this earth.

Since Copernicus and Galileo, it has become clear that Plato’s upthrust finger points only at the cold emptiness of outer space. Now that men have walked on the moon and laid bare the structure of the atom, mysticism has lost its credibility in the physical realm. But mysticism still haunts the realm of values. That realm has been fenced off as a special epistemological preserve which reason may not enter. Mysticism has distorted the very concepts used to make value-judgments. Many people who reject the metaphysics of the supernatural are yet victimized by the residual mysticism that infects their evaluative concepts. One concept particularly in need of philosophical disinfection is “perfection.”

We hear from all sides that perfection is an “impossible dream,” an ideal which always exceeds our grasp, and by doing so lures us on to ever greater achievements. In sanctimonious terms, Bertrand Russell pleads, “Let us admit that . . . the ideals to which we do and must adhere are not realized in the realm of matter. Let us preserve our respect for truth, for beauty, for the ideal of perfection which life does not permit us to attain.’’1 Religionists and atheists, liberals and conservatives, whim-worshippers and duty-worshippers — they all agree that “Nothing is perfect in this world.”

It is all perfect nonsense.

And it is dangerous nonsense. The idea that perfection is unattainable amounts to an assault on all values, on values as such. “Perfection,” as the mystics use that term, makes self-esteem impossible.

What is “perfection” supposed to mean? The Random House College Dictionary gives as one of its definitions of “perfect”: “excellent or complete beyond practical or theoretical improvement.”2 This definition represents pure mysticism: if only the unimprovable is perfect, then perfection would require omniscience — i.e., the beatific state of already knowing everything about everything, with no further improvements left to be discovered. What earthly purpose could justify using such an other-worldly standard of perfection?

The mystical version of perfection means that improvement retroactively debases that which was improved. This idea takes progress, which is actually the path from achievement to achievement, and converts it into a treadmill on which man moves from flaw to flaw, in a hopeless quest for the perfection that lies at infinity.

The dictionary is not to blame. It has reported accurately the legacy of mysticism that has become embedded in the term’s usage. Mysticism is so engrained in the concept that for many people the actual meaning of “perfect” is: supernaturally good. “Transcendence” is listed as a synonym for “perfection” in a standard thesaurus.3 On this view, to be is to be imperfect.

The philosopher who is primarily responsible for the mystical version of “perfection” is Plato. The essence of Plato’s philosophy is the positing of another, non-perceivable reality, a realm of static perfection, the world of ‘‘Forms.’’

“Platonic Forms are conceived as timeless and non-spatial objects, immutable entities set over against the changing world of sensible [i.e., sensorily perceivable] things. . . . Each [Form] is a perfect original, of which sensible things are imperfect copies.”4

Plato insisted that the perfection of an ideal, a Form, has nothing at all to do with the possibility of its attainment in this world. In the Republic, Plato asks us to imagine a painting of “the ideally beautiful man.” The perfection of his beauty, Plato holds, would not be diminished even if one were “not able to prove that it is actually possible for such a man to exist.”5 But if the painting depicts something that is contradictory to man’s nature, how can it be a representation of an ideal man? What is non-human human beauty?

Plato downgraded this world, but did not strip it of all value. That step awaited the advent of Christianity. In Christian doctrine, perfection was conceived as that which pertained to a higher reality of infinite goodness; man and this world were condemned as intrinsically evil. Accordingly, to say any man or human phenomenon can be perfect is to blaspheme God.

Historian W. T. Jones observes, “The orthodox determination to exalt God led inevitably to the conclusion that man is worthless, for to allow any value or significance to humanity was to derogate by just that amount from the majesty, perfection, and supreme value of God.”6

The practical result? “Since the perfection of the Deity gave the Christian an absolutely exalted ideal to aim at, the Christian always felt a sense of failure: No matter how good he was, he was not as good as he ought to be.”7

This is a correct description of the doctrine’s effect, but it is radically understated. To see the full effect on man’s self-estimate of Christianity’s impossible standards, one should consult the kind of pronouncements that came from the Church when it held absolute power and was free to bare its soul. Here, for instance, is a brief excerpt from On the Contempt of This World, written in the year 1198 A.D. by Pope Innocent III:

Man has been conceived in the desire of the flesh, in the heat of sensual lust, in the foul stench of wantonness. . . . he is destined to become the fuel of the everlasting, eternally painfull hellfire; the food of voracious, consuming worms. . . . reflecting upon the heavenly bodies he will become aware of his utter baseness. . . . Why are you proud, O mud? Wherefore art thou exalted? What are you, O ash, that you should boast?8

That naked hatred for man is the spiritual ancestor and undiluted version of today’s hayseed homily, “Nobody’s perfect in this world.”

After this sort of history, one may well question the basic validity of the term “perfection.” But the mystical-supernatural associations are not inextricably tied to the term (as they are to “saint,” for example). Is there any rational need for such a concept? Yes, provided one recognizes that “perfection” is a normative, not a metaphysical, concept.

Metaphysically, a thing is neither perfect nor imperfect — it simply is whatever it is. Apart from the goals, purposes, and values of a living being, there is no basis to rank things as “better” or “worse,” much less as “perfect” or “imperfect.” “Perfection” assumes an answer to the questions “Perfect—for what? By what standard?”

The actual meaning of “perfection” is: flawlessly complete satisfaction of a standard of value.

In its rational meaning, the concept of perfection denotes not the unimprovable but the best possible in a given context. If one has achieved a goal to the fullest extent possible in a given context, then the achievement is perfect, in the rational sense of that term. Subsequent improvements based on a wider range of knowledge or higher level of ability will not invalidate that achievement or subtract from its value: it remains perfect by the standards of the earlier context. Just as new knowledge cannot invalidate old knowledge, new achievements do not invalidate the old. Just as, in epistemology, certainty is contextual, so in the realm of values, perfection is contextual. Man can judge and act only within the context of the knowledge that is available to him. No standard can demand the impossible of reality or of man.

Further, one may distinguish between one’s personal standards of perfection and the standards defining the best possible to man as such. This is not subjectivism: one’s standard of perfectly achieving a given goal must be consistent with the facts of one’s own particular abilities, interests, knowledge, and hierarchy of values. For instance, the standard of perfect writing for a student in a fourth-grade English class is obviously not the same as that for a professional author. The contextual nature of such standards does not make perfection any the less objective or praiseworthy.

The one area in which the same standard of perfection applies to all men is morality.

In regard to moral values, the “imperfect” is not that which falls slightly short of the ideal, but that which betrays it altogether by instituting an immoral premise. It would be grossly misleading, for instance, to describe a man who tells the truth most of the time, but lies occasionally, as “imperfectly honest.” Such a man is simply dishonest.

In this sense, “moral perfection” is a redundancy. Moral principles do not admit of compromise. Either what is right is one’s supreme guide, or it is not. There is no such thing as an “almost supreme” principle — this phrase merely indicates that some other factor is supreme, and the principle enters, if at all, only as a secondary, dispensable consideration.

The term “perfection” as applied to morality serves the same purpose as the term “laissez-faire” when applied to capitalism. There is no other version of capitalism; if it is not laissez-faire capitalism, it is not capitalism. Likewise, if a choice is not morally perfect, it is not moral. But both terms are valuable for precisely their stress on the need for consistency. “Laissez-faire capitalism” means: the principle of capitalism (individual rights) carried through without exception to every political issue. “Moral perfection” means the principle of morality (the commitment to reason) carried through without exception to every choice one confronts. Since the need for this type of consistency is not self-evident, since it is only implicit in the nature of morality, the idea of’ “moral perfection” is profoundly valuable.

The concept of ‘‘perfection’’ is based on the need for precision and consistency in a value context. Eliminating this concept would act as an invitation for every form of the approximate, the uncompleted, the sloppy, and the subjective. This would be dangerous in any culture, but in an age like ours, when the educational system actively encourages sloppiness of thought and expression, when Pragmatist trial-and-error groping is considered “scientific” but adherence to principles is called “dogmatic,” when people do not pursue excellence but are “into” things (“I’m into acting”), the concept must not be abandoned to the mystics.

Rational perfection is determined by reference to a rational standard of value. The mystical idea of an unattainable perfection means that fantasy supplies the standard by which facts are to be held accountable. It means that the arbitrary contents of consciousness are that to which reality should (but stubbornly does not) yield. The philosophical term for this inversion is the primacy of consciousness.9

But “the primacy of consciousness” is almost too dignified a term here. To capture the perverse silliness of the use of impossible standards, imagine a man who designs an airplane, finds that it cannot get off the ground, and responds by blaming gravity for being too strong. In an ideal world, he muses, his airplane would fly — but the actual world is imperfect.

There is no difference in basic principle between such a man and those who hold equally impossible standards regarding man’s mind — such as the idea that to be perfect, one would have to be able to solve any problem immediately, never make an error of knowledge, never experience an out-of-context emotion, never feel fear or doubt, and always know just what to do in every situation. In all these cases, one is demanding the impossible of man. The fault lies not in man, but in the demand.

It would be a grave error to conclude from this that one has to settle for a second-best goal or lower one’s standards. That attitude represents a failure fully to reject the wrong standard — i.e., fully to accept reality. It means that one still regards the impossible as desirable, though not practical. The truth is that the impossible is, if anything, beneath the possible. It is not just that one should not “dream the impossible dream”: if it is truly impossible, it is not a dream but a nightmare.

The truly good is not a scaled-down, budget version of the fantasy good. One does not reach the truth by starting with fantasy, then making adjustments as a concession to “realism.” A rational man starts from reality — from what exists (actually and potentially) — and never casts a longing glance at the unreal.

The choice in regard to perfection is not: the hopeless quest for the unattainable or the abandonment of all ideals. The alternative is not the impossible dream versus cynical resignation. These irrational dilemmas are a manifestation of the wider false alternative that is ripping our culture apart: mysticism versus skepticism (or: intrinsicism versus subjectivism).

One side asserts that perfection is to be judged by the standards of the supernatural and concludes that perfection can be attained only in Heaven, not in this world. The other side agrees that perfection is to be judged by the standards of the supernatural but holds that Heaven is (probably) a myth and concludes that perfection cannot be attained anywhere. Both sides hold that without God man is doomed to failure, cognitively and morally; both hold that man qua man is an ignorant sinner.

It does no good to reject the mystics’ metaphysics while retaining their epistemology and ethics, i.e., to cling to other-worldly standards without the other world.

The truth is that proper, this-worldly standards are more demanding than standards which cannot be met — more demanding intellectually. Defining and applying rational standards takes a careful process of independent thought, while the mystical “standards” turn out to be simple-minded substitutes for mental effort: vague images, canned slogans, and floating abstractions. (The desire to escape mental effort is one reason why many people would rather demand the impossible of themselves than accept rational standards.)

The claim that perfection is impossible attempts to blame reality for the problems resulting from the cavalier misuse of concepts — from invalid definitions, equivocations, and “stolen concepts.” Consider three areas in which perfection is commonly believed to be unattainable.

1. Morality. The anti-perfection doctrine is most deeply entrenched and most disastrous in regard to morality. The impossibility of moral perfection is taken as a self-evident truth. But what is morality? Morality is “a code of values to guide man’s choices and actions.”10 Morality exists to evaluate the choices confronting man; the concept of “choice” logically precedes and delimits the scope of all moral concepts — including the concept of “moral perfection.” To speak of an impossible moral perfection is to violate this hierarchy of concepts, thus “stealing” the concept of “moral perfection” and engaging in self-contradiction. For if moral perfection is not merely rare but impossible, then man is saddled with some degree of unavoidable evil — i.e., an evil choice that he cannot stop himself from making — i.e., an unchosen choice.

Religionists often argue that to be morally perfect man would have to be metaphysically incapable of evil. Since man has free will, since he is free to choose between good and evil, he cannot attain moral perfection, they hold. This argument carries the “stolen concept” to its ultimate extreme: the factor that makes morality possible — free will — is held to be a violation of morality. The truth is that a being lacking the choice between good and evil would not be morally perfect, but amoral — i.e., outside the province of morality altogether.

In logic, the standard of morality must restrict moral evaluation to the issues over which man has volitional control. The Objectivist standard of morality, man’s survival qua man, recognizes this fact.

“Man’s survival qua man” means the terms, methods, conditions and goals required for the survival of a rational being through the whole of his lifespan-in all those aspects of existence which are open to his choice.11 (emphasis added)

The major cause of the near-universal belief that moral perfection is impossible lies in the specific version of morality that, since Kant, has monopolized the field: the code of self-sacrifice. The idea of a nonsacrificial morality is now treated as if it were a contradiction in terms. Philosophers today will tell you that principles to guide man in achieving his rational self-interest are by definition non-moral; such principles are matters of “prudence,” not of morality, they announce.

On the premise that morality equals self-sacrifice, it is easy to see why “moral perfection is impossible” is on everyone’s lips. The code of self-sacrifice is a code of self-destruction. To live is to violate the code. On this point, readers of Atlas Shrugged need no elaboration.

On a rational moral code, moral perfection is not merely possible, it is an absolute necessity. Since morality proceeds from the fundamental alternative man confronts — life or death — morality has first claim on a man’s choices, and nothing can justify the subordination of morality to any other consideration.

Discard that unlimited license to evil which consists of claiming that man is imperfect. By what standard do you damn him when you claim it? Accept the fact that in the realm of morality nothing less than perfection will do. But perfection is not to be gauged by mystic commandments to practice the impossible, and your moral stature is not to be gauged by matters not open to your choice. Man has a single basic choice: to think or not, and that is the gauge of his virtue. Moral perfection is an unbreached rationality . . .12

A “breached rationality,” or what Ayn Rand has called the “mixed economy of reason and emotion,” means the complete subordination of reason to emotion. Whenever a man elects to side with his emotions against his reason, his premise is, ‘‘I’ll go by reason — as long as my emotions permit it.” He establishes his feelings as the final authority that sets the domain in which his mind may operate. Unless he rejects that premise, reverses the priority, and commits himself to perfect rationality, the sphere in which he feels it is “safe” to be rational will constantly shrink, as his irrational feelings flex their muscles.

The literal mixed economy attempts to find a compromise between the opposite principles of freedom and force, but cannot succeed. The same is true of the moral “mixed economy” which seeks to find a compromise between the good and the evil, rather than to attain moral perfection.

2. Politics. Political freedom is a prime target of the anti-perfectionists. Man cannot be perfectly free, they maintain, because he is not omnipotent. His freedom of action is restrained by the limitations of his own capacities and by the laws of nature; his freedom to have what he wants is restricted by the fact that nature does not shower him with goods and that he must work in order to obtain values.

Moreover, they continue, man’s freedom from other men cannot be perfect because each man’s freedom conflicts with that of others. If I am to be free to do whatever I wish, then what becomes of your freedom when our desires conflict? What if, for instance, you and I both want the same job and only one of us can have it? What if I want to have your car, your money, your house? What if I want to enslave you? In all these cases of conflicting desires, they argue, at least one of us has to yield, surrendering thereby some or all of his freedom.

On the premise that perfect freedom is impossible, there is no difference in principle between capitalism and statism. Capitalists and statists are seen as differing merely over where they would draw the line between too few and too many restrictions on freedom. In fact, political “conservatives” argue in this manner that capitalism is the safe, moderate middle of the road between totalitarian dictatorship and the impossible dream of perfect freedom.

Sound inspiring? Ready to mount the barricades to defend “reasonable” restrictions on your freedom? Want to launch a crusade to preserve a “moderate” degree of enslavement?

This offensive nonsense results from accepting the irrational standard underlying the attack on perfect freedom. “Perfect freedom” is assumed to mean: the complete absence of obstacles to the fulfillment of one’s desires.

The irrationality of this standard lies in the fact that it subordinates reason to emotion. Desires are not irreducible primaries. They are the product of man’s value premises — premises which may be rational or irrational, consonant with or contradictory to the facts of reality. The fulfillment of a desire cannot be evaluated out of context; whim cannot serve as the basis for any political concept. When one evades that fact, the result is a definition by non-essentials, leading to exactly the sort of equivocations and confusions that characterize the anti-perfectionists’ stand on freedom.

The concept of political freedom does not pertain to man’s relationship to nature but to man’s relationship to man. The “obstacles” whose presence or absence the concept evaluates are man-made obstacles. The laws of nature are not “obstacles” to human action — but they are viewed as such by the irrationalist who takes his desires as the given, and only then turns to reality to see what it will “permit.”

(The word “freedom” can of course be used in a metaphorical or analogous sense to talk of freedom from pain, disease, etc., but then the word denotes a different concept. It is nothing but plain equivocation to switch from that concept to the political one, as the anti-perfection argument does.)

The actual obstacle whose absence is denoted by the concept of freedom — the thing a free man is free from — is coercive interference by other men. And the means by which coercion operates is physical force; only physical force can compel a man to act against his own judgment.

The issue of political freedom is not a primary. The alternative of freedom versus coercion arises only after one has arrived at the principle that man has a right to his life. On that foundation, one can proceed to identify the conditions which are necessary to implement man’s right to his life, including the fact that man must be free to act on his own judgment.

Since man survives by producing values, not by expropriating them, the notion of a “freedom” to rob, enslave, and murder is precluded at the outset. The idea that laws protecting individual rights restrict the “freedom” to commit criminal acts inverts the necessary hierarchical order and turns “freedom” into a “stolen concept.”

The best answer to the idea that absolute, perfect freedom is impossible was given almost 35 years ago by Ayn Rand: “Within the sphere of your own rights, your freedom is absolute.”13

3. Epistemology. Although the concept of “perfection” is primarily normative, assuming a standard of value, the term also has a wider usage. The dictionary gives the following additional meaning of “perfect”: “conforming absolutely to the description or definition of the type: a perfect sphere; a perfect gentleman.”14

The same anti-perfectionism crops up here. In fact, the alleged impossibility of a perfect sphere is a philosophical chestnut trotted out in every introductory philosophy course.

The argument is that no matter how nearly perfect a sphere seems to be, some deviation from perfect roundness will always be present. If an apparently perfect sphere, such as a (new) billiard ball, is examined under a powerful microscope, flaws will be observed. And ultimately, the billiard ball is composed of molecules that are in constant vibratory motion (due to heat energy). Thus the billiard ball’s shape, far from being perfectly spherical, is constantly undergoing very tiny changes. Conclusion: the mathematically perfect sphere is an “idealization” that is never realized in the physical world.

By extending this line of argument and applying it to tables, organisms, etc., philosophers can “prove” that all concepts apply only imperfectly to reality, that nothing conforms absolutely to any concept’s definition, that what we think of as “knowledge” is merely approximations built on approximations, and that no one has the right to demand precision, absolutes, or say “it is” about anything in this world.

The fallacy here is context-switching. What one sees under a microscope is not relevant to the concept of “sphere,” which is formed to denote precisely the sort of shape possessed by billiard balls. A billiard ball is a perfect sphere, by a rational, contextual standard. A “perfect sphere” means a sphere that is flawless in the context of man’s form of perception.

To a sub-amoeba living on the molecular level (if such an organism existed), a billiard ball would be a galaxy — an astronomically large, pulsating collection of entities. But what does that have to do with man? Man’s concept of “sphere” refers to a human scale, the scale on which man grasps and deals with reality.

All concepts, including the farthest reaches of mathematical abstraction, are derived from the perceptual level of man’s awareness, and all standards of perfection must be consistent with this fact. To borrow a passage from Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology,

It is here that Protagoras’ old dictum may be given a new meaning, the opposite of the one he intended: “Man is the measure of all things.” Man is the measure, epistemologically — not metaphysically. In regard to human knowledge, man has to be the measure, since he has to bring all things into the realm of the humanly knowable.15

* * *

The alleged impossibility of attaining perfection is invoked when an idea or standard conflicts with reality. We are expected to swallow the contradiction rather than to correct the idea or standard. In this regard, “You cannot have perfection” functions in the same manner as such familiar catchphrases as “That may be good in theory, but it’s bad in practice,” “Nothing is black or white,” and “There are no simple answers.” In each case the underlying message is: theories, principles, and standards cannot be applied to the problems of “real life.” The “realistic” man, we are told, recognizes that reason is only an approximate or partial guide; to be “practical” we must not insist on consistency, which is merely “the hobgoblin of little minds.”

In this way, the demonstration that an idea conflicts with reality — which ought to count as that idea’s refutation — is treated as a sign of the inadequacy of reason.

As an unattainable perfection undercuts reason in epistemology, so it undercuts virtue in ethics. For the conscientious man, the acceptance of an impossible standard of moral perfection sets his best trait, his idealism, against himself. The more he strives to be good, the more guilt he experiences from his inevitable failure to achieve the impossible. His own pride, his moral ambitiousness, becomes his worst enemy. But for the man who is indifferent to moral values, the impossible standard carries no such penalty. In fact, the set-up serves as an excuse for such a man’s indulgence in actual evil. He comes to have a vested interest in the doctrine that perfection is unattainable. He is eager to hear that there is no difference in principle between himself and the greatest hero: both are held guilty, the difference being only one of degree. The impossible standard ensures that every hero will turn out to have feet of clay, for the standard equates human flesh with clay, i.e., it damns man for being man. The impossible standard protects the evil man from condemnation: it guarantees that there will be no one without sin to cast the first stone.

Men would rebel if they were told that the good must surrender to the evil, that the good has no rights by virtue of the fact that it is the good, while any demand made by the evil must be honored because it is the evil. But tell them instead that no one can be perfectly moral and they leap to agree, thereby instituting the same inversion of morality quietly and by degrees. For,

When men reduce their virtues to the approximate, then evil acquires the force of an absolute, when loyalty to an unyielding purpose is dropped by the virtuous, it’s picked up by scoundrels — and you get the indecent spectacle of a cringing, bargaining, traitorous good and a self-righteously uncompromising evil.16

As proof of the accuracy of this analysis, just recall the last thirty-five years of America’s foreign policy.

This brings us to the political motive for the anti-perfection attitude. By infecting man with unavoidable guilt, the mystics and collectivists aim to deprive man of the moral certainty required to assert his rights.

Do you recall the scene in which Lillian Rearden attempts to prevent Hank Rearden from defending himself at his trial?

I think you should remember that it’s not for you to make a stand on any sort of principle. . . . I think you should abandon the illusion of your own perfection, which you know full well to be an illusion. . . . The day of the hero is past. . . . Human beings are no longer expected to be saints nor to be punished for their sins. Nobody is right or wrong, we’re all in it together, we’re all human — and the human is the imperfect.17

And do you recall Ayn Rand’s analysis of the motive behind the collectivist ideal enunciated in the papal encyclical, “Populorum Progressio”?

It is not intended to be accepted and practiced; it is intended to be accepted and broken. . . . Men who accept as an ideal an irrational goal which they cannot achieve, never lift their heads thereafter — and never discover that their bowed heads were the only goal to be achieved.18

It was not always thus. There was a time in which unbowed heroes, armed with an inviolate confidence in the perfect justice of their cause, declared their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. ‘‘And for the support of this declaration,” they wrote, “we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.”

It is precisely the sanctity of a man’s honor, with the self-assertiveness it makes possible, that the anti-perfectionists seek to destroy. Such honor is impossible to an imperfect being. But not, as the Founding Fathers proved, to man.

George Orwell’s short allegorical novel Animal Farm is often recommended as a warning about the dangers of communism and socialism. Earlier this year, Ken Griffin, the CEO of the Citadel hedge fund, offered to provide copies to every New York City 9th grader as a response to Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s proposed tax hike.1 And after a widely panned animated adaptation came out this year, critics like Eli Lake excoriated the film for downplaying Orwell’s warning about the “false promise” of socialism.2^, 3

Offering Animal Farm as a response to socialism is tragically self-defeating. Orwell was a self-proclaimed socialist and Animal Farm is not an anti-socialist or even an anti-communist novel. It is anti-Stalinist — but its critique of Stalin’s regime is actually pro-socialist. Here’s why — and where those looking for a genuinely anti-socialist novel should look instead.

Animal Farm’s pro-socialist message

Animal Farm portrays animals who overthrow Jones, the owner of their farm (who is widely taken to represent the monarchy of Tsar Nicholas II) and establish a new society in which “All animals are equal.” Importantly, Orwell portrays the socialist experiment on the farm as an immediate, admirable success:

In the end they finished the harvest in two days’ less time than it had usually taken Jones and his men. Moreover, it was the biggest harvest the farm had ever seen . . . All through that summer the work of the farm went like clockwork. The animals were happy as they had never conceived it possible to be. . . . With the worthless parasitical human beings gone, there was more for everyone to eat. There was more leisure, too, inexperienced though the animals were.4

The novel attributes this initial success to the animals’ collective effort to practice communist economic equality. At this time, two pigs — Snowball (seen as representing Leon Trotsky) and Napoleon (Joseph Stalin) — become the de facto leaders. However, when Napoleon forces Snowball into exile and seizes dictatorial power for himself, life on the farm gets progressively worse, and his cadre of pigs declares themselves “more equal” than the other animals.

The novel’s message is not that socialism is bad. If anything, it upholds the socialist ideal of creating a society of individuals who are to be rendered equal in all respects as far as possible, regardless of differences in capabilities and achievements. The pursuit of this sort of equality is entirely different from the political equality espoused by the American founding fathers in which all individuals are recognized as equal in their rights, as worthy of impartial treatment by the law — even as they may be unequal in many other respects. Socialist equality is rather the the egalitarian equality captured by Marx’s slogan “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” Individuals with greater abilities are proscribed from benefitting from their use; the products of their efforts and abilities are to be redistributed to others to achieve equal outcomes for all. And because individuals have no inviolable rights, they may be sacrificed to collective ends like egalitarian equality.

Animal Farm’s claim about Stalin and dictators like him is that they turn a noble and workable socialist experiment into a contemptible dictatorship that undercuts the socialist ideal. But what does it look like to really practice this ideal?

The image Orwell paints of a happy, flourishing farm early in the story does not even resemble the real historical Soviet Union before Stalin. It was a brutal dictatorship that killed tens of thousands of suspected dissenters and sent many more to gulags.5 It also was, as socialism always is, an economic nightmare, rife with rationing, poverty and famine.6

Moreover, it’s just not true that Stalin betrayed the socialist ideal. According to his biographer Stephen Kotkin, Stalin was a true believer in Marxism whose private statements were consistent with his public beliefs.7 And one of Stalin’s most devastating policies was the collectivization of agriculture, a campaign that confiscated private farms and coerced peasants to work on collective farms.8 This policy was in part an attempt to fulfill the egalitarian, collectivist ideal of socialism, redistributing from those with the ability to produce to those with needs. But it resulted in millions of deaths. In both the Lenin and Stalin eras, Soviet Russia was dominated by poverty and oppression as a result of its leaders’ loyalty to socialism.

By portraying socialism as an idyllic success before its corruption by a dictator and suggesting that it wasn’t to blame for Stalin’s crimes, Animal Farm elevates Marxist ideals instead of criticizing them. Orwell implies that un-hijacked socialism would drastically improve human life, obscuring the reality that faithfully practiced socialism actually causes oppression and poverty. That’s a false and blatantly pro-socialist message. And in light of socialism’s devastating impact, it’s a dangerous message.

So business leaders who recommend Animal Farm have fallen for Orwell’s propaganda. Where can they turn for a true defense of freedom against socialism?

Ayn Rand’s depiction of the evil of socialism in Anthem

The pro-capitalism novelist Ayn Rand recognized the danger of Animal Farm back in 1946. She warned Leonard Read, the founder of the free-market organization Foundation for Economic Education, not to promote the novella:

As an advance warning, for God’s sake DON’T recommend “Animal Farm”. . . . It is a book against Stalin, not against Communism. In fact, it is the mushiest and most maudlin preachment of Communism (I suppose the author would call it Socialism, but there is no difference), that I have seen in a long time. The moral of the book is not: “Communism is evil,” but: “Stalin’s Communism is just as evil as Capitalism.” Don’t let’s help to preach that idea.9

Contrary to Orwell, who regarded socialism as a noble ideal that in practice is often corrupted, Rand regarded socialism as evil both in theory and in practice. Although famous for The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, Rand also wrote a novella (about 100 pages) called Anthem, which, in contrast to Animal Farm, is genuinely anti-socialist in the most fundamental sense.

Anthem depicts a society in which the egalitarian, collectivist ideal of socialism has completely triumphed. The official policy of this society is to make everyone as equal as possible in all respects and to compel everyone to live solely to promote the good of the whole society. In other words, the society’s stated policies are similar to those of the Animal Farm before Napoleon’s takeover: “All animals are equal,” and all must work for the interests of the farm as a whole. Where in Orwell’s novel the collectivism is merely implied by the rest of the animals’ ideas and practices, the society in Anthem is explicit about its collectivist ideal in its official slogan:

We are one in all and all in one.
There are no men but only the great WE,
One, indivisible and forever.10

But Rand presents a very different portrait of the un-hijacked attempt to practice these ideals. The councils that rule Anthem’s society condemn and attempt to suppress all inequalities, including metaphysically given ones like height, raw intelligence and other forms of ability. Since it’s impossible to bestow greater abilities on the least able, the councils primarily seek equality by tearing down the most able. For example, they deliberately assign intelligent individuals to menial jobs — the protagonist Equality 7-2521, who has a brilliant scientific mind, is ordered to be a street sweeper. They strive to control all aspects of life, from work to meals to relations with others, according to their plans for the alleged good of the “great We.” As a result, they outlaw all individual initiative: everyone must act strictly as ordered.

They even attempt to suppress what enables individual initiative: independent thought and personal preference. From childhood, the people of this society are subjected to propaganda telling them that it is wrong to think anything that others do not think or to prefer a career, activity or person. Anyone who does not completely subordinate their mind and their capacity to value faces an agonizing conflict between the life they are compelled to live and, on the other hand, their own thoughts, desire and emotions — which they cannot even express without fear of punishment. Even an unstated question or a secret preference, kept hidden within one’s own mind, puts one in conflict with those in power.

In a society like this, it is impossible for anyone to be happy. Equality 7-2521 finds joy only when he figures out how to pursue some of his values — in secret defiance of the councils’ mandates. He observes that none of his fellow citizens are happy: He sees people who frequently cry without reason or scream for help in the night. “Fear walks through the City, fear without name, without shape. All men feel it and none dare to speak,” he observes.11

And this society’s suppression of the individual has caused it to regress from a modern, industrial society back to a primitive level of existence. Its prohibitions on individual thought and initiative quell any technology more advanced than the candle. Its citizens farm at a near-subsistence level, with life expectancy dramatically reduced.

The picture conveyed by Anthem: practicing egalitarian collectivist ideals consistently causes poverty and oppression. The problem isn’t “corruption” of the socialist ideal — it’s that the socialist ideal itself is corrupt.

And Anthem offers a value beyond astutely showing the evils of socialism. Its critique of socialism is inextricable from its depiction of the source of invention, progress and prosperity: the independent, individual mind, which pursues new truths regardless of the demands of authorities or the views of the majority. By defying the society’s prohibitions, Equality 7-2521 becomes a scientific innovator who creates a technology that promises to improve human life. Anthem contends that, to have a society where such people can succeed, one must reject the whole collectivist worldview and embrace the moral right of the individual to think freely, to pursue his own initiatives, and to pursue his own happiness.

Anthem, not the pro-socialist Animal Farm, is the short fictional antidote to socialist ideology because it reveals the evil of the socialist moral ideal. Those like Griffin who want to stem the resurgence of socialism would do themselves a service by reading and recommending it.

This essay by Ben Bayer was originally published in New Ideal on January 4, 2023. New Ideal is the online journal of the Ayn Rand Institute. Free subscribers gain access to more content than is published on our Substack. Subscribe here.

Why does the “antiracist” movement mobilize to deplatform or fire anyone who slights or asks the wrong questions about the dominant views of “social justice”? What explains the irrational fervor of the “woke”?

John McWhorter, noteworthy Columbia linguistics professor and New York Times columnist, grapples with this question in his recent book, Woke Racism. The book’s subtitle reveals his provocative answer: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America. To understand the “woke” movement, he shows, we must take seriously its religious character.

How are we to deal with a social movement guided by blind faith? McWhorter is under no illusion that we can somehow rationally persuade the leaders of the movement to change their ways. Instead, he counsels that we must find “a way to live graciously among them” while insulating “people with good ideas from the influence of their liturgical concerns” (xii-xiii).

But if McWhorter is right about the religious character of the movement, then multitudes of unsuspecting students who otherwise lean secular have accepted an unscientific, religious doctrine. Those of us who want to insulate ourselves and our children from its influence, will wonder whether it’s enough to ignore its advocates and live “graciously” among them. To know what is required to insulate ourselves fully from “the influence of their liturgical concerns,” we will need to know what makes woke doctrine so seductive even to secular, educated people.

While McWhorter’s explanation is good as far as it goes, it doesn’t go quite far enough. In particular, McWhorter’s account doesn’t make explicit what it is about the religious character of the movement that motivates such irrational fervor. Arguably his own evidence points to the fuller explanation we need, but he doesn’t dwell on it. I’d like to bring it to the forefront.

How does religion motivate fervor?

The evidence McWhorter presents of the religious character of the woke movement is compelling. The movement has articles of faith: no one is to question that racism is to blame for most social problems. It has its sacred texts (Ta-Nehisi Coates, Ibram X. Kendi, Robin DiAngelo), which are to be read and recited almost ritualistically. It has its own conception of original sin: white people cannot escape their “privilege” and must acknowledge it. It has a gospel that must be spread to all “sinners” and who must repent. The parallels are so striking that McWhorter dubs the members of the movement “The Elect,” a reference to Puritan Calvinism’s class of those predestined for salvation.

How does a religious doctrine encourage nominally secular people to engage in such irrational behavior?

The problem is not that woke activists suffer from some form of mass psychosis. McWhorter stresses that he thinks they don’t, even though they embrace their dogmas in defiance of the evidence and hold others to impossible, contradictory standards (e.g., to be inclusive and multicultural one can’t avoid “cultural appropriation”). Why, if they are neither crazy nor uneducated do they so openly defy intellectual standards?

McWhorter thinks that the new woke religion fulfills the same basic need that traditional religions have fulfilled for countless people for millennia.¹ The need is a “basic sense of succor” (70). Elsewhere he is more specific: it provides a sense of “sheer purpose . . . the basic sense of feeling like you matter and that your life has a meaningful agenda” (40).

This is headed in the right direction, but it’s important that not all religious believers behave like zealots. Consider a “New Age” religion that has also supplanted traditional belief systems in the West, neo-pagan Wicca. This sometimes polytheistic, sometimes pantheist set of beliefs and practices would strike most secularists as a genuine form of religious mysticism. And surely many Wiccans find “comfort” in their magical rituals, including through some sense of purpose from being “interconnected with the cosmos.” Yet even though Wiccans probably embrace their beliefs in animistic spirits and magic irrationally, few are motivated to join a mob marching for a new Inquisition against non-witches or a crusade against monotheists.

Numerous other religious believers go in for a faith but don’t march for its cause. Consider sundry modern Episcopalians or Western Buddhists who formally accept their theologies and practice their rituals, but who would never persecute heretics and apostates. We can say they simply don’t take their religion very seriously, that they don’t see their beliefs as relating to the rest of their lives. But which element of their religion are they ignoring when they don’t see it as relating to the rest of their lives?

The milquetoast modern faithful ignore the same element of their religions that a religion like Wicca simply lacks: a systematic code of morality. The major monotheistic religions come packaged with strict codes of morality because the God they worship is seen as the creator of the universe and the author of its order, and with that its moral laws. A code of morality relates an ideology’s view of the universe to the guidance its adherents need to live.

If the woke crusade while the Wiccans do not, it is likely because the woke share the potent code of morality they probably inherited from the influence of the monotheistic religions. It’s their quest to adhere to this moral code that gives them not merely the sense of a comforting ritual but that of joining a holy quest. No wonder the acts of the woke invite such natural comparisons to a crusade or an Inquisition, two hallmarks in the history of Christian religion.

The motive power behind religious crusaders

The evidence for the central motivating power of moral doctrine in the woke religion is scattered throughout McWhorter’s book, though it is not emphasized enough.

McWhorter notes that “Elect ideology stipulates that one’s central moral duty is to battle racism and the racist” (48, my emphasis). He notes how the woke see the sheer act of bearing witness to the sins of racism (including, notably, their own) as garnering moral credit (49, 66–67). And he notes how this even includes embracing a “self-flagellational guilt for things you did not do,” a reference to apologies for the sins of one’s race.

The reference to “self-flagellational guilt” helps bring out the distinctively religious moral idea that’s at play in the woke crusade. Christianity is perhaps best known for making it a major virtue, but McWhorter compares antiracism’s take on the virtue to that of another post-pagan monotheistic religion:

This is all very Abrahamic, as religion goes. Muslim, Islam — the core of such words in Arabic is the consonants s-l-m, which constitute the concept of submission. One submits not only to a God. To suspend disbelief is a kind of submission. It is no accident that many of the white Elect spontaneously put their hands above their heads as an indication that they understand that they bear “white privilege.” Think of this type, asserting “Oh, I know I’m privileged!” while holding their hand up, palm out, like a Pentecostal. . . . They are so comfortable with that gesture in attesting to their privilege because of an overriding impulse: to indicate submission to a power up there looking down on them.

Or even this: When Elect white people at protests started taking a knee for extended periods to indicate general wokeness after George Floyd’s murder, it was a submission to Elect imperatives. (27–28)

To idealize the morality of submission is to enjoin the virtue of humility. It’s the burning commitment to the duty to avoid, expurgate, and punish the sin of pride that explains the crusade to banish heretics against the woke creed.

The affirmation of the virtue of humility is distinctively religious. In ancient Greece, Aristotle regarded pride not as a sin but as a crowning virtue (“To be the one who thinks himself worthy of great things and [to be] really worthy of them . . . [is] an adornment of the virtues; for it makes them greater, and it does not arise without them.”2) But contrast this with St. Augustine, who formalized the Christian view: “Deign to be lowly, to be humble, because God has deigned to be lowly and humble on the same account, yours not his own.”3 Augustine emphasized the virtue of humility because he was the original champion of the Christian doctrine of original sin: we should not aim for perfection because we are inherently sinful.

It’s the Christian view of pride vs. humility that animates the zealots of the woke religion.

For example: suppose that you are a professor or an employer who thinks that some member of a minority group hasn’t lived up to the relevant educational or professional standards of a task and doesn’t deserve the corresponding rewards. How dare you, say the woke, to think you have the right to judge a member of a historically oppressed group by your standards? You don’t have the right to judge their performance by what you deem to be “objective” standards. Humble yourself and repent, prideful sinner.

Or: suppose that you refuse to admit you’re guilty of the “original sin” of racism, because you judge people on the basis of their character and other achievements, not on the basis of racial prejudice. Here again, the woke object that racism is systemic enough to make you subject to biases and an unavoidable beneficiary of oppression. How dare you think you have the special power to escape from the clutches of your history and the system it created? Humble yourself and repent, prideful sinner.

Or even this: perhaps you’re a black person whose ancestors certainly were oppressed, and while you acknowledge that racial prejudice still exists, you might still claim that you yourself have never been seriously handicapped by it. Even here, the woke will intone, as they seem to have intoned against McWhorter himself: how dare you think you have the personal virtue needed to escape the same systemic oppression? And how dare you disagree with the leaders of your people who know they are victims to whom all the other sinners must submit? You especially should humble yourself and repent, most prideful sinner. Tua maxima culpa.

Earlier I asked: “Why, if they are neither crazy nor uneducated do they so openly defy intellectual standards?” In a way, McWhorter has provided material that helps answer that question: “To suspend disbelief is a kind of submission.” But this helps us see how (as Augustine himself maintained) blind faith is the ultimate form of humility.4 One takes no pride in what one uncritically accepts from others. By contrast, it is an act of intellectual pride to demand evidence and consistency and assert the right to believe only what others can prove.

This is what permits sane and educated people to engage in absurd inquisitorial crusades against heretics. They have knowledge of intellectual standards, but they suppress this knowledge when they think their moral duty demands something more important than a dedication to truth.

The underappreciated challenge of avoiding the influence of religious morality

Judeo-Christian morality has had a powerful influence on Western culture. Two thousand years of cultural dominance will leave a mark on anyone raised or educated by others influenced by the tradition, even on those who ostensibly reject this tradition.5

We can see this especially in the deference to the religious morality of humility in ostensibly secular, left-wing activist movements today. In addition to finding it among woke activists, we see it in the green activists like the members of Extinction Rebellion who demand our faith in an imminent environmental apocalypse and reject even carbon-free nuclear power.6 (The environmental movement generally has deeply Christian historical roots.7) We see it in the transgender activists who try to make heretics of anyone like J. K. Rowling or Kathleen Stock, who raise questions about the merits of transgender ideology and its critique of the biology of sex.

This suggests that we cannot easily insulate ourselves from the influence of the woke crusade simply by “finding a way to live graciously” among its agents. That’s especially true if some of the most thoughtful and upstanding critics of woke religion are still under the spell of the Christian moralism that empowers it. This may seem hard to believe because some of them are adamant critics not only of the woke but of religion, generally. Yet the virtue of humility really is a distinctively religious idea, and it is at work in even their thinking.

For instance, even secular thinkers like Steven Pinker and others in the “rationality community” regularly call for “epistemic humility,” the idea that “perfect rationality and objective truth are aspirations that no mortal can ever claim to have attained.”8 There’s indisputable value in intellectual honesty: in refusing to draw conclusions stronger than one’s evidence permits. But to infer that even the best and most rational science can never attain some kind of truth is to affirm a kind of epistemic original sin and so, not surprisingly, a virtue of epistemic humility.

In rare moments, even McWhorter himself seems to call out the woke for their own alleged intellectual pride: “Since about 2015, a peculiar contingent is slowly headlocking us into . . . supposing that this particular new religion is so incontestably correct, so gorgeously surpassing millennia of brilliant philosophers’ attempts to identify the ultimate morality, that we can only bow down in humble acquiescence” (58–9). Yes, he’s explicitly criticizing their demand that we be humble, but he does it by implying that they are being sinfully prideful in thinking they’ve gotten morality right.9

The real reason woke ideology doesn’t surpass millennia of philosophers’ moral inquiries is that it’s just borrowing from them (albeit without giving credit). The problem here isn’t that it pridefully claims to have identified the ultimate morality. The problem is: “To suspend disbelief is a kind of submission.” The problem is that the religious claim to ultimate morality is advanced without scientific basis. Scientists who can prove a well-integrated case for their position on the basis of the evidence have earned pride in their findings. The woke have not, especially if their morality is itself derived from religion.

Generally, the work of secular thinkers like Pinker and McWhorter is rational and courageous. They deserve to take pride in their intellectual accomplishments. But the fact that even these avowedly anti-religious thinkers seem to have absorbed a religious moral idea suggests that its influence is truly pervasive. It promises comfort against some insecurity that even the most rational of the secular can feel. So, we need to guard against it to fully insulate ourselves against the effects of wokeism.

We need to guard against this insecurity because its consequences weaken the secular defense against wokeism. Consider McWhorter’s recurrent question about the irrationality of the woke movement: “What kind of people do these things? Why do they get away with it? And are we going to let them continue to?” They are people who call us out for being prideful sinners. They get away with it because we ourselves often feel guilty for our pride. And we will let them continue to do so as long as even we the secular cater to that feeling by venerating such things as “epistemic humility.”

McWhorter himself answers his last question, about why we let them get away with it. He notes that precisely because of the moral progress we’ve made against racism, people disapprove of it and are horrified when charges of it are leveled against them. So many would rather “tolerate some cognitive dissonance” and kneel with woke activists in repentance than be considered an unrepentant bigot. But this willingness to tolerate “cognitive dissonance” is precisely the consequence of a belief in epistemic humility. It’s the idea: Who am I to take my cognitive dissonance as a sign that something is wrong here?

Someone who takes pride in his commitment to the truth, by contrast, wouldn’t tolerate that dissonance: he’d try to understand why he’s been accused of an evil he himself disavows. He’d accept his fallibility and acknowledge that he can make mistakes. He’d even be willing to apologize when presented with evidence of his error. But he’d not kneel before his accusers without that evidence just because his peers were kneeling. And someone long convinced of the evil of racism would likely never accept that self-effacing submission is proper penance for a real mistake.

McWhorter thinks that because the woke movement is based on a kind of faith, we can’t respond to it by arguing with its most devoted practitioners, any more than we could expect to convert many fundamentalist Christians to atheism. Instead, he urges that we “just say no,” and stand up against the woke. “The coping strategy, therefore, must be not to try to avoid letting them call you a racist, but to get used to their doing so and walk on despite it.”

I agree with McWhorter that rational people must proudly walk on despite unfounded charges of racism. But if the woke faith is empowered by a religious belief in the virtue of humility, we will need to do more than simply disassociate ourselves from its practitioners. We can’t live “graciously” among them if that means accepting their ideas and practices as normal. Indeed, McWhorter’s characterization of the movement as religious dogma implicitly classifies it as unscientific and irrational, which is already a harsh but warranted judgment. We need to share this judgment with others, especially the young people we care about, as McWhorter has done in his book.

But we’ll need to do even more than McWhorter has done. To fully quarantine ourselves and others against wokeism, we need to come to grips with the fact that many of us are also already infected with the ideas that empower its followers. This means we will need a new philosophical antiviral. We will need to fully sterilize ourselves from the idea that submission is a virtue, and in another act of intellectual pride, be willing to rethink a secular, scientific morality afresh.10

In the aftermath of Nazi Germany’s defeat in World War II, collectivism was still very much alive. Soviet Russia, America’s wartime “ally,” was now its greatest enemy — but one that was more intellectual than military. Ayn Rand’s screen guide, now available for the first time as a book, was written and produced in 1947 as a warning about this ally and its subtle ways using films to undermine America and the individualism it represented. This first archival edition of “Screen Guide” is supplemented by an 11-page afterword by founding CEO of ARI, Michael S. Berliner, providing important historical background from Ayn Rand’s life and career. The Ayn Rand Institute is pleased to reprint the afterword.

The Screen Guide exemplifies the convergence of two significant aspects of Ayn Rand’s life to that point in time: film and political ideology.

Ayn Rand’s Connection to the Film Industry

Films played such an important role in a 30-year period of Ayn Rand’s life that a mini-biography can almost be written by tracing her connection to films, beginning with her mid-teens up to the publication of her “Screen Guide,” when she was in her early 40s. Although she may have attended foreign films earlier, that period officially starts in the winter of 1922 with the first entry in her movie diary, D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance. That diary was an ongoing list of movies she attended between 1922 and 1929. It was so important to her as a documentation of her movie-going that she had her sister Nora reproduce the contents in letters to Rand, who had, for reasons unknown, not brought it with her to America. Nora began incorporating that list into her letters apparently just a few days after Rand arrived in America. Rand then copied the information into a small notebook.¹ Each entry contained the film title, her grade for the film, the date and theater, the director, and the principal cast. Nora concludes the list with: “That’s the end!!! Well, aren’t I the most heroic person in the world? The Crusades were child’s play compared to my labors here. To recopy 170 movie entries! . . . I curse the Technicum for giving you free passes.”

The “Technicum” to which Nora referred is the State Technicum for Screen Arts, a school created by Soviet dictator Vladmir Lenin to advance Soviet film. Hoping to learn screenwriting, the 19-year-old Alisa Rosenbaum enrolled in the Institute in the fall of 1924, but she attended for only one academic year: Before she could take courses on screenwriting, she received an invitation to visit relatives in Chicago.

And it was likely that writing assignments at the Technicum marked the start of her writing career. Her first two published works were film-related booklets, both written in 1925: “Pola Negri,” and “Hollywood: America’s City of Movies.”2 Since these were both written before she came to America, her likely source of information was movie magazines that her Chicago relatives were sending to her.

But it was the content of Western films that had such great impact. Operettas (particularly those by Emmerich Kálmán) had been her main inspirations and windows on the West, but, as she put it in her 1960–61 biographical interviews: “movies supplanted the operettas in my life . . . because that was a much more specific, not merely symbolic, view of life abroad . . . . I began to see movies every night practically. And that was the most wonderful period. For Russia that was one of my happiest periods as such. I don’t mean in the total, but at least in this aspect: because it was almost as if I had a private avenue of seeing the world outside. So that those movie stars and movie magazines from abroad became, well, the world from Mars, the voice from Mars.”3 What those films showed of America was especially inspiring: “There were some American movies where you could see New York, just shots, usually long shots, and I would sit through two shows just to catch it . . . and it seemed completely incredible. I can’t tell you how glamorous it was at that distance.” That glamor inspired a goal for the teenage Alisa Rosenbaum: get to America and never return.

When she arrived in “Mars,” on February 19, 1926, she stepped — at first indirectly and then directly — into the film world. In Chicago, Sarah Portnoy, matriarch of one of the two families of relatives with whom she stayed, owned the New Lyric Theater, a movie house on Chicago’s South Side, which Ayn Rand attended almost daily: she saw 234 films in 183 days.

When she wasn’t going to films, she spent her time writing scenarios, as she later related:

Now, the first six months, you see, I had to spend here writing those stories, learning to speak English, and then I had decided that I would go to Hollywood, because I couldn’t yet hope to write in a literary English. I had figured out that, since this was the day of the silent movies, I could write — even if it’s slightly broken English — enough to write an outline, the scenario, just the original of a story, and then somebody else could write the titles. . . . It was putting things in reverse, because, you know, in Hollywood you have to make a name for yourself in some other branch of writing before you go to Hollywood, but I reversed it.

So, after those six months in Chicago, she took the train to Los Angeles, bringing with her an introduction to the publicity department at the studio of Cecil B. DeMille, her favorite American director. Then, on September 4, 1926, her first full day in California, came the “fairy-tale” event of her life: Headed to DeMille’s studio in Culver City, she took the right bus line but in the wrong direction, and it was that fortunate mistake that enabled her to launch her early film career and indirectly to meet her future husband. She finally got on the correct bus to Culver City but arrived later than expected at the studio. After submitting her letter of introduction and getting a perfunctory response, Rand prepared to return to Hollywood, where she had a room at the Hollywood Studio Club, a residence for young women seeking careers in the film industry. Then, in her own words, “Now I walk out of the studio . . . and it has a driveway in front of the main building that goes to a gate. And as I start [to] walk down that driveway, I see an open roadster parked, and a man at the wheel talking to somebody outside the car, and it was DeMille. . . . I was just stunned, because it was such a lucky coincidence.” Because she had taken the wrong bus, she caught DeMille on his lunch break. “I recognized him from pictures I had seen. And I stood there staring at him. . . . So I walked on to the gate, and I stopped at the gate to wait to see him drive by. And it wasn’t too long before he started driving. He drives up to the gate, stops, looks at me, and asks, ‘Why are you looking at me?’ Very, very pleasantly. Apparently he had noticed me before. So I told him I had just come from Russia and I am very happy to see him. So he opens the door of the car and says, ‘Get in.’ I didn’t know where we were going; I got in and he started driving. Now isn’t that a fantastic story?”

The story doesn’t end there, for DeMille drove her to the backlot, where they were shooting crowd scenes for his epic The King of Kings. In the car, DeMille told her “If you want to work in pictures, you should begin by watching how they work on the set and by observing and learning, so this will do you good.” He then gave her passes for two days, hired her as an extra and eventually as a junior screenwriter. Her career was off and running, and so, ultimately, was her romantic life: On her second or third week at the DeMille Studios, she spotted Frank O’Connor on an early-morning streetcar from Hollywood to Culver City, sought him out on the DeMille set, where he was also working as an extra, later ran into him by chance at a Hollywood library, and married him in April 1929.

After the DeMille Studios closed in 1928, Rand got a job in the wardrobe department at RKO, a job that supplied an income while she wrote We the Living. She lived across the street in an apartment building where she met producer David O. Selznick’s assistant, who gave her the idea for Peter Keating, the second-hander, whose character type features so prominently in The Fountainhead. (Rand’s original title for the novel was “Second-Hand Lives.”) After moving to New York City in 1934, she worked for Paramount Studios, reviewing books submitted to the studio for possible adaptation. Then, after The Fountainhead was published in 1943, she returned to Hollywood to write the screenplay for the film version to be produced by Hal Wallis, who was fresh from his success producing the classic Casablanca. It was upon her return that she became involved with pro-free enterprise people in Hollywood, in particular the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals (MPA).

Ayn Rand’s Political Activism

Ayn Rand’s history with politics and political philosophy hardly needs recounting. She witnessed the start of the so-called Kerensky Revolution in February of 1917, and, when 12 years old, adopted the anti-Bolshevik Alexander Kerensky as her hero (downgrading him to “mediocrity” when she met him in 1945). Then, in her mid-to-late teens, she began having political discussions with her father, whom she described as favoring individualism and free enterprise. Although she made anti-Soviet entries in her diary, she kept those ideas secret, knowing that they could be a death sentence. But when she came to America, she became active in politics, working in the 1940 Willkie presidential campaign, writing her “Individualist Credo” and “Individualist Manifesto” and working to form what she called “The Individualist Organization.” Particularly daunting and motivating was her shock at the state of American politics. When she was writing We the Living, she expected that the prevalent view of Communism would be the same as hers. As she explained in her biographical interviews:

Did I know the degree of Pink penetration in America? No. I had no idea of it. I did not know very many people in Hollywood, but those I knew were certainly not Left. And I did not have the impression of the enormous prevalence of Pink sympathizers. Now remember, this was before the New Deal, when the novel was started. And Russia was not even recognized. I did not follow politics or New York publications closely enough to see any particular Pink trend. And I do believe, in retrospect, that it accelerated enormously after 1933, after Roosevelt. . . . My impression, more than anything else, was that people are not sufficiently aware of the menace and the evil of Communism, but that they would be in sympathy with it, I didn’t expect. . . . I took for granted that nobody, except the worst kind of hypocrites, can ever be or advocate altruism.

Still a relative newcomer to America, Rand did not know that the Red Decade had arrived, that period in American history when reverence for the “Soviet experiment” was at its highest.

The Screen Guide

Ayn Rand was not the only anti-Communist in Hollywood. Formed in 1944, the MPA’s membership included DeMille, Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, Barbara Stanwyck, Hal Wallis, and John Wayne. For a short time, Rand was on the executive committee. The MPA organized the writing of “Screen Guide,” which was published over the group’s name in its newsletter, “The Vigil.” Details of the publishing history and Rand’s dealings with the MPA can be found in Robert Mayhew’s Ayn Rand and Song of Russia.

If We the Living can be considered a promise kept to the family friend who urged her to “tell the rest of the world that we are dying here,” then “Screen Guide” can be considered a similar warning. She was telling moviemakers and moviegoers to beware of unknowingly absorbing dangerous ideas — not beware of the Communist Party but of altruistic/collectivist ideas that pervade the motion pictures. The Ayn Rand Papers, housed at the Ayn Rand Archives, contain clippings from major newspapers (including The New York Times) with stories announcing the publication of the guide. These stories are by-lined news stories that summarize “Screen Guide,” including numerous quotes and stressing the MPA’s support of freedom of speech.

Ayn Rand’s Assessment

Let Ayn Rand continue the story about the guide’s impact:

This was just about the time of the Hollywood hearings. And, originally, two men from the Thomas Committee — that was the House committee investigating it — came to Hollywood to interview conservatives. And what they wanted mainly was only factual, journalistic material about penetration of the Director’s Guild, the Screenwriter’s Guild, and things like that. All facts. Well, I had nothing to do with any of it. I didn’t belong to the Writer’s Guild. But, at that same time, the FBI was helping them to investigate, and they attended some of our meetings, of the Board.4 And they had heard about the “Screen Guide for Americans.” It was interesting to me that they had heard it before it was out. And asked us for galleys of it, just for their own interest. Which we supplied. It was just being finally put into booklet form then. And about a week later, I got a call from those investigators that they wanted me to come to Washington to testify on the ideology of films. So, I’m sure it was connected. I later learned that the galleys or some report on it had gone to one of the chief investigators for the Thomas Committee, who was an ex-communist, but of thirty years ago, or something like that. And he was their expert on Communism. He had been urging them to do something ideological for years. And when he saw a report on this booklet, he is the one who urged that I be brought to testify. [I was willing to testify] to bring it out into the open. So long as there was a chance, it would have been the only forum. The real reason why I felt it would be all right, and the real good that I accomplished was this: prior to that hearing there would have been no way to get anything about it into any newspaper or magazine. The idea of Hollywood penetration was hopeless ideologically. As I said, there were quite a few articles appearing about Reds in Hollywood but never about propaganda on the screen. That was the real issue, you see, the touchy issue for Hollywood. And incidentally, the producers and all were quite willing to let it be discussed that there were a few communists around. But it’s the content of movies that they did not want to touch. I suspect partly because the Red pressure would have been on that, partly because they were all scared to death of not knowing how to handle those issues and didn’t want to be involved in ideological disputes. Now, the good that that hearing accomplished is that that was the turning point for Red propaganda on the screen. It vanished after that completely. And then later, a few hints kept coming back, but so feebly and so subtly that only Party members would ever know it. I mean it was too feeble to do any harm to the general public. And there I take credit, for the “Screen Guide for Americans” did it. Now, the best thing was that that “Screen Guide” (in condensed form, but the most important highlights) was reproduced in the drama section of the Times,5 the Sunday Times front page, you know, the drama section, which there would be no way of getting to, except in connection with this hearing. . . . Several other newspapers across the country did the same. My name, you know, is not on it, because it was written for the organization. But one magazine, Plain Talk, reprinted the condensed form without permission, with my name on it.6 And that was the best accomplishment. Then, at first, when the “Screen Guide” came out, the major studios generally kind of ignored it. Progressively, thereafter, I began hearing one studio and another ordering it from the MPA in tens and dozens. And all the points that I made in it — particularly, you know the attacks on the businessmen as villains — disappeared, certainly in the form in which they had been. If you watch old movies on TV, you’ll see the difference. And there I really take credit for it.

The format of the guide is a list of “don’ts,” addressing Conservatives in general but film producers in particular, urging them not to sanction ideas and positions that are destructive of their ideals. Thus “Screen Guide” was not merely a warning about the subtle ways that collectivist ideas are spread. As a call not to support one’s enemies, it was her first public statement about moral sanction, a principle integral to the story of Atlas Shrugged (a crucial insight of the novel’s hero is that “I saw that there comes a point, in the defeat of any man of virtue, when his own consent is needed for evil to win — and that no manner of injury done to him by others can succeed if he chooses to withhold his consent”). This principle was the theme of Rand’s last public talk, “The Sanction of the Victims,” where she implored businessmen to cease financing universities that are the source of collectivist and thus anti-America ideas. It is, she said, “a moral crime to give money to support your own destroyers.”

By the late 1940s, Rand began to cut her ties to the film industry. She had resigned from the executive committee of the MPA, The Fountainhead film had been released in 1949 and had moved the novel back onto the bestseller lists, and she and Frank moved permanently back to New York City in 1951. One final confluence between political ideology and film was her editing for re-release of the newly rediscovered Italian film of We the Living. Produced illegally (i.e., without Rand’s permission) in 1942 in Fascist Italy, a print was discovered in 1968, and Ayn Rand worked on editorial issues, including the script and subtitles, making sure that it contained no remnant of the Fascist ideology that had been introduced by the Italians, who had banned the film when they realized it was as anti-Fascist as anti-Communist.

The immediate practical effect of the guide was to alert people to the dangers of unknowingly spreading Communist propaganda. But Rand’s dealings with the Hollywood Conservatives showed her the futility of dealing with issues unphilosophically, which is what they did. Thus, her admonition to Leonard Read (see her February 28, 1946 letter in Letters of Ayn Rand) that what is needed is philosophic not economic education, and her proclamation to Rose Wilder Lane that her “personal crusade” was not to fight collectivism or altruism (which, she said, were “only consequences”) but to go after “the real root of evil on earth: the irrational” (see letter in revised edition of Letters of Ayn Rand). “Screen Guide” was an early instance of Rand stressing the need to look beneath the surface, a path she traveled in her many political analyses and explained in her 1974 article “Philosophical Detection.” Revealing the fundamental philosophic ideas underlying political and social policies and showing the effects of those ideas was a theme of much of her nonfiction writings after the publication of Atlas Shrugged. “Screen Guide” was also an early (the first?) appearance of one of those uniquely “Ayn Rand” identifications, “the sanction of the victim,” which she so eloquently explained in her New Orleans talk shortly before the end of her life.

Screen Guide for Americans is available now on Amazon in paperback and Kindle, with an audiobook to follow soon.

The signers of the Declaration of Independence pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to fight a militarily superior enemy to secure that independence. 250 years later, the American president signed a “memorandum of understanding” with Iran — a far weaker and viler enemy — securing none of his stated war objectives, but acceding to most of the enemy’s demands.

Why has the world’s strongest military power allowed this to happen, in such dramatic contrast to the example of its founders? The answer we must consider is that there’s one final battle in the American Revolution still to be fought — not a military battle, but an intellectual one.

To explain America’s foreign-policy collapse, some will point to the commander in chief’s cowardice and cynical pragmatism about the upcoming elections. His character flaws are many and profound. But few would accuse the president of insensitivity to his base. He is obviously eager to continue appeasing Republican voters who welcomed his promise to stop “forever wars.”

But this just raises the question in a different form. How did once hawkish Republicans —traditional advocates of a confident American foreign policy — become so meek?

A clue to the answer — and a sign that the unfought battle is intellectual — is found in the thinking of the generation of Americans including Tulsi Gabbard, J.D. Vance, and Pete Hegseth who fought in the Iraq war, witnessed its failures, and now guide American policy.¹

Hegseth, who led the “Department of War” into Iran, has put his thinking on record. His 2024 book The War on Warriors recounts his experience in Iraq with the Army’s 101st Airborne. There, as he led a platoon in search of al Qaeda operatives, he was regularly flummoxed by rules of engagement that handicapped his men’s ability to defend themselves and even mandated the release of suspected enemy fighters who would go on to attack them again.

The rules of engagement that bedeviled Hegseth exemplified the Bush administration’s overall approach to its “war on terror.” Time and again Bush sought to elevate the interests of foreign civilians and even enemy soldiers over those of American citizens and soldiers. We saw this not only in restrictive rules of engagement, but in the recurring insistence on dropping humanitarian aid along with bombs, and using war to spread the “democracy” that elected Iran-aligned Islamists in Iraq.

In Hegseth’s thinking, the error of Bush’s policy was to “conflate international law with just war theory.” “Just war theory” is the traditional Christian doctrine that Republicans have also recently invoked to justify the Iran war, in response to criticisms from Pope Leo. Hegseth’s invocation of that doctrine signals his underlying commitment to Judeo-Christian morality.

It’s undoubtedly true that various international treaties encouraged “humanitarian” restrictions that disabled America’s ability to fight a just war. But Hegseth openly doubts that any notion of “just war” can be translated into “universal rules” of war. He says men are too sinful by nature to follow such rules, so we might be “better off winning wars according to our own rules” rather than caring about what he dismissively calls “morality plays.”

Hegseth’s insistence that “just war theory” can never be translated into actionable rules amounts to the confession of a man — and of a nation — in the grips of a contradiction. It’s the contradiction between a morality that demands we humbly turn the other cheek to love our enemy, and the real-world practical requirements of military victory.

To resolve this contradiction is a key element of the American Revolution’s unfought intellectual battle.

But it cannot be resolved by having it both ways. The contradiction is real, and “just war theory” cannot dissolve it. That theory already drastically restricts permissible war and (as I have argued earlier) is in tension with Christianity’s pacifist roots. The pope himself recently repudiated it as inconsistent with those roots and the nature of modern warfare.2 We can either be good Christians or we can confidently fight wars of righteous self-defense and win. We cannot do both.

It’s well-known that Christian moral principles are defined in opposition to the practical needs of life, whether they concern warfighting or moneymaking or sexual fulfillment. So we should expect that a defense secretary trying to answer practical military questions will find little if any real guidance from those principles. He will conclude that warfighting inherently involves (in his words) “shades of gray.”

A culture whose moral principles repudiate practicality can offer no principled guidance for how to be practical. Whatever shaky confidence the practically oriented might muster is then unguided by any standards. This further encourages range-of-the-moment, shoot-from-the-hip pragmatism. We see this in Trump’s cynical foreign policy agenda of coddling dictators (Putin and Xi), betraying allies (Europe and Israel), and toying with weak neighboring rivals (Venezuela and Cuba) only because it’s easy.

The Iran war epitomized the spurt of confidence unguided by ideals. The decision to start the war was not the result of a strategic vision, guided by long-term commitment to achieving specific values, but the whim of a president likely looking to distract from domestic controversies. As a result, even very short-term contingencies, like a lack of cooperation from recently spurned allies or the Iranian closure of the Strait of Hormuz were not planned for.

Such a narrowly “practical” approach is also doomed to be ineffective, because nothing ambitious can be achieved without a single-minded focus on long-range goals — i.e., values. The shifting Iran war objectives (unconditional surrender, regime change, nuclear and ballistic missile disarmament, etc.) were announced and abandoned so quickly because they were unachievable in an unplanned, whimsical, unprincipled war.

In the face of failure arising from such thoughtlessness, it’s then easy to collapse in humiliation, especially if one’s only notion of a moral principle in the first place was humility.

The last, unfought battle of the American Revolution is to finally throw off the shackles of the morality of Christian humility. There was nothing humble about the Declaration of Independence. To declare to the world an intention to stand on your own feet and fight to the death for the right to the pursuit of your happiness is an act of rational pride, not humility. That declaration was possible only because of an Enlightenment philosophy of individual rights that consciously or unconsciously repudiated the Christian morality of humility.

But most American intellectuals never formulated a moral philosophy that fully sanctioned the pursuit of happiness or with it the doctrine of individual rights. They never completed the American Revolution because they never broke free from old European moral thinking (whether Christian or neo-Christian egalitarian). And so America has long struggled with a contradiction between the only moral philosophy it’s known since its founding, and its practical ambitions (in business, in technology, in military affairs) for living life and achieving happiness on earth.

This is why Ayn Rand called for “a moral revolution to sanction and complete the political achievement of the American Revolution.” It’s why she said “For a nation, as for a man, a Declaration of Independence implies a declaration of self-esteem. Neither can stand without the other.”

Anyone who cannot understand how a militarily powerful modern nation like America could capitulate to a weak, medieval theocracy like Iran must know on some level it is not for any failure of power. It’s for unwillingness to use it. But our will is guided by our moral code, and no matter how much many evade it, our dominant moral code says: “love thy enemy.” If ever we are to escape the cycle of spurts of unmoored confidence followed by humiliation, we must declare independence from that moral code and seek another.