Free Republic

My name is Gennady Stolyarov II. In August of 2002, I founded The Rational Argumentator, an online magazine that has consistently presented and promoted the ideas of reason and liberty and the emancipation of individuals from the stifling grip of political tyranny. Today, the United States of America is faced with an unprecedented opportunity to bring the goal of complete individual liberty to fruition. Never before have the prospects for reversing the onward march of statism and central planning looked so bright as today - but this may also be our last chance to avert an economic calamity of unprecedented...

Fred Dalton Thompson, who served as United States Senator from Tennessee from 1994 to 2003, is a possible Republican contender for the presidency in 2008. Thompson's candidacy is not yet official, but numerous grassroots movements have emerged to "draft" him to run for office, and the former Senator himself has indicated that his agreement is a possibility. On June 5, 2007, Thompson has even set up his own site, ImWithFred.com, which has options for donations and an announcement of Thompson's intentions to "change Washington and help America meet the challenges of today and tomorrow." A formal announcement of Thompson's candidacy...

Contrary to my usual method, I will presently argue a rather moderate position-but one absolutely essential to the preservation of a free, civil, and tolerant society. My purpose here is not to refute any religion or religion-based system of ethics. Nor is my purpose to dissuade anyone from adhering to a religion or religion-based system of ethics. On the whole, I consider ethics based on religion to have beneficial consequences in this world, and I have found the individuals today who genuinely practice a religious morality to be decent, respectable, trustworthy, and upright persons. Such people are my friends and...

George is a regular wage laborer -- industrious, but somewhat frail and easy to tire. Thus, George is unable to put in 18 hours every day for running a small business or generating a vast fortune quickly.Had he lived the average human lifespan, he would likely have died owning only a small home and having a fairly marginal discretionary income. But George is fortunate, for he lives in an age where immortality has just been made a commercial product.

Duncan Hunter, a U. S. Representative from the 52nd Congressional District in California, is another of the Republican contenders for the presidency in 2008. Analyzing Hunter's stances on important political issues shows him to be generally sound on his positions in support of the right to life and limited government. However, Hunter's recommendations to restrict true international free trade and prohibit online gambling are causes for significant concern.

To further educate voters about Republican contenders for the presidency, it is fitting to examine the ideas of Kansas Senator Sam Brownback, a generally reliable social and economic conservative, many of whose suggested policies are in accord with the principles of limited government. Here, I will examine the strong points of Brownback's platform, as well as the positions where his vagueness hurts him and hinders voters' understanding of his true intentions.

A devastating effect of the collectivist mindset is the emergence of massive societal turmoil and heinous crimes. Collectivists often unleash brutal force against people who are not of "their" kind and instead belong to some "inferior" group. In the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, an untouchable man once slapped a higher-caste thief for stealing beans from his field. The self-righteously offended community responded by stripping the man's mother and parading her through the village amid a hail of stones and mud hurled in her direction.

Two dictators, Salvador Allende and Augusto Pinochet, both brought tremendous suffering upon the Chilean people -- one through his socialist policies and nationalization of industry, and the other through systematic campaigns of terror.

All too often today we hear condemnations of the profit motive as destructive and uncaring. But is it really? Or is the profit motive one of the noblest forces that can impel a man to act? To understand whether the profit motive is desirable, we must first grasp the goals of a life properly lived. These goals are twofold; on the first level, survival is the goal of sustaining one's biological existence and preventing one's downward slide toward poverty, ruination, and death. On the second level, flourishing is the extension of one's control over the external reality-the ability to harness...

Three of the Republican presidential contenders -- Mike Huckabee, Ron Paul, and Tom Tancredo -- show promise as individuals who are largely devoted to limited government, individual rights, and sound policy.Each of them has numerous issues where their principled stances will appeal to the conservative voter base of the Republican Party. Each also has some ideas which I find flawed. To educate voters and lead to the most informed possible choices, here is an analysis of some of these three candidates' positions.

Most people are astonished when I tell them that I would like to live forever. "Would that not get extremely boring after a long time?" many of them ask. I respond, "Being dead - sensing nothing, thinking nothing, feeling nothing - would be far more boring. Besides, one is dead forever; once one is dead, one cannot simply recognize the misfortune of one's situation and decide that one will not be dead anymore." An absence of everything is far more boring than a presence of anything.

I grow tired of chaotic, unpredictable, and wildly fluctuating weather conditions. Left to its own devices, the weather produces nothing but sustained inequality and frustration for all. Therefore, in accordance with the rising tide of public opinion in support of government-imposed climate controls, I would like to take an already popular idea one step further. I believe that the federal government should impose regulations on all weather within the boundaries of the United States under the following plan:

The 18th-century Enlightenment was the single most important intellectual development in human history; it made possible the comfortable, prosperous, stable, and relatively free Western civilization that we enjoy today. Enlightenment thinkers believed in a single, knowable, absolute reality guided by rational natural laws. Individuals—said Enlightenment thinkers—had the faculty of reason, which enabled them to accurately understand the absolute reality. Using reason, individuals could understand not only the factual data of reality but a rational moral system which would instruct them on how they ought to behave. The Enlightenment cultivated the rights of every human being to his life, liberty, property,...

Luck exists. Success through luck does not exist. A coin can be tossed; money can depend on the outcome; you can bet, and it can come up your side. That is luck. If you follow that as a systematic strategy, however, probability theory states quite clearly that you can expect to end up approximately where you started. Real-world outlets that sustain themselves on their customers’ expectations of success through luck will not give you such generous odds. No lasting and permanent good comes to man through luck. It might seem at first that money could. After all, some inherit enormous...

The 18th-century Enlightenment was the single most important intellectual development in human history; it made possible the comfortable, prosperous, stable, and relatively free Western civilization that we enjoy today. Enlightenment thinkers believed in a single, knowable, absolute reality guided by rational natural laws. Individuals—said Enlightenment thinkers—had the faculty of reason, which enabled them to accurately understand the absolute reality. Using reason, individuals could understand not only the factual data of reality but a rational moral system which would instruct them on how they ought to behave. The Enlightenment cultivated the rights of every human being to his life, liberty, property,...

Virtually every system of ethics—Objectivist or not—will acknowledge in no uncertain terms that honesty is one of the chief human virtues. What is meant by the term “honesty” varies widely, however. A popular misconception of honesty equates the virtue with always “telling it like it is” and not holding back any of one’s thoughts about a person, idea, or situation—no matter what the consequences of those thoughts. This view and its real-world applications are antithetical to genuine honesty. If we acknowledge that the individual’s life is the standard of all value, then every virtue must be identified in terms of...

I personally find all currently illegal drugs loathsome; they stunt the mind, inhibit the body, and curtail productivity. I would never consume such substances myself, and I would advise others against doing so. Yet, compared to the adverse effects of their illegalization, the harm of drugs themselves is small indeed. Drug-taking is extremely unhealthy for the persons engaging in it, but not for anybody who abstains from it. The “War on Drugs,” by contrast, harms everybody subject to a government that undertakes it. I have no sympathy for drug addicts; I wish to argue the case of the innocent, moral,...

All too often today we hear condemnations of the profit motive as destructive and uncaring. But is it really? Or is the profit motive one of the noblest forces that can impel a man to act? To understand whether the profit motive is desirable, we must first grasp the goals of a life properly lived. These goals are twofold; on the first level, survival is the goal of sustaining one's biological existence and preventing one's downward slide toward poverty, ruination, and death. On the second level, flourishing is the extension of one's control over the external reality—the ability to harness...

Recently, several frequently articulated objections to tax cuts for upper-income individuals have been brought to my attention. The scenario feared by the objectors and used as grounds for denying tax cuts to the wealthy is the investment of the money gained by the recipients. I shall address three of these objections using the principles of economics and rational self-interest to display the virtues of such an outcome. Indeed, no damage will result from investment of such money; quite the contrary, this practice will fuel economic growth in the United States and rising standards of living for Americans. Objection 1: What...

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in his "Commonwealth Club Address" (1932), articulated his desire for a government of expansive economic powers – used to hold back "economic oligarchy" and assure positive "economic rights." Roosevelt considered public welfare considerations to overshadow individual sovereignty in importance; he was ready to use government power to force individuals to behave in the “public interest.” Ronald Reagan, unlike Roosevelt, recognized that government was the problem – not the solution– in economic crises, and that its authority over the economy must be curtailed to secure the freedom of entrepreneurs and all hard-working, self-directed Americans. In his First Inaugural...