Our New Year's Resolutions
Jan 2, 2002

      MARINA DEL REY, CA--At the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) we use the start of a new year not to make new resolutions but to renew our commitment to the values we have long cherished.

      ARI was founded to help create a renaissance of reason by disseminating the ideas of Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand. In our op-eds and press releases, we strive to identify the consequences of the irrational ideas that grip our culture. For example, ARI writers have for years warned that our government's weak, appeasing responses to Islamic terrorists would only embolden them to commit worse atrocities. So for us the new war on terrorism, which began on September 11, is an old war, but one we vow to continue to fight with all the intellectual means at our disposal.

      One of the consequences of fighting evil for so long is that we become known more for what we oppose than for the deepest values we support. Thus we take the opportunity afforded by the new year to remind ourselves, and the media, that defeating the irrational is not our primary aim; it is only a consequence. Our focus is always on fostering the joy of living in a benevolent universe, on nurturing human life and its values, on establishing reason throughout the world.

      So, in the coming year if you are struck by the force of our denunciations of altruism, irrationalism and collectivism, or by our passionate advocacy of the complete separation of church and state, an educational curriculum designed to nurture a child's mind, the freedom of laissez-faire capitalism, the virtue of selfishness, etc.--please remember that it is all for a world in which reason and the rational man not only exist but flourish.

      Happy New Year!
      Yaron Brook

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Dr. Yaron Brook is available for interviews. To interview Dr. Brook or book him for your show, please e-mail media@aynrandcenter.org

For more articles by Yaron Brook, and his bio, click here.