Per Arne Karlsen

When more than 100 million Americans tune in to watch the game, advertisers pay up to $4 million for 30-second commercial spots, and a nation consumes food on a scale rivaling Thanksgiving, Super Bowl Sunday can safely be declared a de facto national holiday. As Evan Weiner, a sports writer for the New York Sun, put it: “The Fourth of July is America’s birthday party, but Super Bowl Sunday has become America’s biggest party.”

What explains the popularity of a game that annually ranks among the most-watched single-day events? Certainly, the gambling, the glitzy commercials, and social events play a part in attracting a wider audience. But something more fundamental is at play: the nature of football itself.

Football is a uniquely intense and dangerous game that demands equal parts physical and mental effort. Its athletes study, memorize, and practice extensively choreographed plays that they must execute with pinpoint precision—and maximum exertion—all while risking serious injury.

Moreover, since NFL teams play just 16 regular-season games, compared with 162 in baseball and 82 in basketball and hockey, each play from scrimmage holds considerably more weight. Add to this football’s single-game, win-or-go-home elimination playoff system, which, unlike those of comparable sports (e.g., the World Series, the NBA Finals, the Stanley Cup) leaves no room for error, and you begin to see telling differences.

True, some Super Bowls have been so lopsided that by halftime they were no longer worth watching. Yet despite its relatively short history, the Super Bowl has produced some stellar contests and many dramatic, critical plays that have attained folklore status.

Fans will never forget Denver Broncos quarterback John Elway’s dive into a gang of Green Bay Packers, who spun him like a helicopter prop, to sustain what became a tie-breaking drive in Super Bowl XXXII. Also etched forever in the minds of fans is the image of St. Louis Rams linebacker Mike Jones tackling Tennessee Titans wide receiver Kevin Dyson to stop him one yard short of tying the game on the final play of Super Bowl XXXIV. And then there was New England Patriots kicker Adam Vinatieri’s last second, game-winning field goal against the Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI.

Super Bowl XLVI, between the New York Giants and New England Patriots on Sunday, has no shortage of pre-game elements of intrigue. Chief among them is that the contest is a rematch of the Super Bowl four years ago, in which the upstart Giants, a 14-point underdog, derailed and defeated the Patriots, who otherwise were headed to immortality as the second undefeated team in NFL history.

On Sunday, restaurants, bars, and pizza-delivery chains across the nation will rake in big bucks thanks to the mass appeal of the big game. That appeal is rooted in the immense value fans derive from watching superlatively honed athletes who demonstrate exceptional determination and ability in a seriously dangerous contest with near equals.

Is it any wonder the Super Bowl has reached the status of a national holiday?

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Related:

• Did God Help the Patriots Beat the Broncos?
• That First Season by John Eisenberg

Image: Creative Commons by Jack Newton

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie ignited a political furor when he vowed to veto a bill recently introduced in the state legislature legalizing gay marriage because he believed the issue should be decided by popular vote through a public referendum. In so doing, he said “I think people would have been happy to have a referendum on civil rights rather than fighting and dying in the streets in the South.” (Christie has since apologized for that remark.)

The backlash was swift. Said NJ Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver (D-Essex): “Governor — people … were fighting and dying in the streets of the South because the majority refused to grant minorities equal rights by any method. It took legislative action to bring justice to all Americans, just as legislative action is the right way to bring marriage equality to all New Jerseyans.”

“People of color in the American South,” lectured civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), “…could not register to vote… take a seat in the front of the bus [or] visit state capitals. If it had been put to a referendum, we would have never ever won”; only “congressional actions, court decisions and presidential executive orders” made victory possible.

And as the NJ Star-Ledger pointed out: “Imagine how different American history would be if this rule by referendums had carried the day from the start. … [M]inority rights should not be subjected to majority vote. That misses the gist of constitutional rights.”

The governor’s critics are correct, up to a point: Rights are not a matter of voter approval. But nor are they a matter of legislative approval, court order, or executive order. The right of individuals to freely contract with one other, so long as their contracts and actions don’t involve the violation of others’ rights, is a moral matter, which precedes politics and legislation.

Should the bill pass, the NJ legislature in fact will not have created a right to gay marriage; rather, it will have removed NJ’s ban on the practice, thus recognizing that same sex couples have an inalienable right to join together under a marriage contract.

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Related:

• Gay Marriage and Rights vs. Democracy
• Church and State: A Marriage Not Made in Heaven

Image: Creative Commons by Bob Jagendorf

Flere hundre mennesker har frosset i hjel i den pågående kuldebølgen forteller avisene. Dagbladet skriver for eksempel at ”Mer enn 420 kuldedøde i Europa. Kuldebølgen i Europa har til nå krevd mer enn 420 menneskeliv, og nå spår meteorologene mer snø og kulde … ”.

Dette er forferdelig. Men naturkreftene er sterke og det er lite vi mennesker kan gjøre med dem. Eller?

President Obama is feverishly trying to dissuade Israel from attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities, warning of the “disruptive” consequence such an attack would have on oil prices and regional security. Instead, Obama is encouraging more diplomacy.

The Iranian regime continues to fund and support Islamist terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah—both of which have committed numerous massacres on the Israeli people—and has repeatedly staged rallies calling for “Death to Israel.” Making matters worse, as the Associated Press reports, “Israel fears that Iran is fast approaching a point at which a limited military strike would no longer be enough to head off an Iranian bomb.” That Obama and his ilk are discouraging the Israelis from defending themselves against this ongoing and increasing assault is an abomination.

The Israelis should act in their self-interest, ignore the siren songs leading them to their slaughter, and obliterate the Iranian regime.

If you enjoyed this post, consider subscribing to The Objective Standard and making objective journalism a regular part of your life.

Related:

• Interview with Reza Kahlili, an Ex-CIA Spy Embedded in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards
• 9/11 Ten Years Later: The Fruits of the Philosophy of Self-Abnegation
• The Mastermind behind SEAL Team Six and the End of Osama bin Laden
• “Just War Theory” vs. American Self-Defense
• “No Substitute for Victory” The Defeat of Islamic Totalitarianism
• Israel and America’s Flotilla Follies (and How To Avoid Them in the Future)
• An Interview with John R. Bolton on the Proper Role of Government

Image: Creative Commons by Israeli Defense Forces

Som kjent er det uro i Syria. Det pågår et opprør mot diktaturet til Baššār al-ʾAsad, og pressen forteller at flere tusen mennesker er drept, stort sett massakrert av styrkene til president Baššār al-ʾAsad.

Dette er svært ille. For å håndtere slike situasjoner og for å gripe inn og beskytte sivile har det som kaller seg verdenssamfunnet etablert en organisasjon som har som formål å ta seg av slike tilfeller. Denne organisasjonen, for de som ikke vet det, er De Forente Nasjoner, FN.

Peter Bregman loves buffets. He loves the variety they offer. He loves the opportunity he gets to taste many different dishes. And he loves the low cost of being able to eat so much.

But invariably Bregman leaves feeling uncomfortable and exhausted—full not just of food but also of regret. Many people experience this after eating at a buffet, and probably as many of us have felt the same when looking back on how we’ve used our time.

In his latest book, 18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done, Bregman coins this “the buffet challenge” and shows how it’s related to that of managing our time.

Because there’s so much to do—so many interesting people, enjoyable activities, worthwhile causes, compelling opportunities—it’s hard to choose. So we don’t. We try to do it all.

The problem with most time management systems is that they don’t help solve the problem: They’re focused on how to get it all done in less time. But that’s a mistake. Just like tasting from a buffet is a mistake. Because we can’t possibly get it all done and not end up frantic, depleted, and overwhelmed.

The secret to surviving a buffet is to eat fewer things. And the secret to thriving in your life is the same: Do fewer things.

Bregman himself thinks it’s best to focus on roughly five broad areas. For example, you might want to devote time to growing your business, spending more time each day with loved ones, or achieving peak physical shape.

Whatever five areas you choose, however, Bregman thinks they all should have a certain characteristic. “They should be substantial things,” he says, “so when you spend your time on them, you’ll get to the end of the year and know it was time well spent.”

Without a doubt, being selective at a buffet can be difficult—and in life, even more so. However, Bregman is spot on when he observes that this is key to leaving a buffet feeling good—or looking back on your time and being full, not of regret, but of cherished memories of a life well lived.

If you enjoyed this post, consider subscribing to The Objective Standard and making objective journalism a regular part of your life.

Related:

• Objective Moral Virtues: Principled Actions
• Making Life Meaningful: Living Purposely
• Book Review: Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

Human Rights Watch (HRW) is urging the West to respect the rise of political Islam in the Middle East, saying, “The international community must … come to terms with political Islam when it represents a majority preference.” Instead of being unsympathetic to political Islam, says HRW, the West should encourage Islamist governments to “respect basic rights — just as the Christian-labeled parties and governments of Europe are expected to do.”

But contrary to what HRW implies, the “majority preference” of foreigners is not a standard by reference to which civilized nations should set foreign policy. Further, political Islam means violating rights and, ultimately, killing those who reject Islam. Whether Islamists gain power by force or by vote, they seek to force their barbaric creed on the citizenry and ultimately the world. Encouraging Islamists to “respect basic rights” is like encouraging communists to respect basic rights. It can’t happen.

Further, for Islamists to say that they intend to “respect basic rights” would be a patent lie. Iranian Reza Kahlili, in an interview with TOS, recounts what happened when Islamists took over Iran:

[T]he new government went back on its promise that the clerics would not interfere in government matters, that they would only address the spirituality of the people. The clerics started enforcing Islamic law, which was not supposed to be part of the new government. Soon Khomeini and other clerics declared that they were representatives of God on Earth and that anybody who opposed them would be regarded as a “moraheb,” an enemy of God, and executed.

Following that, tens of thousands of men and women were arrested, opposition political parties were banned, and certain universities were shut down to get rid of the Western influence in our education. Among the thousands taken to Evin prison, where they kept political prisoners, were my best friend and his siblings.

I witnessed the torture and the horror that this new regime was inflicting on Iranian citizens. Teenage girls were raped prior to execution—because of the Muslim belief that virgins go to heaven. Boys and girls were tortured in unimaginable ways, some of which I’ve described in my book [A Time to Betray], and then executed.

Political Islam should not be tolerated; it should be eliminated.

If you enjoyed this post, consider subscribing to The Objective Standard and making objective journalism a regular part of your life.

Related:

• Interview with Reza Kahlili, an Ex-CIA Spy Embedded in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards
• “No Substitute for Victory” The Defeat of Islamic Totalitarianism
• The Iranian and Saudi Regimes Must Go
• An Interview with John R. Bolton on the Proper Role of Government

Image: Creative Commons by atphalix

”Alle er bekymret for et todelt helsevesen” forteller Aftenposten i dag, og bringer intervjuer med seks toppolitikere fra de store partiene som alle sier det samme. Bakgrunnen er at stadig flere kjøper egne helseforsikringer som gjør at de kan få behandling for plager og sykdommer mye raskere enn de kan få dersom de må vente på behandling i det offentlige helsetilbudets køer. Det at noen får behandling raskere enn de ville ha fått i det offentlige systemet er for disse partiene et problem, og de kaller dette er ”todelt helsevesen”.

Vi plukker noen tilfeldige sitater:

What’s often forgotten (or ignored?) about the Iranian nuclear program is that Tehran has advanced this far despite being subject to numerous sanctions for many years. There’s now a strong push in Congress to amp up economic sanctions on the regime. In Foreign Policy, Mark Dubowitz and Jonathan Schanzer discuss Iran’s use of an international financial-transactions system, and argue that severing Tehran’s link to that system could seriously disrupt its ability to engage in trade. Definitely worth reading.

My take is that further sanctions, if really effectual, could help disrupt or slow down Iran’s program, but I continue to maintain that eliminating the threat from that regime will require far more — at this point, almost certainly military coercion.

image:sxc.hu

If you’re looking for a useful app to boost your productivity, I recommend iDoneThis, which I’ve used every day for the past six months. Here are three ways the app helps me get more things done:

1. It enables me to effortlessly keep track of what I’ve done and thus how productive I have (or haven’t) been.

At the end of each day, iDoneThis sends me an email. “Hi there,” it says, “Take 30 seconds to write out what you got done today.” So I do—and that’s that. Keeping track of what I’ve done isn’t something I have to think much about; with iDoneThis it’s just a question in my inbox that I respond to in less than a minute.

2. It motivates me to get the right things done.

I have a handful of things I want to do each day and knowing that I’m going to report what I did sometimes gives me just enough added motivation to take action on the most important things when I otherwise would not.

For example, I normally treasure reading to my son. Sometimes, however, particularly when I’m tired, I waver between going upstairs to read to him and skipping it. Then I remember that I’ll be able to report the activity to iDoneThis by email—and just that much tips me to read. Shortly thereafter, I’ve read two or three short books to my son and strengthened not only an important habit but also a vital relationship—and I’m feeling more energetic to boot.

3. It keeps me honest about what I have actually done.

It can be easy to blame outside factors for not getting things done or not being happy. After all, other people and chance events can influence both of these things. But iDoneThis keeps a clear and definitive record of what I do each day, and when I look back on what I have done I can see the results of my decisions and actions.

For example, I can see that over the past month I read many more books for my own enjoyment than I had planned and, partly because of this, wrote much less. Without iDoneThis, it would be easy to tell myself that I was productive, having read so much, and leave it at that. But with the record that iDoneThis provides, I can see that my indulgence in reading, however productive on one level, precluded me from doing the writing that I wanted to do. This enables me to adjust my plan for the following days, weeks, and months.

There are other ways iDoneThis helps me boost my productivity, and other ways it can help you boost yours too. If you want to give it a try, you can sign up to use the app here. (It’s free.)

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Ayn Rand was born on February 2, 1905. To commemorate the 107th anniversary of her birth, ARC analyst Don Watkins has an op-ed on FoxNews.com today, in which he discusses the controversy over Rand’s influence on today’s politics.

“Rand has clearly inspired millions,” he writes, ”But a debate has emerged over the question of Rand’s political influence, with many commentators claiming her ideas have played a key role in shaping the political landscape. . . . But to gauge Rand’s influence, we need to know more about her views than the sound bites we’re typically offered.”

Why are Tea Partiers, political commentators, and politicians talking about a philosopher almost thirty years after her death? Read the article to find out.

American philosopher Ayn Rand was born on February 2, 1905, and her long-time associate Harry Binswanger has designated her birthday a new holiday: “Randsday.” I love this idea.

Rand, author of The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, The Virtue of Selfishness, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, and several other revolutionary books, was, from the standard of the value of man’s life, the most important philosopher of the 20th century.

Rand advocated what she called rational egoism: the idea that one should always act in a rationally self-interested manner, always pursue one’s life-serving values by means of one’s best judgment, always consider the long-range consequences of one’s actions, and never commit a sacrifice (“the surrender a greater value for the sake of a lesser one”). To enact this principle, she held, is to be moral; hence the virtue of selfishness.

Rand saw this idea both as the key to personal happiness and as the moral foundation of a free society. And she was right. If you want to live your life fully and achieve the greatest happiness possible, you must act in a rationally self-interested manner as a matter of unwavering principle. You must choose life-serving goals, activities, and relationships, and you must pursue them rationally and ambitiously throughout your days and years. To do otherwise is to live less fully, less happily than you are able to live.

Likewise, if you want to live in a society where you are free to act consistently as you see fit, you must advocate a social system in which individual rights are fully recognized and protected. You must uphold the inalienable right of each individual to act on his own judgment for his own sake—whether in regard to his career, business, recreation, romance, or any other value—so long as he does not violate the same rights of others. The proper purpose of a government, Rand emphasized, is to protect rights and thus enable individuals to live their lives in accordance with their judgment.

This is the essence of Rand’s philosophy: Go by reason, pursue your life-serving values, respect the rights of others to do the same, and advocate a social system that makes all of this possible. And this is why Randsday is a worthy holiday. It celebrates the birthday of the philosopher who codified the virtue of selfishness and made the moral argument for a rights-respecting society.

How to celebrate Randsday? As Binswanger puts it: “You do something not done on any other holiday: you give yourself a present.” The idea is to treat yourself to something that you really want and will greatly enjoy but that you ordinarily would not buy for yourself now: that MacBook Pro or that beautiful dress you’ve been eying, that snowboard you know will improve your turns, reservations at that picturesque hotel in the Caymans, tickets to that Broadway show, a Lexus, a puppy—whatever you’ll love and can non-sacrificially afford. Buy it for Randsday and enjoy it.

What will it be?

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Related

• Atlas Shrugged and Ayn Rand’s Morality of Egoism
• The Beauty of Ayn Rand’s Ethics

Image: Gary L. Friedman www.FriedmanArchives.com; Copyright © Sandra J. Shaw Studio 2011.

I de siste par år har europeiske politikere med Sarkozy og Merkel i spissen avholdt et stort antall møter for å løse de økonomiske problemene som rammer stadig flere land i Europa. Til tross for dette har de ikke kommet noen vei, problemene er bare blitt større og større. Et utvalg overskrifter fra Aftenposten de siste dagene viser dette:

”Hellas koster enda mer enn planlagt” (29/1)
”Hellas nekter å overstyres av EU” (29/1)
”Europas krise kryper nordover” (28/1)
”Portugal kan bli det nye Hellas” (31/1)
”Reinfeldt: Hellas er i praksis konkurs” (31/1)
”Grasrotopprør mot EU” (1/2)

People have the right to associate voluntarily and to contract by mutual consent. Those rights have long been under assault by the “progressive” left; now they are attacked by conservatives as well. Today Mitch Daniels, governor of Indiana, signed a “right to work” bill that further erodes freedom of contract.

Conservative writer Liz Peek praises this bill on the grounds “that union labor costs and work rules have become an obstacle to job growth.” No doubt her claims about unions are true. But the problems arise from various federal statutes, including the National Labor Relations (Wagner) Act signed by FDR in 1935, that violate the rights of employers and employees to contract as they see fit. One practical result has been to hamstring the American auto industry, as Daniel J. Mitchell pointed out even before the auto bailouts.

The conservative solution, as articulated by Peek, merely compounds previous violations of freedom of contract with new ones, apparently on the grounds that two wrongs somehow make a right. In her view, the bill is good because it “prohibits contracts requiring workers to pay union dues.” But why should the government be in the business of setting the terms of employment contracts? Employers should be free to hire whomever they want on whatever terms the parties mutually agree to accept.

More broadly, there is no “right to work” against an employer’s consent, any more than there is a “right to health care.” A right refers to a freedom of action—such as the right to seek employment or medical care from willing partners—not to an entitlement to a specific good, service, or outcome. People have the right to work for others only insofar as the employer freely consents to the terms of employment. (Of course, people always have the right to work for themselves using their own labor and resources.)

The solution to rights-violating labor laws is not to impose more rights-violating labor laws, but rather to repeal them all and restore liberty of contract.

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Related:

• Mitch Daniels: Business is “One of the Noblest of Human Pursuits”
• America’s Unfree Market

Image: Bob Glass

Tidligere var det fylkeskommunene som drev sykehusene. Dette fungerte ikke godt og derfor valgte man – dvs. alle de store partiene ønsket – en annen løsning. Staten skulle overta sykehusene, og alle trodde faktisk at dette ville løse problemene. Det ble etablert et antall statlige helseforetak (i dag er antallet slike helseforetak redusert til fire), og de skal ha ansvar for sykehusene i hver sin geografiske region. Det kom selvsagt også en ny lov, helseforetaksloven (2001), som skulle regulere driften av sykehusene.

Earlier this month, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a Texas law that forces women seeking an abortion to obtain a sonogram and wait 24 hours before being able to act according to their own judgment. The law also requires doctors to present information and claims that neither doctor nor patient may regard as relevant.

Though praised by some conservatives, the law violates the rights of doctors and patients and opens the door to similar attacks on all our rights.

The Texas law violates freedom of contract by restricting consensual, voluntary agreements between women and their doctors. Conservatives who support such restrictions on abortion can offer no principled resistance when leftists wish to use government force to restrict freedom of contract in medicine in other ways, as by imposing myriad costly insurance mandates.

The law violates rights of trade and self-determination by forcing women to wait 24 hours to get an abortion in most cases. By the same logic, the government could force people to wait to enter any other controversial economic transaction. No doubt other activists would love to use government force to make people wait to buy a gun, buy unhealthy foods or drinks, trade certain stocks or other financial instruments, or even read or publish “sensitive” materials (such as that denying human-caused global warming).

The law also violates the free speech of doctors who, under the law, must discuss what politicians dictate rather than what their professional judgment demands. By the same standards, politicians could impose rote speech on marriage and divorce counselors, sellers of controversial magazines, etc. (The argument that the Texas law merely ensures informed consent is an obvious pretext to make abortions costlier and more difficult to obtain; the idea that women seeking abortions don’t already understand what an abortion entails is ludicrous.)

The choice is stark. We can have either economic liberty or laws that restrict freedoms of contract, trade, and speech; we can’t have both. Those who act to restrict economic liberties in the realm of abortion should not be surprised when other sorts of transactions fall prey to the same types of controls.

Regarding the broader case for why women have the right to seek an abortion, and why fetuses don’t have rights, see Diana Hsieh and my recent Objective Standard article, “The Assault on Abortion Rights Undermines All Our Liberties.”

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Related:

• Gingrich Seeks to Violate Rights of Women and Doctors to Engage in Fertility Care
  
• The American Right, the Purpose of Government, and the Future of Liberty
  

Image: Creative Commons

Igjen er det debatt om vikarer – et nytt direktiv fra EU skal gjøre det enklere for norske bedrifter å bruke vikarer. Regjeringen er for dette direktivet, mens LO er imot. Vi siterer fra en litt gammel avisomtale:

”EUs vikarbyrådirektiv ble vedtatt i 2009, og Norge skal innføre direktivet, med mindre regjeringen benytter reservasjonsretten i EØS-avtalen. Direktivet skal sikre likebehandling mellom innleide arbeidstakere og fast ansatte. Dessuten skal vikarbyråer anerkjennes som arbeidsgivere.

The spectacle of Newt Gingrich—of all people—trying to dictate the family planning of others is ludicrous.

Yet Gingrich’s recent call for more rules controlling in vitro fertility treatments raises an important issue: Under the proposed anti-abortion “personhood” laws that Gingrich endorses, common fertility treatments would be outlawed. The result would be that many women who wish to have children would be legally barred from getting pregnant.

“Personhood” laws would arbitrarily declare eggs at the moment of fertilization to be the legal equivalent of a born child, conferring full legal rights to zygotes. Among many other things, such laws would ban common fertility treatments that involve harvesting multiple eggs from the woman, trying to fertilize those eggs, and then implanting one or more of the resulting zygotes in the woman’s uterus. Because these procedures typically produce extra zygotes that are later destroyed, “personhood” laws declare them to be murder.

If doctors were forbidden from fertilizing more than a single egg at a time, that would dramatically increase the cost of fertility treatment and dramatically reduce the chances of success. As a result, many women who wish to have children would be legally prevented from doing so. (For details, see a 2010 paper on the subject by Diana Hsieh and me.)

Thus, “personhood” laws would violate the rights of women and their partners to seek fertility care as well as the rights of doctors to administer it—a violation of the founding rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

And yet, even though they would prevent many women from having children of their own, the “personhood” laws are preposterously called “pro life” by their advocates. They are in fact profoundly anti-life, and it it time for Americans to recognize them as such.

If you enjoyed this post, consider subscribing to The Objective Standard and making objective journalism a regular part of your life.

Related:

• The Assault on Abortion Rights Undermines All Our Liberties
  
• Ayn Rand’s Theory of Rights: The Moral Foundation of a Free Society
  

Image: Creative Commons by Gage Skidmore

Could you survive deep in the Alaskan wilderness and make your way out with only the resources from a crashed airplane?

That’s the stark challenge faced by the seven protagonists of the movie The Grey, starring Liam Neeson. An airplane carrying Alaskan oil field workers crashes during a storm, and they must battle harsh winter conditions and a pack of aggressive wolves while attempting to find their way back to civilization. In addition to spectacular cinematography and spellbinding action scenes, the movie demonstrates surprising philosophical depth in delivering its theme: “What does it really mean to fight for one’s life?”

The movie also dramatizes three related principles that are easy to forget during everyday life but that are made vividly clear in the context of the movie:

1) Man’s basic means of survival is his reasoning mind.

The wolves in The Grey survive using their claws, fangs, and instincts in accordance with their basic nature. Humans, however, cannot survive in this fashion. We lack the fur to keep us warm in subzero temperatures, claws and fangs to kill prey (or to protect ourselves against predators), and instincts to dictate our actions. To survive, we must use our minds, rearrange nature, and create the goods we need. Reason is our basic means of doing so.

2) Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.

Do you need to start a fire? Then you must identify the nature of the material at hand and proceed accordingly. Do you need to cross a violently rushing river? Then you must devise a method that holds the weight of a full-grown man; you must respect and apply the laws of physics. Wishful thinking, bluster, or drunkenness won’t make reality bend to your desires or make your problems go away. The only way to solve your problems or accomplish your goals is to face reality head-on, heed the facts, and act accordingly.

3) Modern man is extremely dependent on the benefits of technology.

Technology is an incredible enhancement to our lives. I would rather be typing a movie review on my MacBook Air in the comfort of my living room than shivering in a dark cave wondering whether I’ll be eaten by wolves tonight.

But it’s easy to take for granted the benefits of industrial civilization until we are reminded (in fiction or in real life) what life is like without those benefits. In Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged, Hank Rearden hosts a fancy party during a storm. During the party, Francisco D’Anconia tells him:

“[Y]ou are able to have summer flowers and half-naked women in your house on a night like this, in demonstration of your victory over that storm. And if it weren’t for you, most of those who are here would be left helpless at the mercy of that wind in the middle of some such plain.”

The Grey reminded me how grateful I am for the many entrepreneurs, engineers, and businessmen who have created our modern industrial civilization. Without them, we wouldn’t enjoy the iPads, cell phones, automobiles, central heating, and electricity we so easily take for granted. Instead, we’d be like the protagonists of The Grey, struggling mightily against raw, untamed nature, hoping to survive another day.

For this reason, although The Grey is not a political movie, it also helped me better appreciate Ari Armstrong’s recent blog post, “Great Producers Deserve Our Gratitude, Not Obama’s Tax Hikes.”

In the hubbub of everyday life, it’s easy to forget some basic truths about man, nature, and the fundamental role of reason in our lives. A gripping tale of novel and dire circumstances, The Grey reminds us of what we must never forget if we want to live.

”Skal en niqabkledt norsk ungdom fra Bærum hindres i å reise på skoleturné fordi nesten alle hater det hun står for” spør Aftenpostens Knut Olav Åmås i artikkelen ”Prinsipper, ikke følelser”. Selv om dette er en lovende tittel så hopper han over det viktigste poenget: