The latest issue of The Objectivist Center‘s monthly journal, Navigator, is out.
In his cover article “Fortress Americanism,” Roger Donway examines the dangerous influence of foreign ideas on the founding philosophy of America. Noting two contrasting philosophies of liberty, Donway writes:
Since the dawn of the Enlightenment, liberty in America has rested on the political philosophy of John Locke to a degree unequaled in any other country, even Great Britain. By contrast, liberty in continental Europe has rested on a political philosophy rooted in medieval Christendom, secularized by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and radicalized by romanticism and socialism.
And in the article “Art and Ideas,” TOC Executive Director David Kelley tackles the age-old question of why humans started creating art:
Why did humans begin doing this sort of thing? Unlike tools for hunting, cooking, building, scraping animal skins, and the like, these artifacts have no clear survival value. Why did people whose daily life was a struggle for subsistence and whose life expectancy was probably less than twenty years spend time and energy making two-dimensional images in dark places? Why did they spend time and energy making instruments to produce rhythmic, tonal sounds? Why did they invent stories of things that never happened? What was the purpose of such activities? What needs did they satisfy? Why has art been such a pervasive feature of human life?
See the full issue of Navigator for these and other articles.