Author: Adam Lee

Atlas Shrugged, part III, chapter VII, The Speech A brief promo before we get to today’s post: I was on the Feminist Coffee Hour podcast to talk about Ayn Rand and gender roles in Objectivism. Check it out! (Full disclosure: one of the co-hosts happens to be the person I’m married to. There were also…

Just after New Year’s, a gang of self-proclaimed militia members led by two sons of Cliven Bundy (yes, that Cliven Bundy) announced that they’d seized a building in the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon. Ostensibly, this was a protest on behalf of two ranchers who’d been sentenced to prison for setting fires on federal…

The future is bleak for Miami. Built on low-lying swampland, it’s one of the most vulnerable places on the planet as storms strengthen and seas rise. The city is already suffering from streets that flood at high tide and saltwater seeping into drinking wells. With just a few feet of sea-level rise, which may be…

Atlas Shrugged, part III, chapter VII The morning after the riot at Rearden Steel, Dagny is woken out of a sound sleep by the insistent ringing of her doorbell (“She had worked at the office till four A.M. and had left word not to expect her till noon” – such shameful weakness! since when do…

As the last hours of 2015 pass, it’s time to revisit the themes and ideas that I kept returning to over the year. These are the most significant: A Violent Year Paris suffered not one, but two atrocities. In January, there was a bloody terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo, committed by fanatics who slaughtered artists…

In 2015, our attention was riveted by crisis, disaster and violence, and politicians flourished by pandering to bigotry and xenophobia. But behind these discouraging headlines, there’s a quiet trend of progress unobtrusively transforming the world. That’s the topic of my latest column in the Guardian, Buried in the darkness of 2015: the seeds of hope…

The news was nearly overshadowed by Christmas, but Elon Musk’s SpaceX pulled off an incredible feat of technology this week: The company’s Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral to carry a set of communications satellites into orbit. While the second stage of the rocket delivered its payload, the initial booster stage turned around…

Atlas Shrugged, part III, chapter VI There’s a scene in this chapter that I’m going to pass over briefly. In it, Hank Rearden is invited to a conference in New York where a cabal of prominent looters proudly announce their Steel Unification Plan, in which every steel maker will be paid based on the number…

I’ve said in the past, and will have occasion to say again, that the world is slowly becoming a better place despite the tragedies and outrages that parade before our eyes. But just because the overall picture is brightening doesn’t mean that there aren’t real and lingering dark spots that ought to command our attention.…

I saw The Force Awakens last night, and I have thoughts, so here’s an open thread to discuss the movie. Warning: spoilers ahead! As Lore Sjoberg once said, the best Star Wars will always be the one that reverts you to the wide-eyed 8-year-old you were when you saw it for the first time. By…